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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Nice green pool
We have been living in the northern state of Perlis since the end of 2014. Here are some entries featuring the state.
Kangar Street Art Photos
I was busy all through to the end of 2016 that I was oblivious to stuff happening in Kangar. For example, I recently discovered an alley near the centre of town which had been adorned by colourful street art apparently painted by schoolchildren from all over Malaysia. I thought I would take a couple of photos for documentation’s sake, because this must have been a really fun event for the attendees.
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The Clutch
The answer to that is the clutch disintegrated on the inside.
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The Car Exhausts Me
Usually car problems come not within a month or two of one another. For us. So far. Until now. Friday It was Friday afternoon just before Solat Jumaat when the car engine refused to start. After prayers, with the help of some colleagues, I got a nearby mechanic to see to our immobilised vehicle. It turned out that the battery – nearly two years old – was as flat as a paper miniature. Saturday Saturday was the lull in the storm. Little did we know that our car troubles for the week were not done yet. Sunday The car returned from a short jaunt to refill our potable water bottles and hissed at me. Since the thermometer was broken, we were unsure if it was the radiator. After it cooled down, I attempted to refill the radiator and reversed the car a metre or so, away from the puddle I […]
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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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Return Trip to the Hospital
After the last aborted attempt at FESS at the hospital, I have been waiting for five months for the next scheduled surgery, spraying mometasone furoate up my nose almost daily. Finally it was time to get this pair of nasal polyps out of my sinus cavity. It should have been an easy in-and-out surgery. Of course there were complications from all sides. My application for a job as a Language Tutor here was accepted and I had been scheduled to report for duty the day before the surgery. I had to call the right person at work to find out the proper procedure. Thankfully postponing reporting for duty is allowed. The Guarantee Letter (GL) that would allow me to be admitted to the hospital wards under the workplace was rejected by hospital admissions because the printout did not include my pay grade. So we had to pay first for a […]
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Finally, Furniture and then Ice Cream
After eighteen months of sitting on the floor watching television, we finally got enough cash this month to purchase a sofa set! Atok and Opah were visiting, so we thought it was great that they could have something soft to sit on in the living room. There’s also a bookshelf. As you can see the Star Wars RPG books have made themselves comfortable on the new bookshelf. To celebrate, we headed for Changlun where there was an excellent coconut ice cream stall. It was made of vanilla ice cream scoops in a coconut husk with coconut flesh, nuts, crouton, pulut and some other stuff.
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Nasi Kerabu: A Bus Ride Follow Up
During our bus trip over the mountains the other week, Ain made friends with a fellow traveller, a Kelantanese who lived in Perlis. She had a nasi kerabu restaurant in Kangar. That only meant one thing: we had to check it out. They only open in the mornings. When we were in Kelantan we were disappointed were unable to visit our favourite nasi kerabu restaurant there. It was a stroke of luck that we discovered one here in Perlis that sells delicious nasi kerabu comparable to the restaurant in Kelantan! We foresee many weekend breakfasts at this place.
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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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Like Flying Polyps But Not Really
THEN It was back in early October after Raya Haji vacation when I began to fall ill with fever, coughs and sniffles. I blew my nose at work and sprayed the toilet at the office with a bowl full of blood. That never happened before. I thought that such amount of blood should not be outside of any human body. The pain was strong and constant. It speared up into the right eye and down into the right side of the mouth. The smell of blood from my nose and mouth was incessant. (My review of Andy Weir’s novel The Martian might have been written when I was right in the middle of it as evident from the last paragraph.) One quick visit to a clinic near home, and a doctor diagnosed just a nosebleed perhaps because of my vigorous nose blowing over the days. A second visit later in […]
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Rainy Dinner by the Sea
We cannot afford a lot. Most of our resources are currently being used to our debts collected while living in Kuala Lumpur below the poverty line. I even think twice refuelling the car. But one of my responsibilities is to ensure the family have fun. For many years, even when we were living back at the Tenth Floor, we all take pleasure in a good drive. We tell jokes, chide each other, sing along with the radio, make funny observations and try our best to make each other laugh. And we do. Laugh that is. It seems as if we laugh more here than we did back there. Weekends are when we take a drive somewhere. Sometimes when we drive somewhere, the time is just right for a meal. So we found ourselves by the sea in Kuala Perlis one dark, cloudy Friday afternoon after work as light began to […]
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A KL Incursion into the Caves
Then all too suddenly, we were visited upon by relatives from back in the Klang Valley, specifically Irfan’s cousins Aiman and Zara and their family. It was the first time they visited Perlis. As per the standard operating procedure, we took them around the state – the smallest in the country – starting with the bustling, tourist-filled bazaars of Padang Besar. Zara bought new a toy there. Ain brought them to her vendors of choice. The duty-free store at the Thai border is also a tourist favourite. Just as it was 25 years ago, I still wished Padang Besar had a decent book store, but I guess visitors here are more concerned with getting a good deal for wares rather than books. In any case, Zara got to ride in a duty-free shopping cart. The standard operating procedure ensured that we next visited Gua Kelam, where they appeared to have […]
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A Second Move
Last December we moved 500 hundred kilometres to new house. This week a year later, we moved again but this time it was only about 2 klicks down the road. It was gratifying that we did not need to cross state lines for the move. Thanks to some friends, before I went to my course in Kuala Lumpur we secured a house at a residential estate right beside Irfan’s school. We had scoped this area out for months to no avail, until now. Our previous house was nice and comfortable, and the landlord was a great person. We were surrounded by greens there, but I still hoped for a house where Irfan could actually walk to school. Our former landlord helped with the move by introducing us to some movers. Most of my stuff are still in moving boxes for over a year because we had to place to unpack […]
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The Haze Reaches North
The haze has crept up and enveloped the entire northern region of the country. The last couple of days has been abysmal. Visibility range has been lowered to about 200 metres. Even the night rains failed to scrub the air. Even worse is this cough I am experiencing which started when we went to Kuala Lumpur last month and took a turn for the worse on our way home from Sitiawan after Hari Raya Haji. I joked once that our family motto is Lepas Satu, Satu. In Kuala Lumpur, after we get out of one crisis, it is customary for an even larger crisis to swamp us. I sincerely hoped that this is not one of those instances, now that we are on the brink of being able to live with a small measure of comfort.
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Visitors to Burger Republik
When the visitors formerly from the tenth floor visited, we thought we would take them to some place fancy, namely Burger Republik. For the occasion, two tables were joined together to form the robot lion. The day the sign was made, they told us that anyone who pointed out the spelling mistake of “oren” got a free orange juice. So anyway… this is Ciksu’s burger. It has all the onions, which makes it more awesome than awesome. Many ordered the chicken chop, including Ain, which as usual had a great flavour to its gravy. Cikma ordered the salmon. I thought I would just enjoy the burritos. Because it should be a burrito day everyday.
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