… why can’t we all? [[popup:chickenfrog.jpg:(thumbnail):The Chicken and The Frog:center:1]] When I lived in Terengganu, at my first rented house, there was for a time a strange thing that occured daily. Each sunset for a long time (I can’t remember how long; it might have been half a year or so) a chicken would fly up and perch atop the fence by the driveway. Then a couple of minutes later, a little frog painstakingly would climb up the chain link and settle down beside the chicken.. as can be seen in the old photograph which I took of them. I tried to catch the frog making its way up the fence, but as far as I can remember I saw it actually climbing up only once. It was a stealthy fellow. Throughout the night they just sat there side by side. And by dawn they were gone. They seemed like […]
Continue reading365 Tomorrows
365 Tomorrows is a website that provides one short speculative fiction story a day for a whole year. While obviously the stories cannot match the narrative quality of a novella or a full-length novel, it does have however the ability to feature a new science fiction concept after another daily. The site began posting on August 1st 2005, so you have a lot of stories to read through in the archives and more coming each day until July 31st 2006.
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Illustration Friday: Remote
Not just remote, but cold, lonely and desolate as well.
Continue readingRamadhan Activity Updates
Time flew by quickly this Ramadhan. It’s already almost the last week of the month and it’s the longest time ever before I actually checked how many days were left before Aidilfitri. There’re only two more days before I’m out of town until after festival season. Tomorrow is the last exam of the mid-term season, and on Saturday it’s balik kampung time. The itinerary is such: Saturday (Oct 28th) we’ll be driving back to Pasir Mas, Kelantan. There we will stay until Deepavali on the following Tuesday (Nov 1st), when we head on down to Sitiawan to spend the last days of Ramadhan. It’s been a while since we did long distance travel (more so this year, since money is tight) and I’m very excited about it. [[image:train.jpg:Irfan’s Birthday Present:center:0]] Irfan really can’t wait to get to Sitiawan to play with a train set and a bus that his grandparents […]
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Chronicles of the Wild Gundark Part I
A Star Wars fiction, based on the Chronicles of Wild Gundark RPG campaign. It all began when the crew of the Wild Gundark was commissioned to deliver twenty tons of bantha milk to the backwater town of Prosperity on the cold tundra of the planet Dellalt. The job went without a hitch, apart from the little tussle with the crew of an Imperial customs corvette (the two-pronged, sleek affair that many tramp freighter captains love to hate) in the Vaxal system. Unfortunately, the result of the little encounter was the spillage of approximately half of the delicious blue milk because of gravity plate failure. Things could have turned out real bad for them, but instead their contact, a imposing and tattooed Herglic named Dapp only paid them fairly in half and left peacefully. There was only one thing known to them as they left Dellalt: They had taken on a […]
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University Exam Hijinks
Last Friday, I was all prepared and psyched up to head on down to Unitar for my first mid-term examination paper for this semester. It was LAN 0023 Islamic Studies. I double checked the Excel file they’d emailed on the 11th and confirmed that the time and place for the last time. Left the house at 8.10 am to make the 9.00 am exam. Made it there with 15 minutes to spare because it was Nuzul al-Quran, Selangor had a public holiday and the streets weren’t that filled with Kuala Lumpur’s accursed traffic. Got a great place to park right in front of where the exam is to be held. Then I walked up to the exam timetable Excel printout they posted on the bulletin board. I discovered to my horror there were no exams scheduled for last Friday. (Though it took about 5 minutes for the horror to set […]
Continue readingPassing of the PM’s Wife
Datin Seri Endon Mahmood, the wife of our Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, passed away at 7.55am this morning, after succumbing to her battle with breast cancer since being diagnosed with it in 2002. Condolences to the PM, and make he take comfort in the fact that her passing occured in Ramadhan, the holiest of months. Our prayers will be with her.
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Illustration Friday: Cold
Another Illustration Friday entry, with the subject title “Cold”. How could a person be sent out walking the plank in his shorts in space? With the closest star being just a faraway glow, our friend here should be in quite a cold spot. Medium: Digital painting.
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5 Years Ago…
… Ain & I got married. Last night, after Irfan slept early and we left him in the care of his Cik Emma, Ain & I went to see Mr. & Mrs. Smith at GCS Midvalley (where they’re replaying the summer blockbusters for half price), got something to eat in a doggie bag, went home to eat it, and then I gave her the wedding anniversary card I bought earlier. It’s been a great 5 years, with hopefully more to come.
