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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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.
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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Comes A Nia Nia
Rania and family came back to visit us from Kuala Lumpur during the long weekend. We picked up Ayah Cik Farid and Cikma from the airport and had dinner with them at Kepala Batas. Nia Nia was asleep when she arrived, but woke up just in time for a meal. Nia Nia was still groggy from her sleep, but soon got her head back in the game upon spotting a cat and toddling excitedly after it. At home, Irfan began teaching her to operate his Rubik’s cube. Then suddenly there was a power outage! Thankfully Nia Nia did not give a crap. The next day, we went for a dinner at Kuala Perlis. We hung out at a restaurant across the road from the beach. Ayah Cik Farid showed Nia Nia the incoming tide, and she was impressed (and quite vocal about it too) with the rising tide and the […]
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A Homemade Gamemaster’s Notebook
Irfan has now taken up bookbinding as a hobby so I thought I would commission from him a small gamemaster’s notebook for me. I printed out the cover design at the print shop on blue paper and gave it to him. The cover was designed quickly using Inkscape and saved as a pdf. Irfan stacked and folded some blank A4-sized papers for the interior pages. He carefully measured where the staples were supposed to go on the spines. Then he stapled the spine of the folded papers together carefully onto an eraser and bent the staple legs inward manually. Here is the notebook almost done. All that is needed to be done is to slice the extra piece of paper away for a flat edge. The notebook is now ready for me to write in to continue our Time is the Hunter Star Wars RPG campaign that I am gamemastering. […]
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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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SWD6: The Chandrila Extraction Fiasco
Time is the Hunter Episode 05: The Chandrila Extraction Fiasco After their rescue of the rebel agent known as “The Skywalker”, who turned out to be a Togorian named Meow Skywalker, bounty hunter Jax Hunt (played by Irfan) and the amnesiac lady who then named herself Iris Helena (played by Ain) were taken aboart the VCX-100 frieghter Screeching Arrow to rendezvous with a Nebulon-B escort frigate at an unknown location in deep space. After three days of being cooped up in the Arrow, Meow finally approached them with a mission. “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. […]
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16th Anniversary Dinner
Tonight is our sixteenth year together as husband and wife, so we took it upon ourselves to go celebrate with a dinner at a restaurant known as MaiCafe. As far as anniversaries were concerned it quite an enjoyable dinner and our second here in Perlis. I have said it once and I will say it again: I am blessed to have Ain beside me as a partner for 16 years. Though we began four years earlier, so this is actually our 20th anniversary together as a couple. Also, where would we all be without the presence of one Irfan Shafiq who is old enough to earn the Legion Flight Ring. Ain ordered her favourite meal, chicken chop with black pepper sauce. The portion was quite large that Ain was unable to finish it. Thankfully, Irfan was present to obliterate the chicken. Irfan’s spaghetti and meatballs were also quite delicious, especially […]
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Another Rainy Dinner by the Sea
In the past I have posted an blog article of us having an early dinner along the road by the sea at dusk in Kuala Perlis before. Again, it was raining but this time there was a spectacular sunset on display for us to view. The sun was about to set, although at first thick clouds over Langkawi Island blocked our view of it. Meanwhile the rain fell sporadically in fine droplets that we easily ignored. Irfan and I ordered the lok ching, which is various seafood and sausages on a stick, roasted over an open fire and dipped in various sauces. The sun revealed itself while the clouds arranged themselves in an aesthetically pleasing way for us to see. Other patrons of the roadside eatery walked into view on the wall of rocks that separated us from the beach, so I took a photo of them against the epic […]
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And Then It Was His 14th Birthday
Irfan’s fourteenth birthday came and went. So did Irfan’s grandparents from Perak. It would be easy to say “I can’t believe how tall and how far he’d come” but the truth is that I am not surprised. With the opportunities and facilities available to him here – as opposed to the Klang Valley where he would have to fight with the sheer number of students in school for available teaching and learning resources – Irfan is surely and gradually turning into a young man with the powers and abilities of a teenager. What would be best for us to celebrate a fourteenth birthday? I have no idea, so we decided on going our for pizza! When the pizza arrived it looked appealing and it was quite delicious. My personal criteria for “delicious” was fulfilled thanks to onions. We took a group photo with our prey, before we finished it off […]
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The Man From Counter Possession
