Shane meets Tom Zarek

And On The 501st Post, Shane Meets Apollo

Yes, really. Awesome wikked. Take it away, Shane: Today was the Winnipeg Comic Con. Richard Hatch was the big reason I wanted to go. JUST to get a pic of him and I together and an autograph. I did that very early on in the day, think I was third in line. I knew later he had this acting/improv/rpg character creation session. I went, thinkin that there was gonna be a million people and I’d get stuck in the back and not even get to interact with him. The room turned out to be very small, and there were only about 50 people. Me, sitting up front. He starts asking why people are here. I raise my hand. Suddenly, I’m talking to Apollo. One on one….I’m mentioning about being a GM and wanting to crerate better stories. He then talks about how RPGing and being a GM is harder than […]

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The birthday boy

Meanwhile At Irfan’s School (or The 500th Post)

After Aidilfitri, Irfan also had some events at school, before exam week begins. The first being his belated birthday celebration at school, which apparently everyone has. Great for him. We were lucky to have the teacher wish up a happy birthday back in our days. In any case, the vanilla cake with the chocolate topping (and strawberries, as astutely observed by Irfan’s classmate) was delicious. We believe the orange-coloured fruit is apricot. Irfan’s gang huddle around their prey, the poor defenceless cake. If you mouseover the image below you will find the words “The cutting of the cake” appear on it. The cake is distributed by the teachers to the little humans. Happy Belated 5th Birthday at school, Irfan! Also, there was a belated Aidilfitri celebration which happened a day after the day with the vanilla cake. Here is Irfan prepared for school in full Raya getup, with baju Melayu, […]

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The guys from Germany

Why It’s Been Quiet Around Here Lately

It’s been a busy month, even since before Aidilfitri. The reason of it all will now be shown as a series of photographs for the event that took place at Shangri-La Hotel on the 24th and 25th of October. Sorry, no photos of me cause I didn’t get anyone to snap one at any time. Here’s the aforementioned series of photographs with captions: Before I left, I shook the organiser’s hand saying, “Awesome party, yo.” Next stop: LIMA 2007!

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Not so fast, buster

ACS Kids at Aidilfitri

At Aidilfitri Irfan met and played with a whole bunch of kids of his generation whose parent(s) were former students of ACS Sitiawan. Here are some pics of Irfan and friends. Too bad we didn’t get photos of children of Lan, Dila and Gnana. Here’s Chris C’s (the other Chris C) daughter Aleyxia whom Irfan invited to play with the hamsters brought back from Kuala Lumpur by Irfan’s Opah Ngah. The small dark on is called Ciki and the big orange one is called Oren. Irfan loved to go upstairs and feed the little guys seeds and carrots, loudly and spiritedly commently on everything they do. Then, Irfan tries to escape the camera, to no avail Awi and Hanim came with young Aisyah. She found Tok Irfan’s fish pond and Irfan’s plastic toy car very intriguing. She was also very friendly with Ain, trying to get Ain to help her […]

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Our Seventh Year

[[image:7thanniversary.jpg:Seven Years Already?:center:0]] It’s been seven years since Ain and I were married, more than eleven years since we met. Through all that time, there’s been a lot of ups and a lot of downs. And I’m glad I went through it all with Ain giving me strength at my side and I’m looking forward to more years like that.

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Finally! Transformers: The Score!

One of the things that I looked for immediately after watching Transformers was the soundtrack CD. I was disappointed that there was only Transformers: The Album released which had, you know – a bunch of songs. The Linkin Park song What I’ve Done wasn’t too bad. So were the songs from Goo Goo Dolls and Smashing Pumpkins. But there was not one track released that had the movie’s orchestral score as composed by Steve Jablonsky. In fact there was no score soundtrack album at all. I’ve been monitoring the online news about the status of the score soundtrack. On or off? There was an online petition, but would it work? Sifting through a ton of information in the internet I found only an mp3 of Jablonsky’s Decepticon theme on the web. And there was nothing on Amazon.com… until last month or so. And as of last week, it’s been released. […]

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Eid Mubarak From Sitiawan

[[popup:aidilfitri2007.jpg:(thumbnail):Everone but Sila & Vin:left:1]]Click on the thumbnail on the left for a photo of everyone present for Aidilfitri this morning. Although it wasn’t perfectly done, the different families are colour coded for ease of identification. 🙂 Although you can’t see them, Sila and Vin were also present by way of Skype video call and were privy to the regular Raya ruckus. Ain’t information technology grand? Their actual presence are missed by us all and we’re looking forward to them able to make it for Hari Raya in the coming years.

