According to the online system, Irfan is registered to vote in Pandan Indah, Ain in Pasir Mas and I in Sitiawan. It appears they set our locations to default to the addresses on our identity cars. This is after I have changed my voting location to Perlis over the counter several years ago. In any case, we will need to change or addresses before the next General Elections. Later that day Ain and I caught up with our old friend Mei, who also returned to Sitiawan to vote. We saw Eva (and her little brother Connor) who last appeared in this blog when she was a little baby. At the time Eva had yet to develop locomotion. Then later that night we continued our gossiping at Chicketory. Why Chicketory? Because its name was Chicketory. We talked about the General Elections of Malaysia, old times, new times, a better Malaysia and […]
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First Face-to-Face Class Since March 2020
The last time I taught a class face-to-face in a classroom was March 2020. It is now November 2022, almost three years later. In the interim, I have had the Remote Teaching tag for all the online teaching posts in my blog. I cannot believe it had been so long. It was good to meet students face-to-face in class. For the longest time, I thought perhaps the students were all AGIs designed to fool teachers into thinking students existed (just kidding, my students reading this!) Click on the image below to expand it. We are still in blended teaching mode, so only 50% face-to-face. Most of the classroom teaching are weighted towards the end of the semester. But it is a start!
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A Vampire Librarian Named Terry
After the end of our mini Vampire the Requiem RPG campaign, in which our pregenerated characters won the civil war in Atlanta, we started making new characters for a new campaign. It is now 2032, 10 years after the Vampire revolution that overthrew the old blood… I now play Terry McAllister, a Mekhet librarian. He hails from Perthshire, Scotland but was turned while he was on a vacation to the United States. It sucks for him that he cannot return to his homeland… for now. But for the time being, he has a job with the library at Georgia State. Loads of students burning the midnight oil there, easily charmed for nourishment. He does not leave bodies as the victims are not killed. He sucks enough blood to survive, but leaves the students alive though dazed and charmed. Sometimes, he also helps them to study for their exams by pointing […]
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Year 22: An Anniversary
It has been twenty-two years since we got married. Nothing to report other than a family dinner. Earlier that morning we had breakfast at a new place that appeared from the abandoned site of an old. Located in front of a nearby orphanage, it has become our new go-to place for breakfast. Their nasi kerabu is delicious with a lot of very fresh chopped vegetables. That evening, we had dinner at Ana Burger. Here are the images of the event:
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SCALLOP’s First Programme
And so it came to pass, a bunch of us teachers came together to form a team to do CSR for our department at the university. It took some time, but ultimately we came up with a group name: SCALLOP, short for Strategic Communication And Language Learning Outreach Programme. Our First Thingamajig Our inaugural site for our CSR programme was the secondary school Sekolah Menengah Sains Tuanku Syed Putra here in Kangar. We made arrangements with the teachers and administrators to have our event with the school’s Form 2 students. On the morning of the first of October, our team gathered at SMSTSP and proceeded to greet the students, then we split into three huge groups for further things to do, such as ice breaking. Irfan was on site to help me with photography. The big event was Creating Your Own Island, where the students get to use their imagination […]
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Two Decades of Irfan
It seems incredible. Our son is twenty years of age today. Where did the time go? Oh, I forgot. Time was sucked in and consumed by the singularity known as the Covid-19 quarantine, also known as the plague year. In any case, our mic testing, Vietnam roll making, galactic smuggler offspring has been alive in this space-time continuum for two whole decades. In any case, here are some photos of the celebrations tonight.
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SWD6: Voyage of the Magma-3, Part 1
Once upon a time, I ran a Star Wars D6 campaign for cadet pilots at Perth Aerodrome while I was studying to be a greasemonkey. The year was 1992. The party created a custom freighter they named the Magma-3. In fact, a lot of details about this campaign has been lost from my memory. However, I have retained some notes and photos of our shenanigans from that time. Before I lose more details to the ravages of time like tears in the rain, I should transfer as much information I have from my notes to this blog post as capsule write-ups of each session. Caveat: I do not recall most of the NPCs, locations and situations in these sessions. Heck, I can barely remember the players’ names. Star Wars D6 Voyage of the Magma-3 In any case, here are the first four session. Episode 1 The Mining Cauldron Earl Metolkian […]
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RPG Webinar for Mahsa University
After the meeting with MAHSA University last month, it was finally time to speak at the webinar that they organised entitled: Tabletop Roleplaying Games for Teaching and Learning Languages This was the first time I did an RPGs in education talk for an inter-university programme. Despite how I seemed, I was nervous as heck and spent a lot of time coming up with the slides. A lot of the pages I wrote for it are brand new, requiring not just new text, but also new images. To view the talk on MAHSA University’s YouTube channel, click here. I hope this will be the first of many programmes where I attempt to convince educators of the benefits of employing RPGs as teaching tools.
