It was an evening of something quite unexpected. True, I did hear about the coming of the “Super Blue Blood Moon” which was talked about all throughout social media. Bu I never thought it would look breathtakingly spectacular. Ain alerted me to the start of the lunar eclipse during the full moon. It was a clear night. The stars were out. The moon was gradually and visibly being devoured by the shadow of Earth. When it was completely engulfed in shadow, the moon turned blood red. The photo I took above does not do it justice. Soon after, the light of the sun began to shine upon the moon once again, slowly revealing itself to the night sky. The evening began with me underestimating how the lunar eclipse would look like. In the end, I felt fortunate that Ain called me outside to view the phenomenon.
Continue readingTag Archives: Around the House
TV first
Here are blog posts of things and events that happen at home…
Another January Weekend
Last weekend, we went for a drive. This weekend, it was time for the farmer’s market. There were a bunch of fresh produce Ain wanted to pick up at the market. She knew of cheaper locations to purchase some of the things here, but it has been a while since we visited this market. Lots of green grown were sold here that we could consume to keep our biological avatars running without any errors. Ain pokes a papaya. All this fish gives me an idea for an epic RPG campaign. (No it does not.) There were also flower growers selling their wares at the market. After acquiring the items that needed to be acquired, we headed home where Ain began to cast her sorcery in the kitchen. She used some sort of cosmic powered transmogrifying spell to turn some eggs, greens and mayonnaise into cole slaw. The cole slaw was […]
Continue reading
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.
Continue reading
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 […]
Continue reading
And Then It Was His 14th Birthday
Irfan’s fourteenth birthday came and went. So did Irfan’s grandparents from Perak. It would be easy to say “I can’t believe how tall and how far he’d come” but the truth is that I am not surprised. With the opportunities and facilities available to him here – as opposed to the Klang Valley where he would have to fight with the sheer number of students in school for available teaching and learning resources – Irfan is surely and gradually turning into a young man with the powers and abilities of a teenager. What would be best for us to celebrate a fourteenth birthday? I have no idea, so we decided on going our for pizza! When the pizza arrived it looked appealing and it was quite delicious. My personal criteria for “delicious” was fulfilled thanks to onions. We took a group photo with our prey, before we finished it off […]
Continue reading
Driveway Apam Balik Station
One Saturday, our driveway became an apam balik station. Many visitors came to obtain free apam balik as dessert to go with their meal. The driveway had been converted because of the wedding feast held by our neighbour to commemorate the wedding between his son and daughter-in-law, and his daughter and son-in-law. A twofer! The previous day both Ain and I helped out with the preparing of the food. I helped cut up the beef into small pieces while Ain had her fingertips chemically seared off when she attempted to remove the skin out of a million metric tonnes (or so it seemed) of garlic. Apparently de-skinning a large amount of garlic can be painful to your fingers. There was a meeting some weeks back and we had given them permission to set up the apam balik station here. Across the street where the food was being served, an ais […]
Continue reading
Finally, Furniture and then Ice Cream
After eighteen months of sitting on the floor watching television, we finally got enough cash this month to purchase a sofa set! Atok and Opah were visiting, so we thought it was great that they could have something soft to sit on in the living room. There’s also a bookshelf. As you can see the Star Wars RPG books have made themselves comfortable on the new bookshelf. To celebrate, we headed for Changlun where there was an excellent coconut ice cream stall. It was made of vanilla ice cream scoops in a coconut husk with coconut flesh, nuts, crouton, pulut and some other stuff.
Continue reading
Lighting the Bike
Once upon a time, I marvelled at Irfan’s then-newfound abilities to reach a light switch. These days he’s repairing the bicycle Atok bought for him last year all on his own. Here we see him attempting to remove his bike’s forward and rear lights which he had purchased and installed himself during the weekend. He even bought and installed the batteries for his lights himself. He even went to the bike shop alone to replace his seat, as 14-year-olds normally do. Maybe someday he’ll even repair communication satellites! I think he’s getting older by the second. Snif.
