Irfan's Great-grandparents' house 01

Our Grandparents’ House

By “our”, I mean Sila’s and mine, on Atok Irfan’s side. As children, when Sila and I balik kampung, one of the locations we would go to was to visit our grandparents. We would sleep over with our parents here, celebrate Hari Raya here with cousins, and it used to be surrounded by fruit trees. Coconut trees were of course […]

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Purple voting finger

Purplish Finger

According to the online system, Irfan is registered to vote in Pandan Indah, Ain in Pasir Mas and I in Sitiawan. It appears they set our locations to default to the addresses on our identity cars. This is after I have changed my voting location to Perlis over the counter several years ago. In any case, we will need to […]

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See you guys next time

Old School Mates in Lumut

Not only is it Labour Day here in Malaysia, but it’s also Hari Raya Aidilfitri! It is very rare for our old school mates to meet up when we return home for the holidays. So it was a welcome pleasure to have met up with these dudes in Lumut. We talked about the future of the county, old times, lost […]

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Ain in Lumut

Aidilfitri After The Lockdown

During hari raya, we were unable to cross state borders to balik kampung thanks to the COVID-19 quarantine. It was not the first time for us. As the MCO downgraded because of the reduced infection rate, we discovered that we were able to travel back to Sitiawan to meet up with Atok and Opah. We thought it would be good […]

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Lunch panhandler

Year’s End Vacation 1: Sitiawan

After a couple of weeks planning for it and applying for leave, it was time to execute the end-of-year vacation plans. We exited the highway near Selama and proceeded towards Taiping using the Federal roads. There was a convenient new road from Taiping to Changkat Jering. We stopped for lunch at the food court at that town. There was a […]

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Farewell to Sitiawan team

To Sitiawan and then Home

And so it came to pass that our vacation came to an end. But before that, we had to depart from Nia’s house. There was a flurry of furtive but sad goodbyes. We headed north towards Sitiawan using the old road we used to travel from KL. I thought I would try using the back roads via Kampung Kuantan. Ultimately […]

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Last Day

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 […]

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Some 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:

Before long it was time to head home.

The old market

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 […]

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When I grow up I want to be Iapetus

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 […]

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Still zzzz

A Hometown of Sorts

…Sitiawan! We drove from Pasir Mas to where I grew up and where nothing now looks familiar, except for the old house. Because I was not able to go to Kuala Lumpur for vacation earlier, I figured we should visit Atok and Opah in Sitiawan during Maulud Nabi. Of course Irfan was glued to his grandparents desktop computer for hours, […]

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The ambassador is my friend

A Coup Then Hari Raya

On the day of our arrival in Sitiawan, we played some Coup. By the end of the session, we were quite evenly matched. It’s Tyrion. The ambassador is Tyrion. The morning of Aidilfitri, Ain had her galaxy-famous nasi dagang prepared for eating and stuff. Yada, yada, yada… Maaf Zahir Batin. Atok and Opah pose for a photograph with their plants. […]

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Jeli mist

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. […]

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Aeon meetup

Another New Year Reunion

This year we returned to Sitiawan for Chinese New Year because Teik Sing and family are back home from abroad! The last time we met was over two years ago when they visited us at the Tenth Floor, when Ezra was still a baby! We met at the biggest shopping mall in Sitiawan, which in itself still causes cognitive dissonance […]

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