November Rain

Surely it must've rained a big deal in little ol "Rain Town" Taiping this past November.
Of course memory serves me short (hazy? pun intended) as I skimmed through the pictures that was automatically ear-marked November by the phone, and with my current Day 4 of CW-DC Arrowverse Crossover Zombie mode; that certainly doesn't help jogging the mind's eye.

November was pretty good, I might say since we had some pretty memorable milestones in our walk with the Lord, as well as it has certainly been a great month of me catching up on my favorable pastimes. Nevertheless, I suppose I've been caught out somehow as I was very much unproductive with my very low output of digital images, I don't think I did even 5 pieces of images in total, across all my endeavors. Shame. Shame. Shame.

Anyhow, on with it. (Remember, K.I.S.S, Kevin. Summarize it and hit the showers and finish up Legends of Tomorrow!)

Sunshine Homes visitations: We hit 2 believers in a day! and one of them was this old brother who'd incidentally became unconscious during our session; thank God as we laid hands and prayed for him to regain awareness to accept and do the sinner's prayer. Hallelujah!

We continued our Wednesday sessions to Emmanuel Women's Home (or something like that, can't recall for sure) Quaint nifty home nearby Sunshine Old Folks Home. 

The womenfolk does have activities, crochet-ing and well, they help with prepping their food too. Of course, this home houses able womenfolk, whereas everyone had seen better days at Sunshine.

We sneaked in a couple of visits to this senior gentleman who neighbors Taiping Baptist Church. Kind and pet-friendly man; he hid behind his house (must've been to light up a smoke) on his grandchildren's birthday one day, and he saw Bunny & the Gang (Pastor Cheah's dogs : Bunny is the humongous Labrador Mix, The Gang refers to the other 2 young clowns) peeking and calling out to him for treats. He took the half of the birthday cake(s) and fed them by hand..and that was how Pastor saw it to tell us the tale.

On the 26th, we joined Taiping Baptist Church's family gathering, a 3D2N stay in Ipoh. 

Of course, I for one was raring to go when I knew about it, since this would totally mark the first time we are going to a family church camp..of course as days sniffed closer; (and with Mom and her worries of us 2 ass-hats sneaking off for smokes) the self-doubt sets in. The elephant in the room was the language barrier; I mean I do understand Mandarin somehow, sparingly; but this is going to be practically a full-on 3 days of Mandarin and even conversing in it (which is technically my worst) 

But I suppose I asked for not the whole nine yards from the Lord as I asked only for the strength to comprehend the sermons, and He did deliver. I am pretty sure I get the implications and hidden messages from all the sermons and this is a mean feat since there were 3 hour-long sessions from this Reverend Bai from China and it was evident as I understood his jokes too in thick accent. (and to a certain degree, playing RoTK 13 with mandarin language)

 Praise the Lord!

Moving along, yeah Ipoh. In the family I had the least things in common with Ipoh (they lived here for some years, years before I was born) but of course growing up in Taiping I had a few flings (both 'with' and 'in' teehee) with Ipoh and the other Perak cities no thanks to my busy/active middle school life, which is a lifetime away. But I do remember one thing, I wasn't like some of my friends that glorify Ipoh and traveled down for leisure, just for the malls, etc whenever they got their dad's car for the weekend (yeah, small townies had to resort to that, but I suppose I was being a dick since I associate Penang as my hometown then, yeah. Dick)

Oh, how different it was. I mean my last pass-over Ipoh must've been 5-6 years ago when I visited an ex-colleague based here; and I've certainly forgot Ipoh for it also being the food capital of Perak. We had a leisurely stroll on the final day, and I must say I did an imaginary tearful joy at having this particular dish I've only been reduced to having the discount version (though not 'discount' in price!) when I lived in KL.. the infamous Ipoh Koay Teow Soup. It should easily be more than 20+ years since I had a sniff of the authentic bowl of noodles; no matter where was the original one.

Bad Photo I Know Right : Ipoh's Chee Cheong Funn, got schooled from Harry that they are somewhat special, as evident in the addition of the mushroom gravy and mushroom bits. Yum yum awesome! But I had their other infamous noodle; which I never did like before this; Hor Hee (yes, in the family, Heidi named it such during our CNY steamboat dinners, little did I know it is named as such as a dish. I was taught that this specific 'space-ship' looking fishball is Hor Hee; if we called it "Space-Ship"...the elders wouldn't know it meant that. But we still call it Space Ship, even though I don't like eating it, since it is fish, somehow. But I can say I love the Hor Hee dish now!

Yes! of course this one is from a tourist-y place, but it still brings age-old memories

Skeptical at first; but I ate my words as I saw it for myself. I must say I was dead impressed. Buns are good, the varieties got me impressed really. But my favorites are the Real Squid Balls, tender juicy bouncy balls.

