Spider Monkey

D6: Spider Monkey Stats

Spider Monkey: D6 Stats Spider Monkey Type: Tree-swinging monkey DEX 5D Dodge: 6D+2 Throw: poo 6D PER 2D STR 1D+2 Brawl: bite attack 5D Climb/jump: 7D Move:10 (on ground) / 15 (on trees) Special abilities: Bite attack: STR+1D Damage Poo flinging: On hit, roll target’s willpower against Moderate difficulty. Failure causes a round of barfing, plus immobilized for that round. The next round, the target is considered wounded. The third round, the target is automatically back to normal unwounded health state. I wrote these stats for a spider monkey as a joke in The Rancor Pit forums back in 2004, a year before this blog was created. Since I have never reproduced them elsewhere, I thought I should have them here for posterity’s sake. The image is from Wikipedia. Will anyone ever use these stats? Who knows.

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Irfan buys peas

Floating Market in Town

Earlier today, we visited the Floating Market in Kangar, which was located close to the Denai Larian in town. Denai Larian is what we called the River Esplanade in a blog post just after we moved to Perlis. Only once did we visited a honest-to-goodness actual floating market and it was when we chaperoned students to Songkhla How does this floating market rate? It was a pleasant place to visit. There are boat rides and food stalls; even picnic spots. At far end of the lake is a fishing pond.  Check out the video and photos below. Next time we visit we will rent one of the paddle boats!

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A walk in the park

A Walk at Gua Cenderawasih

There was on Star Trek Adventures session on Discord this fine Sunday morning. Earlier today, Ain and I drove to Gua Cenderawasih to burn some calories there. It was a pleasant, cloudy day. Everything was green. Various flowers were blooming, and pictures do not them any justice. There were fishies in the lake and stream, monkeys in the playground and monitor lizards basking on boulders. See for yourself: Long story short, we would like to return here to burn some more calories in the future.

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The Drama Aquatic Season One

Web Series: The Drama Aquatic – Season One

Once upon a time, Irfan cared for a fish. It lived with us for quite sometime before expiring. We never had another fish tank after Comeli the fighting fish, until recently. Irfan got a couple of decorative fishes from our neighbour. One thing led to another, and we now have an aquarium in the house. So I did the thing I knew I should do upon faced with such an aquarium: Make a 10-episode web microseries and upload it on YouTube. Presenting the first season of the web series The Drama Aquatic, directed, shot, edited and produced by me. Will there be a second season? I have no idea as I completed and uploaded this whole thing from 6 PM until midnight not an hour ago. It would have been completed sooner if I had thought to insert captions as subtitles onto the videos themselves. I have no idea what […]

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Sitting cat

Dinner by the Bendang

A bendang is a rice field. Ain and I thought we would try out a new restaurant we saw earlier. Its speciality was char kuey tiau. Irfan decided to sit this one out as he wanted to study. Besides the char kuey tiau, we also had the restaurant cat to keep us company. He just sat at our table without asking for anything from us.

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Lunch panhandler

Year’s End Vacation 1: Sitiawan

After a couple of weeks planning for it and applying for leave, it was time to execute the end-of-year vacation plans. We exited the highway near Selama and proceeded towards Taiping using the Federal roads. There was a convenient new road from Taiping to Changkat Jering. We stopped for lunch at the food court at that town. There was a cat who asked for food at the restaurant. Later, we headed for Beruas. It was quite a long winding road to reach Beruas from Changkat Jering, but soon we found the turnpike into the new West Coast Expressway which would theoretically be a faster route to Sitiawan. The WCE Sitiawan exit was near the original (and once upon a time, the only) road to Ayer Tawar. We had dinner with Atok and Opah that evening. The next day we went to the Aeon Manjung mall. I could not locate a […]

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The team plus one hornbill

Zoological Exploration of Melaka

Today is not only my birthday, but it is also Federal Territory day. Kuala Lumpur day. Ayah Cik Farid and Cik Ma both work in Cyberjaya, so they both got the day off. They invited us for a drive to Melaka. Since they live in the south of the Klang Valley, Melaka is just a hop skip away via the highway. First, we went to the Melaka Zoo. The zoo impressed me because at some points it seems like we were really in an equatorial jungle surrounded by real foliage. There were areas that were landscaped, but a lot of the exhibits were designed around what seemed to be old jungle terrain. Although it was our first time there, Nia’s family had been there before, so they took us around the zoo on foot. We opted not to take the motorised tour because we would not have the opportunity to […]

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Lunchtime

Chicken Stalking During Lunch

Upon our arrival in the Klang Valley for vacation, we headed for Nia’s house. We thought we would spend the night there as my work appointment in KL would not be until Monday. The night we arrived, a belated birthday party was held for the three sisters whose birthdays were close to each other’s. Meanwhile, the cousins quickly started playing together again. The next day, we went exploring at the nearby new mall that was opened a couple of weeks earlier. The Chinese New Year music were piped and decorations had been raised. I was sad that there were no good bookstores there. For some reason, my lower back also began to hurt. It was moderately painful when I shifted balance from one foot to the other. After the mall-walking, we went to the café along the country road towards Nia’s house, which had excellent nasi ayam. “Nasi ayam kukus […]

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Post-rat disposal sunset

Rat Disposal Weekend

One other thing that occurred over the weekend was the success of our household in apprehending a rat. We heard it scritch-scratching once in a while in the attic and Ain set up a trap as usual. Saturday evening we took it out to a deserted spot by a main road and let it loose into the wild. On our way back to the house, the sky displayed quite a spectacular wash of bright, lively colours. (Click on both images above to expand them.)

