I am Back As Jobless (For Now)

Happy New Year! Wow, it’s incredible how quickly time flies! It’s been a while since I last posted anything, especially since I shared so little last year. After quitting my job last December, I’ve redirected my energy toward home improvement projects—repairing and painting our house, while I wait for job opportunities to come my way.

It is a tough time looking for other job opportunities. When I decided to quit, I went all the way handling my resignation letter and moved on without thinking about the consequences. I understand very well the current economic situation in Brunei. It's just that I couldn't care less any longer after attending the most nonsense meeting of my life and seeing how incompetent the management I have worked with for nearly 15 years being so irresponsible. Better leave early and avoid all the troubles coming my way.

Anyway, that’s all for now and there will be more posts coming.

Toy Price Increase But Shipping Fee Is Way Worst

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.

End of 2023 – Citizenship Test 2013 Now Calling

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.

JoyToy X Warhammer 40K: Ultramarine Heavy Intercessor Sergeant Aetus Gardane

 

One of the three Heavy Intercessor members, Sergeant Aetus Gardane, comes with a helmet-less head. The body design is the same (Nikos and Helvin), with limited mobility in the shoulders and legs. The paintwork is fine, but I did experience some loose joints in the torso and a microphone that kept popping off. I had to glue it multiple times for this particular figure. It's interesting because I didn't notice a missing component while taking pictures and only discovered it when it fell to the floor while posing on the display shelf.

JoyToy X Warhammer 40K: Ultramarine Heavy Intercessor - Nikos Phaetz

One of the three Heavy Intercessor members, Nikos Phaetz, utilizes the Excecutor Heavy Bolter. The figure's body design features limited mobility in the shoulders and legs. Some areas of the figure have a dirty paint job, with the most noticeable being on the top of the backpack.

Goodbye 12-year-old AMD HD4770!

Well, it’s time to say goodbye to my long-surviving AMD Radeon HD4770! I have been holding out on the upgrade for over three years after the COVID lockdown, and the GPU price was insanely expensive back then. Now the GPU prices have gone down after China took down the Bitcoin mining operation there. It’s time to look for a new card and complete the upgrade by the end of this year before another stupid AI trend hits the GPU price again.

This time, after 12 years, I decided to go back to NVIDIA for an MSI GeForce RTX™ 4070 VENTUS 2X 12 G OC due to limited brand availability in Brunei. Yeah, it's a controversial card, and the MSRP price is not that attractive or even competitive this year, but I no longer care about it, and I want to start gaming the latest titles. The price fits into my budget during a sudden' August Eight' promo for SGD 799.00, and I am happy to save SGD 80.00 from the deal. This card does provide good gaming performance and low power consumption, although I do have doubts about my 750WATT PSU being enough. We shall see after I invest in a new PC case with Lian Li fans and upgrade to AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D. I plan to adopt a lower-cost option of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700XT upgrade to maintain its TDP 65WATT so that I don’t need to spend extra on the ATX 3.0 PSU. For some reason, I have a feeling it is not a good upgrade path.

Update Guide for the Brunei Citizenship Registration and Sample Letter

This is a revisit to 2023 and revising (proofreading) my guide on registering Brunei Citizenship examination. It is unimaginable that every one of us struggling to register at the immigration in Kuala Belait (KB) even today. The procedure is still complicated as usual and hasn’t changed after all these years. You had to write a formal letter to request immigration to do an update. These things are not necessary for immigration in BSB, they will just use their system to update on the spot and way faster. However, I choose not to because this may cause some trouble to those working in the KB branch getting blasted. Out of respect, I just follow the procedure of getting the letter done and submitting it.

I encourage those who change their mobile phone numbers and move into new homes or rent houses to get it updated. If you need the letter sample, I uploaded and shared it from my Google Drive. You can download or print it out for reference. I also updated my guide for the Brunei Citizenship registration with proofreading and correction in case anyone needed the information.

• How to Register Brunei Citizenship for ICI/Stateless
• Pertukaran Nombor Telefon (Letter) *A copy of your photocopy IC is require.
  
• Tukar Alamat (Letter) *A copy of your photocopy IC is require.