Our gathering was at the Oasis 5, Jalan Raja Dihilir; an awesome church venue. Huge spacious rooms and I suppose it is very accessible indeed.

Landscape of the back

looks dead like I pawn off an official picture. but no, just an opportune shot. 

Rare occasion to selfie. Of course without much practice, couldn't time a decent one with Mr Ozzie Ostrich

boat ride view of Gunung Lang and it's cleavage?

I only have pictures from the third day, somehow must've been preoccupied with the camp, helping out getting food, picking up speaker-brother Dr Lawrence Lim from his hotel nearby, and making coffee for Dad (and seeing to his tablet too, shared responsibility with Harry)
Guess must've reverted back to the introverted shell as I only thought of getting a selfie with Lawrence after we sent him back to his hotel. It certainly was a good 2 session of health talk from him; as I too am inspired to follow his dietary lifestyle, not his lifestyle, not yet jose. I mean, I can't fathom tuning in the night at 9pm and waking up 5am (he does his morning devotions for an hour and a half) but I will certainly aim for that one day... maybe the 7am's? :D
But I certainly am aiming for a good level of reduction in skipping dinner at 'normal' dinner time. His dinner is no later than 5:30pm, so that is an achievable goal somehow. Of course with staying at home and our meal times (and Dad with his food habits) plus the occasional *ahem* awesomeness of my cooking, it needs TIME for it to be reasonably possible lol. Of course, I'm aware Harry had been lowering his dinner intake ever since the last meet with Dr Lawrence earlier this year, and Mom has always been a small eat; it needs time to adjust our meals as I can't just simply excessively tone down on my dinner intake as this will certainly mean leaving loads of leftover rice for Fried Rice! and Larry isn't exactly stopping by to visit every single month. Okay. I better speed this up. Dominators are waiting to be pawned by the heroes & legends, man.

gosh, can't remember this alley. 

Mom with Rev. Bai

And so here we are, the final month of 2016. Mental note for the Christmas gift list, and of course looking forward to the conclusion of Civil War II, and this coming weekend's season finale of HBO's Westworld. Probably should do a post about Westworld, after I watched the original film and err, the book. But heeyy, I am pretty behind on my Goodreads Book Challenge!
Too many books too many graphic novels, too many Marvel, too many tv series, so little time. (oh, for one, I accidentally missed out on catching Doctor Strange in the cinemas, what an embarrassing relapse in time/day-keeping!)

supposed death of Iron Man. Not too shocking since you kinda have been teased and forewarned with/from other new titles.

October in Pictures

Trying out this collage as a blog graphic (just to see how it fits kind of) , perhaps this might be how I'd weblog an entry for every month, seemingly I can't (and somehow sort of lost any bit of motivation to do so) be back to regular weblogging somehow, with the mounting excuses it certainly defied the whole intention of blogging.

October has and perhaps always had been a mix-bag of bittersweet month, evidently more so from last year onward. In short, I wouldn't really pin it as a bad month (for me); it's just synonymous with so many other things that if I were to simply put it as a "Them Feels" Month is too general in nature.
I struggled (and procrastinated reasoned successfully) to not do/write about 5 posts that was pretty high-up on my list to do prior to October, and hence I found myself unprepared when it (the month) rolled over and I asked myself; and justified that there will always be a tomorrow. Of course, it does and it doesn't and perhaps all in all this is me 'reporting' and justifying my spent month, in chronological order:

Heidi's birth-date was on the 10th, and we finally got together and managed to move her urn to the niche, sort of a moving-in of the final physical items, after like 17 months.
I suppose I am half-happy with the final plaque bearing an absolute 90-odd percent semblance to my design (She always did encourage and love my designs and etc) but alas, it was a shame there was an annoying bit of spelling mistake on the engravings of a certain word, (engravers fault, not mine) that it had to be it. Now, I promised myself to 'fix' it, by figuring out the possible material for a stick-on for the word the next time we make our way to the memorial; since we certainly are not making the trip north this week for All Souls' Day (yeah, we don't really celebrate that, but we might, someday?)
Our trip was an extremely short one; reach the island by 9am-ish, pick up the urn and towards the ever-green and ever tranquil Penang Christian Cemetery, a quick lunch (yay Penang food), and a short stop in Sg Dua; and then it was back home for lunch.

Wasn't prepared, as I think about it now, could've just brought along that 1 snow-cap of hers I have as keepsake , oh well.

