CNY Holiday Over For Me

Just like that. A blink on the eye and the holiday leave is over. I didn’t go anywhere and visit during Chinese New Year. Some of my relatives and cousins choose to travel. I didn’t and even think about it at the moment. Only my sister went to Singapore to met up with my mom and brother family. The only things I did at home is playing online games and catching up with the TV series I miss.

To be honest, I no longer really understand how to enjoy life anymore and more like avoiding for some reason. This is fucking terrible and finding what I am fearing for something that I couldn’t understand this whole week resting. I can say for one that hunt me these days is doesn’t have your own home are the most frustrating and stressful part in life. Probably I need to start working out tomorrow and continue my Gunpla work next week clearing off my mind before this shit start distracting me.

Why We Should Install and Learn How to Use LibreOffice in Brunei

First of all, it's a top free office suite on the internet today that provide much of the features needed to get things started. Why spend money buying Microsoft Office when you don’t really use often? Retail version only allow installed 1 PC and doesn’t get other access to their Cloud features service. Mind you, this applied to their latest collaboration (version 2016) feature for businesses. Your only choice is purchase subscription plan. Of course, it may sound like you save money in a long term. Again, ask yourself, do you really needed this Cloud features using at home? Not unless you work at home often.

It just a shame that not many local users knows about LibreOffice. Reason is simple, Microsoft is dominated the market in Brunei. You can say 99.9% of the schools, public, private sector, oil and gas industries and even Government sector uses Microsoft Office. This is why almost everyone here overlook free office suite. 

I will cut short talking about LibreOffice history. All you need to know this is an overhaul version from OpenOffice code base. No fancy ribbon menu or whatsoever you going to find. It still onto friendly and clean classic menu style. The reason is simple, they want to make sure the users able to easily access the most use features in LibreOffice. 

There are doubt and controversial about today document formats issue but so far I hardly encounter the problem myself working with Word and Excel documents between my office desktop and own laptop on site from the DropBox. The Document Foundation teams (and volunteers) have done remarkably by providing monthly update release that bring bug fixes and improvements. You can say working with Microsoft document formats slowly becoming less headache. In case you wonder, LibreOffice does have feature working remote files directly in Google Drive, One Drive etc. 

As always, it is recommended to save a copy of OpenDocument Format (ODF) before creating different format. You don’t have to worry about Microsoft Office playing tricks not supporting the format. They have to but not in a good way and basically not LibreOffice issue. Why? As you may not know, LibreOffice actually has being seen various mass deployment by the companies, schools and Governments worldwide. Taiwan was the latest country migrating to ODF/LibreOffice last year. Can you imagine how pissed and unhappy Microsoft nowadays? You can check out the ‘Migrating Libreoffice in Taiwan’ story by Franklin Weng to understand better. 

I do not know if our Government follows the news or even interested adopting free and open source software into their office. But I think its important they start looking as it can pave way for future cost cutting solutions. Same goes for the private schools communities if they planned to tighten up their budget saving yearly. More importantly, another way helping low income parents to save money without needing to buy Microsoft Office for their children to do homework or projects. LibreOffice features already provide sufficient needs. 

While I do admit LibreOffice has long way to go and limitation on its own comparing with Microsoft Office 2016. Microsoft continue stand strong selling to companies especially their latest Cloud and collaboration features. You won’t find the features in LibreOffice. Good news is, they are going to bring it this year. With the support from the Government around the world moving towards LibreOffice. This definitely going to be huge threat to Microsoft, which means more competition and option to offer. So I suggest everyone should start installed and learn LibreOffice. Who knows one day you will be working in some company or Government sectors using LibreOffice where Microsoft Office is not available.

Toy Collectors Slowly Target by Thieves?

Have you ever worry and question about this issue? I did and somewhat happening. My modeling beat up dirty toolbox just got snatched for no reason and not even single things you can say its valuable. It really caught me off guard seeing my Gunpla cabinet gets open this morning. Hard to say if this any related to drug abuse thieves wanted to find thinner to sniff. Geez....Why my toolbox?

Looking at how the thieves' behavior searching my cabinet in our home front entrance (inside). He/she knew what they trying to look for. The toolbox inside contain, the sand papers, filers, cutter, brass rod, thinner, cement or whatever I can remember. This stuffs already cost me between BND60-70.00+. Luckily I separate the most of the tools into different storage boxes earlier to prevent minimum losses. Now I have to guess when the thieves might going struck our house again and this is worrying what we might lost next.

No doubt the toy collections are already popular these days especially when we looking at mint in seal box (MSIB) that worth more than a hundred to a thousand in the market. If the thieves are smart and starting to realize, probably they are going to after it in the future. Seems like I have to invest security tech for home soon.

My 2016 Resolution

When my friends talk about what is our New Year resolution plan during outing, mine is all about saving and time to completely slow down buying new toys. I had to admit my room is getting smaller stashing all the Gunpla and Lego which is getting more problematic. There are plans to sort this out but my trip to Hua Ho department store getting storage rack was cancel due to huge spending during holiday (last year) so got to on hold for a while see till next month. The Transformers still have some room, but I’m trying some luck to get rid few of them and stay off buying using USD for the mean time.

Right now, finding way to lock out my saving is the top priority. It just in Brunei, there are hardly a safe way financing a saving and of course only small returns. But if you are low income person, jump into non-risk free plan is like committing suicide because we always think earning big buck fast way. So better be safe than sorry and I already learned hard lesson losing unnecessary saving on risk investment.

Let’s hope the best for all new 2016.

Gunpla Works - Gundam Aeolus

Old work from last year, nothing much to explain since I am doing some experiments on colors and mixed with left over parts. I quite liking the results.

Lightning Bawoo (BTC Competition Entry)

Lightning Bawoo is my third entry for the local Gunpla competition this year. This kit took me three months to build and constant revised. Not really a satisfied work, again and again, the spray painting quality went wrong. But I tried to correct the problem by focusing some area improving on the parts color. This actually helps a lot hiding the mistake during work in progress. I will put out some history log and photos how I implement the Lighting Back into Bawoo.

As for now I will need to clear some backlog photos I forget to upload previously. You can check all the previous work at my I.Model Kits Works page for links.

Brunei Toy Convention 2015 (December Event)

Finally, my new chair has arrived! Now I can properly sit without hurting my back while typing. Let’s start off my trip to Brunei Hobby Convention (BTC) event on December 12^th. Again, same place but with more toy vendors showing up in the event. As always for me, when you get use to buying online. You would hardly want to get locally. It just that day I couldn’t find anything that interest me at all. Sorry to say their stocks are almost the same as previous. So I decided to focus buying new comfortable chair and running shoe instead which already cost BND300.00+.

As for the Gunpla competition, I didn’t participate this time around. Not like I don’t have kit to join but I just not satisfy my current work and trying out some option parts for old kit modifications including finding recent issue on the spray painting. I will post up my new test work coming this next week for closing the year 2015 works as well my previous participation kit for BTC event.

Take note. The photos and the plastic kits competitions are not taken on the last day. So you won’t find the newer and last minute submission works in the photos. As much I like to go on the last day, all I can say flu suddenly struck first and the next day I knew coughing and terrible fever came. Hardly had any good night sleep and once better I had to worry about rushing to close my maintenance works because I was down for two days.

Anyway, click read more to check out the photos I took at the event! Happy holiday and merry Christmas to all!