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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The Kido Watcher’s Guide to Bavva
Dice For Brains is an amazing Star Wars RPG actual play podcast, gamemastered by Ross Rockafellow using Fantasy Flight Games’ Force and Destiny rules. What makes the podcast stand out from other actual play podcasts is threefold: it is recorded well, crisp and clear voices of the players with hardly any disruptive external noises. Secondly, it sounds like the games have been edited professionally which presents the action very clearly to the listeners. Finally, the gameplay is extremely story-oriented whereby plot points AND dice result interpretations are sometimes repeated to ensure listeners do not get lost in the story. The players, like the professional actors they are, annunciate very clearly and speak out loud the action they are about to do and periodically what their player characters think of. This makes for an extremely dramatic actual play record of the game sessions being played, which are also enhanced by original music […]
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Nia Takes Leave
Nia spent several days with us. Her sense of fun and humour kept us amused for the whole time. She played with Ain. She watched movies (well, just the one, mostly) with Irfan. Soon it was time for the Seri Kembangan crew to leave. Ayah Cik Farid, Cik Ma, Cik Su and Nia Nia packed up and prepared to leave. Nia wept sadly. Not because she had to leave us, mind you, but because Cik Su pretended she was not going back to Seri Kembangan with her. See you later, guys.
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Nia and the Beach Cats
We went for an early dinner at Kuala Perlis with Ayah Cik, Cik Ma, Cik Su and young Nia Nia. The restaurant was by the promenade, right by the sea. Irfan knew exactly what would float Nia’s boat: Cats. So he introduced her to a stray cat by the beach. At first Nia more fascinated by the giant stone balls scattered all over the promenade. Then it struck her: Perhaps this can will not merely be a bystander or a passer-by. Perhaps she could make friends with this cat. She became even more excited when the number of cats who showed up increased to more than one. This cat knows where it’s at. The cat decided to move, turn and booped Nia on the nose with a fuzzy tail. Needless to say, Nia was beside herself with joy at being booped on the nose by a fuzzy tail. After dinner, […]
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15th Birthday Plus One Nia
In a blink of an eye, Irfan is now 15 years of age. He is more or less an adult, as I myself do not remember 15 being any different than 25 besides more experience by dint of being the latter. Even when he was much younger, I tried listening and talking to him as though he was an older teen. These days we are able to converse with each other in a multitude of subjects maturely – even if Irfan, Ain and I are prone to sudden infantile jokes and giggling like babies. It so happened that on the day of Irfan’s birthday, Nia, Cikma and Ayah Cik Farid came a-visiting and it was a far better day with their presence. Nia even wore a cap! The last time Nia was here she saw a cat. She awaited for the appearance of Abang the Cat from next door at […]
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Mini Six: A Day By The Sea
Mini Six: Doom Agents 01 A Day by the Sea For the third time I ran a tabletop RPG session for my class using the Mini Six system, and this time I have integrated it with the English curriculum we had. The week’s lesson theme was Natural Disaster and I also had to teach them about Descriptive Essays. The RPG became a teaching tool in this situation, because students were able to interact verbally with each other in the context of the narrative. I did some research on the seaside towns in Fukushima, Japan to prepare for the session. During the game they also had to roll dice to determine that the action they declared succeeded or failed. And then had to write their game experiences as in-universe stories for homework using a structured set of questions I sent them via Google Forms. Dramatis Personae Sabrina as Berry, the scientist Athirah […]
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Irfan’s Jaunt into Robotics
Some time last month I received an email notification of an Introduction to micro:bit Workshop for schoolchildren to be held at the Mechatronic school at the university, and so we enrolled Irfan. It was a full day’s programme. Ain and I decided to save our transport fuel by hanging around at the expansive computer lab. Because of that I got to play around with micro:bit as well. To my surprise all the desktop computers in the lab were installed with Linux Mint. The micro:bit is a small but multi-functional system with a processor, sensors, output jacks, LEDs and USB port. It can be used in conjunction with other hardware to create amazing tools. It can be programmed using a Javascript Blocks Editor online. The online editor has a handy virtual micro:bit for you to test out your program live. You can experiment with the micro:bit code yourself here. And then […]
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A Sad Raya Haji in Sitiawan
Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Adha from the whole lot of us in Sitiawan… …or something. It was Eid and it was Sitiawan’s turn this year. The trip to Sitiawan was not stressful for traffic was more than manageable. After nearly three years, I am still getting used to raya traffic being bad in the opposite direction. Irfan and I performed solat Aidiladha at the temporary masjid in town as a new one was under construction at the site of the old. Before long it was time to head home. A sad footnote:The day we before we travelled to Sitiawan I had heard that an old family friend – my parents’ good friend and my former classmates’ dad – had been hospitalised. We visited him the next day and were met by his entire family, people I have known since I could remember and rarely meet these days. Sadly the next […]
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The Star Wars Show Fan Art
