An Alien Life of Starboykb

Wars going to continue and the increase in inflation hurt everyone globally. This year is no good and the economy in Brunei is not improving with nothing going on. I am feeling the heat these days, and the price of the toys is getting expensive. Sure, we are all still able to source cheaper prices if looking harder. The problem I see right now is the expensive shipping fee.

My recent experience online shopping in the US has been awful. My Last of the Seekers: Robot Toy & Comic I crowdfunded two years ago was stuck last year thanks to MyUS (forwarder) garbage customer's support and falling into a scam reputation because more and more sellers don’t want shipped over there. The delivery didn’t make it into their warehouse for an unknown reason and had to pay to rearrange the delivery again. Switching to another well-known forwarder (Stackry) doesn’t help either. Their shipping fee is insanely expensive (triple!) and had to wake up at 1 AM to go through three help desks to get sorted out to push the price down by 40% which cost me around SGD 160.00+ for a decent box size.

The whole situation is insane for me and had been looking for an alternative forwarder since because there is no Airmail available for Brunei until today. Getting Transformers from Hong Kong is currently out of the question because China fuck the economy over there. Their fee is no different than the US. Can you imagine, ordering one deluxe figure can get me a Voyager figure? Yeah, that’s right. That was damn expensive. If the HK Airmail is available, it will help to drive down the cost.

Japan EMS shipping right now is the best and the most affordable. I have been enjoying buying from HLJ since last year. The only problem is I can’t find much interesting stuff at Mandarake. I might try Amazon soon and see whether they can ship to Brunei.

The end of the year is coming! My friend has informed me that our batch of 2013 has been now processed and everyone is eagerly awaiting a goddamn 10 years result. Do remember that if there is no call and receive a letter from a mailbox, then sorry to say, we failed our exam. I’m not too bothered because I am so tired and no longer care since I am way more worried about money to survive the increase in inflation and the unfair treatment from the company.

After clearing my last loan in July, my finances haven’t improved at all and only started to perform slightly better last two months ago. Hopefully, this December there won’t be much good promo going on to continue to brainwash me to spend more money which I already burned half of. I already got a new phone, so now, desire to get an Android tab for my home and work usage including starting planning to travel to Thailand and visit the Gundam Base store there.

Never for me. No matter how sensitive the topic is, every one of us who work hard and takes up multiple tasking deserved to know if are we being awarded for our performance. A few of my colleagues disagree with me and shouldn’t be brought up to HR. You need to remember that we have a signed contract that clearly stated there will be a bonus review every twelve months which means the company has to uphold their contract to have a proper discussion with the employees. Even a company need to publicly issue a memo announcement if they are facing poor market performance. Keeping quiet is a big mistake. Not that we don’t understand the current economic situation in Brunei. The oil & gas market is not doing well due to the ongoing war between Russian and Ukraine. It’s up to the employees to decide whether to stay or move on with their careers for better opportunities.

This is what happens to me. Thanks to this piece of shit department HR. I already lost my bonus payout last year after getting transferred without any chance to fight back because of the fear of losing my job and being unable to pay the bank loan. Now, it is over and this time I am fighting back. I prioritize the importance of my welfare as a decent low-salary guy. So there are going to be two ways going to end here. Either they pay my deserved bonus or resign based on the final answer from the management. If I resign, I may suffer monthly income and no toys. Since I no longer have any loan commitments, nothing can stop me from getting a longer rest to heal my mental health and stress-free.

I believe the majority of you have already gotten a call from immigration to go for the briefing and are ready for receiving a certificate for Brunei Citizenship. Congratulation again to those going this week.

The information I am aware of is currently still in progress processing and speeding up to clear out the batches who passed in the year 2012. If you still haven’t received any call yet, my suggestion here is DO NOT IGNORE the local landline call. There have been numerous complaints against immigration that they did not make any phone calls. I understand that not every one of us knows the exact office phone number and afraid that it might be a scam call. My suggestion here is if you see the local phone number on your cell phone. Just pick it up because you might score your golden ticket.

I am expecting our results for the year 2013 batches should be very soon. It is interesting to see how we handle our emotional damage when receiving a phone call notifying you failed the exam and good luck reapplying again for the next examination.😑

All the loan stress carry with me for so many years finally ended! No more loan repayment next month! I also decided to say goodbye to two of the useless debit card that I don’t even need in the first place. It was stupid of me for giving out free money to the bank for many years. From today onward, there will be only UnionPay and one Credit Card. I only need to keep the useful cards that work both locally and overseas, especially online purchases, nothing else.

