Well, at least this weekend is not turning out to be boring like the past few weekends. I got informed from my landlord just yesterday that he has several free entry tickets to Singapore Flyer, a giant observation wheel at the Marina Bay overlooking the city skyline (it is the world’s second tallest observation/ferris wheel at a height of 165 metres). I immediately said yes because I have never been to the flyer before and it is one of the most famous attractions in this island nation. And it’s free…so why not?
The ticket includes entry to the ‘Time Capsule’ exhibition which offers an immersive and interactive experience from its showcase of Singapore’s past, present and future through various multimedia projections. The exhibition occupies two levels at the base of the observation wheel. I spent about 1 hour in there before proceeding to board the capsule for a one-round flight of the observation wheel that took about 30 minutes.
Due to the current restrictions, only a group of two person is allowed to board a single capsule. Hence, it felt like I have the whole capsule to myself (without the need to pay more) and it is a pretty large space equipped with seating, informative displays and air-conditioning. The views from the observation wheel are breathtaking! 30 minutes isn’t enough for me to fully enjoy the view though because I spent a lot of time taking pictures.
A normal entry ticket price to the observation wheel including the ‘Time Capsule’ exhibition is SGD$35. If not for the free ticket, I would not have thought of visiting this attraction because the price is a bit too expensive. Now, I have another one of the attractions here in Singapore checked!
First of all, Happy Wesak Day to all who are celebrating the festival! It’s the day to commemorate the birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha and devoted Buddhists and Hindus will pay a visit to temple and be a vegetarian for the day. Wesak is a public holiday (in both Malaysia and Singapore) and it gives me a much needed short break in the middle of the week filled with countless online meetings.
Just yesterday alone, I was already occupied with 6 Teams meetings that took nearly 7 hours of my time. That’s very exhausting. Having online meetings are much more convenient now to discuss on work progress and unresolved issues in this time of pandemic. However, this made it so much easier for everyone to simply organize plenty of such meetings (of which some are meaningless and repetitive…and some even beyond normal working hours) and sacrifice all the time to truly work.
I’m going to spend the day chilling at home and watch some new movies. By the way, I have completed another Hong Kong drama series yesterday. The series is called ‘AI Romantic’ (智能愛人), has 30 episodes and starred Ali Lee as a high-end AI robot who accidentally loses her way while being shipped from factory and ends up among a family of weirdos as an AI company employee (portrayed by Luk Wing) found her and decided to keep her for himself. The family eventually developed strong bond with her and she even begins to experience human emotions, love and desires. The drama also starred Crystal Fung, Mayanne Mak, Angelina Lo, Ram Chiang, C Kwan, etc.
It’s a very refreshing theme for a TVB drama as I believe TVB has never produce any drama yet with AI (artificial intelligence) robots as the theme. I’m also pleased that we are seeing some fresh faces taking on main roles in this drama such as Luk Wing and Mayanne rather than seeing all the recent usual actors again. Ali Lee nailed the role as the AI robot. It’s a very challenging role as it requires her not to exhibit any emotion with robotic movement while slowly transforming into a much more ‘human’ robot as the series progresses.
All the story arcs including the ones that involve only the supporting characters are interesting and engaging. This is quite uncommon for TVB standard nowadays. They are very funny to watch too. Besides that, the chemistry among the cast portraying the family is fantastic too. Basically, it’s all compliments from me to this drama. A good effort and an interesting premise further supported by excellent performance, I rate ‘AI Romantic’ a total of 8.0. My highest rated TVB series so far for this year!
(Images in this post are from various online sources)
Not long after Zack Snyder’s Justice League version is released, another one of his works is out to the public this year too. It is ‘Army of the Dead’, a zombie heist film that follows a group of soldiers who plan a Las Vegas casino heist amid a zombie apocalypse. The film starred Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Theo Rossi, etc.
It is a fairly entertaining and enjoyable zombie movie to watch especially on a comfortable Saturday’s night at home. We have got to spend most of our time now at home again due to the current ‘heightened alert’ of Phase 2 reopening in Singapore which saw increased number of daily Covid-19 cases in the community and more restrictions kicking in including ban on dining-in.
Let’s get back to the movie. The gore is there, the visuals are great and the actions are cool. However, the movie is lacking emotional punch extensively; I couldn’t feel the characters including the story arc between the main lead, Ward with his estranged daughter. The runtime of the movie is also extremely long (it’s nearly 2 hour and 30 minutes long, untypical for a zombie movie). I have to skip some of the unnecessary scenes.
Out of 10 points, I would rate ‘Army of the Dead’ a total of 7.1. It’s stylish and quite entertaining but even with a ‘zombie tiger’ in it, it still hasn’t manage to cross the line yet.