Bucket List #1 : One day, when I could afford and find a master sculptor, man. (this has been around 80+ years!)

certainly not my favorite Dhoby Ghaut's; but that will do in the mean time, that day.

truth be typed, I was mad at the engraver; it wasn't just that 1 spelling mistake, there were irregularities with  the capitals here and there...but then again, I don't think this was made digitally with auto-correct

On another note, Angél was sick a week prior, the vet said he was down with flu (of course, for a newbie with cats aka mois , I was dumbfounded-ly shocked, since I saw the sign of him having a bruised 1 eye and all I thought was he got scratched near his eyelids) and I suppose I must've muttered an idiotic line something like "Cats can get fever?" in Malay. Of course I was lucky enough with my 1 canine boy to not being sick when he was older, but then again, caring for a sick cat is way much harder! It isn't so easy to sneak or feed pills, certainly. But he was alright in under a week.
But on the morning of our trip to Penang, I found Angél's Wife #1 lying in the garden, which was pretty odd, since she was such a nimble ninja (actually both of his waifus are such cats. came for the food, and vanish as soon as you move an inch)
Black Face as what we unofficially call her, had gone to the other meadow by the rainbow bridge that morning. That was the first and final time I got to touch that cat that we know and don't know. Poor kid must've got poisoned somehow from her last scavenging hunt the night before, as I walked over to her owner and told her that my brother has dealt with the carcass. Days later, heard from her that her kitten had also joined his mum a day after. Oh well, poor kitties.
Angél is fine now; but I could still remember the whimper (do cats whimper?) cry from Angél when both of us found Black Face. damn

Mama Cat & Junior, happier times, September. R.I.P

Junior - could've fooled people as Angél. Similar markings, even with the shortened tail; though slightly smaller and without collar., eyes could've been a different shade 

The other big one was on the 7th.
Well, I wish I could avoid that.
The 7th actually has a deeper connection to that, as it was tied to a person of years' past. Yet it now shared an ambiguous date with the day I last see Chance.
1 year. 7 eff-ing doggie years.
I miss the boy.
I miss his fur on everything.
I miss waking up to see that jovial spirit with his hetero-chromia eyes
This is harder than I imagined.
How do you somehow explain this to a canine companion?
Yet I don't seem to do anything about it huh?
 Well, I wish I could avoid that. Choices, man. But. Soon.

the final last 2 pics of him before the pick-up. He must've felt something, 

I remember goading him to come up and take a pic with Angél, I can't brace myself to watch the video, not yet.

So what exactly have I been up to this sad ol' October?
Apart from the fortnight visits to Sunshine (and subsequent visit/prospecting to the other 2 prospective Christian Old Folk's last Wednesday) and attending a few activities by the Chinese Methodist & Chinese Gospel Hall, I did not commit to the 3-day combined camp by FGA though.
Did images for 2 sermon presentations, well, actually stayed up the night to fully start & finish Mom's first ever slides; pretty last minute since she wasn't sure whether to proceed with presentation anyway, but yeah I was proud and happy for her to get the courage to try that something new for herself. I mean, yeah, Dad has grown into this 'new and spank-ly original custom-made images' (not much on the latter, yet, I suspect) presentation slides. Although for Mom's maiden try it somehow wasn't to be, we forgot all about informing the need for a projection; so we made do with the few Gospel-Hallites squinting their eyes to see this RedYacer's screen whenever wherever.
Made a couple of other images as well, though not all were of usage as yet (even the Diwali ones, oh the shame)
Oh yeah, I've finally reconnected with my guitar-ing old self. Well, got the guitar loaned in by Ps. Cheah late September when he couldn't made a trip to Sunshine then, though I only did practiced once then; I've put in a teeny effort to touch the acoustic for a few practice sesh. So yeah, it was pretty alright. It is practically like riding a bike/ or swimming I suppose. You just don't forget how-to.

Taiping Chinese Methodist's 111th Anniversary service. Wow. Chaperoned Mom & Dad as VIPs

Kau Kee Choy Stir-Fry; one of many variations I started doing as these shoots were going on sale, found out it translates to Go Ji Choy as in the Goji berry's Goji. A bit of lazy to research then, but I suppose it is from similar cultivae? These leaves does have some berries, albeit different and so much smaller than gojiberries somehow. 

Lady's Fingers Red & Pale variants: Taman Kaya home-grown! Pretty productive month indeed to have quite a good harvest of our Red Okras (and even abundant Potato Leaves!) and Friendly-Black Chillies but alas; it grew to about the usual length of those locally found okras; however our neighbor's pale colored okras were freakin' huge! Our pale variant plant died off some time ago according to Mum; but both were 'smuggled' in from 4th Aunt's visit to Korea perhaps.

Dad's sermon at TCM Seniors service. That's a lot of senior citizens!

