There are a number of traditional melee weapons that originate from the historic kingdoms of South East Asia. Here are some of them displayed at the Kota Kayang Museum near Kuala Perlis. When Atok and Opah came for a visit we took them to the museum to look at the exhibits. There are more than just weapons on display, but this post will be about the traditional weapons available there. Here is a classic weapon from the South East Asian region: the keris. The keris has a wavy blade. Each crest of the wave is called a luk. A keris can be classified by the number of luks it possesses. Some keris, like the centrepiece at the Pasir Salak Historical Tunnel museum keris section, can be as long as a man is tall. (No images of it because we were not allowed to take photographs there.) The pamor (metal patterns) […]
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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.
SWD6: A Wild Stranglepod Appears
Time is the Hunter Episode 07: A Wild Stranglepod Appears Continuing the adventure I ran for Ain and Irfan – (counts fingers) – 16 months ago… Bounty hunter Jax Hunt and amnesiac lady who called herself Iris Helena were waiting in the Corellian Engineering Corporation VCX-100 light freighter assigned to them, the Screeching Arrow, by the rebel fleet when the Togorian rebel coordinator Meow Skywalker came to them with a job: “The mission will require you to travel to the Chandrila system in the Core Worlds to extract Imperial bureaucrat Ton Kelauae, his wife Aklu and his daughter Wencie. Land at Nayli Spaceport. The Kelauaes are holed up in Apartment 7C, Blackback Building. The Empire is looking for them and it will be a matter of time before they are discovered. Get to them before the Empire does and bring them back here.” During the mission, the duo got into […]
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Savage Worlds: A Simple Job
Kuala Lumpur 2099 was a colossal city-state, among hundred of other city-states which still existed on this dying Earth. Half of the population of the planet were safely nestled in these cities subject to amazing technology, while also under the watchful eye of the tyrannical megacorporations. The other half of the population are either rich enough to buy their way onto space habitats across the solar system or are dead, killed by a vengeful mother nature outside the walls of the city-states. DIGITAL REMAINS 01 A Simple Job Today I ran a short Savage Worlds cyberpunk scenario for the first time for my son where he played an “information retrieval specialist” with a “switchblade katana” (Yes. I’ll allow that! Same damage stats as a normal katana!) in Kuala Lumpur 2099. His yet-unnamed retrieval specialist had been paid to break into and steal a file named “deathbringer.odxz” from a terminal in […]
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Irfan is Sixteen
Once again, the arbitrary day based on an arbitrary timing system returns after a long cycle known as a year. Because we appear to honour the system, it was time just like last year to celebrate Irfan’s birthday. He turned 16 today. Atok and Opah visited from Perak to celebrate their grandson’s birthday with him. Irfan’s birthday cake was an ice cream cake with lychees, peaches and cherries on top. The thing about the cake during his birthday was that Irfan also shared it with other patrons of our eatery. He would have shared it with the local cat if cats ate cake. We went to a restaurant whose name could be translated as “The Cafe Beside Our House”. This was our second time at this restaurant. Earlier, we tried going to the pizza parlour that we celebrated Irfan’s 14th birthday at, but it appeared to be closed or undergoing […]
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DnD: Abduction at the Ancient Ruins
Finally after almost 30 years of gamemastering roleplaying games, I finally got to run Dungeons and Dragons. Setting background: 130 years in the past, a fleet of jongs, perahus and lancang led by a Laksamana of the Sultanate of Melaka left their port for the Kingdom of China. As they approached the island of Temasik, a mist of green and purple descended upon them. They sailed in the mist for three days without the sun or blue sky. After the mist vanished, they found themselves in unknown waters. At night, the stars were different and the moon had a different face, and shone blue. The flotilla sent scouts north, south, east and west. The scouts discovered an archipelago to the east and led the fleet to an island that took them two days to sail around. The Laksamana decided on building an encampment at a river delta protected by a […]
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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 was dead tired. The next day we spoke for an hour with the away team online. On Monday, we headed upstate to visit the Kompleks Sejarah Pasir Salak. We stopped at Batu 10 for breakfast. The view of the Perak River is a rare view for me. It would be kind of therapeutic if we had a place by the river to unwind. There was also a large dead monitor on the walkway by the river, heading towards the complex. It looked fresh enough to be recently deceased. There was […]
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Weekend Before Classes Begin