My plan, for now, will prioritise a recovery path. I lost my bonus last year and had a feeling the company making another excuse not going to pay this year as well. Looking for a new job is very hard right now especially considering the age problem and lack of paper qualifications. The challenging part is reminding myself to be super patient and not overthink about quitting my current job. I had to be very confident there are enough funds in the bank to cover the expenses especially monthly insurance for at least a year when searching for other jobs if I decided to rage quit.

Starting a business is not something I am confident of especially in Brunei. With a lack of access to basic online receiving transfer funds. I have to put this idea way back on the list and figure out other ways to earn extra money from part-time. I do have some stupid thoughts about streaming but feel silly to do it. I have an old camera lying around and just need to invest in a budget streaming microphone messing around.

Happy New Year and another new beginning day to start over. Last year was another stressful year and nonsense. Hopefully, this year will be better and can’t wait to clear all the remaining 7 months of the mafia bank loans.

Travelling will not be priorities at the moment until my financial back to normal and stable. The year 2022 wasn’t good either for me when I lose the bonus payout completely. This affects me badly and has to extract backup money from my mom's savings to cover the losses at the moment. Once the bank loan clears, I can start to slowly pay back my mom's savings around September and keep some funds as a backup in case of emergency. My original plan is to pay using the bonus, but at the moment, nothing is certain about whether the current company going to pay me or not this year. If the same shit happens, well, time to plan for an exit.

Of course, the main problem is also my obsession with toy collections. It’s not slowing down, instead, JoyToy X Warhammer 40K action figure just join the family. Yikes! Even I recently loaded the classic W40K: Dawn of War RTS game to pass my lazy time. JoyToy is not stopping with its released wave and continues to announce new races every week. This is not good. I had to in advance preparing my financial spending plan last year because I have almost forgotten about the pre-ordered several P-Bandai Gunpla with one of the local sellers. I was hoping to slowly get from Mandarake. Looking at the Japanese YEN exchange rate right now, I need to revise and adjust my spending on the pre-order at HLJ too.

Mostly my order over there are either plastic kits (Gunpla, 30mm etc) or Transformers. I’m staying away from buying Anime figures because it’s so insanely hard to sell off in Brunei. Currently open to shipping out to the international buyer so if any of you happen to visit my blog, do check out the garage sales section. I haven’t started posting on FB yet because I don’t have the digital weight to calculate the item to estimate the shipping fee.

Well, a lot of things happen in with my life and terrible busy especially during CONVID-19 period. I wanted to restart posting again, but I got sick during Lunar New Year (not CONVID mind you!) then too busy doing the house cleaning weekly and doing my best trying fixing problem myself, and clearing out the infinite boxes (mostly toys) for recycle. Yes, I am finally free from my dead father home rental nightmare.

My step-mother surely pissed off knowing after we decided to move out last year. She basically loses her 70% income from us which why the more reason my sister and I should move out. It took time to convince my sister making move buying a house because it was huge financial risk to both of us, so we have to turn to our brother for support and expertise on the lawyer agreement. Even now, I am barely sustained and losing money every month fixing developer shitty work which I plan to blog about how fuck up this developer can do to you if you are not very careful buying a house from them in Brunei and even the danger these lawyers can screw you.

Living in developed countries, money is the first thing that keeps you and your family out of poverty. The costs of living in Brunei indeed increase sharply. Some shops taking advantage of this situation trying to scam and even department store fake the discount prices on goods. Because of this, most my Malay friends are on high alert and even create Excel documents comparing prices nowadays to protect themselves getting cheated. Well, not a bad idea, and I am following their footsteps too.

The company I work with may be slowly doing good recovery but my salary remained the same for two years now after % reduction. The good thing is I continue to keep the job and receive my salary on time so it was a plus to allow me clearing the car loan until this final year in January. I am now feeling more relieved and less stressful. However, my spending habit is still number one concern, so I decided to keep tracks every payment and withdrawing money from the banks in order to find out the total amount left every end of the month.

