Cik Su F spent an extra night with us. Then we headed south towards Perda to attend a wedding on Ayah Cik Farid’s side of the family. Atok and Opah remained home as they thought the trip might exhaust them. Ain drove with Cik Su sitting shotgun. Irfan and I goofed around in the back together. She drove all the way to the hotel in Perda where Nia and family spent the night… and the uncle in the red shirt in the photo above awaited. After Nia was all prepped to attend the wedding, Ayah Cik taught Nia about numbers using the hotel signage. Irfan took a photo of us at the hotel lobby. Soon Nia joined us at the lobby with her favourite hat. We drove to the hall and then got a group shot of the entire contingent. A difficult effort, because the sun glared down brightly, preventing […]
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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.
Nia Meets Atok and Opah Irfan
It was one of those occurrences where several plans overlap and Atok & Opah Irfan come to visit the same time Ayah Cik Farid, Cik Ma, Cik Su F and Nia Nia came to visit. Thus began several days of Nia entertaining Atok and Opah with her brand of activities, which included singing and dancing to the Baby Shark song, as well as asking them to draw for her in her book. Nia insisted she carried her own luggage. Soon, she was looking for Abang Irfan and tried to figure out what her cousin was doing. Also, she remembered playing badminton several months ago and thought she would hit airborn shuttlecocks some more. Obviously, she was forbidden to indoors. Atok and Opah helped to draw some of Nia’s favourite things in here book, namely “fish”, “flower” and “elephant”. I also drew a duck in it once. Our entire adventuring company […]
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The First UUM Incursion
Last month, all of the sudden, I was tasked with writing a script for a short play for an English Language Carnival to be held at UUM. Not just that, but I had to coach the actors, who were all students of our business school. The theme was “peace”. So I wrote a script with 10 speaking roles (2 narrators included) entitled Requiem to War. However the event was postponed on account of royal demise. Then we got word that a new date had been set. All the actors got back into gear. I attended their final rehearsal. I only handled the acting and staging part of the rehearsal. My colleague Yuzy did most of the heavy lifting with regards to costume, props and logistics for the troupe. Friday evening, Irfan, Ain and I drove to UUM to check out the site of the event. We had dinner at the […]
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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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17th Anniversary Dinner
It is now our seventeenth year together, Ain and I. So many hardships along the way and against hostile odds here we are still together, still in love; and with Irfan still in tow although he is not as little as he used to be. We thought we would try out the BIG Tas’TEA restaurant by the roadside at Arau. We have always wanted to stop by, but we had to have extra change in our pockets before we could splurge on the more expensive Western food and smoothies and such. We made sure in advance that we had the cash to visit BIG tas’TEA on our anniversary. Sure the cholesterol level might be through the roof, but the chicken in this meal tasted fantastic. We ordered Pepperoni Chicken and the Ultimate Cheese pizzas! I thought we should quickly get a photo of us together before my ailing, physically broken […]
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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.
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Nia and the Beach Cats
We went for an early dinner at Kuala Perlis with Ayah Cik, Cik Ma, Cik Su and young Nia Nia. The restaurant was by the promenade, right by the sea. Irfan knew exactly what would float Nia’s boat: Cats. So he introduced her to a stray cat by the beach. At first Nia more fascinated by the giant stone balls scattered all over the promenade. Then it struck her: Perhaps this can will not merely be a bystander or a passer-by. Perhaps she could make friends with this cat. She became even more excited when the number of cats who showed up increased to more than one. This cat knows where it’s at. The cat decided to move, turn and booped Nia on the nose with a fuzzy tail. Needless to say, Nia was beside herself with joy at being booped on the nose by a fuzzy tail. After dinner, […]
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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 […]
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Irfan’s Jaunt into Robotics
Some time last month I received an email notification of an Introduction to micro:bit Workshop for schoolchildren to be held at the Mechatronic school at the university, and so we enrolled Irfan. It was a full day’s programme. Ain and I decided to save our transport fuel by hanging around at the expansive computer lab. Because of that I got to play around with micro:bit as well. To my surprise all the desktop computers in the lab were installed with Linux Mint. The micro:bit is a small but multi-functional system with a processor, sensors, output jacks, LEDs and USB port. It can be used in conjunction with other hardware to create amazing tools. It can be programmed using a Javascript Blocks Editor online. The online editor has a handy virtual micro:bit for you to test out your program live. You can experiment with the micro:bit code yourself here. And then […]
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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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SWD6: Out of the Red
Time is the Hunter Episode 06: Out of the Red Continuing the adventure I ran for Ain and Irfan last December… 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.” Then they went off on their mission… And Now, a Standoff! […]
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New Sandwich Place
I have been wanting to visit this new sandwich place in town. We finally got extra cash for the week so we went for some sandwiches. However to save money, we only bought two – takeaway – and no drinks. The restaurant was cozy and had a nice ambience, found on one corner of Capitol Square. The smell of freshly baked bread wafted from the door. Also, there was freshly-pressed coffee. We might be back for a proper dining experience here later. We ordered the cheesy beef salami and the garlic chicken sandwiches. When we got home we divided them into three parts each, so Irfan, Ain and I were able to sample equal measure of each sandwich. I believe there were more cheese in the garlic chicken than the cheesy beef salami, and I have no complaints about that. Maybe I will try the Thai mayo chicken next.
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Irfan’s New Dice
I tried ordering some cheap dice from Lazada several weeks ago for Irfan. The new set with his old purple set he bought in Subang Jaya. Haven’t tested them in salt water for perfect balance yet, although random rolls did not result in any numbers that turned up significantly more than others. At least not yet.
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An Old School Buddy Visits
Once upon a more innocent time I went to school, the result of which was I met many other school-age little humans many of which became my friend. I was 10 years old when I first met Iskandar. We were in the same class for a couple of years. But after school we rarely see one another until the Age of Digital Social Media. Recently, Iskandar and his family came to stay at our place for a weekend. Here are some of the photos of the visit. Last year we had an Aidilfitri pot luck at his folks’ house in Sitiawan. Come back soon, Is.
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Nia Nia’s Hari Raya in Kedah
En route back to Perlis, we stopped in Kedah where Nia Nia and family were celebrating Aidilfitri this year. Also present were Nia’s cousins Nawal and Adenin. Nia of course was a busy little girl with a lot of self-appointed assignments and jobs to complete. (Usually with toys.)
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BFF: The Free Wizards of the Clave
The last day of Ramadhan, Irfan taught cousin Aiman to play RPG, specifically BareBones Fantasy (BBF). With the Eid Tabletop RPG Travel Pack I brought, I gamemastered an impromptu session for the cousins in the morning. Irfan tweaked his old player character (PC) Jake Hastur to be the Halfling wizard Drego Andre. Aiman adapted a pre-generated character from the BBF rule book to be an Elven wizard who called himself Johnson Jones. Session 01: The Cave in the Clave The Crossing The two free Wizards Drego and Johnson were travelling the thick woods on foot in the Emondran Clave of the Keranak Kingdoms. (Presumably Johnson is an Emon Elf.) It was getting dark but there was no place for them to hole up and camp. There were large trees and thick brush everywhere. They came across a river which flowed dangerously fast. If you fell in the water, you would […]
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