On this fine Saturday morning, we drove to Taman Tun to the NeoOne Centre for Accelerated Learning. I had previously booked a spot in a workshop entitled “Facilitating Change via Gamification“. The workshop was organised by the Malaysian Association of Facilitators. The event focused to introducing gamification to the various industries in the professional world and I had the opportunity to describe my work in the field of education. Besides that, we played a number of board games, namely Blokus and Decrypto. By learning the rules, the participants were able to express how the game, and the process of gamification, would be able to help in their own fields of work. Perhaps someday I would be able to cooperate with this group of facilitators to further introduce role-playing games as training tools.
Continue readingTag Archives: Work Excursion
Return to the Institute
Three years ago or so I was sent to the Translation Institute as a student. Now I return to it with my colleague Bazli to carry out a benchmarking mission for our translation unit at the Centre. Here are some photos from our away mission.
Continue reading
A Solo Return to KL
I got a call from Shide with whom I had several work adventures with years ago who needed me to return to Kuala Lumpur for some minor business. He graciously footed the travel bill for me, so after we decided on a flight ticket. So yay! I get to ride on one of these new-fangled flying machines again. The ride was rough enough through storm clouds that some passengers exclaimed loudly. At the airport, Nia came to pick me up. (Aided by Cik Ma and Cik Su of course.) Being the month of Ramadhan, we all went to buka puasa at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Cyberjaya. I kind of like this stuff. I rarely get to sample such food. A post-meal photo was taken. Thankfully I was able to do jama’ ta’khir prayers because of travel considerations. The next morning I drew stuff for Nia while waiting for Shide […]
Continue reading
BBF: The Day The World Burned
The second RPG session I ran during the Geomatics Carnival 2018 at UiTM Arau was DwD Studios’ BareBones Fantasy. This session had even less prep time than the Star Wars session I ran earlier in the day. However, it turned out to be one of the most hilarious sessions I have ever had he pleasure of gamemastering in recent years. BareBones Fantasy The Day the World Burned The day began like another day for the two adventurers the elven thief Mus and human warrior Kazuma (both at Rank 1) and their hireling Aqua, an archer, who were travelling through the wilderness on horses. Upon Kazuma’s shoulder was his faithful hawk. The Blood in the Standing Stones The light woodlands ended and a wall of dark twisted trees and dense thickets blocked their path. They were considering what to do when they heard a scream from beyond the wall growing before […]
Continue reading
EOTE: Rescue on Crait
The first RPG session I ran during the Geomatics Carnival 2018 at UiTM Arau was Fantasy Flight Games’ Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion. The players, who were UiTM students, used the Legends of the Galaxy pregenerated character sheets I used in class previously. Edge of the Empire Rescue on Crait The YT-2000 light freighter Sitichepa (I’m… sure this is an in-joke between the players) dropped out of hyperspace off the Crait system. Aboard the ship are a group of rebel operatives in search of fellow rebels whose ship disappeared near Crait: the star-pilot who was born and raised on space freighters and barges Kreepo, the sharp Twi’lek engineer Byt, the droid assassin FLAM-O who was bristling with weapons and Malea the Force sensitive warrior who had a lightsabre on her belt. Kreepo brought their ship closer to the desolate planet so Byt could scan its surface for signals. The Twi’lek […]
Continue reading
Gaming at the Geomatics Carnival 2018
Today, the Centre for International Languages was officially invited by Zainee to UiTM Arau nearby for their Geomatics Carnival 2018 exhibition. There was a hobbies exhibition section where I set up shop with tabletop RPGs with my colleague Bazli. I would talk to visitors about using RPGs as a language learning tool. Also, to run games if and when I can. Sharnizan of Serious Games UUM was also present to introduce and sell his product the Ace of Maths game to UiTM students. Though at this point he was explaining the card game to Bazli. There was no dearth of visitors to our tables when the exhibition started. The exhibition organisers even provided Bazli and I with a packed lunch. My usual suspects line up was arrayed for display at their table, eliciting enquiries once in a while. I ran two game sessions for visitors. I ran the Edge of […]
Continue reading
A Bowling Sunday With Colleagues
Earlier today, the language centre welfare club organised a tenpin bowling session for the centre’s personnel for some rest and relaxation as a group. It was quite the fun experience. And the last time I bowled was… holy crap! 8 years ago?! I did discover that my joints are in need of lubricants.