It was the long weekend, which started on a Friday. We thought of filling up the weekend with some activities before my semester with a new batch of students begin next week. First, we headed toward Taman Sakura on the way to Kuala Perlis. (Click on all the images to expand them.) At first, a stream. Then WHEEEE! pic.twitter.com/ap0WdDcHD7 — Khairul Hisham (@hishgraphics) September 2, 2018
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A Bookstore Then The Next Day Home
Later that night… The night before we had to return home, Cik Su took us to the new BookXcess book store nearby, at a mall which looked pretty impressive but appear to be incomplete. The only other outlet we visited before was at Amcorp Mall. The books there were cheaper than standard retail value because these were old stock copies which were to be pulped. Irfan bought a couple of young adult adventure novels. Irfan also signed up for a store membership card which he hopes to use some day. Perhaps, he offered, he would be able to use the card to order books online at a discounted price. I found a Star Wars Millennium Falcon: Owner’s Workshop Manual for less than half its retail price, but I thought I should save. I bought a much cheaper China Miéville This store turned up the pop culture references level to eleven. […]
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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 than Pandan Indah before we moved to Perlis nearly four years ago. From Nia’s house all the way south, we travelled up north via the MEX and inserted ourselves into the MRR2. We thought we would visit Wan Cik who took care of Irfan from when he was 1 year old until he enrolled in pre-school. It was Nia’s first time at Wan Cik’s house too. Wan Cik had expanded her house since the last time we were there. Irfan caught up with Afzan who is actually his uncle. Soon […]
Continue readingThe 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.
Botanical Gardens
I posted on Twitter videos of Irfan shooting arrows at orcs a bullseye:
The 16yo tried his hand in archery too today. pic.twitter.com/yyPq1PAXWT
— Khairul Hisham (@hishgraphics) August 19, 2018
He didn’t do too bad with the bow all things considered. pic.twitter.com/JNiVecZvpK
— Khairul Hisham (@hishgraphics) August 19, 2018
We were having lots of fun and it was only the second day in the Klang Valley.
Overnight at the Office
One Friday morning we woke up discovered we had a water outage. We did not know how long the roof tanks would sustain us because driving through the town of Mata Ayer (ironic name in this case) nearby we noticed that the repair work being done, digging into the street there appeared to be major. I thought that this would be a good time to have a sleep over at the office which was not affected by the repairs. After Irfan’s Bahasa Malaysia tuition, we headed for the office with our overnight bag. Also I actually also brought over some work from home back to the office. I signed in with the guard and all. The R&R restaurants in front of the office were open, so we took away some food from there to my office. Soon we made ourselves at home at my office. The office is laid out […]
Continue readingSome 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:
Some Salam Lebaran From Sitiawan
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!
Pre-Aidilfitri in Pasir Mas
Perak beckons.
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 to reach Tok Bah and Tok Ma’s home in Pasir Mas! Ain did a lot of legwork done beforehand, getting the Thailand vehicle insurance and such, days before we departed. We mulled over acquiring some Thai currency although we did not plan on stopping anywhere to buy anything. However, we stopped at a currency exchange and converted some ringgits into bahts. It was lucky that we decided on it as we had to pay some sort of vehicle tax at the border. We used the phone’s Map app to navigate. […]
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A New Place to Eat
We are always looking out for an affordable restaurant with delicious food. Luckily, there are still many places that surprise us in a good way in Perlis. South of Kangar towards the highway, while looking for a nasi mandi restaurant, we came across this good Thai restaurant for iftar. We parked by the fields which had been prepped for sowing. It would not be long before a more lively field of green would grow and cover up the brown mud. We discovered that the nasi goreng Thai here was delicious. It has a side of soup and sambal. The nasi mandi restaurant was right across the road. We might return to it later. Here is Irfan posing with the multicoloured lights that marked the restaurant’s location and illuminated the its signage.
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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 in Sungai Petani. Fortunately, Opah was on the mend although the doctor forbade her to continue her fast until she was checked out. Later, we went on a drive around town and watched Solo: A Star Wars Story at the Aeon mall – a second viewing for me since Kuala Lumpur. Hey, it be my old school! Weird thing is that besides very small bits and pieces of it, it no longer on the whole looks like my old school. Yay for progress? This used to be a happening place […]
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