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Illustration Friday: Lost
My first Illustration Friday submission for 3 weeks and I’m late for it. It’s almost time for the next topic to come up. This week’s topic is “Lost”… and there’s only one thing that came up in my mind when I heard of the topic: One of my favourite TV shows on the air right now. Media: Digital painting using Photoshop, with image references from screencaps of season 1 episode 4 “Walkabout”. Click on the image on the right to expand it.
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Voyage of the Flying Couch
Here’s a single piece of artwork that I came up on a whim in about 2 hours. A girl’s adventures to faraway lands on her flying couch. Imagine the possibilities. Maybe there’s an actual story to be written there somewhere, and made into a book. I shall ruminate on it on my armchair.
Continue readingDoomsday Scenarios Galore
Are you feeling too cheerful or happy? Are you feeling that you’ve had enough feeling on top of the world? Are you sick of everyone telling you “The sun is shining! The birds are singing! Everything is smelling of roses!”? Then check out Exit Mundi, the website that catalogues the various ways the world and/or the entire universe may end, from scientific and religious standpoints. It’ll sure to wipe that smile off your face. How do you like to read about the accidental extinction of the human race? For example, what happens if genetically engineered crop (actually created in a lab named Epicyte in San Diego in 2002) designed to be a contraceptive, escapes into the real world and are accidentally planted in farms all over the world? We’ll all be eating food that induces infertility by killing all sperm cells. If you’re interested in space-based threats, what if a […]
Continue readingArabic Star Names and Science Fiction
I’ve known for quite some time that major star names used in science are Arabic in origin, a testimony to the work of Muslim astronomers between the 9th and the 12th centuries, but I’ve never found an extensive list of current star names and their Arabic origin until I stumbled across the Jordanian Astronomical Society’s website with its great Arabic Star Names page. Since I read and watch a lot of science fiction, I found it interesting that some of the names have appeared in contemporary SF. Not the well-known ones like Betelgeuse or Vega or Rigel, I’m talking about the not so well known star names. Referring the the JAS list in the link above: #133 Rukbat is the star which Anne McCaffrey’s Pern revolves around. It’s known as Alpha Sagittarii, so she did her homework by referring it to be in the “Sagittarius sector” although in the wiki […]
Continue readingSerenity Appreciation Entry
[[image:serenityposter.jpg:Serenity Movie Poster:left:0]]Once upon a time, Joss Whedon created a science fiction TV show called Firefly that had great characters, a fantastic millieux and a witty script. It got cancelled by Fox Network. Then its DVD sold faster than hotcakes. Fans wrote to revive the show. So, he wrestled the rights of the show from Fox and transferred it to Universal. One thing led to another, last Friday saw the release of Serenity, the motion picture continuation of the TV series Firefly, was released to critical acclaim. I can’t wait to watch this because I was also won over by Firefly when TV3 showed it last year, on Wednesday night 12.30 am… sometimes pre-empting it for several weeks for football, or pushing it even further to 1.30 am. But the bad news is there is not a trace of Serenity appearing in Malaysian theaters any time soon. Hopefully we’ll get […]
Continue readingIt’s Ramadhan
Starting today, I’m fasting for 30 days from dawn til dusk. A happy Ramadhan to all readers, and happy fasting to all Muslim readers. Sahur this morning, before dawn, we had rice with eggs and cabbages, while watching the Smallville season premiere, as Irfan slept. I have an idea for another book, after looking at a random picture on deviantArt… it would be about kids spending the night camping, and the whole story would take place at night. The blues and the grays of the picture I saw was compelling. Now to come up with an actual story, suited for kids. Childhood camp-outs are awesome. By the way, I updated some large artwork into my deviantArt page. Yeah, I have a deviantArt page. I left it untended for exactly a year and a month. I’ll be uploading large-sized images there and link them from there, or elsewhere, to save on […]
Continue readingThe Meme Tagged thingamabob…
Since Lilian tagged Hisham and I for the meme thing and Hisham actually did his, here’s my meme. Quick story about “Meme”, when I first saw it, I thought “grandmother?”. My friend and colleague Jo’s granddaughter calls her “Meme” (pronounced meh-may). But anyway – my contribution: Where I was 10 years ago:1995 – i was starting my Sophomore year at HU, and trying hard to gain back the 45 lbs I’d lost in the previous school year. I was getting used to living in upperclassmen housing and loving the old ivy-covered halls. My classes were quite sucky as it was the year I finished ALL (and i mean ALL) of my pre-requisite classes, so it was quite miserable. Thank God for my roomies and Music A. Where I was 5 years ago:2 years into being in the workforce, I switched companies and got a nice raise and much better working […]
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