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Lok Ching AND Laksa

Comes A Nia Nia

Rania and family came back to visit us from Kuala Lumpur during the long weekend. We picked up Ayah Cik Farid and Cikma from the airport and had dinner with them at Kepala Batas. Nia Nia was asleep when she arrived, but woke up just in time for a meal. Nia Nia was still groggy from her sleep, but soon got her head back in the game upon spotting a cat and toddling excitedly after it. At home, Irfan began teaching her to operate his Rubik’s cube. Then suddenly there was a power outage! Thankfully Nia Nia did not give a crap. The next day, we went for a dinner at Kuala Perlis. We hung out at a restaurant across the road from the beach. Ayah Cik Farid showed Nia Nia the incoming tide, and she was impressed (and quite vocal about it too) with the rising tide and the […]

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Betty on Irfan

Betty Was Missing

A month ago, Betty went out for her daily roams and never came back. The neighbours reported not seeing her. She was gone all throughout Ramadhan. We live close to thick tropical-grade underbrush. One possibility is that she might have come afoul of local wildlife – and I don’t mean squirrels. After three weeks, I had accepted that we would never see her or hear her little mewlings again. For weeks only Comel, the neighbour’s cat, hung around about the house. Here she is trying to persuade me to let her drive us to town. Well, not without a valid driver’s licence, missy. But on Sunday, while Irfan was playing with Comel’s owners from next door, his classmate came a-visiting bringing with him Betty! Thanks to Irfan’s sustained crowdsourcing efforts and detailed descriptions, his friend from school recognised Betty’s markings and her collar at a housing area half a mile […]

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83 Months

83 months of Yaya! [[image:2015-yaya83month-01.jpg:Happy girl at the beach at night:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions This entry is written two months late so I will keep it short. June was a busy month with work travels for me. We didn’t take that many photos of the kids this month (oops!) but here’s a quick summary. Food status: I don’t believe Yaya tried anything new in June. Reading status: Yaya is doing really well! Starting to read some cursive text. Handwriting improving. Two thumbs up for her glasses. New thing: Yaya started piano lessons in June! Wheee! Adik too but we’ll get to that in his own entry. Yaya is doing pretty well for a beginner. Go Yaya! Let’s see the photos taken in June! We were in the greater Fort Lauderdale, Florida area for work and in the pond outside my office lived a gator, turtles, fish, […]

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Neow neow buddy

Veronica – Hello and Farewell

Before we left for Kuala Lumpur and Sitiawan last weekend, Ain was enamoured with another stray kitty who hung around at a roadside stall nearby. She took to Ain very well, so she thought we would also adopt her and Betty would have a companion. We took in the new calico on Tuesday and named her Veronica. Like their namesake, Betty and Veronica did not really get along well. Betty was quite haughty and Veronica was a better-behaved kitty. They did things together, but once in a while they got into hissing slap flights. We thought that after a week or two of acclimatising, the two kitties would be okay with each other. On Wednesday, while we were having lunch at home a neighbour knocked on our door and told us she saw Veronica get hit by a car. She was at the doorstep limp and lifeless, her eyes looking […]

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Finally TIme for a Breather and a Kitty

I have not been posting much because life in the last month or so has been very hectic. [[image:bettycat-arrives05.jpg:Betty loves Google+:center:0]]  First, I was commissioned to proofread a doctorate student’s thesis from a neighbouring university. The work has – to put it simply – given me the desire to take a Master’s Degree once I’m done with this Bachelor’s Degree in English Studies, and perhaps if the opportunity opens up even a Doctor of Philosophy Degree eventually. What in? I have no idea just yet, but I am looking into Applied Linguistics. Perhaps I could integrate tabletop gaming into it somehow. Secondly, I began writing the assignment papers for this semester, which should be my final semester in this Bachelor of English Studies programme. I spent all weekends reading and writing for these assignments. Although some of them are freeform writing requiring no reading, most of them required me to […]

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This is not an unboxing video

An Unexpected Guest: The Wet Sprocket

Upon returning home from Pasir Mas to pay our last respects to Irfan’s Nyang, we discovered that the house had an unexpected guest. It was a big katak puru that took refuge among the old laundry causing Ain to scream out loud when it jumped after being startled. Ain and the local fauna appear to love to startle each other at the same time. It attempted to flee deeper into where the glassware was stored, but Irfan and I boxed it in, literally. Soon, the toad was released out to the recently-harvested bendang. Where I assume he lived happily ever after.

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