Dungeon Master and Soran Itsuka

Abduction at the Ancient Ruins

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Finally after almost 30 years of gamemastering roleplaying games, I finally got to run Dungeons and Dragons. Setting background: 130 years in the past, a fleet of jongs, perahus and lancang led by a Laksamana of the Sultanate of Melaka left their port for the Kingdom of China. As they approached the island of Temasik, a mist of green and purple descended upon them. They sailed in the mist for three days without the sun or blue sky. After the mist vanished, they found themselves in unknown waters. At night, the stars were different and the moon had a different face, and shone blue. The flotilla sent scouts north, south, east and west. The scouts discovered an archipelago to the east and led the fleet to an island that took them two days to sail around. The Laksamana decided on building an encampment at a river delta protected by a […]

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Manufacturing1 Answers

First Week of Social Social in Class

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The first week of the first session of the 2018/2019 academic session has begun. Do the students possess the not-very-instinctive ability to position words in an adjective phrases — specifically the positions of the noun and the adjective? I would like to happily report that this semester, the students have this ability… mostly… as these Kahoot quiz results show among six separate classes: At least no one answered “social social” or “media media”.

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Post-rat disposal sunset

Rat Disposal Weekend

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One other thing that occurred over the weekend was the success of our household in apprehending a rat. We heard it scritch-scratching once in a while in the attic and Ain set up a trap as usual. Saturday evening we took it out to a deserted spot by a main road and let it loose into the wild. On our way back to the house, the sky displayed quite a spectacular wash of bright, lively colours. (Click on both images above to expand them.)

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The waterfall in the back

Weekend Before Classes Begin

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It was the long weekend, which started on a Friday. We thought of filling up the weekend with some activities before my semester with a new batch of students begin next week. First, we headed toward Taman Sakura on the way to Kuala Perlis. (Click on all the images to expand them.)   At first, a stream. Then WHEEEE! pic.twitter.com/ap0WdDcHD7 — Khairul Hisham (@hishgraphics) September 2, 2018  

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Dr. Dips is teaching this class

Back in School Studying

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I remember a time, a long time being out in the city working job-to-job with hardly any official, usable certification or diploma. It was difficult. Then one day, with Ain’s urgings I enrolled for a Bachelor’s Degree course. That was eight years ago. This year, I begin my Master’s Degree. I never thought I would make it this far, but I am grateful to everyone who pushed me in the right direction from family to friends. With the major reorganisation of my weblog, I have created a Research Checks category where I would be writing about my journey as a postgraduate student. Also, here is where I will list essays I will write about the topic. Perhaps my supervisor would be able to monitor my work and provide guidance based on my posts here. My postgraduate research will investigate the effectiveness of tabletop roleplaying games as a language tool for […]

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A Bookstore Then The Next Day Home

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Later that night… The night before we had to return home, Cik Su took us to the new BookXcess book store nearby, at a mall which looked pretty impressive but appear to be incomplete. The only other outlet we visited before was at Amcorp Mall. The books there were cheaper than standard retail value because these were old stock copies which were to be pulped. Irfan bought a couple of young adult adventure novels. Irfan also signed up for a store membership card which he hopes to use some day. Perhaps, he offered, he would be able to use the card to order books online at a discounted price. I found a Star Wars Millennium Falcon: Owner’s Workshop Manual for less than half its retail price, but I thought I should save. I bought a much cheaper China Miéville This store turned up the pop culture references level to eleven. […]

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Ilham Bestari

The Place Where He Grew Up

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The day after Aidiladha we thought we would head into the city to check out the borough of Pandan Indah where Irfan grew up. It would literally be a balik kampung for him even though the kampung was Kuala Lumpur. Born less than 10 klicks away as the crow flies in Kuala Lumpur Hospital, he knew no other home other than Pandan Indah before we moved to Perlis nearly four years ago. From Nia’s house all the way south, we travelled up north via the MEX and inserted ourselves into the MRR2. We thought we would visit Wan Cik who took care of Irfan from when he was 1 year old until he enrolled in pre-school. It was Nia’s first time at Wan Cik’s house too. Wan Cik had expanded her house since the last time we were there. Irfan caught up with Afzan who is actually his uncle. Soon […]

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Tok Bah and Tok Ma post-airport retrieval breakfast

Aidiladha with Nia

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The days before Aidiladha we spent home with Nia or out for meals . There were a lot of laughs and falling asleep and wanting to play with a goose.

