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 when I was at Langkawi in July and clearly I was swindled. Physically, the phone looked like it had been beaten up by school bullies. The battery looked pretty chubby in the end. I needed to buy a new phone as mobile communications appear to be paramount at work. Thanks to Cik Ma, I finally got a new mobile phone as we rendezvoused at Pasir Mas. Even the photo quality of the phone is superb. Click on the thumbnail above to check out how luminiscent Tok Bah’s yard looks like […]
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Where Woon Seong once sleepwalked and chased us all over the grounds way past midnight
Blog posts where we go back to Pasir Mas and Sitiawan. This tag will now include Pandan Indah as Irfan’s kampung.
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 took roads that eventually led us to this keropok restaurant. Ain and I miss eating the Terengganu keropok lekor, which we once had quite frequently as I once worked in Terengganu. As we ate keropok and satar at the restaurant, the proprietors there were also processing raw keropok right there behind the sales counter. The raw keropok was then deep fried before being sold. For some reason, I did not get a photo of the satar, which I thought was more delicious than the keropok. Five metres down the road […]
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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 solat Aidiladha at the temporary masjid in town as a new one was under construction at the site of the old. Before long it was time to head home. A sad footnote:The day we before we travelled to Sitiawan I had heard that an old family friend – my parents’ good friend and my former classmates’ dad – had been hospitalised. We visited him the next day and were met by his entire family, people I have known since I could remember and rarely meet these days. Sadly the next […]
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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 Long and Zara decked out in brown. The following photos were taken by Ciksu: Ciksu could not believe Irfan’s height. A trio of sisters. The entire roster of people at Tok Bah & Tok Ma’s house during Hari Raya in a single photo!
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Driving Towards Kelantan
Two days before Eid, we drove to Pasir Mas. We had planned on departing at 2 a.m. but we all overslept. So, we left and headed east after Subuh prayers. A notable feature of this journey is that Ain drove for more than 80% of the way. She took the wheel from Changlun. She drove from Changlun along the North-South Expressway, got out at the Gurun exit, drove past Jeniang, Kuala Ketil, Baling, Gerik and went up the East-West Highway over the mountains. She became sleepy near the Titiwangsa rest stop, so we parked the car for a while. Irfan massaged his mother’s back, which was knotted up no doubt caused by the extra long driving. Then I took the wheel while Ain slept in the back. The only place where a traffic jam occurred was near Bukit Bunga in Jeli, caused by Friday prayers traffic. I drove on towards […]
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A Hometown of Sorts
…Sitiawan! We drove from Pasir Mas to where I grew up and where nothing now looks familiar, except for the old house. Because I was not able to go to Kuala Lumpur for vacation earlier, I figured we should visit Atok and Opah in Sitiawan during Maulud Nabi. Of course Irfan was glued to his grandparents desktop computer for hours, even late into the night. So he was pretty tired in the mornings. It was a chore to wake him up in my old bedroom. We mostly chilled out and relaxed in Sitiawan. We wanted to visit my cousin, but they were not in town. Irfan’s Atok and Opah also took us to dinner, before I went to GM a Star Wars RPG session. Wait what? The pasembor and rojak place under the rubber trees had quite tasty food, even if there was a swarm of flies in the area. […]
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A Send Off to Mekah
For the first time ever, Tok Bah and Tok Ma in Pasir Mas got the opportunity to go on an Umrah pilgrimage in Mecca. We drove to Kelantan to see them off. En route, we got to see a herd of elephants, pale and monolithic, at about three a.m. along the Grik-Jeli highway over the mountains. They must have just crossed the road as their butts were to us. No, we did not stop the car to take photos. Tok Bah and Tok Ma would join a group of pilgrims from Terengganu and be escorted by Ain’s cousin and her husband in their journey. Many came from Pondok Lubuk Tapah and other places to see them off at the Kota Bharu airport. Yes, Ain shed tears at the airport. Irfan should get to know his cousins a bit more. Though I think his extraordinary height (and his somewhat introverted demeanour […]
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Ain and Irfan Go To KL
It came to pass that Ain and Irfan went for vacation back in KL but I was not able to join them because of work. A side effect of given a new position at work after one has planned one’s year end vacation and bought travel tickets. So while I held the fort during exam season, the anak beranak spent their time with Ayah Cik, Cikma, Ciksu and Little Rania. Here are some of the photos of what happened during their away mission. Mouseover the images to read the captions. They had a fun time there, visiting some folks including Zara and Aiman, and Irfan’s former uztazah, our old neighbour back at the tenth floor. Hopefully I would be better at planning vacations next year after I have acclimatised better to my work schedule as a teacher.
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Aidiladha Games
The second Eid of the year has come and gone. For Hari Raya Haji, we took the bus back to Pasir Mas. But for this Aidiladha post, we focus on games played by Irfan, Aiman and Zara when the cousins rendezvous at their grandparents house in Pondok Lubok Tapah. The bus arrived two hours late at the new Pasir Mas bus terminal as the Eid played havoc with the traffic from Kota Bharu. We arrived home late, but in one piece.
