The day after the bird park visit, there was another thing that Irfan wanted to do with his grandparents – which was to bowl. Actually the previous day we did attempt to travel to the bowling alley at Midvalley but the arcology was jam-packed with cars, so we instead went birdwatching. However, on this day we decided to see if the bowling alley at the mall known as the Mines Shopping Fair was good for a game. It was, so there we bowled. Only Irfan, Ain, Irfan’s Atok and I played, though Irfan’s Opah had a go during one of Ain’s round. One stand-out characteristic of the Mines Shopping Fair is the canal that runs through the mall itself. There are boats with which a visitor could be brought out to the lakes, either to the north or the south of the mall. Only Irfan and his granddad took a […]
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Irfan on the new desktop
When this blog was founded, Irfan was not yet three years old.
He is now an adult with many more leagues to travel.
An Exploration of the Aviary
Atok and Opah came a-visiting for the school holidays, and one of the places Irfan wanted to go with them was the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park. It was quite huge and housed many species of birds, most of which are free to fly about under the park’s netting enclosure. Sure, there were a number of cages which housed lots of the wilder birds, but the amount of birds walking, flying, perching and eating among the visitors were just astounding. Because it rained earlier in the morning, Irfan wore his Atok’s hat just in case it rained again. The hat stood by constantly in Atok’s car for emergency usage. Irfan later became a perch for a couple of colourful birds. He was happy the birds didn’t poop on him. Ain tried to fend off a bloodthirsty pack of crowned pigeons. Will the fence hold if the ostrich attacks? Irfan thought nervously. […]
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Subang Airport Pickup
After 10 days back in Pasir Mas, Irfan’s Cik Ma returned to KL by way of the old Subang Airport, which is now the new “Subang Skypark”. It seemed to have transformed from a musty warehouse airport into a 21st century shopping mall airport. Doors opened automatically for us and stuff! There were two banks in the building accessible from the inside! (Not that we had any cash in them.) One of those new-fangled Starbucks coffee shop too, which probably has coffee! Irfan posed before the Skypark’s big screen computer display of the inbound and outbound flights. His Cik Ma’s flight is on there, speeding closer to the airport. Also, someone has a new digital wristwatch. See? Wristwatch. Also, someone met his cousin Aiman who also came to the Skypark to see Cik Ma. Finally, the cousins rode on their Cik Ma’s trolley. Why? Because it’s cool, that’s why. I […]
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Irfan’s Player Character Saves The Day
Irfan played his first complete Star Wars Role-Playing Game adventure today, as everyone’s favourite intrepid astromech droid Artoo-Detoo. He was awesome at figuring out solutions to simple problems that were presented in the scenario that I cooked up. He even role-played Artoo well by having in-character conversations in regular robotic beeps. We played on the living room carpet and I used the gamemaster (GM) screen for the first time ever, with the D6 rules and stats inserts I made. My coterie of white D6 were arrayed on the floor, while the singe red D6 served as a Wild Die. The scenario was designed to be short and with minimal story twists. Shortly after the Battle of Hypori that, Artoo-Detoo, the lone player character (PC), was sent by Clone Commander Cody for a mission. Orbiting the planet, say for story’s sake, Eiattu 6, Artoo’s task was to be flown from the […]
Continue readingIrfan Takes To The Alleys
The bowling alley, to be precise. Thanks to Irfan’s Cik Emma, we all went for a round of bowling last Sunday. Irfan was at first hesitant to pick up a bowling ball, but soon found himself having fun throwing the ball at the pins. The pins, I hoped, had fun being knocked down by us. [[image:bowling-01-01.jpg:Irfan the bowler:center:0]] Because we were assigned the rightmost lane, there’s space for us to take photos by the side of the alley.[[image:bowling-01-02.jpg:The gang?:center:0]] Irfan again, the moment before he pulled back and swung forward. He managed to hit a majority of the pins in one of his tries.[[image:bowling-01-03.jpg:Attempt to knock down pins:center:0]] He began to enjoy the game more and more.[[image:bowling-01-04.jpg:Running in victory:center:0]] Irfan’s Ummi lets loose a bowling ball. Because we recently saw the movie, she chuckled when I told her we needed a Donny so we can tell him to shut up.[[image:bowling-01-05.jpg:Rolling […]
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In My Garden, In The Shade
My player character in Eclipse Phase is named Hokusai Tarnungshaut. He is an octopus. Specifically, he is a North Pacific Giant Octopus with an uplifted human-like intelligence. He comes with the regular eight arm, a beak and a camouflage skin. He was uplifted by a scientist in a hypercorp during the fall. The hypercorp was destroyed but Doctor Kyle Hoo the scientist took Hokusai away and taught him about the world. The scientist also used his resources to fit a whole bunch of cyberware – including a basic mesh insert, deadly cyberclaws and a cortical stack – in Hokusai. Because the body of the octopus lives only as long as two years, the scientist have been cloning his body and resleeving him in a fresh cloned body every couple of years. Over the years, he’s come to appreciate the arts, specifically drawing and painting. One day, he was invited to […]
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Yet Another Gathering of Old Schoolmates
And old school, we were. The school being ACS Sitiawan. The location being the pool level of Mei Lin’s apartment building. Thanks for hosting the little gathering, Mei. ‘Twas fun times.
