I remember a time, a long time being out in the city working job-to-job with hardly any official, usable certification or diploma. It was difficult. Then one day, with Ain’s urgings I enrolled for a Bachelor’s Degree course. That was eight years ago. This year, I begin my Master’s Degree. I never thought I would make it this far, but I am grateful to everyone who pushed me in the right direction from family to friends. With the major reorganisation of my weblog, I have created a Research Checks category where I would be writing about my journey as a postgraduate student. Also, here is where I will list essays I will write about the topic. Perhaps my supervisor would be able to monitor my work and provide guidance based on my posts here. My postgraduate research will investigate the effectiveness of tabletop roleplaying games as a language tool for […]
Continue readingMonthly Archives: August 2018
A Bookstore Then The Next Day Home
Later that night… The night before we had to return home, Cik Su took us to the new BookXcess book store nearby, at a mall which looked pretty impressive but appear to be incomplete. The only other outlet we visited before was at Amcorp Mall. The books there were cheaper than standard retail value because these were old stock copies which were to be pulped. Irfan bought a couple of young adult adventure novels. Irfan also signed up for a store membership card which he hopes to use some day. Perhaps, he offered, he would be able to use the card to order books online at a discounted price. I found a Star Wars Millennium Falcon: Owner’s Workshop Manual for less than half its retail price, but I thought I should save. I bought a much cheaper China Miéville This store turned up the pop culture references level to eleven. […]
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The Place Where He Grew Up
The day after Aidiladha we thought we would head into the city to check out the borough of Pandan Indah where Irfan grew up. It would literally be a balik kampung for him even though the kampung was Kuala Lumpur. Born less than 10 klicks away as the crow flies in Kuala Lumpur Hospital, he knew no other home other than Pandan Indah before we moved to Perlis nearly four years ago. From Nia’s house all the way south, we travelled up north via the MEX and inserted ourselves into the MRR2. We thought we would visit Wan Cik who took care of Irfan from when he was 1 year old until he enrolled in pre-school. It was Nia’s first time at Wan Cik’s house too. Wan Cik had expanded her house since the last time we were there. Irfan caught up with Afzan who is actually his uncle. Soon […]
Continue readingAidiladha with Nia
The days before Aidiladha we spent home with Nia or out for meals . There were a lot of laughs and falling asleep and wanting to play with a goose.
Soon, Tok Bah and Tok Ma arrived at the airport. We travelled there, not far from Nia’s house, to pick them up.
Later we headed out to Aiman’s house to celebrate hari raya there, though on raya eve, Aiman and Irfan returned to Nia’s house with Ciksu to sleep there. The next morning, Aiman, Irfan and I went for Aidiladha prayers at a nearby mosque.
Ben came a-visiting, but I forgot to take photos. Here are some of the photos Ain and I remembered to take.
Aidiladha with Nia
The Botanical Garden Expedition
We had to balik kampung this Aidiladha holidays. The kampung we returned to was neither Ain’s nor mine. It was Irfan’s.
On Saturday, after my Research Method class and my colleague Anis’ sister’s wedding, we drove from Perlis all the way to Nia’s house. Nia was happy that we came. We also met Aiman, Zara and family there.
The plan was that the next day, Sunday, we would all rendezvous at the Botanical Gardens at Shah Alam. Ain and I have not been there since before we were married. This was the children’s first time visiting it.
There were flowers. There was a rope bridge. There was archery. There was even a troupe of monkeys.
Irfan and his cousins entered the bunny farm where Nia became superlatively elated. According to Irfan, she even fearlessly fed a large goat by hand. There were no photos of the goat, but we do have other photos.
Botanical Gardens
I posted on Twitter videos of Irfan shooting arrows at orcs a bullseye:
The 16yo tried his hand in archery too today. pic.twitter.com/yyPq1PAXWT
— Khairul Hisham (@hishgraphics) August 19, 2018
He didn’t do too bad with the bow all things considered. pic.twitter.com/JNiVecZvpK
— Khairul Hisham (@hishgraphics) August 19, 2018
We were having lots of fun and it was only the second day in the Klang Valley.
No One’s Ever Really Gone
I bought a warm gray 03 marker the other day. I should have bought a couple more. This was a nice practice because I have not really touched markers in nearly a decade (or maybe more).
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The First Post of an All-New Hishgraphics Blog
The blog is thirteen years old this year. It has gone on for far longer than I could have imagined back then, with now over a thousand entries. I selected the CMS formerly known as Pivot to build my blog back in 2005. Two years ago I replaced old, vapourware Pivot with PivotX, its successor. Little did I know that the PivotX was already also vapourware by that time. Welcome to the Hishgraphics WordPress Blog! For the time being the old blog still exists at its original URL here, but I have decided to install WordPress into the root folder of the web server and eventually use WordPress for everything. I decided on WordPress because it is currently actively supported by developers. Meanwhile PivotX will slowly continue to fail as old PHP functions are depreciated over time. Over the previous weekend (and after two weeks of experimenting on a test […]
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