One of the most rewarding things about having to teach from 5 to 7 in the evening is the view. Sometimes the sky just lights up on fire. Yesterday, the following view was what I beheld when I was heading home. I tweeted the photo immediately. No brightness or saturation modification was done on the image.
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Irfan is Sixteen
Once again, the arbitrary day based on an arbitrary timing system returns after a long cycle known as a year. Because we appear to honour the system, it was time just like last year to celebrate Irfan’s birthday. He turned 16 today. Atok and Opah visited from Perak to celebrate their grandson’s birthday with him. Irfan’s birthday cake was an ice cream cake with lychees, peaches and cherries on top. The thing about the cake during his birthday was that Irfan also shared it with other patrons of our eatery. He would have shared it with the local cat if cats ate cake. We went to a restaurant whose name could be translated as “The Cafe Beside Our House”. This was our second time at this restaurant. Earlier, we tried going to the pizza parlour that we celebrated Irfan’s 14th birthday at, but it appeared to be closed or undergoing […]
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Dice of Purple and Blue
I forgot to mention this last week. A set of polyhedral dice I ordered online arrived at the office. I used them during the D&D game last weekend and they look like this: I have actually ordered a larger set of dice and hope that they arrive soon.
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Otherworldly Creatures of Issyka
Christopher Mennell aka The Secret DM, commissioned me to create a host of otherworldly creatures for his fantasy setting of Issyka. It had been a while since I drew fantasy creatures. So I thought it would be a great for me to flex that cluster of creative muscle. Long after the ancient Shapers have gone extinct, their bio-factory are still creating new creatures that continue to roam the wilds of Issyka. Click on the images to expand them: An adult zegak-zoti grow anywhere from three to thirty feet tall. This type of creature has an armoured hide which could turn the best arrows. The largest of these beasts could be made into a mobile fortress if they could be tamed. However, the problem many find is that zegak-zotis adore the taste of human flesh. Sysakuunds are aquatic hunters that can grow up to fifty feet in length. They hunt prey […]
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DnD: Abduction at the Ancient Ruins
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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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 was dead tired. The next day we spoke for an hour with the away team online. On Monday, we headed upstate to visit the Kompleks Sejarah Pasir Salak. We stopped at Batu 10 for breakfast. The view of the Perak River is a rare view for me. It would be kind of therapeutic if we had a place by the river to unwind. There was also a large dead monitor on the walkway by the river, heading towards the complex. It looked fresh enough to be recently deceased. There was […]
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First Week of Social Social in Class
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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Rat Disposal Weekend
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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Weekend Before Classes Begin
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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Back in School Studying
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
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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The Place Where He Grew Up
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 […]
Continue readingAidiladha with Nia
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.
Aidiladha with Nia
The Botanical Garden Expedition
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.
Botanical Gardens
Let's get botanical in Shah Alam with the cousins
I posted on Twitter videos of Irfan shooting arrows at orcs a bullseye:
The 16yo tried his hand in archery too today. pic.twitter.com/yyPq1PAXWT
— Khairul Hisham (@hishgraphics) August 19, 2018
He didn’t do too bad with the bow all things considered. pic.twitter.com/JNiVecZvpK
— Khairul Hisham (@hishgraphics) August 19, 2018
We were having lots of fun and it was only the second day in the Klang Valley.
No One’s Ever Really Gone
I bought a warm gray 03 marker the other day. I should have bought a couple more. This was a nice practice because I have not really touched markers in nearly a decade (or maybe more).
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The First Post of an All-New Hishgraphics Blog
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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