Murderer.....

I killed a living thing the other day.

I was driving the other day and there was just a flock of these birds by the roadside. They could've been flying around some food or something but I didn't notice.

As I was driving - a couple of them flew out into the path of my car. Most of the time, the birds are pretty agile little things and they would fly out of harm's way. Not that day. I'm not sure exactly where it flew to but I heard a bump. It might have flew in between my moving tyres and got banged up against it.when I looked in the side mirror, I saw its lifeless body lying on the road, the other birds just flying around it.

Oh well.....

I had Friday off and will be on leave until Tuesday. Yesterday was Good Friday and it will be Easter tomorrow. I've just wasted 2 days doing nothing.

Its a welcomed break. I haven't taken any annual leave since Chinese New Year way back in January. Am I turning into some sort of workaholic?!? Un-fucking-believable! :P
Its going to be chaos when I go back to work on Tuesday. It always is after public holidays.

I actually spent Friday night in front of the PC, making up and inventory list of my old comics. Might consider selling them in bulk and I've found a contact person who might be able to assist me. Funny - always thought I had more comics than what I counted in my list.

Good news this year - 4% salary increment and 1.5 months bonus based on 9 months salary before the promotion, and 3 months in my current role. Not too bad if I say so myself. Certainly way more than what I expected. Way, way more. I'm pleased as I didn't have too much expectations this time. The higher the expectations, the bigger the disappointment. Isn't that always the case?

Looks like I might allow myself the luxury of doing slightly more shopping this time around!

If you've been reading up on my blogs lately, you might recall that I placed an order for the 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime (referred to as OP from this point forth) by HASBRO. So far, I haven't been informed about the status of my pre-order yet. I placed a RM 50 deposit for the Star Wars Saga figures (which I'm not able to get) and used that towards the deposit towards OP. On top of that, due to the price of the thing, I had to top up another RM 50!

Last night, while surfing the forums and EBAY - I came across several people selling off their TAKARA MASTERPIECE MP-01 (the Japanese version of the 20th Anniversary OP). It did strike me as strange at first but the prices were more reasonable than most (range between RM 600 - 650, compared to some guy's RM 1100 starting bid!).

This is what some people are willing to pay up to RM 1600 for:

TAKARA MASTERPIECE MP-01 - OPTIMUS PRIME

After contemplating for sometime - I decided to take the plunge and placed a bid on the RM 600 one. How exciting - an auction! (I won a couple of bids for some Star Wars figures a couple of weeks back but the seller informed me that he did not update his items for sale - so therefore, I didn't get the figures and its a good thing because after examining some of the figures I have, I wouldn't have been satisfied with them - even though Anakin and Obi-Wan came with cloth cloaks!)

My rationale was simple - bid for it and if I get it, its all good. I can try selling of the HASBRO version and keeping the TAKARA version (which is the one I actually wanted since it doesn't have the "battle-damage paint" but I settled for the HASBRO one since I couldn't lay my hands on the TAKARA version at a decent price). If I didn't win - no harm, I'll still be getting the HASBRO version.

Now I'm sure I spent hours on the forum last night. To my horror this afternoon when I logged in again, I saw a post where they said that TAKARA was going to reproduce the 20th Anniversary OP and its expected to be released in June 2006. When I saw that - I went "WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!".

Why didn't I see that last night? I'm 100% certain that I would have seen the post last night. Joy turned to anger and disappointment. I'm pretty upset with the turn of recent events.

So here I'm stuck with a dilemma - it has occured to me that since TAKARA will re-release the figure in June, people will be selling off their current TAKARA's to maximise their profit then pre-order the re-release figure when it comes out in June at a cheaper price. Not going through with the EBAY deal will not be good for my Feedback ratings. And if I go through with the deal - chances are that I end up with 2 units of the OP figure. It will be much harder to sell the HASBRO battle-damaged version if TAKARA re-issues their version of OP.

Then again - pre-ordering the re-issue version is no 100% gurantee that I'll get it now, is it?

The auction ends in about 8 days and from the looks of things, I don't think there's anyone else who will outbid me - there's still time and things might change. There might be people who might outbid me thus releasing me from my "predicament". There's another part of me that wants to go through with the sale - if I do get it, at least I can say that I have the 1st Edition - kind of like comics that I used to collect.

Never in my life have I thought that buying toys would be so complicated. Gone are the days when you can just walk into the toy department and pick toys off the shelves. What is this world coming to?!?!?!

SIDESHOW has gotten me interested in their figures as well. Limited around 5000 - 7000 worldwide and all for an affordable price of around RM 250 - 300. Damn - I want these! Maybe time to place pre-orders!