Episode 1 The Man From Counter Possession On this slow lazy Sunday afternoon, after binge watching the new series Stranger Things which I had described elsewhere as “totally a Laundry RPG scenario set in America, where Black Chamber operatives in the Department of Energy attempt to contain their screw up in a small town in Ohio”, I thought I would sit down with Irfan to generate a Laundry RPG character. And if I had the time, then I would run a short, simple scenario for him. The Laundry RPG is based on Charles Stross’s The Laundry Files novel series, which is a delightful mashup of unspeakable horror and droll British humour, where the world of espionage meets the Cthulhu Mythos. It uses the Basic Role Playing (BRP) system used by Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Pendragon and Stormbringer RPGs. Irfan created a 25-year-old British grad student named Dustin Hopkins, a Capital […]
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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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SWD6: The Privilege of Choice
Time is the Hunter Episode 04: The Privilege of Choice A 1500th post special! Last time on Star Wars Time is the Hunter, Jax Hunt finds himself being forcibly inducted into a bounty hunter posse bent on killing his mark, known only as The Skywalker in the abandoned structures deep beneath Spaceport Tower 214 in the Byblos system. Jax recently learned that The Skywalker was also helping to save young orphans of victims of the tyrannical Galactic Empire. Surrounded by a colourful group of nearly 20 bounty hunters consisting of a variety of species, Jax Hunt faced their prune-faced Dressellian leader who wore a DL-44 blaster at his hip. The leader barked with a smile, “My name is Kozener. And I lead this crew to claim the bounty on The Skywalker. But we will kill this Skywalker and claim 20 times the reward of the one posted through your House […]
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SWD6: Deeper Undercity
Time is the Hunter Episode 03: Deeper Undercity Last time on Star Wars Time is the Hunter, a gunfight between bounty hunters accidentally activated a trio of Separatist BX commando droids from the Clone Wars. Malfunctioning, they began hunting for targets deep in the bowels of Spaceport Tower 214 on level Brown-212 in the Byblos system. The three rusty droids fanned out with vibroswords drawn, their joints sparked when they moved jerkily. “Kill all Republic clone troopers.” “Roger roger!” Jax Hunt hugged the debris-strewn floor behind the engine of a Y-wing fighter. Beside him, a fellow bounty hunter – the Nimbanel named Tulon Tash – lay injured and semi-conscious after being shot by a rival hunter. Meanwhile the furnace behind both bounty hunters illuminated the chamber of scrap metal and discarded technology with angry colours. Jax considered throwing one of the two grenades he was authorised to carry, but the […]
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Splitting the Party
The evening after the Spell-It-Right competition, we travelled to Alor Setar where Ain and Cik Su who came visiting would be heading to Kuala Lumpur to reunite with Tok Bah and Tok Ma, and also to see little Rania. It was sad when Irfan and I were the only two occupants in the car heading home. Perhaps I thought we would continue the adventures of Jax Hunt when Ain was away. But in the meantime there were places to go. For example the Perlis Book Carnival was taking place at the Kangar Public Library. Irfan and I just had to go visit despite the abnormal midday heat. There were food stalls and even an inflatable pool for children. Irfan was much too big for it. We bought a couple of books. Irfan bought Darkmouth, a YA fantasy novel by Shane Hegarty which he digested quickly over the coming days. I […]
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Boy Spells More Words
It has been more than a month since it last rained. The skies have been blue all day for weeks. I would gladly enjoy the view of the blue sky if it were not for the soaring heat. And it came to pass Irfan was selected to attend another Spell-It-Right competition in Kangar. He was apprehensive in joining company of English spellers for his school, but in the end he decided to jump in feet first. We braved the searing solar radiation to drive toward the hotel where the event was being held. And sear us it did. We thought we could take refuge in the hotel lobby, but for some reason it was still stifling hot within. Either the air conditioning was unable to overcome the heat radiating from hundreds of schoolchildren or the air conditioning was borked. There were three sessions: one for the primary students and the […]
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SWD6: Stalk the Lower Levels
Time is the Hunter Episode 02: Stalk the Lower Levels Last time on Time is the Hunter, Irfan played bounty hunter Jax Hunt who signed up with the Byblos chapter of the House Benelex Bounty Hunting Guild at Tower 214. Jax Hunt arrived the next day at Abbit Mowba‘s office. The signs of battle from when Jax saved Mr. Mowba from a disgruntled bounty hunter the previous day were still there. But Mowba seemed distracted. “Hi Mr. Mowba,” Jax greeted the Aqualish manager. “Jax,” he stuttered. “I… There seems to be a problem.” “What is it?” “There is a new mark. The bounty is right here on Byblos. In Byblos Spaceport Tower 214 itself. Way down dozens of levels in Brown-212. It’s a difficult mark. I sent three bounty hunters after the mark. They should have returned yesterday evening.” “I’ll take the bounty,” Jax exclaimed. “I usually do not send […]
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