Continue reading
A Second Move
Last December we moved 500 hundred kilometres to new house. This week a year later, we moved again but this time it was only about 2 klicks down the road. It was gratifying that we did not need to cross state lines for the move. Thanks to some friends, before I went to my course in Kuala Lumpur we secured a house at a residential estate right beside Irfan’s school. We had scoped this area out for months to no avail, until now. Our previous house was nice and comfortable, and the landlord was a great person. We were surrounded by greens there, but I still hoped for a house where Irfan could actually walk to school. Our former landlord helped with the move by introducing us to some movers. Most of my stuff are still in moving boxes for over a year because we had to place to unpack […]
Continue reading
Tsuro Picnic
Once upon a time, earlier today, Irfan came up with the idea of setting up a mat out in the yard so he and other neighbourhood kids can play board games outdoors. Later, there were even sandwiches and apple juice! Here’s hoping the boardgaming will help Irfan and the other children to improve their social and language skills as they interact with one another. Perhaps someday there will be RPG picnics?
Continue reading
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 […]
Continue readingYaya loses a Tooth!
Yaya lost her first baby tooth today! June 18, 2015. She is a little over a month shy of her seventh birthday! [[image:2015-yayagigi_jun2015-04.jpg:Buh-bye tooth!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions So the wiggly tooth that has been wiggling for months has finally fallen out. Yaya’s permanent tooth has already sprouted (and quite advanced too!) behind the line of milk teeth (see photo in this entry from the dentist visit). There was even a slight drama two days ago when Yaya bumped her face while playing and the tooth just bled for a little while. Slight fat lip that went away pretty quickly. The drama came when it was time to eat dinner. The blood in the food and drink, that was a huge problem as it turned out. There were tears, cajoles, threats, and negotiations in order to finally get her to drink milk using a straw cup. That […]
Continue reading82 Months
82 months of Yaya! [[image:2015-yaya82month-13.jpg:Yaya and Adik:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions I’m feeling pretty proud of myself in that it’s not yet the middle of July (only the end of June) when I’m writing this entry! I will count this as a win! 🙂 May was another full month. We were in Florida for work the beginning of May and we also ended May in Florida. Which was a lot of fun (albeit tiring). I’m trying to keep the pictures in the monthly entries less beachy and have some beach-related entries, but there are a few that may have crept in to this entry because I liked them so much. Food status: No new foods. ‘Nuff said. Reading status: Yaya may even be reading some words faster than Adik! Go Yaya! She still spends a lot of time doing art and definitely enjoys doing arts and crafts. […]
Continue reading
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 […]
Continue reading
A Return To the Tenth Floor
It’s the Labour Day/Wesak Day long weekend. We were unsure if we were able to travel 500 klicks plus change to the old house back on the Tenth Floor in Kuala Lumpur. We had planned on departing at 3AM, but because we were exhausted we awoke at six, and after gearing up were only able to push off from Kangar at seven. Twitter warned us of slow traffic on the highway ahead of us, which forced us off and into the state roads near Selama toward Taiping. Soon we decided to stop at Atok and Opah’s in Sitiawan for a brief rest and Friday prayers. We resumed our journey at 3PM and reached Kuala Lumpur by nightfall. It was a strange feeling, returning there after five months away from the city. I don’t believe we were ever away from the city anywhere near this amount of time. The strangeness was […]
Continue readingRafe – 39 Months
And now Adik is 39 months old! [[image:2015-adik39month-10.jpg:Happy little boy, up close:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Somehow I am getting more and more delinquent – it is mid-May and I am just now writing this March entry. Oh well. Here are the basics for March, Adik’s 39th month: Food status: no change. Still no veggies or fruits other than veggies I sneak into noodles for him. But his palate is still fairly open, as compared to his sister’s. Reading status: still amazing. He seems to be able to read more and more. However he seems to have forgotten how to spell in that when you ask him to spell a word, often he needs help or prompting. He can write his name, but for the most part he likes to draw happy faces on paper or just scribble. Potty training status: Adik refuses to go without his […]
Continue reading