Welcome to Hishgraphics Games & Training

Hishgraphics Games Training

After carrying out a handful of tabletop role-playing game events for schools, colleagues and such, I believe it is time to offer these services actively instead of sitting down and waiting while I do other stuff. As such, I have created a new YouTube channel. The first video, the intro, has been posted below. I plan on doing interviews with other tabletop gamers concerning education (especially language learning) as well as training and teambuilding. Check out Hishgraphics Games & Training (still not sure about the ampersand). I’ll try my best to upload new (and old) videos about my running tabletop RPGs and other such events. Please subscribe and wish me luck for my future plans.

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It's Irfan the Intern again

BM Course at LEAD

There are a number of courses that I had to take upon being appointed as permanent staff at the university. And I had three years to take them all. This week I was scheduled to take a Bahasa Melayu course. It was a great course as we talked about things I loved, like sociolinguistics, language drift, history of the language and such. The lecturers who would deliver the course were my colleagues, Zaki, Jannah, and Noriha – who once played Rayha the Linguist. The BM course was to be held at LEAD. And I seem to recall knowing an intern who works there. Click on the images below for a larger view:

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Irfan the intern

Interning at LEAD

It seemed as if it was only five years ago that we were stressing out finding a kindergarten for young Irfan. We were in our car, scouting all the pre-schools in Pandan Indah with the questions, Would we be able to afford it? Is it safe? Will he pick up bad habits from other human younglings? A blink of an eye later, here he is doing internship at the Centre for Sustainable Academic Leadership Development (LEAD) at UniMAP. His first foray into the working world, after some years studying across the highway from the university with three of his cohorts.

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Purple voting finger

Purplish Finger

According to the online system, Irfan is registered to vote in Pandan Indah, Ain in Pasir Mas and I in Sitiawan. It appears they set our locations to default to the addresses on our identity cars. This is after I have changed my voting location to Perlis over the counter several years ago. In any case, we will need to change or addresses before the next General Elections. Later that day Ain and I caught up with our old friend Mei, who also returned to Sitiawan to vote. We saw Eva (and her little brother Connor) who last appeared in this blog when she was a little baby. At the time Eva had yet to develop locomotion. Then later that night we continued our gossiping at Chicketory. Why Chicketory? Because its name was Chicketory. We talked about the General Elections of Malaysia, old times, new times, a better Malaysia and […]

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Reloading Spoons

Thoughts Old and New Spiralling Unheeded

Previously, on Hishgraphics blog… It has been months since I posted. The last published blog post announced of our entire household’s infection with COVID-19. Sorry to disappoint some readers, but we yet live. The infection did not saddle us with severe symptoms. However, I have not posted for a long time and it is time to rectify that. The reason why I have not posted is because I found it a huge chore to conceive blog posts, formulate the text and prepare images. In the interim, besides the week-long COVID-19 bout, I have been for the last two years suffering from eczema, and last week a doctor diagnosed me with arthritic psoriasis whereby my left knee hurt immensely making it hard for me to be mobile. This has (not had) the effect of making it hard to manage my classes in the previous semesters. I enjoy the classes and interacting […]

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One hundred art cards

Wherefore Art Thou, Art Card?

I am so excited to receive this package today. It is something I ordered from Shopee. I have been looking for this in million print shops here in town. None appear to have them in stock any more. I am a proud owner of 100 pieces of A4-sized, 260 gsm-thick, white art card. This is because I had been trying and failing to print out my paper miniatures. I also found that the only place that I definitely knew stocked art card had folded* (or moved). In short, I am so happy. *No pun intended.

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It's a Pfizer

A Vaccine Nation, Part 2.

Previously on “A Vaccine Nation”… Yesterday afternoon, I went to my second vaccine injection session snuggled between two classes. As of now, I am fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine. I hope Ain and Irfan get their vaccination dates on MySejahtera quickly. We need a lot more for vaccinated people so herd immunity can be effective.

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I am vaccinated

A Vaccine Nation

Today is Opah Irfan’s birthday. Happy birthday, Opah Irfan. Additionally, today was the date the MySejahtera app scheduled my first COVID-19 vaccination injection. However, Ain nor Irfan were still unscheduled. We believe that my blood pressure condition automatically grouped me early with citizens who are at high-risk. It cannot be stated enough. It is unbelievable that we are living through a real, honest-to-goodness planet-wide pandemic. Ain drove me to the vaccination site and waited in the car. When I was in line, I asked one of the medical personnels if it was possible for Ain to be given a shot today since she was close by. After the lady visibly consulted with two officers, she informed me: no. When my number came up it did not take long for me to reach the injection booth even though I went through the check-in table, the confirmation table, the briefing and signature […]

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Raised on DnD with IKOM

Podcast Guest on Raised on DnD

Recently, Nick Cardarelli invited me to be a guest on his podcast, Raised on DnD! The podcast features those who plays tabletop role-playing games with children at home and students in class. Because I have both run RPG sessions at home for Irfan for 10 years and in classes for students to help them acquire English language skills, I had a thing or two to say about the topic. Aside: I am sad that I am unable to run games for students during the quarantine era of 2020-2021. It would be much more engaging for them to look and speak to each other, and to roll the dice on the table. Thanks to Nick for inviting me as a guest. I now join a list of amazing RPG personalities in the series, from Luke Gygax to Chris Pramas. Hopefully I have even more things to talk about if I do […]

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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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Front cover of the Moleskine

Beacon in the Dark

I received a package this morning. Chris, an old friend from Sitiawan who now resides in Belfast, sent it. It was a Moleskine notebook for Irfan, which looked great. Furthermore, it was a limited edition Gundam cover Moleskine! I am grateful for the gift. So is Irfan, needless to say. But what is more dear to my heart are the notes he wrote for Irfan and I. I had been uncertain whether my friendship with a lot of my old friends at school mattered. Sure there were some that says hi every now and again on text chat or on social media. But for the longest time, I wondered if I did right with the friends whom I ran Star Wars RPGs (and sometimes ShadowRun) for, the ones who hung out with me discussing books, movies and music, and spent their free time obliging this eager nerd with his nerd […]

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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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Mint 20 Cinammon

Mint 20 is Here

I noticed that there as a Mint update notification at the system tray yesterday. When I looked it up, it was the upgrade to 64-bit Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon. Its codebase is Ubuntu 20.04 LTS codenamed Focal Fossa. Since this is a Long Term Support system, I decided to upgrade ASAP. It took two hours or so, and in the end I was running Mint 20:

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Evening cloudscape June 2020

Three Cloudscapes in One Day

Although it was Wednesday, I was at home as I took the day off from work. The reason? To work on semester’s grading and keying in of marks. In short, I took the day off work to work. That did not stop us from heading out to enjoy the scenery in the morning and at sunset. There were quite a number of nice cloudscapes we saw that day. Click on the pictures below to view larger images.

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Buster Gundam

Buster Gundam – Gundanium Builds

Irfan’s first gunpla was a Buster Gundam once upon a time. Sadly, Irfan is unable to find that model except for various limbs and weapons. So, he has bought a new and a more current manufacture of the Buster Gundam. This build is now the second Gundanium Build video released on YouTube. If it is not too much out of the way, please feel free to view, like and subscribe.

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