Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Sincere Farewell Embrace [Wordless Wednesday]


Two highschool prefects having a farewell hug at the end of a farewell dinner for leaving highschool seniors.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Long Jump [Mellow Yellow Monday]


One of my students doing the long jump during my school's Pre-Sports Day events. This guy, Vincent, is a basketballer, so he naturally gets a lot of airtime in his jumps. Some of my other students who saw this picture joked that Vincent cheated by riding on an invisible magic flying chair to make the distance. *Laughs*

For more Mellow Yellow Mondays, or to participate, click here.


Friday, December 23, 2011

[Eat-Out] Smoked Salmon Sub with Salad and Fries


I almost always order the smoked salmon sub whenever I eat out at Fullhouse Giza.

Or the smoked salmon salad.

Basically anything with salmon in it would whet my appetite like Slimer with a mountain of burgers.

Oh, and if you know who Slimer is, high five! You were an 80's kid like me :)


[Photo] Arsenal for Shooting Greyson Chance



Part of the set of cameras we used last month to shoot Greyson Chance.

Photo above taken on my smartphone Samsung Galaxy Mini and edited using Adobe Photoshop Express.


Monday, December 19, 2011

[Mellow Yellow Monday] Feeding Monkeys


I remember taking the picture above as my dad fed the swamp macaques with groundnuts bought from a roadside stalls.

The macaques of Tanjung Ketapang live in the trees of the mangrove swamp forests, but they regularly get their food from either visitors (who feed them with fruit and/or nuts) or raiding nearby food stalls at night.

Click here for more Mellow Yellow Monday or to participate.


Wednesday, December 14, 2011

[Wordless Wednesday] Insects In Sex

For this week's Wordless Wednesday, I'm sharing with you some of my photos of insects copulating.







All photos captured by me, ihsankhairir.


Monday, December 12, 2011

[Blog Stats] This is why my blog has to be in English

The following pie chart and table shows the percentages of visitors to this blog for the last 30 days according to country.




You can see that more that two-thirds of the visitors are from English-speaking countries, so it's only rational that I keep writing and updating in English and not in my mother tongue, Malay.

But sometimes I do feel like I need to start writing in Malay too. I guess I need to create a separate blog, where the posts will be in Malay, for that. What do you think?


Friday, December 09, 2011

[Shared] Complex Relationship, or Imaginary?

via 9gag
Discovered the above picture on 9gag and I just have to say something here.

Actually, it should be 'imaginary' instead of 'complex'. For it to be 'complex', there must be both the real part and the imaginary part, expressed in conjugate pairs. Regarding the above picture, squarerooting negative one will result in i, the imaginary number, which by itself is not yet a complex quantity.


Friday, December 02, 2011

[Eat-out] The Steamboat Ketam Village

Last night my cousin Liza treated my sisters and I to a steamboat dinner at The Steamboat Ketam Village in IPC Mutiara Damansara.


I ordered the sliced fish set with tom yam soup and iced carrot milk as my drink.


Since I had been eating so much earlier that day, I decided to just have veggies and seafood for the night. I even let my sister have the noodles so I could skimp on the carbs.



Gosh, I can't remember what fish these are, but they're really good. The first few slices were just dumped into the boiling tom yam broth and eaten well-cooked. My sister suggested I have them shabushabu style where I let each slice be lightly simmered in the boiling soup. The end result is a well-cooked outside and a fresh sashimi-like texture inside, which was a more delightful taste. I will definitely be having my fish slices this way for my next steamboat dinner.



As an a la carte add-on I had the Pacific clams which costs an additional 14 bucks. These were really tasty, although they're a bit chewy and tough despite having been boiled in the broth for more than 15 minutes. I didn't mind the chewy texture though.

Overall the service was quick and food was great. The tom yam broth is quite spicy so if you can't stand spiciness I suggest you just order the plain broth. Each table is set for 4 people so it is advisable that you go in fours so that everyone gets to use their own hotplate.

Around dinnertime the place is quite packed despite even during weeknights so you should either come early or make booking arrangements to avoid the long wait.

To my generous cousin Liza, a thousand thanks for treating us to such an awesome dinner! I will return the favor if I get my bonus next month. A big capital IF! :)


Wednesday, November 30, 2011

[Wordless Wednesday] Double Piggyback Ride

Cast members of the high school musical 'Alyss from Wonderland' having a bit of fun during rehearsal break


Tuesday, November 29, 2011

[Photo] Jungle Cockroach

A few weeks ago I joined about 60 or so pre-college students for a hike up a mountain, which presented me with ample opportunity to capture images of wild jungle insects.

One of which, is a jungle cockroach.

EXIF: 1/200s, f/22, 35mm with a macro converter, ISO 800, on camera flash with wide diffuser

I hope anyone with expert taxonomical and entomological knowledge can help me identify what species this is so I can properly label and tag the photo.

From the basic anatomy of the bug I can definitely say it is some kind of a cockroach, with different color markings and shades as compared to the urban counterpart.

Like the common cockroach it also has long antennae but somewhere along the antennae there's a band of white marking, as you can see in the photo above. The legs are spiky / thorny like the cockroaches we commonly see.

I shall share other jungle shots I managed to capture in my future posts.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

[Shared] XKCD: Set Theory

I have a confession. I do this sometimes, in my math classes.

source: xkcd
I sometimes tend to explain simple mathematical concepts using math jargons that most students don't really understand.

When in reality they can all be explained using simple layman terms.

I sometimes wonder, why do I do this?

Probably to impress. Or probably to prove my credentials as a math teacher.

