Core Gundam and Veetwo

Irfan’s Gundanium Builds

Irfan has established a new YouTube channel that will showcase his Bandai gunpla builds. The channel is titled Gundanium Builds. Here is his first video: a build of the Core Gundam (G3 Color) and its Veetwo Unit which combines into the PFF-X7/V2 Veetwo Gundam. Click on the video to watch it. Also, subscribe if you will! 

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Travelling outdoors

Outdoors After Two Weeks

I have been cooped up at home for more than two weeks. The last time I left the driveway was to fill up the water bottles with the potable water vending machines. Since then I have been spending most of my time planning for lessons, running lessons, uploading online learning material and monitoring the students’ output. This takes up a great deal of my time. I am used to working from home for fives years before I came to work here. I do not mind working from home at all and could happily spend the rest of my life teaching from home. However, the virtual paperwork and other class management duties has worn me down. I have never felt so emotionally and physically exhausted before in my life, without being clinically depressed. Yesterday, the government has allowed two persons from a single household to travel by car. So Ain and […]

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A new beginning

Newly Minted OS

The Situation Last year some time, I upgraded the Linux Mint on this laptop from 17.0 to 17.3. In the last couple of months, I pushed it higher, upgrading from 17.3 to 18.0 to 18.3. However, this was where I hit a brick wall. I was unable to upgrade further because of an mdm display manager issue. None of the troubleshooting guides I read solved my problem. Additionally, the 18.3 build I had was noticeably getting slower to boot up AND it froze for three minutes or more intermittently. The freezes were happening a lot when I had a Nemo file manager window open. Saving on LibreOffice also immobilises the machine. This was a frustrating new development. Even more worrisome, because I had to use the machine for online teaching. Finally, I have been wanting to use the latest Discord and Blender programs (among others). There are no new 32-bit […]

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A celestial being

A Little Seraphim

During the plague year, Irfan rediscovered his drive to build Gundam plastic models. He decided to purchase a GN-009 Seraphim Gundam from Mobile Suit Gundam 00. It was smaller than the usual Gundam as it was part of the Seravee Gundam. This mobile suit which belonged to the private paramilitary organisation Celestial Being only showed up for a few seconds in an episode of 00. Only thing for Irfan to do now is to get a Seravee so they could dock together.

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Endlessly waltzing

Sandrock Custom A Year Overdue

Irfan was very committed to studying and working hard for his SPM examination last year. He was so committed that he put off building a gunpla that he bought early 2019. Just like that, his passion for gunpla building returned and before too long, he had the XXXG-01SR2 Gundam Sandrock Custom (Endless Waltz version) completed, curved giant swords and all. I believe he found the semi-quarantine circumstances quite conducive for building Gundam models.  

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Brand new container

Outbreak Outage

Besides having this Movement Control Order because of this virus outbreak, we also learnt last Thursday that we were going to have a water outage. The powers that be announced that it would last 3 days from Saturday to Monday. On Friday, Ain and I went looking at shops to find one that would tide us for the duration. Thanks to my colleague Rizal, we found a hardware store that sold lots of them. We spent minimum time purchasing the container, then headed back home as soon as possible. It is now Sunday morning, the container is full and standing by, and we have another 24 hours plus change left according to the waterworks maintenance schedule. So far, so good.

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Lockdown dice

Outbreak Measures

Malaysia has begun a 2-week movement restriction period throughout the country because of the Covid-19 outbreak. All teaching and university work has been suspended though the team kept in contact all day via Telegram. I spent the entire day with Ain and Irfan at home. I do have tasks to complete, knowledge to learn at home, which means I am back to my freelance illustrator work mode. It is just like when I was back in the city, except that I would not be drawing. Of course today of all days my Lazada order arrived from China: six sets of polyhedral dice. When it arrived, I immediately took it to the bathroom and dunked everything in a bucket of soapy water. Hours later, after they had dried, I split the dice with Irfan. Ultimately, we never even unlocked the gate until night fell when we needed to take the garbage […]

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Something broke

Lower Control Arm Goes Even Lower

Today Ain needed to go to for her scheduled medical check-up. She was along the kampung road out of our housing area when something when BOINK under the car. Immediately she felt the tyres pulling her steering wheel towards where she did not want to go. So she turned around and headed back to our taman perumahan and just as she turned into a main road in our area – 50 metres or so from our home – the car stopped and refused to move any further. She walked home, distressed by the occurrence, and I went to have a look. The closer I got to the car the more dire the damage seemed to be. Also, there was a large puddle of fluid forming under the car and gravity was pressing down the wheel well onto the tyre. We called our regular mechanic and he came an hour or […]

