Half past ten post meridian equals no sunlight or its dim red afterglow outdoors. Thus if lights are out indoors, it’s dark. Last night we were about to go to sleep when Irfan asked for his Dinosaur book (Das Reich Der Dinosaurier. Gee, I wonder where I bought that for him) to read. It was out in the darkened living room according to memory so I told him, “Go out and get it.” He said, “No, I’m scared.” What? That’s never happened before. “What are you scared of?” “It’s dark. There are dragons.” Ain and I both looked at each other. She then asked again, “Why are you scared?” “There are dragons outside.” He doesn’t pronounce it “dragons”, not does he say “dwagons”. It’s more of something in between, like “dr-wagons”, which I find pretty amusing. So, I had to go out into the dark living room, braving against the […]
Continue readingTag Archives: Around the House
TV first
Here are blog posts of things and events that happen at home…
The Library
At the end of last summer, we finally finished our library project. We turned the front room from a room where the books were stacked on the floor to having books sorted out on bookshelves. OK, let’s admit it. Neither Vin nor I are handy enough to actually build our own bookshelves, believe me we have enough trouble trying to assemble anything that has the tag “Some assembly required”, so Josh, our friend Jeanne’s grandson was commissioned to do the actual building. Here’s a little photojournal of the evolution of our library. First Vin vacuumed the room, and we stacked all the books elsewhere. [[image:lib01.jpg:Love the bright colors in this room!:center:0]] [[image:lib02.jpg:This wall is to be covered by the shelves, unfortunately:center:0]] Prototype box: [[image:lib03.jpg:One is the loneliest number:center:0]] The room fills up: [[image:lib04.jpg:More boxes:center:0]] [[image:lib05.jpg:The corner is to be a workstation for Vin:center:0]] [[image:lib06.jpg:This wall is filling up:center:0]] [[image:lib07.jpg:Recessed lights […]
Continue readingSpectral Visitors And Other Matters
Irfan’s Cik Su F is here until tomorrow, and she’s sleeping in the room next to ours. Some time last night, I was told she woke Emma up, trembling with absolute fear. It seemed that she saw an apparition gliding by where she slept and disappeared out through the iron grilled window. The ghostly figure wore white and its head and face was a mass of long black hair. It might have been night terrors (though I doubt it), it might have been a dream, it might have been a fear-induced hallucination, or it might have been the real deal. But that was the story told to me this morning by Ain. Meanwhile in other news: Battlestar Galactica was renewed for a third season, and there was much rejoicing. (Just get on with “Resurrection Ship” already) It was Alan Moore‘s birthday yesterday. He wrote a bunch of excellent stories. Painting […]
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Home Sweet Home, After A Fashion
We’re back on the tenth floor of this apartment building. The tiles on the bathroom floor are coming apart. The extra room still reeks of termite poison. We have the smallest TV screen among all the people we know. We are instantly reminded of the bills we have to pay. And it looks like Irfan is feeling lonely after almost two weeks surrounded by lots of family. But it’s home sweet home. The computer is set up just the way I like it so that when it was activated the setup felt so welcoming. Irfan is quite literally swimming in his books (which he rummaged from his book table, much to Ain’s chagrin), and, to anyone who understands what this means, Ain had a fantastic hour sweeping the floor of the house. It was a great holiday, now it’s back to work for all of us. There might have been […]
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Irfan Cuts His Cake and Eats It Too
“I want to eat the Happy Birthday Cake!” Irfan begged for hours after seeing the number three-shaped vanilla cake with the Tigger-esque toon on it. He wasn’t getting it until everyone arrived of course. There were, yet to arrive, his Mak Long and Ayah Long, and his Cik Eda and her roommates. So all day long, he staked out the cake box on the dinner table. More than once, you’ll see this happening and then the cry in the background, “IRFAN!!!” The box opens, much to Irfan’s delight. The cake had support by french fries, chicken curry, roti jala, chicken fingers and watermelon. Finally it was time to cut the cake. Irfan goes nuts. Irfan cuts the cake, aided by his parents. You can just see how happy he was. Now, Irfan’s probably thinking, “Wait! Why is the cake going to other people? I wan’t one.” And he lived happily […]
Continue readingHenna
Malay weddings aren’t complete without henna. Malay culture isn’t the only one to include henna in its rites and rituals. Henna is an ancient tradition practised by many ancient cultures, and is an integral part of weddings and childbirth for Hindu as well as Muslim cultures. I had hoped that one of the benefits of marrying out of my own culture would be that I would be allowed to skip some of the more tedious rites, but (un)fortunately, my aunts and cousin would have none of it. So whether we liked it or not, henna became part of our wedding. After the aqad nikah (marriage) ceremony, Vin and I both sat down for my cousin Ija (Kak Long) and she meticulously applied the ritual henna on our digits. Well, Vin only had to have the three fingers on his left hand hennaed. I had to have all of my fingers, […]
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Arise, New Graphics Tablet!
The other cool stuff I bought the same day I bought the table is this Wacom Graphire 3 graphics tablet. In fact, I’ve been wanting it for many years now that when I finally have it in my hands, I didn’t have the heart to remove it from its box and plug it in for FOUR DAYS. This morning I finally did it. After getting the tablet up and running with my computer, I proceeded to install the bundled Painter Classic software. When I finally ran the program, my blood went cold. All the colours were screwed up! It took me about 30 minutes before I decided to increase my monitor’s setting from 16-bit to 32-bit colour. Only then did I let out a sigh of relief. I grabbed the stylus, played around with the controls a bit; then tried playing with different brushes and tool on different layers; finally […]
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Tales of the Prototype and the Table
Last week, we printed out some of the prototype pages for the first ever Hishgraphics e-book. To be honest, prior to this I do have a fair amount of doubts about the project. In my mind, I estimated that perhaps this would have a 20-30% success when it’s eventually released into the wild. But after holding these coloured printouts in my hands, looking at the storytelling from the viewpoint of sequential art, I feel like this has at least 60% chance of succeeding. The story is somewhat half-baked, in retrospect it looks to me like its influenced by a bunch of different sources such as the C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree series, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and Pixar’s Monsters Inc. Substantially more text has now been added to the short paragraphs with large typeface size that you see on the image above, so the current version […]
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Picture of a Second Birthday
Last September, Irfan celebrated his second birthday by eviscerating a cake as seen in the attached image. This year perhaps we’ll celebrate his third by watching Firefly. But he better not aim to misbehave.
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