We headed back to Pasir Mas for a wedding the past weekend. Likewise, Anya and family also travelled back from the Klang Valley. With the looming threat of the virus, we decided to attend the wedding early before the bulk of the guests arrived. Also, we ate the food away from where other early guests were having their food. Additionally I did not take any photos at the feast. In the meantime, Irfan and Anya played together as cousins are wont to do. Here are some photos of them hanging out together. In other news we also visited Pantai Senok in Bachok, where Anya wanted to fly a kite. Here is the video of the occasion: We arrived home yesterday evening safe and sound.
Continue reading
SWD6: Scavenging the Fallen
Star Wars D6: Scavenging the Fallen A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the crew of the YT-1300 light freighter Pretty Enemy was tasked with retrieving a Carbanti H-50 targeting processor from the derelict husk of a crashed Imperial Star Destroyer on the planet Jakku. Six months earlier, there was a battle there where many Star Destroyers had crashed onto the planet’s desert surface. Although the star system was remote and unremarkable, it had become the very site where the military might of the Galactic Empire was finally extinguished by the New Republic… Dramatis Personae Donetto – a smuggler Hamilton – a speeder racer Lubird – a protocol droid Sam Aiman – a young Jedi Susan – a brash pilot Zam Wessel – a bounty hunter We have seen better days The Pretty Enemy, an orange-and-blue YT-1300 freighter, dropped out of lightspeed close to the planet Jakku […]
Continue reading
Cthulhu Hack: The Man of the House
Cthulhu Hack The Man of the House Cthulhu Hack continued today with my colleague Robert. After a day investigating the disappearance of his high school classmate and threatened by law enforcers to leave town, our investigators holed up for a night at the Helton Hotel. After breakfast at the hotel café, private detective Sean Columbo and his friend and partner Dr. Bogdanowicz considered their options. Where would the real estate broker Margaret Hilton could have disappeared to? Why did everyone believe the Woodson estate, which Margaret was trying to broker to developers, was haunted? How did the Woodson house burn down 35 years ago, killing the matron of the family Evelyn Woodson and her sons David and John? He remembered the two photos he had salvaged from the ruins of the Woodson house the previous day. They then took a cab to the Leon County Public Library to look up […]
Continue reading
Papermini Video: Escape on the Krayt Fang
I have been experimenting with editing videos to come up with marginally entertaining (at least to myself) short films. This one is a dramatisation of a SpecForce Pathfinder trying to evade Imperials all over the hangar bay. Also, he’s trying to commandeer the Krayt Fang and leave Mos Shuuta. One bad roll and a threat reveals itself in the end! The ship is a YT-1300 light freighter. The Fang’s deck plans was released with the Edge of the Empire Beginner Game.
Continue reading
Easterly Wind Festival 2020
This weekend was the Pesta Angin Timur Perlis (Perlis Easterly Winds Festival) and they have been advertising it everywhere from meatspace to cyberspace. This year, they held it at Kampung Oran which is not too far from home. Although word on the street (and digital streets as well) say that it would be more spectacular at night, we went in the afternoon under the scorching sun to avoid the crowd. We could see the kites in the skies as we approached the site. Thankfully, parking was easy and as we presumed the crowd was light. We already had lunch so we did not purchase any food offered there, except for the… Well, watch the video below.
Continue reading
Theatre Arts: Third Time Around
UniMAP offered my English Theatre Arts co-curricular class once again this semester. This would be my third time teaching this class in which the number of participants have risen from just under 40 to 50 students. Like the previous class two semester ago, I started by giving the class an Introduction to Theatre Arts lecture to get them in the right frame of mind. Then we went right to it: The 50 split into 5 groups and each group had to come up with a short play in an hour. This was only for our first session. Ultimately the students performed their play at the amphitheatre in the Lecture Hall Complex. There were five plays in all, where three were adaptations of classics and two were original works. There were two adaptations of Cinderella, while The Tortoise and the Hare got only one. The first original work was a comedic […]
Continue reading
Lower Control Arm Goes Even Lower
Today Ain needed to go to for her scheduled medical check-up. She was along the kampung road out of our housing area when something when BOINK under the car. Immediately she felt the tyres pulling her steering wheel towards where she did not want to go. So she turned around and headed back to our taman perumahan and just as she turned into a main road in our area – 50 metres or so from our home – the car stopped and refused to move any further. She walked home, distressed by the occurrence, and I went to have a look. The closer I got to the car the more dire the damage seemed to be. Also, there was a large puddle of fluid forming under the car and gravity was pressing down the wheel well onto the tyre. We called our regular mechanic and he came an hour or […]
Continue reading
Cthulhu Hack: The Woodson Estate
Cthulhu Hack The Woodson Estate Today at work I ran Cthulhu Hack for the first time. I have the rulebook with me for some time now and had not tinkered with it last weekend. Then, Irfan and I went through character generation and the dice basics, just to get the hang of it. Later I read several of Michael LaBossiere’s online scenarios, after which I decided to adapt “Woodson Pond”. Here is the story from the game I ran for my colleague Robert who like me also teaches English. The Letter The year was 1980. It was on a Friday during one of his lull weeks when Sean Columbo received the letter. The Seattle-based private eye discovered that the letter was from his former high school classmate Margaret Hilton, a real estate broker in Tallahassee, Florida. Margaret had was set on acquiring and selling a land to a developer as […]
Continue reading
The Third Driver
Once upon a time, Irfan needed us to carry him around for mobility. Now he has the ability to drive a car. This means there is a third driver in our household which will be very convenient. I like the way he drives. It appears he attempts to be perceptive when controlling the vehicle on the road. May he keep out of harm’s way when driving cars in the future.