The Star Wars Show crew asked for some fan art of the Star Wars Show from the Twittersphere, so being a Twitterspheroid (or a spheroid of some sort) I thought I would oblige them. So here we have Andi Gutierrez in an Imperial gunner costume, Anthony Carboni in some smuggler’s outfit with CH-33Z in his arms and Pablo Hidalgo at the back with the Star Wars Sourcebook. I tweeted the image a couple of days ago (see Appendix A below) and then it was featured (for about 2 seconds) on the latest Star Wars Show on YouTube! Here be the latest episode of the show: Don’t forget to check out the other fan art submissions (and the rest of the episode) in the episode above. Also in the original tweet was the illustration I drew laid out as the cover to one of West End Games’ old Galaxy Guides. This […]
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SWD6: Out of the Red
Time is the Hunter Episode 06: Out of the Red Continuing the adventure I ran for Ain and Irfan last December… Bounty hunter Jax Hunt and amnesiac lady who called herself Iris Helena were waiting in the Corellian Engineering Corporation VCX-100 light freighter assigned to them, the Screeching Arrow, by the rebel fleet when the Togorian rebel coordinator Meow Skywalker came to them with a job: “The mission will require you to travel to the Chandrila system in the Core Worlds to extract Imperial bureaucrat Ton Kelauae, his wife Aklu and his daughter Wencie. Land at Nayli Spaceport. The Kelauaes are holed up in Apartment 7C, Blackback Building. The Empire is looking for them and it will be a matter of time before they are discovered. Get to them before the Empire does and bring them back here.” Then they went off on their mission… And Now, a Standoff! […]
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Patreon: Troops on the Ground
The latest Patreon paper miniatures were released hours before August arrived, but I forgot to feature them here on the blog. So here are the Troops on the Ground series of modern soldiers for any modern role-playing games that require soldiers as player or non-player characters. Easily used with games like Covert Ops, Delta Green or The Laundry. The image above showcases the four basic designs. Each design has three discreet variations. There is space for you to write down character names. Click here to go to the Patreon entry to download the PDF file for printing and assembling! Or be a patron. Or share. Or something. Many thanks to our patrons on Patreon for the opportunity to create these paper miniatures over the years.
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A Nasal Epilogue
After last week’s surgery, I had splint and padding up my nose to hold things together as the parts within healed. The doctors gave me little bottles of saline solution and a syringe to douche my nasal cavity to cleanse it of blood, snot and other assorted blood-covered snot. On Saturday, after my regular nose douche and a shower I felt something shift uncomfortably up my nose. The string taped to my nose which connected to the splint was slack. Something sharp and stinging had moved down my right nostril. More blood than usual was dripping down my nose. We went to a clinic to get it looked at, but the doctor there referred us to the ER at the hospital. There was a referral letter and all. The ER doctor who attended me called up the ENT physician on call. The ENT doctor (who correctly guessed who I was […]
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Porg Dameron
What if Poe Dameron was a porg? What if he still had his helmet and Glie-44 blaster pistol? What then? What then? I drew the above a couple of days ago, posted on Twitter and Facebook. It was even featured on Star Wars Reporter!
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New Sandwich Place
I have been wanting to visit this new sandwich place in town. We finally got extra cash for the week so we went for some sandwiches. However to save money, we only bought two – takeaway – and no drinks. The restaurant was cozy and had a nice ambience, found on one corner of Capitol Square. The smell of freshly baked bread wafted from the door. Also, there was freshly-pressed coffee. We might be back for a proper dining experience here later. We ordered the cheesy beef salami and the garlic chicken sandwiches. When we got home we divided them into three parts each, so Irfan, Ain and I were able to sample equal measure of each sandwich. I believe there were more cheese in the garlic chicken than the cheesy beef salami, and I have no complaints about that. Maybe I will try the Thai mayo chicken next.
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Suddenly, The Emergency Room
… but upon my return home from my three-day hospital stay, I discovered that Opah Irfan had a high fever and could not sit up. She was extremely weak from illness. So, we took her to the Klinik Kesihatan downtown before it closed, leaving Irfan alone at home to do his homework. When we arrived, Ain and Atok Irfan got a wheelchair for Opah. After a blood test, the medical personnel there discovered that Opah’s blood sugar, blood pressure and body temperature were sky high. The nurses there had to inject some insulin into her system. Then, they called an ambulance to transport her to the Emergency Room of the hospital next door – escorted by Ain – while Atok & I returned home to get her medical records. What followed was a six-hour wait at the ER for the lab to return a new blood test to see if […]
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Finally, A Surgery
Atok and Opah Irfan came to visit last Saturday for a medical reason. The photo of them above along with Irfan was taken the day they left for Sitiawan on the 12th. Several days earlier, on Monday the 7th, I was hospitalised and surgery was scheduled for the next day. There I was, once more unto the breach. This was my fourth attempt at surgery. A FESS to remove what was left of a couple of polyps and a septoplasty to fix my right air hole which was apparently too small. The first attempt back in early 2016 was postponed because of high blood pressure. The second was postponed on account of getting sick while under observation in the hospital ward, and I missed a work excursion to Terengganu in vain because of it. I was unable to go for surgery the third time earlier this year because of a […]
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