Continue readingIrfan Meets a Cat
It’s not a stray because it seems to be well-fed, not unkempt and has a collar. It’s prowling the corridors outside the tenth floor. Naturally, Irfan tries his best to have fun with it, throwing ball and running around the corridors. It sometimes succeeds in bypassing the blockade and zips into the house, causing Irfan to gleefully try to corner it and chase it outside. [[image:cat-2010-mar-01.jpg:It’s a lion! Get in the car!!:center:0]] At the end of the day, Ain lets Irfan feed it some milk which it lapped up quickly. [[image:cat-2010-mar-02.jpg:Starring Sean Penn:center:0]] If no one claims it, i.e., it doesn’t belong to anyone on the tenth floor, then I should stick a notice downstairs. [[image:cat-2010-mar-03.jpg:oh hai wats goin on in dis post? kthxbai:center:0]]
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Wrath Of Diabolical Water Elementals!
While picking up Irfan from school in the very late afternoon, we were hit by a great, big thunderstorm the size of a big thunderstorm. There was a point where there was no delay between lightning and thunder. Driving to school, the windshield, which thankfully did its job keeping the wind out failed to ensure the rain slid off fast enough so we can see through it. Even the wipers were useless. On the way back, we had to cross Pandan Indah central to get from the school on the south side to our house on the north side. We discovered that we couldn’t because of flash floods. All the primary, secondary and the secret routes had a foot or so of water.So, we drove went to a mamak restaurant for some roti canai and warm drinks. Below, we can see some water on this side of the main road […]
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Irfan Goes To Space
Here we have Irfan sleeping soundly in zero-gee aboard the International Space Station’s bunk at Low Earth Orbit after a day’s work of repairing the Hubble Space Telescope. Not really. He did, however, have a fun time at the Planetarium, where there was a presentation at the theatre entitled Passport of the Universe. It was narrated by Colin Hanks’ dad. We lay back in the chairs to experience the hemispherical screen projection of the night sky that took us through interplanetary space past Mars, Jupiter and right under the rings of Saturn. Then the virtual camera went into interstellar drive where we finally saw stars began to move accordingly in the third dimension. We also went really fast as we went just short of a hundred parsecs a second to zoom past the stars of the Orion constellation and zip right into M42’s gaseous mass where we saw lots of […]
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Even The Exhibits Mooned Me (With D6 Stats)
Muzium Negara focuses primarily on the cultural history of this magical fantasy realm currently known to the world as “Malaysia”, although some natural history of the land is touched upon. Outside, we were greeted by a number of old train exhibits. In other words, there were more trains here than any one time I’m at the LRT station waiting for a train to arrive. Irfan poses by the Inscription Stone of Terengganu, unearthed at Kuala Berang at the turn of the 20th century. 700 years old, it’s evidence that Islam thrived in that region at the early 14th century. This guy is from my old neighbourhood – The Perak Man. How old is this guy? Take our current year: 9391 Before Guild. Go back about 2000 years we arrive at the dawn of the Common Era at 11391 B.G. Between then and now, we’ve had the Roman Empire, the Dark […]
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Irfan’s Fighting Fish
Our recent foray back to Kelantan during Aidilfitri rewarded Irfan with a new responsibility. A Siamese fighting fish, given to him by his Tok Cik Mi. I told him don’t, because the car is not really equipped to physically hold a live fish travelling eight hours at night, rocking and rolling over the mountain road. Irfan would be (and was) asleep for most of the trip because of our nocturnal journey. Despite all that, the fish survived all the way to Kuala Lumpur. The following week, it survived a two-way journey between Kuala Lumpur and Sitiawan, which was nothing compared to its previous adventure. Today, Irfan and I went to an aquarium shop and bought some stuff to beautify the fish’s otherwise spartan living environment. What else does a fish need in its aquarium? A phone extension? Hair curlers? Drapes?
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Eid Mubarak & Happy 7th Birthday
Aidilfitri greetings to everyone from us who are spending the holidays in Pasir Mas this year. This year, our family was garbed in black on Aidilfitri morning. The next day was Irfan’s seventh birthday. There was no place in the fridge to store the cake so we cut the cake that morning. Irfan’s cake was very nicely decorated by the cake shop, complete with edible Donald Duck, Doraemon, Ultraman, some funky cat and for some reason, an unidentifiable Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle with a goatee. He must be evil. Meanwhile in the kitchen, Ain was leading the team to cook her nasi dagang, which I sampled quite a lot of before the end of the day. Later that afternoon, Aiman came to visit from Salor with his parents, so Irfan and Aiman did their regular things together, watching TV, chasing each other all over the house and playing with the […]
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Irfan Draws Again
Note the day-old mustache and stubble I have.
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Irfan Wears Glasses And Stares At People
After asking him to do a reading test on stuff all over the house, standing at a distance, we came to the realisation that Irfan’s eyesight isn’t good at all. We took him to the optometrist to get his corneas measured, but instead they gave him more sight tests. The next day, Irfan was wearing new glasses and the world was much clearer to see than the day before. Too bad the optometrist couldn’t provide ruby-quartz lenses.
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That Is One Big John Fruit
The last leg of the vacation was a couple of days back at Ain’s kampung at Pasir Mas, Kelantan. When we arrived, Irfan’s cousin Aiman and family were on their second-to-last day there before returning to Kuala Lumpur. They had a few hours together to play, with the Atok’s ball from Sitiawan, and the bubbles. That night Aiman slept over at his paternal grandmother’s house. They came to visit the next morning before leaving. Fruits were abundant. There were roadside stalls which sold tons of them. Ain bought a pineapple to be turned into pajeri nenas. Tok Bah and Tok Ma also bought mangosteens, as seen in the above photo. It had been a while since I had some. Irfan poses beside a jackfruit tree, where a large jackfruit waited to be cut down by Tok Bah. We brought the fruit with us back home. We are slowly eating the […]
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