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Kangar Jaya After Dark
Tonight we went to scout the new township of Kangar Jaya at Seriab. We stopped for some ice cream at Mokti’s Signature, located beside Lepak King. Sometimes (well most of the time) there are no messages behind my posts, just pictures which I thought are pretty enough to be posted.
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More Aidiladha in Selangor Tales
After the MAHSA visit, it was time to take it easy. The penultimate day of our visit we scouted Kuala Lumpur, checking out Pandan Indah though there were no photos taken there. We did have lunch at Burger King at the Petronas near Lotus Ampang (formerly Tesco). We also checked out the new (relatively new for us) KL East Mall where Irfan bought shoes and got some books. One of them was a gift for Anya. Then we visited cousin Razlyn’s house. We had not seen her for years. We expressed our condolences for the passing of her father and my uncle, whom we called Anjang. When I travelled to KL after SPM for various interviews and such, I stayed a lot with them. Anjang was nothing but kind to me. At home, I gave the book to Anya and that night we had a family dinner out in Nilai. […]
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Visit to MAHSA University
Several weeks ago, I received an email from MAHSA University in Selangor. They would like to know more about using tabletop RPGs as teaching and learning tools, especially for their language classes. I set a date to meet with their faculty members earlier today, as we would be on vacation in Sepang. I also called my former student and current research assistant (not mine, actually) Aidil and we went for the meeting. Meanwhile, Irfan drove and waited in the car. During the meeting I introduced them to the world of TTRPGs by bring with me a bunch of books and starter sets which included maps, cards and pregenerated characters. Aidil helped a lot in explaining. No, I did not run a game for them, but I did explain to them how I ran RPG session in my classrooms with students. A request by them for me to talk in an […]
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Aidiladha in Selangor
It was Hari Raya Aidiladha. We drove down south towards Salak Tinggi to Anya’s house even though they were spending their first few days in Kelantan. They would return home when we were still there. For the first few days, we were at their place with Cik Su F as company. On the third day of our visit, I went to call on Shide at his office/events space Area 27 Events and Co-working Space in Bandar Baru Seri Petaling . Then, then next day I met up with my former student Aidil to plan for the MAHSA University meeting. Here are the pictures of the first few days in Selangor. The next day, we visited MAHSA University.
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Thoughts Old and New Spiralling Unheeded
Previously, on Hishgraphics blog… It has been months since I posted. The last published blog post announced of our entire household’s infection with COVID-19. Sorry to disappoint some readers, but we yet live. The infection did not saddle us with severe symptoms. However, I have not posted for a long time and it is time to rectify that. The reason why I have not posted is because I found it a huge chore to conceive blog posts, formulate the text and prepare images. In the interim, besides the week-long COVID-19 bout, I have been for the last two years suffering from eczema, and last week a doctor diagnosed me with arthritic psoriasis whereby my left knee hurt immensely making it hard for me to be mobile. This has (not had) the effect of making it hard to manage my classes in the previous semesters. I enjoy the classes and interacting […]
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STA: Three’s a Crowd
Star Trek: Thine Own Self S2 E03 Three’s A Crowd *** Stardate: 57930.2 – Sat Dec 06 2380 10:50:16 UTC Starfleet Dramatis Personae Lt. Cmdr. Kodar Tamat, Cardassian engineering officer and mission commander Dr. Thomas Crane, Human medical officer (NPC) Lt. Leahman Barclay, Human conn officer (Semi-temporary NPC) Ensign Sparik, Vulcan conn officer (NPC). Previously on Star Trek Thine Own Self… Into the Mushroom Caves Kodar Tamat, Leahmann Barclay, Thomas Crane and Sparik rush into the mushroom forest in the enormous, presumably the Kom-Rhanok towards the central stone pillar of the enormous subterranean cavern. Presumably they would be able to contact the USS Sienkiewicz. – which is in orbit – from that stone pillar. Thankfully, their hand phasers still work. However their tricorders are limited to a range of 50 metres and the jamming field is still preventing them from calling their starship. Light patches from bio-luminescent moss give the space […]
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Nipah Klasik
We discovered this really neat restaurant recently. The eatery is nestled among a thick grove of nipah plants growing out of a swamp slightly south of Simpang Empat. Besides having food that we found delicious, the actual restaurant was built on stilts over the swamp. Visitors can sit at tables over the water. The water beneath is clean and clear. No bugs bothered us. Though there were some spider webs that Irfan kept his eye on as we had lunch there. Check out the video below for a walk-through of the restaurant over the swamp.
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Lazy Unboxing of Three RPG Starter Box Sets
A couple of days ago I received my order of three tabletop role-playing game starter sets. Three boxes! The Star Trek Adventures RPG Starter Set, Alien RPG Starter Set, and The One Ring Starter Set. I thought I would make an lazy, amateurish video unboxing video of the three games. Here is the video: I hope I DO get to run them soon. Addendum (30th November 2022): SPOILERS – he did NOT get to run them soon.
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