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Near the university

Final Day, No Water

It is the last day of 2019 and we are spending the night at my workplace again. Apparently a water outage that was scheduled to last less than 12 hours has been extended without any official announcement. Again, we appear to be lucky that my office is basically an apartment building. We had dinner at a nearby favourite restaurant of Ain’s. Before we retired back to the office, I took this photo of the last cloudscape of the year over the Kuala Perlis-Sintok highway.

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November 2018 Tenth Floor

Goodbye, Tenth Floor

Almost five years ago, there was a final entry from the Tenth Floor. Less than a year thereafter there was a return to the Tenth Floor. Early this month, we finally said goodbye permanently to the Tenth Floor. It was finally bought by a young lady, a professional, who has substantially more resources than I did at her age. We lived there for almost 14 years and there had many happy memories there. This blog was created four years into our stay there. But on the whole, Ain and I experienced a great deal more sadness and trauma there. The house itself was a dreadful shadow looming over us. It was a huge block of limestone on my shoulders. Its walls cracked even as we lived in it. The bathrooms disintegrated over the years to the point where Ain had to borrow money and pay it back over many years […]

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The home team

Once More Unto The Nasyid

Once again, I volunteered to participate in the interdepartmental nasyid competition in order to make a lot of noise without being arrested for disturbing the peace. A team was formed. We rehearsed for weeks. We obtained funds for costumes and such. Then the day came. For some reason, we won first place! The theme of the nasyid programme was “adaptation”. So adapted a song to be sung. What song did you ask? Watch the video of the performance below to find out:

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Irfan takes a hike

Photos from Irfan’s MFLS Week

Irfan was chosen to go to Malaysian Future Leaders School, a 10-day programme that was not unlike my own Outward Bound School programme back when I was his age. There were team-building events, kayaking (at Timah Tasoh), hillwalking (which is basically hiking through the jungle for a day up a hill), abseiling at the Kangar fire and rescue station (no pictures of that here), morning drills and a whole lot of other events. Here is a selection of photos that we received from his organisers after the MFLS programme on their Facebook page.

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I will learn

Goodbye Google Plus

G+, You will be missed. Hundreds of friendships blossomed over there. Many carried over to other social networks. Once I attended Google’s gMalaysia Conference. There, I spoke a bit on Google Plus as the primary platform for my freelance illustration work. Here are some of my old G+ entries just for kicks.

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Sunset aft

Cloudscape in the Wing Mirror

I headed home from class as the red-orange glow of dusk slowly crept across the land. I headed west. The sun was behind me. There was a traffic light stop. Quickly, I took a photo of the view I saw in the car’s wing mirror. I was impressed that the photo turned out almost as spectacular as the real thing. The traffic lights turned green, and I continued home.

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The CIL committee and participants of the programme

A Meeting With A Poet Laureate

Another thing I would have never thought I would ever do if I were still back in KL was to meet A Samad Said, the national laureate, who was in town because of Perlis Book Festival 2019. The Centre for International Languages Bahasa Melayu team organised a talk with the renowned writer and poet. Because I had no classes at the time, I headed to the library auditorium to attend the talk. I am glad to know that Mr. A Samad Said has the same positive thoughts about today’s youth as I do. Here are some photos of the event:

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The PIBG committee

Marching Orders for Irfan

This might be Irfan’s final year at Semsira, his secondary school, and mine as the vice president of the PIBG (Parents Teachers Association). I was invited to attend the school’s Sports Day and I took some time to head there before a class. I was invited to sit up on in the gazebo with other members of the executive committee. Later, I even bestowed medals to winners of some events. The parade marched by and Irfan was with his scout group at the back of the column. Ain moved closer to snap a photo. The effects of dry season is apparent from the brown grass on the school field. There were five Sports Houses in his school, namely Bendahara, Laksamana, Temenggung, Penghulu Bendahari and Syahbandar. Each were named after titles in historic administrative titles of the region. Addendum (March 9): During an annual general meeting, the PIBG was dissolved and […]

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