I’m not going to lie. This is not enough, so I decided looked into a better option to save by:

Cooking Your Own Foods
Probably the reason I am getting older and interested to start learning to eat healthier foods. Cooking your own did help me to save more and balance out for fruits. Of course, I am aiming to improve health sake especially fights against my biggest ulcer enemy that plague in my mouth almost every month whenever I accidentally bite and injure. It now takes longer to heal and had to suffer the pain for two weeks. This is not good at all. It's a sign to your body to eat fruits more than ever.

Postponing PC Upgrade
Thanks to the Cryptocurrency asshole jacking up the graphics cards price around the world. The selling price is just too ridiculously high, so I decided to postpone until next year. Man, it did take me months from last year to save the budget and almost go forward with the upgrade.

To be honest, I am happy with the setback. The discovery of the Spectre and Meltdown security problem really hit the global IT security hard and personally, I’m not a fan of flashing BIOS for the motherboard and a bit sensitive on Cybersecurity. My early plan was to purchase both AMD Ryzen processor and MSI motherboard locally but because this involved flashing the BIOS yourself in order to get patch above global security issues. I had to double check with the local shop if they willing to warranty for those DIY builders or the technicians will be the one taking the risk. Otherwise, you will be sucking the cost yourself when they denied the warranty claim. Another truth about local shops business behavior, they are the worst and becomes a jerk when it comes to warranty after sales.

For now, I will be migrating the current Windows 7 to Linux. The security update really slows down the old rig so its time for the switching lighter memory resources since nowadays I am more of surfing the internet and watching TV series than playing games. Actually, I played mobile games the most these days and the heart is telling me to get Nintendo Switch.

Plastic Kits and Toys
Lego has announced the end of Nexo Knights theme which is bad news as I really love the sets. For the good news, I get to slow down mode chasing all the remaining set and the last released sets in the market. I also have more time focusing sourcing army packs, custom mod and different parts from Bricklink to build my own idea armies factions. Almost ready to start custom building but I need few more stuff and waiting for the right time snatching discount price for the large set of the local stores.

As for plastic kits, creating a spreadsheet to record the original selling price and compare the after discount is advisable. HLJ is the reason I started. Everyone knows they are very great online shops to drop by. But the implementation of the bonus credit point system and include together with the discount items are questionable. I actually did discover few times during the sales, some discount items they listed as the original price with additional bonus credit points only. It just doesn’t make sense for me personally. Are they doing sales or just want us to accept bonus credit point for our next purchase? There are even undervalued items I felt like a trap to lure us to add to the cart. I strongly advise you guys open a spreadsheet and start adding for price comparison sake.

Getting more toys too! To be honest, I don’t really feel much joy about celebrating birthday anymore. Cake or no cake, life still goes on and my wish is to get through smoothly settling the remaining car loan until next year then I can start planning to invest affordable house or apartment. Of course, managing own healthy lifestyle should be first in line. Few more years, I am going to be forty.

Yeah, people (family members too!) do ask me occasionally why not making time for relationship. As much I wanted to, I probably would choose to travel and focus something I missed for so long. The timing and self financial still an issue. But the personality of mine are being terrible asking girl out and kinda screw up big time on conversation. Not sure how myself can fix the flaws. It just a habit to be true to myself and speak directly that comes into the mind rather choose to fake it. Not to mention, I'm free thinker. The words and ignorance does the effect.

Now what kind of birthday reward I got for myself? Since the timing is great when Ramandan and summer sales crash together at the same month, the first present was getting new running shoe because the old one is beat up and bad for the foot. I also grab Philip steam iron for dirt cheap $29.00 that comes with 2 years warranty. Normally, I am lazy type of person who doesn’t iron the clothes and just roll putting straight to the clothing storage. But a lot of clothes now winkle and time to straighten it out.

Next, buying toys. Basically is unavoidable. However, because I have remaining Toy R Us $20 voucher to be expire soon. It would be a waste not to use. I drive up and brought two Lego Nexo Knights and Transformers Titan Return Diac & Optimus Prime. Still, a good day to know there are numbers of good discount and surprise to get free Lego City Tractor pack. It's a shame I missed out the Nexo Knights goodies pack few months ago and the sudden 20% sales on later week. Fuck me.

For the online shopping, Hobby Link Japan currently celebrating their 20^th anniversary sales. Sad to say, there aren’t a lot attractive items to get. I feel like the additional or more bonus store credits for use in the next purchase kinda eyesore. While the offers last until end of this month, I will wait until the remaining lists will be reveal final week.