Soon, Tok Bah and Tok Ma arrived at the airport. We travelled there, not far from Nia’s house, to pick them up.

Later we headed out to Aiman’s house to celebrate hari raya there, though on raya eve, Aiman and Irfan returned to Nia’s house with Ciksu to sleep there. The next morning, Aiman, Irfan and I went for Aidiladha prayers at a nearby mosque.

Ben came a-visiting, but I forgot to take photos. Here are some of the photos Ain and I remembered to take.

The full roster assembles to wait for the bus for the four season complex

The Botanical Garden Expedition

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We had to balik kampung this Aidiladha holidays. The kampung we returned to was neither Ain’s nor mine. It was Irfan’s.

On Saturday, after my Research Method class and my colleague Anis’ sister’s wedding, we drove from Perlis all the way to Nia’s house. Nia was happy that we came. We also met Aiman, Zara and family there.

The plan was that the next day, Sunday, we would all rendezvous at the Botanical Gardens at Shah Alam. Ain and I have not been there since before we were married. This was the children’s first time visiting it.

There were flowers. There was a rope bridge. There was archery. There was even a troupe of monkeys.

Irfan and his cousins entered the bunny farm where Nia became superlatively elated. According to Irfan, she even fearlessly fed a large goat by hand. There were no photos of the goat, but we do have other photos.

I posted on Twitter videos of Irfan shooting arrows at orcs a bullseye:

We were having lots of fun and it was only the second day in the Klang Valley.

I just installed the Google Fonts into the PivotX's header.php

The First Post of an All-New Hishgraphics Blog

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The blog is thirteen years old this year. It has gone on for far longer than I could have imagined back then, with now over a thousand entries. I selected the CMS formerly known as Pivot to build my blog back in 2005. Two years ago I replaced old, vapourware Pivot with PivotX, its successor. Little did I know that the PivotX was already also vapourware by that time. Welcome to the Hishgraphics WordPress Blog! For the time being the old blog still exists at its original URL here, but I have decided to install WordPress into the root folder of the web server and eventually use WordPress for everything. I decided on WordPress because it is currently actively supported by developers. Meanwhile PivotX will slowly continue to fail as old PHP functions are depreciated over time. Over the previous weekend (and after two weeks of experimenting on a  test […]

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Some Dungeons and Some Dragons

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I spent most of Saturdays this past two semesters teaching extra English classes. This semester after I was paid, I ordered the Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook and Monster Manual from Book Depository. I was told by many that the fifth edition rules handles very well and figured it was time for me to purchase D&D books. Book Depository has free shipping and up to 25% discount on the books! It would cost more for me to grab copies from Kinokuniya. I have not played D&D since AD&D second edition back in the late 80s. The covers are amazing. I love aboleths. I think it was the first major critter I fought back in the day as a Half-Elven Ranger. A beholder is right up there on the cover. I sometimes refer to this as the death salad. I do not believe this monster is a vegetarian though. I believe […]

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I have nothing else to say except to post pictures

New Dice Arrive

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I ordered a set of cheap dice from Lazada. They arrived just before I came home from work today. I was stoked to receive things through the mail and I am stoked to use these dice some day. Sigh. Some day.

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No I don't work for Facebook

A Registered Student Once More

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I never thought it possible even three years ago, but now I am registered as a postgraduate student at my workplace! (It helps that I work at a university, obviously.) I would like to thank my family and friends who supported and encouraged me one way or another. I would have never reached this point if it were not for them. More news to come, I would wager…

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The AC unit was recently installed thank Allah

Overnight at the Office

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One Friday morning we woke up discovered we had a water outage. We did not know how long the roof tanks would sustain us because driving through the town of Mata Ayer (ironic name in this case) nearby we noticed that the repair work being done, digging into the street there appeared to be major. I thought that this would be a good time to have a sleep over at the office which was not affected by the repairs. After Irfan’s Bahasa Malaysia tuition, we headed for the office with our overnight bag. Also I actually also brought over some work from home back to the office. I signed in with the guard and all. The R&R restaurants in front of the office were open, so we took away some food from there to my office. Soon we made ourselves at home at my office. The office is laid out […]

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