Recently, I have been watching three TVB series concurrently; ‘Shadow of Justice’, ‘Sinister Beings’ and ‘AI Romantic’. As mentioned earlier, more time at home means more time for movies and TV series. The first of out of the three to end is ‘Shadow of Justice’ (伙記辦大事), a 32-episode crime drama starring two TV kings, Bobby Au and Joe Ma. The drama also starred Joey Meng, Jeanie Chan, Mat Yeung, Pierre Ngo, Winki Lai, Timothy Cheng, etc.
I am purely disappointed with this drama. I am expecting to see more screen time of Bobby showing his intelligence in solving difficult cases and his chemistry with Joey. However, the drama is overly filled with Jeanie Chan’s love relationship with Joe Ma and Mat Yeung. It looks like as though Bobby is just playing a supporting role here. Jeanie is more suited for supporting role and she isn’t ready for leading role yet. Instead, she was given the most amount of presence here in this drama and it mostly revolves on her absolutely boring love storyline with Joe and Mat (also not to mention the huge age gap between Joe Ma and her which made the whole thing awkward too).
Both Joe Ma and Joey Meng delivered nothing to the show, thanks to their very stiff expression and poor acting. I still can’t get over how Joe Ma can win best actor few years ago over Dicky Cheung in that year. The one who shines in this series is not any of the main actors but a veteran actor who played an antagonist role here as a pervert rich businessman. He is Timothy Cheng, and he nailed the role.
The story development of the drama is also a mess. Bobby get to have his own story arc, Joe Ma has its own part too and it is up until 20 episodes only then they start to bump into each other. It is way too slow. People are expecting to see the dramatic clash between the two and it only started after two third of the whole series. That’s lame.
Out of 10 points, I can only rate ‘Shadow of Justice’ a total of 5.0. The lowest rated drama of the year so far (also among the lowest in recent years). It is bad…near to being awful. The drama should be called ‘Shadow of Love’ rather than ‘Shadow of Justice’. Jeanie Chan’s super frustrating, awkward and boring love storyline occupied 80% of the whole series. The clash between Bobby and Joe came in too late. Poor use of Bobby Au’s talent. What a waste. I’m glad this series is finally over. ‘Sinister Beings’ and ‘AI Romantic’ are way better.
(Images in this post are from various online sources)
First of all, I would like to wish to all my Malay friends and to all Muslims across the world; Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri! Although it will be not as festive as in the past years before 2020 due to the pandemic, I do sincerely wish that you will still have a joyful and warm celebration among your family members. This is already the second year of the festival that saw a lot of restrictions from the nationwide lockdown in Malaysia (it’s currently MCO 3.0) and I do felt the frustration.
However, we can’t do much as our safety and health remain the top priority. Few thousand Covid-19 cases a day isn’t a joke and the government’s frequent u-turn in decisions and illogical SOPs are making things no better. The current MCO, EMCO, CMCO or whatever it is in Malaysia for the past few months aren’t working at all due to many unnecessary relaxation of SOPs and many rules-flouting citizens including high-profile people and even ministers. The country should really just move forward to a complete full nationwide lockdown (entirely) for 2 weeks to drastically bring down the numbers rather than all these half-baked MCO, CMCO, etc.
We have about few to 10+ daily community cases here in Singapore recently and the country immediately moves back to Phase 2 of its reopening to quickly curb the spread of the virus. States in Australia imposes few days of lockdown respectively once there is only one or two confirmed cases reported. Malaysia have to take quick and firm actions on this. Few thousand daily cases in a small country like Malaysia is very concerning. I’m also distressed from seeing the Covid-19 situation in India recently that puts the country in grave danger and of course I do not wish to see Malaysia heading into that direction as well.
Let’s not talk about Covid-19 anymore for now. It’s been in everyone’s topic since last year most of the time. I’m already in a holiday mood now because I’m taking a leave on this Friday and the Hari Raya Aidilfitri is tomorrow (Thursday) and hence I will have a long 4-day weekend break. In holiday mood but can’t go anywhere beyond the island…and hence I opt for a staycation for one night in a hotel at the city. Just an affordable and a quick escape away from my home in this long break to rest and relax.
That’s all for my post today. And again, for those who are celebrating; Salam Aidilfitri…Maaf Zahir dan Batin. Hopefully the pandemic will be very much under control by end of this year so that we all can celebrate our respective festivals in a much more normal and festive way next year onward.
You would have recalled in my last post on how my personal-use laptop of over 4 years is slowly dying now with variety of issues (broken hinge, lack of memory, slow performance, non-sensitive start button, etc) and a plan to purchase a new laptop over the previous Labour Day weekend. And yup…I bought a new laptop. It is an Acer Swift 5 model and it is one of the most recent laptop models by Acer.