Continue reading
Meanwhile, During the Rest of SILK 2018
The Symposium of International Languages and Knowledge was quite the event. Besides running the RPG workshop, I also sat in other talks, participated in other educational workshops and also had lots of food. Here are some photos to show the experience I underwent at Walailak University, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand. WU was holding their 26th anniversary expo on campus, a big event we were told. SILK was scheduled to be held at the end of March in conjunction with their anniversary. We waited at the border for their transport to pick us up. It took four hours for the two transports to deposit us at a hotel near their campus. That evening, a bunch of us went out to the expo site at the university in search of dinner. The expo site was big, along a single road on campus. There were vendors who sold food, flowers, furniture, agricultural gear […]
Continue reading
Mini Six: Whiteout, or an RPG Workshop at SILK 2018
This weekend I was honoured to be able to run a tabletop RPG workshop during the 2018 Symposium for International Languages and Knowledge which was held at Walailak University at Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand. Last year, SILK 2017 was held here in Perlis and was featured on the blog as well. Here are some photos of the event with an actual play report of the game that I ran for the Thai students. The little abstract for the workshop which I submitted a couple of months earlier appeared in the programme book for the symposium. Parallel talk session were underway when I went to scout the room where I was due to run the workshop. I quickly set up the table and then did some last minute game prep for the coming participants. Besides showing off the diversity of RPG systems, these book covers displayed side-by-side on the table can […]
Continue reading
Photos from an Academic Workshop
Once upon a time, the entire department was invited to attend an academic excellence workshop in which it was hoped that we would all be much more excellent than we were at being academics. Here are some photos from the programme. Perhaps some mouseover text will be provided as well.
Continue reading
Photos from a Keynote Address
The university’s vice chancellor was slated to hold his annual keynote address before the entire staff, and I was given a new task some weeks earlier. I visited the site a day earlier to help prepare the multimedia guys to run an online Kahoot quiz for the audience. I handed over my set of questions to them and ceded the table. I hoped that they would use at least one of my questions. The next day, everyone assembled at the main hall. I sat with a coterie of departmental colleagues. Ultimately I discovered that they only used three questions for the quiz session and one of them was mine! It made the effort worth it. I suppose we would assemble again at the hall next year!
Continue reading
The Second UUM Incursion
I love tabletop games. I have started to incorporate more tabletop games into my teaching and learning. Suddenly, my friend Shanizan invited me to be a jury member for the Sintok International Games and Gamification Challenge 2017 at UUM. This was nothing less than a great opportunity to be part of the community here. Anyway… After a formal invite had been sent to the workplace, I was now an official representative of the Centre for International Languages at the SIGGC 2017 event at UUM. My colleague Yuzi was also invited to be a member of the jury. Shanizan greeted us when we arrived. After the jury briefing was complete, we went on out assignments: to grade the participants’ games on display. The games ranged from standard tabletop snakes and ladders variants to mecha combat computer games. Yuzi and I brought the Thai interns from the workplace to join the fun. […]
Continue reading
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 […]
Continue reading
Teaching Without Power
This semester I have to help teach another English course to a class of professionals in another learning institution. Today, during my class in which I have prepared a ton to slides to be shown on the screen, the unthinkable happened. There was a blackout. So I took the class outdoors. Luckily there was a cafe right outside the class, which was closed on a Saturday. The students helped me transport the whiteboard out to the corridor. I tried my best to think of an exercise they could do in groups which would compel them to do research, write then speak. In the meantime, the exercise also helped in getting the students to form a proper persuasive essay structure. One thing is certain: These folks, unlike my much younger regular students, had no hangups about public speaking. The topics I chose for the exercise correlated to the topics in the […]
Continue reading
Symposium Gift Artwork
At the language symposium last week, besides the two assignments I wrote about I also had a third task: Which was to sketch some artwork to be printed and presented as gifts to the special guests of the event. The common theme for each drawing was Perlis. I drew them all in Krita separately. Photographic references, of course, were used. Originally I had composed them all in a single artwork. Ultimately, the committee decided to frame them as separate images.The artwork was printed and framed in groups of fives and threes. Here is one of the group-of-three frames given to the speaker after the teaching workshop in the afternoon. Click here to view the artwork on ArtStation. Click on the expand icon on each image to expand them.
Continue reading
My First Language Symposium
Another new experience I underwent was the language symposium I attended this weekend. The language symposium was an annual collaboration between three universities, two of them in southern Thailand. I was also part of the organising committee, although my duties were by far the most unimportant and required the least time and effort compared to everyone else who did a fine job. My job (aided by Bazli who knew the ropes better than I did here) was to figure out and set up the opening ceremony gimmick. In the early weeks of planning (when we had thought of setting up the symposium in Pulau Pinang) I envisioned using a drone for the gimmick. However, it would be much more economical and easier for everyone to just book the use of a gong from the university’s recreation unit: At the end of the set up and rehearsal night the day before […]
Continue reading