But I do hope I don't come across as snobbish or anything. Especially to my students.

My dear students, I sincerely apologize.



Friday, November 25, 2011

Greyson Chance in Sri KDU


Greyson Chance, originally uploaded by ihsankhairir.
One of the many opportunities I had while working at a premium private school is the chance to shoot celebrities, some local, some international.

The latest one being Greyson Chance, the 14-year old international superstar whose list of fans currently consist of mostly teenage girls and moms.

More pictures when you click 'read more' below.




Thursday, November 24, 2011

Comeback

Greetings all.

After a long hiatus, I shall make a comeback to blogging and bloghopping.


More updates soon. Till then, cheers!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

[Wordless Wednesday] Putra Mosque at Night


EID MUBARAK EVERYONE!

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

[Math Stuff] Derivative Solver

Ok I added another WolframAlpha widget to the right of this blog. This new widget is called the derivative solver. It can differentiate any single variable differentiable function up to the 4th order.

You can see the derivative solver as the third Math widget to the right of the page, beneath the inverse function calculator.

I hope the widget can help you check your working and answers when you are doing your calculus exercises.

Good luck and happy studying, Math students!

An infinitely differentiable function which is...Image via Wikipedia


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[Wordless Wednesday] Knotted Single Strand of Hair


Happy Wordless Wednesday everyone!


Tuesday, August 23, 2011

My Japanese Has Gotten So Rusty

私は日本語でブログに試してみたいどう思いますか?

Should I Blog in a Different Language?


Here's the breakdown of where people who visited this blog this past month came from:

MALAYSIA35.58%
UNITED STATES35%
UNITED KINGDOM5.1%
QATAR4.81%
AUSTRALIA4.71%
SINGAPORE3.27%
INDIA3.27%
PHILIPPINES2.98%
CANADA2.88%
Unknown2.4%
It is apparent that most of the people who read this blog are Americans and Malaysians, and the rest of the countries are mostly English-speaking nations.


I have been tempted to blog in Malay (my native language), since my English has deteriorated so much to the point where it has become so often that I take so long a time to compose even one well-constructed, grammar error-free sentence. But there are more non-speakers of Malay that visit this blog than there are Malay speakers, so I guess it's a better idea to keep writing in English so that I won't end up losing a big chunk of readership.

But still, I feel like I should occasionally blog in other languages. Like in Malay or Japanese. Maybe that would help me reach out to another whole new readership. What do you think? Should I or should I not blog in a different language in addition to English?

Monday, August 22, 2011

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

[Wordless Wednesday] Almond Crusted Chicken Salad


Shot at T.G.I. Friday's, One Utama.

Friday, August 12, 2011

[Macro] Red Weaver Ant as Charon


A red weaver ant worker (oecophylla smaragdina) carrying another dead weaver ant. Photo was taken during a group outing with the organisers of MY Challenge 2011.

Chasing around this fella wasn't easy. Apparently she was rushing to wherever she was going with the corpse in her jaws.

Photo was taken using a D60 and a Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 with a macro converter attached. An SB-600 flash was fired to freeze the movement and some editing was done in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Charon is a figure in Greek mythology who ferries souls across the rivers Styx and Acheron to the world of the dead.




Tuesday, August 09, 2011

[Macro] Red Weaver Ants Swarming a Lizard


I took this photo last weekend when I joined a photo outing organized by the folks at MY Challenge 2011.

One of my students, Chien Teng, saw a  swarm of red weaver ants (oecophylla smaragdina) dragging a dead lizard up a tree to their nest. I of course, being some snap happy photo hobbyist fond of shooting these insects (as evidenced by my multiple posts about them) braved through the countless bites by these ants on my arms and legs to take macro shots of them at work. One of the results is the photo above.

I used a Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 lens with a macro converter attached so that I can move the lens closer to the subject, which also means I was very vulnerable to attacks by the same swarm that killed the lizard.

I particularly like this shot because of one detail: One ant was dragging the lizard by the eye.

I look forward to your feedback regarding the photo above. Hope you like it as much as I do :)


Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Am I a Total Nerd...


... for laughing maniacally upon coming across this Chemistry Cat joke?

Anyone else around here get the joke? :)

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Do I Really NOT Look Like a Math Teacher?

I get these from so many people too many times already:

"You don't look like a Math teacher."

"You look too young to be a Math teacher."

"Really? Math teacher ah? So young!"

"You don't look like someone who knows Math."

"I thought you were Chinese because you teach Math. But you don't look Chinese. What's your name?"

"Are you sure you can teach Math?"


What do you think? Does this face look like someone who doesn't teach math?

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Simply Sandwiches

A few weeks ago I started ordering my Tuesday lunches from Simply Sandwiches.



They deliver freshly made sandwiches to offices and homes in Damansara area, and for once a week they also venture into other nearby suburbs.

Nicely wrapped with a note included.

So far I have had two sandwich delivered --- egg and tuna --- both on seeded bread.


The tuna on seeded bread
I personally enjoyed the tuna sandwich. And what I loved most is the seeded bread... it gives a different texture and crunch to the sandwich that I really liked.

If you work in Damansara area or nearby suburbs or even urban KL, and feel like having a nice sandwich lunch personally delivered to you, do check out their schedules for delivery in your area. They have a selection of four different types of sandwiches and the price range is only between RM6 to RM8 including delivery. Just go to their Facebook page for more info, or add them on Twitter at @SmplySandwiches.

Simply Sandwiches
http://www.facebook.com/SimplySandwiches
simplysandwiches4u@gmail.com
@SmplySandwiches

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

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