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ACS Sitiawan Hari Raya Meet
Before heading home, word circulated of a pot luck Hari Raya dinner at Iskandar’s house on the first night of Aidilfitri. I had not seen Iskandar since I was in school, so it felt like a great time to meet up with the entire crew, some I’d lost contact with when I transferred away from school when I was 16. We brought the last of Ain’s nasi dagang. The nasi lemak (contributed by the house) was delicious. Irfan, as per his modus operandi, attacked the pizza. So we spent the night consuming organic matter and catching up while Irfan corralled and looked after the little children as he is wont to do. The next day, Gnana and his eldest son came to visit and then we all went to Nazri’s home where Iskandar had just arrived. Apart from having some Hari Raya spaghetti which Irfan loved a little too much […]
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A Coup Then Hari Raya
On the day of our arrival in Sitiawan, we played some Coup. By the end of the session, we were quite evenly matched. It’s Tyrion. The ambassador is Tyrion. The morning of Aidilfitri, Ain had her galaxy-famous nasi dagang prepared for eating and stuff. Yada, yada, yada… Maaf Zahir Batin. Atok and Opah pose for a photograph with their plants. As usual, photographs such as this need more Adik, Yaya, Sila and Vin to make it complete.
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Misty Drives To and From Pasir Mas
Early Saturday morning we got into the car and headed out into the darkness towards Kelantan to avoid the festive season interstate traffic jam. As usual when even when the sun began to rise we were thick in the middle of mountain mist. The roads after Baling had pockets of very thick water particles which we had to dive into. Meanwhile, Rania and her parents got in front of us and reached Pasir Mas first. For two days, we played with her. She liked to hold conversations with us. I even babysat a couple of times her parents had to go downtown. Early Monday morning, we headed for Sitiawan. After sahur at Ayer Lanas, we stopped for Subuh at the last village after Jeli before the road went up the mountains again. The surau and its adjoining public rest-rooms seemed to be uninhabited and no other travellers stopped while we […]
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The New Cousin Celebration
I haven’t met Baby Rania since she was born, so after that bus trip over the spine of Malaysia we finally arrived in Pasir Mas for her aqiqah ceremony where I finally got to meet her. She is quite a photogenic lady, she is. See, she did not mind me telling her about Yog-Sothoth at all. Her cousins were all over her as she liked to babble to them in baby talk. During aqiqah day, all the cousins of the house were lined up for a photograph. As usual the older three cousins were together up to something. Mostly, playing games on the tablet… … or the phone. Irfan also fed Rania milk in a bottle. Rania glances at cousin Aiman, probably thinking why Aiman is not looking and talking to her. Irfan also meets his second cousin (of the same age) during tahlil ceremony for the late Pak Su. […]
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Bus Ride to Pasir Mas
We had an inaugural journey from here to Pasir Mas by bus. This meant I did not have to focus on driving over a long distance for the first time in a thousand years. This also meant I was free to take photos out the window as we trundled along the roads. It was a great experience. I have never taken an interstate bus since the nineties, in the days when I travelled from Terengganu to Sitiawan (or Kuala Lumpur) by bus every five or six days. As the vehicle barrelled southward from the bus station, I was amazed by the amenities available in the double decked transport vehicle. The seats were much more comfortable compared to the bus seats of old. Leg room were aplenty. And even better, we could recharge our phones at the power sockets. But enough about the bus, on to the pictures. There were numerous […]
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Another New Year Reunion
This year we returned to Sitiawan for Chinese New Year because Teik Sing and family are back home from abroad! The last time we met was over two years ago when they visited us at the Tenth Floor, when Ezra was still a baby! We met at the biggest shopping mall in Sitiawan, which in itself still causes cognitive dissonance with me because Sitiawan had no malls when I lived here and we had to travel far and away for me to reach any mall. In any case, full complement of our families including Ivy met up in the afternoon. We occupied two tables at Secret Recipe to talk and stuff! Teik Sing and Michelle gave us a really well-sculpted NCC-1701-D USS Enterprise as a gift. I also received a drawing of BB-8 by Ashley, who is turning out to be an excellent artist! We gave Lat’s Kampung Boy and […]
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Childhood Friends vs Chicken Wings
I called up Nazri to find out if he was in town for Eid and discovered that a bunch of folks from school were. There was a plan to meet up later that night at Aeon, at a chicken wing restaurant that I never went to before. Before long, Shahmar, Nazri, Sam and I had assembled there to talk of old times and new. Because the meet up went into extra time, the wives and children (including Ain and Irfan) went for a showing of Hotel Transylvania 2. We had to vacate the premises and relocate to the nasi kandar restaurant outside the mall to continue, where we were later joined by Din. All in all, it was an enjoyable time meeting childhood buddies.
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