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Festivities And Then Some

Tomorrow is the last day of the month of Ramadhan. Tomorrow we head back to Sitiawan for Aidilfitri. We will try to beat the crazy traffic (an evil, sentient gestalt entity which appears every holiday season) by leaving Kuala Lumpur at 0200 hours. Also, this year is the first time Irfan happily chants, “Yay! Yay! Balik Raya!” which after a full Ramadhan of solid exhausting work, brings a smile to my face and takes my enthusiasm for the festive season up a notch or so. I still have a bunch of stuff to do before the end of the year which is weighing down on me like cinder blocks on my shoulders. Which just translates to… I’ll be back Tuesday night. I’ll also try to take and upload some Aidilfitri photos in the meantime. SELAMAT HARI RAYA AIDILFITRI TO ALL Yes, and even to Cindy O. Bear in the back […]

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September Reading List

Books Read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony BourdainFruit of the Lemon by Andrea LevyWill Write for Shoes by Cathy YardleyThe Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John LeCarréChasing Shakespeares by Sarah SmithYsabel by Guy Gavriel KayA Spot of Bother by Mark HaddonThe Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood Books Bought Will Write for Shoes by Cathy YardleyA Year in the Merde by Stephen ClarkeThe Breads of France by Bernard Clayton, Jr. September has just flown by and somehow I ended up reading quite a few books. Although a few of them weren’t very large books so maybe I bolstered my numbers by reading smaller novels? 😉 Anyway, I started off by reading Kitchen Confidential, which is written by one of my favorite Food and Television personalities, Anthony Bourdain. This is his first book, the book that launched his TV career, since it contained such truthful and witty descriptions about how food […]

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Pacific Northwest: Part XII (Blue Skies on the Final Day)

Finally, the last day of our trip dawned with blue skies. The irony, right? Our final day and then the sun comes out. [[image:pacnw160.jpg:Beautiful morning:center:0]] Whatever, we weren’t complaining. [[image:pacnw161.jpg:Nice view, eh?:center:0]] We checked out of the hotel and decided to go to Lynn Canyon for a quick excursion. But I promised you pictures of the asian mall next door? Check out the food court. Not one western food eating place!! [[image:pacnw162.jpg:Asian food:center:0]] [[image:pacnw163.jpg:More asian food:center:0]] [[image:pacnw164.jpg:Even more asian food:center:0]] I was totally amazed that I had come to Hong Kong by way of Vancouver. The day before when I ordered my food, the girl at the cash register had to get somebody from the back to translate my question which was “What kind of meat is in this?” I’m totally serious. Not one word of English, basically! Aiya! So anyway, back to Lynn Canyon. It’s got a suspension bridge […]

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Pacific Northwest: Part XI (Vancouver – Night)

After walking around Vancouver, we were pretty tired, so we met up with Lilian for a spot of dinner. Come see what we had! [[image:pacnw149.jpg:Olive Tapenade appetizer:center:0]] [[image:pacnw150.jpg:Scallops appetizer:center:0]] [[image:pacnw151.jpg:Baby Octopus and Asparagus appetizer:center:0]] [[image:pacnw152.jpg:Seafood Risotto:center:0]] [[image:pacnw153.jpg:Lamb chops:center:0]] [[image:pacnw154.jpg:Fish (I forgot what kind now):center:0]] [[image:pacnw155.jpg:Chocolate cake and bread pudding in the background:center:0]] We had us a veritable feast! Yummy! I was so involved with the food that I didn’t even take any pictures of people. Seriously. *ishhhh* So we said our goodbyes to Lilian, as we were heading back to Seattle and home to Ohio the next day. It was a really fun trip, and I’m looking forward to getting together with Vincent and Lilian again next year! (Or whenever the next get together might be). Here are some pictures of the view from our room at night – a bit blurry. Sorry, my hand is not as steady as […]

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Pacific Northwest: Part X (Vancouver)

My goodness, I can’t believe I’ve been sitting on these pictures for so long. This was back in July, when we had a mini-get together with Vincent and Lilian. The journey so far, we had spent time in Washington State, and driven Lilian back up to Vancouver. Checked into our hotel and didn’t do too much that first night, due to the rain and the altogether blah weather. The next morning, it rained and rained some more. So we took our time getting out. We were going to go to a museum (for an indoor activity) but realized it was pretty far from where we were and would take an hour and a half by public transport to get there, so that deterred us. We were just lazing about the hotel, and ended up having lunch at the food court of the mall next door. Unbelievably, every store there was […]

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Desktop-Adorning Mandalorians

[[popup:mandalorians.jpg:(thumbnail)::left:1]]So the other day I put up a thumb to the desktop wallpaper that was on my Ubuntu side of the computer. Here’s the wallpaper on the XP side of the laptop, its size reduced from 1280px by 800px. There’s a whole bunch of folks in Mandalorian armour. I found the image for the wallpaper on DeviantArt but now I can’t seem to find it again to link it here. Click on the thumb to view the image.

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