Irfan's Great-grandparents' house 01

Our Grandparents’ House

By “our”, I mean Sila’s and mine, on Atok Irfan’s side. As children, when Sila and I balik kampung, one of the locations we would go to was to visit our grandparents. We would sleep over with our parents here, celebrate Hari Raya here with cousins, and it used to be surrounded by fruit trees. Coconut trees were of course […]

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Ain in Lumut

Aidilfitri After The Lockdown

During hari raya, we were unable to cross state borders to balik kampung thanks to the COVID-19 quarantine. It was not the first time for us. As the MCO downgraded because of the reduced infection rate, we discovered that we were able to travel back to Sitiawan to meet up with Atok and Opah. We thought it would be good […]

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Waiting on snacks and drinks in town

Two Cousins Doing Stuff

We headed back to Pasir Mas for a wedding the past weekend. Likewise, Anya and family also travelled back from the Klang Valley. With the looming threat of the virus, we decided to attend the wedding early before the bulk of the guests arrived. Also, we ate the food away from where other early guests were having their food. Additionally […]

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Last Day

Long Weekend in Perak

We headed to Sitiawan on Saturday after my Research Method class. It was a long weekend. Really long weekend. Monday and Tuesday were holidays for various reasons. After lunch it would be 3 pm before we finally departed from town. We stopped at the highway rest stop to refresh ourselves. We had arrived early in the night in Sitiawan. I […]

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Ilham Bestari

The Place Where He Grew Up

The day after Aidiladha we thought we would head into the city to check out the borough of Pandan Indah where Irfan grew up. It would literally be a balik kampung for him even though the kampung was Kuala Lumpur. Born less than 10 klicks away as the crow flies in Kuala Lumpur Hospital, he knew no other home other […]

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The Botanical Garden Expedition

We had to balik kampung this Aidiladha holidays. The kampung we returned to was neither Ain’s nor mine. It was Irfan’s.

On Saturday, after my Research Method class and my colleague Anis’ sister’s wedding, we drove from Perlis all the way to Nia’s house. Nia was happy that we came. We also met Aiman, Zara and family there.

The plan was that the next day, Sunday, we would all rendezvous at the Botanical Gardens at Shah Alam. Ain and I have not been there since before we were married. This was the children’s first time visiting it.

There were flowers. There was a rope bridge. There was archery. There was even a troupe of monkeys.

Irfan and his cousins entered the bunny farm where Nia became superlatively elated. According to Irfan, she even fearlessly fed a large goat by hand. There were no photos of the goat, but we do have other photos.

I posted on Twitter videos of Irfan shooting arrows at orcs a bullseye:

We were having lots of fun and it was only the second day in the Klang Valley.

Some Salam Lebaran From Sitiawan

For Eid, we were at Sitiawan taking photos with Atok and Opah. We also visited Marina Island near Lumut to see what the artificial island was like these days. Sometimes friends visited us. Sometimes we visited friends. We also took a trip to Ipoh to visit Wan Cu’s family.

Check out the photos in the following gallery:

Before long it was time to head home.

Pre-Aidilfitri in Pasir Mas

After our journey through Thailand to get to Pasir Mas, we finally arrived just in time for buka puasa at the dinner table with the family there. Nia and family were already there to greet us.

Here are some photos of the fun times over the days before we drove to Sitiawan for Aidilfitri!

Perak beckons.

Nia’s waiting for us at Pasir Mas

A Northern Route Back to Kelantan

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED. Yesterday, we travelled out of the country as a family for the first time. Granted it was only over the border into Thailand, but it was something that all this while was out of our ability to do for fiscal reasons. It was almost time for Aidilfitri and we drove from Padang Besar to Rantau Panjang via Thailand […]

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The old market

A Ramadhan Weekend in Sitiawan

The previous week, just after one of my classes I was informed by Atok Irfan that Opah was hospitalised for a because of dengue fever. We headed back to Sitiawan to check up on her in the weekend. After breaking fast in the car along the highway while passing by the Gurun rest stop, we decided to have our dinner […]

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Smashing

Nia and the Return Home

We had the opportunity to meet and play with Nia Nia again as Ayah Cik Farid and Cik Ma had a 24 hour or so overlap with our stay at Pasir Mas. The day before we had to depart, they arrived. She showed us how to draw. Also, she asked us to read Irfan’s old Hippo book. She especially liked […]

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New phone

Phoning It In

In the last month or so, the battery life of my Samsung phone which I bought over 2.5 years ago shortened and shortened. I thought it was bad when it only had an hour of energy at full charge. In the end it only had about 5 minutes of life at full charge. I had bought a fresh new battery […]

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Water's behind us

A Sojourn To Jerteh

And so it came to pass that Irfan, Ain and I took a vacation back to Pasir Mas, Kelantan. And during our vacation in Pasir Mas we took a sub-vacation south to Terengganu. Our primary objective was Kuala Besut, Jerteh. Kuala Besut was famous for its keropok lekor and other such seafood. For some reason, traffic was heavy. We randomly […]

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When I grow up I want to be Iapetus

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 […]

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Three of NABO

Aidilfitri 2017 at Pasir Mas

Eid Mubarak from Pondok Lubuk Tapah! Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitir. Maaf Zahir & Batin! Our family were clad in blue this morning, as Irfan demonstrated in the picture above. I’m wearing my old baju raya from several years ago, by the way. Irfan with Ciksu, Ayah G, Tok Ma and Tok Bah. Us in blue with Ayah Long, Aiman, Mak […]

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