Continue reading
Lorn Song of the Bachelor
My friend Zedeck sent me his latest tome. It was a tabletop role-playing adventure inspired by the Bujang Senang myth of the last century from Sarawak. The book is digest-sized but its 48 pages are packed with a plethora of descriptions, creatures, maps and illustrations (wonderfully produced by Nadhir Nor). The prose provides the gamemaster the information needed to referee any such campaigns based on this book. However, Zedeck has crafted a well-balanced text. The information hangs between very evocative and economical. It is dense enough for gamemasters to craft adventures and encounters in a fantasy Bornean riverine campaign. But Gamemasters could also easily inject their own ideas in-between the information given in the text. Here are some photos of the book. What is a wet corpse and why is a catfish there? To find out and forge your own campaign from the book, get it at DriveThruRPG here.
Continue reading
With Students in Songkhla
For the first time since joining the Centre, the International Soft-skills and Leadership (ISoL) camp programme committee invited me to chaperone students for two nights in Songkhla, Thailand. The camp was a joint programme between UniMAP and Rajamangala University of Technology Srivijaya. I thought we would go as a family (along with Syamril, the other language teacher on duty) not just to escort these young minds for their event, but also to learn from the trip. Not only did we learn quite a bit and gain new experiences, we also made new friends there. Add this event to things I never thought 5 years ago that I would be doing. We stayed at the Lake Inn Hotel with the students. Some day we would like to visit here again. Here is a short video on our trip there. However, there were more activities that were not captured on video. There […]
Continue reading
Birthday Dinner in Pauh
I am now a couple of year short of 50 years old. We celebrated at a café that we have never stopped at before in the town of Pauh, between our home and my workplace. It seemed like a nice place to celebrate a birthday. Well, two birthdays, as Ain’s was 11 days before mine — although we had dinner by the sea then. This was more of a birthday bash as Irfan had ordered a birthday gift for me online. Click on the photos in the gallery below to view full images. Here’s to making it through it all one year at a time.
Continue reading
The Expanse: Scheherezade Tales
I ran The Expanse RPG for the first time last night. It was a solo session with Irfan playing the ex-soldier Kazuo Khan, based on the pre-generated PC Casey Khatri. Let’s get right down to it… The Expanse Scheherezade Tales The asteroid was once known as 643 Scheherezade discovered in by August Kopff in 1907 at the Heidelberg Observatory. Its diameter was nearly 36 kilometres and it orbited with an orbital inclination of about 13 degrees. It was part of the Cybele family of asteroids out in the Belt and its orbit was closer to Jupiter’s than it was to Mars’. Now – centuries later – the solar system knew it as Scheherezade, or “Zadi” to its inhabitants. It had three settlements – Aberdeen Baharu, Gamelan Sakti and Gertak Lembu, built into it. Almost a century ago, engineers spun Scheherezade so that the settlements would experience 0.4g spin gravity. The […]
Continue reading
In the Driver’s Seat
Once upon a time, my son could barely reach the light switch. Today, he can drive an automobile. Irfan has been taking driving lessons this month and we let him practise on our car. Evidently, he is a natural driver, and he hardly made any mistakes while he drove. Earlier in the month, he obtained a 49/50 score for his written test. For record-keeping purposes, I sat in the back and took photos.
Continue reading
Ain’s Birthday By The Sea
It was time for Ain’s birthday once more, and this time I suggested we go to Kuala Perlis after I got off work. It was nothing special as we had regular masakan panas for dinner, although Ain did get the epic ABC as seen below. Also below are photos of the occasion that night. It was small and low-key, but I enjoyed the company tonight. Happy birthday, my love.
Continue reading
Genesys Core Rule Book
I saw on Facebook that there was a sale going on back in KL. So I asked for Ivan for help in purchasing and shipping over the Genesys core rule book. Because of my experience in running Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars RPG, I think there would be no problems running this system. Although the symbols on the Narrative Dice are different from Star Wars, the mechanics are more or less similar. However, as I do not have the official Genesys dice yet, I could use the Star Wars dice as a substitute. Genesys, like games such as Savage Worlds and Mini Six, is a universal setting system where gamemasters could adapt any setting, fictional or historical, and any genre to run for their players. Although the basic dice pool rules are the same, there are some differences in the general rules between Star Wars and Genesys. For example, instead […]
Continue reading