I love tabletop games. I have started to incorporate more tabletop games into my teaching and learning. Suddenly, my friend Shanizan invited me to be a jury member for the Sintok International Games and Gamification Challenge 2017 at UUM. This was nothing less than a great opportunity to be part of the community here. Anyway… After a formal invite had been sent to the workplace, I was now an official representative of the Centre for International Languages at the SIGGC 2017 event at UUM. My colleague Yuzi was also invited to be a member of the jury. Shanizan greeted us when we arrived. After the jury briefing was complete, we went on out assignments: to grade the participants’ games on display. The games ranged from standard tabletop snakes and ladders variants to mecha combat computer games. Yuzi and I brought the Thai interns from the workplace to join the fun. […]
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The First UUM Incursion
Last month, all of the sudden, I was tasked with writing a script for a short play for an English Language Carnival to be held at UUM. Not just that, but I had to coach the actors, who were all students of our business school. The theme was “peace”. So I wrote a script with 10 speaking roles (2 narrators included) entitled Requiem to War. However the event was postponed on account of royal demise. Then we got word that a new date had been set. All the actors got back into gear. I attended their final rehearsal. I only handled the acting and staging part of the rehearsal. My colleague Yuzy did most of the heavy lifting with regards to costume, props and logistics for the troupe. Friday evening, Irfan, Ain and I drove to UUM to check out the site of the event. We had dinner at the […]
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Nia and the Return Home
We had the opportunity to meet and play with Nia Nia again as Ayah Cik Farid and Cik Ma had a 24 hour or so overlap with our stay at Pasir Mas. The day before we had to depart, they arrived. She showed us how to draw. Also, she asked us to read Irfan’s old Hippo book. She especially liked dancing to the Mitchiri Neko toon on Youtube and picking out the odd cat out among the clusters of cute cat musicians on parade there. Irfan as usual was great with toddler-class cousins. Nia of course loved playing hide and seek at Tok Ma’s drapes in the living room. Later that afternoon, Nia Nia played badminton with her parents and Irfan. The next morning, we geared up for the return to Perlis. Nia played with her baby powder. She applied powder onto her cheeks and nose herself. Irfan gladly became […]
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Phoning It In
In the last month or so, the battery life of my Samsung phone which I bought over 2.5 years ago shortened and shortened. I thought it was bad when it only had an hour of energy at full charge. In the end it only had about 5 minutes of life at full charge. I had bought a fresh new battery when I was at Langkawi in July and clearly I was swindled. Physically, the phone looked like it had been beaten up by school bullies. The battery looked pretty chubby in the end. I needed to buy a new phone as mobile communications appear to be paramount at work. Thanks to Cik Ma, I finally got a new mobile phone as we rendezvoused at Pasir Mas. Even the photo quality of the phone is superb. Click on the thumbnail above to check out how luminiscent Tok Bah’s yard looks like […]
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A Sojourn To Jerteh
And so it came to pass that Irfan, Ain and I took a vacation back to Pasir Mas, Kelantan. And during our vacation in Pasir Mas we took a sub-vacation south to Terengganu. Our primary objective was Kuala Besut, Jerteh. Kuala Besut was famous for its keropok lekor and other such seafood. For some reason, traffic was heavy. We randomly took roads that eventually led us to this keropok restaurant. Ain and I miss eating the Terengganu keropok lekor, which we once had quite frequently as I once worked in Terengganu. As we ate keropok and satar at the restaurant, the proprietors there were also processing raw keropok right there behind the sales counter. The raw keropok was then deep fried before being sold. For some reason, I did not get a photo of the satar, which I thought was more delicious than the keropok. Five metres down the road […]
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Mini Six: The Seaside Catastrophe
And so it came to pass that I was given the opportunity to present my ideas for tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) as a language learning tool to the workplace. During the workshop, I also ran a Mini Six session for the participants. For the first time ever, I gamemastered (GM) an RPG session for colleagues, which was something I never thought I would do. This entry chronicles the epic events that transpired in-game during the session: Mini Six: Agents of CIL The Seaside Catastrophe If this actual play report sounds familiar, then it is because it is the same scenario I ran for my class last month. This time though, the pregenerated player characters (PCs) consisted of a whole new mix of agents. Dramatis Personae Alex and Farahhein as Agent Mustonen the Finnish combat medic Sareepa and Masturah as Agent Khoo the Malaysian sniper Ivy and Angela as Agent Takeuchi […]
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17th Anniversary Dinner
It is now our seventeenth year together, Ain and I. So many hardships along the way and against hostile odds here we are still together, still in love; and with Irfan still in tow although he is not as little as he used to be. We thought we would try out the BIG Tas’TEA restaurant by the roadside at Arau. We have always wanted to stop by, but we had to have extra change in our pockets before we could splurge on the more expensive Western food and smoothies and such. We made sure in advance that we had the cash to visit BIG tas’TEA on our anniversary. Sure the cholesterol level might be through the roof, but the chicken in this meal tasted fantastic. We ordered Pepperoni Chicken and the Ultimate Cheese pizzas! I thought we should quickly get a photo of us together before my ailing, physically broken […]
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Teaching Without Power
This semester I have to help teach another English course to a class of professionals in another learning institution. Today, during my class in which I have prepared a ton to slides to be shown on the screen, the unthinkable happened. There was a blackout. So I took the class outdoors. Luckily there was a cafe right outside the class, which was closed on a Saturday. The students helped me transport the whiteboard out to the corridor. I tried my best to think of an exercise they could do in groups which would compel them to do research, write then speak. In the meantime, the exercise also helped in getting the students to form a proper persuasive essay structure. One thing is certain: These folks, unlike my much younger regular students, had no hangups about public speaking. The topics I chose for the exercise correlated to the topics in the […]
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Theatre Was Suddenly In My Repertoire
Did I not join this university as a language translator? How did I end up teaching English Theatre Arts as a co-curricular course? It really matters not, because I am enjoying my role as an language educator here. More so because I love teaching enhancement of soft skills. So my course began this week. We began with the obligatori Negaraku anthem song. I tried getting the students to read part of the Aliens script – slightly modified – to get them to emote (with and without stage direction). I dealt them this random lines exercise between two students to get them to emote better, but during the first week even “sadness” elicited an unstoppable wave of giggles. During the second week I got the students to read the script that I wrote for students involved in another programme. Perhaps I need to write a blog post about that programme soon. […]
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