I am a loyal user of Acer laptop. I have owned 4 laptops (including this new one) in total and the last three are all Acer models. The first laptop I had was from Compaq (this brand no longer exists as it is bought up by HP) back in 2008 (also the year I started this blog). I still remembered that it got stolen during my trip at Ipoh back in 2011. What an unfortunate incident.
There is no particular reason why I choose Acer over other brands. I do a quick comparison of specifications and prices for multiple brands every time I wanted to purchase a new laptop. It just happens to be that Acer laptops are slightly cheaper but with similar specifications with other brands. I also like its laptop’s design; clean, sleek and had nice colours.
So on this new Acer Swift 5 model that I bought last Saturday; its full model name is Acer SF514-55T-54U0, gold in colour, 207mm thick and weighs around 1.05 kg, equipped with Windows 10 Home operating system, Intel Core i5-1135G7 with 2.40 GHz processing speed, Quad-core (4 core), Intel Iris Xe graphics, 14 inch (35.6cm) screen, LCD touch screen display with full HD mode, screen resolution of 1920 x 1080, 16 Gb memory (LPDDR4X memory technology) and 1 TB solid state drive (SSD) capacity.
I bought it from Courts at Funan mall with a price tag of SGD$ 1698 with many free gifts due to the on-going Hari Raya promotion; laptop bag, wireless mouse, Microsoft Office Home 2019, wireless earbuds, three-year subscription of McAfee anti-virus software, and a snap case. With only an additional top-up of SGD$ 10, I got a Lenovo tablet for free (stock only available in another week or two). The price felt more reasonable with all these free gifts…haha (it’s still expensive!).
The gold colour looks great (it made the laptop felt premium) and I particularly like that there will be no fingerprint or stain on the surface. It is also very lightweight and thin and can be stored in very small space or bag too. The only thing that I’m not that happy is the screen size. 14 inch felt a bit small for me (but it is a standard size for recent new laptops). I’m too used to 15.6 inch screen I had last time for my previous laptops. Anyway, I will get used to it. Everything seems okay to me so far except for a minor issue of yellowish tint over my screen (but had since resolved it quite significantly).
Bought it on last Saturday and spent most of the weekend setting up the laptop (transferring most files from previous laptop to this new one, installing softwares and games that I use or play, adjusting the settings). My previous Acer Aspire F laptop is now stored away as an abandoned junk now after over 4 years of usage. Hope that this new laptop will last longer and work smoothly so that it is worth its price.
(Images in this post are from various online sources)
Happy Labour Day! It’s not a long weekend because the Labour Day itself falls on Saturday but hey…at least we get to get another extra day of annual leave (for those who work five days a week).
It’s the first day of the month and so as usual, you will see a new image for my blog’s header above. It has been a tradition for me to update my blog’s header when every new month approaches for the past 10 years. Yes. I started this practice back in June 2011. After 10 years, I have decided not to continue on this. When June 2021 arrives, there will be a new visual for the blog’s header and it will stay on for long term. New visual will still pop up whenever there is a special occasion.
I’m looking forward to this new month; there’s a lot of holidays coming up (today is the Labour Day), Hari Raya Aidilfitri is on mid of the month and Wesak Day is near the end of the month. The only thing I’m not so looking forward to is a major deadline coming up for my work in this month too. There’s so much to do and yet so little time.
Mentioning about work…today also marks the 3rd anniversary of my present job here in Singapore. Time flies. Everything appears to be fine so far in my work. There is still a lot of things for me to learn but at least in these 3 years, I have managed to gain a lot of experience. Since I have been here for quite some time now, I had also recently submitted my application for permanent residence (PR) here in Singapore. I hope it will be approved in my first try (need to wait few months for the outcome).
It’s about time also for me to change my laptop. I have been using my current Acer laptop for over 4 years and it is starting to get slower and constantly running low on storage space although I did not have many heavy softwares installed. This got me frustrated at times. Just last year, one side of my laptop’s hinge is broken and it costs me a lot to repair it. Two days ago, the same side broke again. I’m not repairing it anymore..it’s waste of money to spend anything further on this old metal junk. I may be heading out in this Labour Day weekend to look for a new laptop!
Alright…that’s all for my update today. Have a great month ahead and do continue to stay safe. Covid-19 cases among the community started to rise sharply again recently. We must not let our guard down. India is now hit hard by the virus with over 300 000 cases daily. That’s very bad and concerning. Things are also not looking good yet in my home country, Malaysia where over 3000 cases are still reported daily. Covid-19, when will you go away….
(Images in this post are from various online sources)
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