October is also a month of reconnecting with the bulk of tv series returning for their new seasons too.
I was raving madferrit for Marvel's Luke Cage late September, though I only binged it much later when the rest of the other shows were about to start again, well I haven't actually been as up-to-date on most series anyway. A lot more compared to the last didn't make the same-day watch-list; the only exception is that much-awaited episode of The Walking Dead, and most of The Flash. Almost every other show made the new pull-list for a later date. So far I've only caught a single episode (or 2) of each Gotham, Lucifer, Supergirl, Ash Vs The Evil Dead, Quantico, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, (okay this one was 2 episodes, since I think I like the 'new' Ghost Rider) like 4 episodes in I think of Blindspot, the new McGyver maybe 3rd episode. Both Arrow & Legends of Tomorrow were up to the week, though not as frequent.
And it's not just that, I've been cutting it slower too with them comics; week in week out I'd only do the current Civil War II's and actual tie-ins, and the occasional The Walking Dead & Archie (and their line-up) whenever they do appear. But with the way things ended September (Ulysses' vision of Miles Morales killing Capt') we got the inevitable surprise (hey, since it launched so early on) of Doom in Infamous Iron Man, yeah we know it's coming (Doom & Riri) and perhaps sensed a certain somebody's demise months ago but that certainly is a curveball, much too soon!
Pretty miffed to see the end of my much loved Vision & A-Force, but, fingers crossed for more gems to come and discover.

"...back to it! " yikes!

Come on, crossover already

So, what actually was my escape this month?
I hid myself in conquering China. Well, to be precise, shagging my way across making 'friends' & fighting/debating banditos & shady merchants across China in KOEI's (ok, KOEI TECMO) RoTK XIII
Introduced to this series when I was a wee boyo of , err 10 I think, by my brother during my school break it became a major influence on me growing up. I suppose that was in line about the time after my dear sis got me to read too; so when I got back home after the holidays I'd immersed myself in this classical Chinese literature. Gorged into it really like 2-3 times on the decades-old tomes from the school library smelly as f*#k; getting myself on the illustrated simpler bilingual copies like I suppose more than 10 times before finishing puberty mayhap. That was the gist of it. Of course, together with my Dickens',Twains', Dumas' & the other classic chaps; since I could only read English, and if you wanna know more about the Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the early 90's.... that's what you are left with. (since you are hopeless with Chinese symbols)
Anyway, before my connection gets sluggy in half an hour, better post this up, before I justify not to.

Not My ScreenShot

Sweet Christmas

Thus it has been ,what, about 2 months from a weblog post ever since Red YAcer (currently re-instated as Primary Computer since I got it back earlier this year) died on me in the midst of working on the church's 43rd Anniversary montage (Baptist Church, not, FGA)
I suppose my previous 2 posts were from the ancient netbook (6 years and still going the distance, somehow) and oh-my-it-was-gruesome to type indeed )it isn't exactly tiny but even with it's larger tile (technically the same size as a standard = means it is somewhat large for a netbook; and NO, I don't reckon I have stubby fingers eh?) the whole lot was revised in such a way I always end up typing a whole lot of "\|+=" somehow. Hence I avoided those few posts during these period.
It wasn't that bleak I mean, working on this/that old netbook (which reminded me, I have yet to go about renaming it yet... or rather giving them oddly familiar and dumb names,ie: BLACKBALA, DISCOLICO, TO-GO BALA, and the latest GOLDBALA..hm, maybe I'll name it NETBALA, mayhap so)
Anyway, with its miserly Windows score of 2.2, it serves me well these 2 months for some light & heavy searches, even did a good number of image editing too I might add, though I'd be left with a slightly higher failure rate in the end images , as WYSIWYG doesn't abide well with me half squinting over the (i suppose <9" ?) smaller screen.
But nevertheless, trusty ol' netbook did a fantastic job getting those downloads in in keeping me occupied with the down/free time and not missing the series and err, Civil War II ? (hmm.. cats out of the bag)

So anyway back to the other computer in the repairs shop. I was half resigned to it being there for a slightly longer time when I couldn't figure out how to round up the cash for it.

Oh Yes! Praise The Lord!
3 days into getting the Red YAcer back, I've just finished a week's worth of images for Dad's page + the sermon, and I should be squeezing a few more miscellaneous pieces by tonight (after the match, err Stoke City right?) by then old netbook should finish its job of getting all ten episodes of Luke Cage right?
Yeah
"Sweet Christmas"

EEJIT!
bloody eejit.
got over to the mamak place only to find Swansea & Liverpool match. That's for not checking alerts on your usual google account(s).
wasted the hour and half more so where I could be binge-ing a couple episodes.
but to be fair, it was an okay match to watch anyhow.

On with #LukeCage then, here's hoping for a wicked opening theme music.