IHSAN KHAIRIR

I stumbled upon an old blog entry from way back when I used to exclusively blog on Xanga. This was the one and only blog entry that has my voice in it, talking (in my most casual accent) to the blog readers. Since I know there are readers here who has never heard my talking voice, I decided to repost this here on Blogger so that you may know what I actually sound like.

The old entry is between the two sets of three asterisks (***).

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I don’t get to speak English much at work here in Malaysia so my English has probably deteriorated with time, but anyways I stumbled upon Southernlass’s accent challenge and decided to have a go…

A copy-paste of the list of words:

Alright there you go. I should probably do a Rojak / Manglish / Singlish version since I speak that too, but I’ll stop at two accents.
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EDIT: Suddenly I am thinking of doing it in a couple of other different voices/accents. Please tell me if you really want me to do so and I’ll do it!


EDIT2: Firda and my sister requested some more so here goes. Two other voices I did included below.
This one is an attempt at a movie trailer narrator voice

This one is some kind of American accent I used once or twice for my puppet performances in the past

Shameless plug: Please star and/or recommend if you like the audios, I might do more audio stuff in the future if people like it!


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What do you think of my voice(s)? Do I sound boring? Haha.

Oh, and if you want, you can have a go at the challenge too. Do tell me in the comments if you are trying. It’ll be fun to know how everybody sound like!

“The young cannot be blamed for not knowing what it’s like to be old, but the old is guilty of forgetting what it’s like to be young”

Or something of the sort. Guess where the quote came from, for bragging rights.

Innocence. I can’t help but notice how little children emanate their glow of youthful innocence whenever they have fun.

They are honest and frank. They do not deviously insult nor flatter. They speak their minds and express their honest opinion on anything, without fear of being judged.

Kids don’t wear a mask on their faces. They cry when they are sad, and laugh when they are happy. They don’t pretend to be excited when they’re not, and when they do become excited, they honestly are.

When they do things to make you happy, you know they’re not doing them because they had to. They do them because they want to. And seing your happy face, in turn, makes them happy as well. And that is enough for everyone, both you and them.

I long for the same youthful innocence, for I feel like it has left me for quite some time.

February 16th was my 27th birthday so the family got together for a small celebration.

The chocolate mousse cake that was completely devoured within two minutes. Because the whole family was busy with preparations and other stuff, I went to town and bought the cake myself. Glad I picked this one because usually at the end of the birthday celebration we ended up with a big chunk of uneaten cake, but this time my cake was the first one to be gone from the food table. I have chosen wisely…

The birthday feast was a simple lineup: chocolate mousse cake, mashed potato with mushroom gravy, salad with hard-boiled eggs, tomato and sliced cheese, turmeric fried chicken, and sliced oranges (Happy Chinese New Year of the Tiger, btw!)

Cutting the cake. As always, Abu my brother refuses to smile in the picture. He does this deliberately sometimes. The frown doesn’t necessarily mean he’s upset, he just wants to make a face in the picture.

This is my excuse for being overweight =). Whenever I’m home, there’s such an abundance of wonderfully cooked meals that I find it hard to restrain myself from finishing up leftovers. My family feeds me well =)

Some of the presents. My sisters like to prepare and wrap each present themselves. Plus they always make (and not buy) the birthday card so it has a personal touch that you can never get from a card purchased from the store.

They spelled ‘successful’ wrong. My sister said it was deliberate. Yeah right =D

The symbolic t-shirt. The absent present (oxymoron!) was represented by the mock t-shirt my sister made. The actual t-shirt was left in our apartment in Seri Kembangan.

Mya gave me a personalized t-shirt with my family nickname on it spelt in Korean. Besan (or Abesan) is a portmanteau of the Kelantanese word ‘Abe’ (means big brother) and the last part of my name, ‘San’ (from ‘Ihsan’).

Milah and Shaz gave me a pair of Crocs. Each half of the pair was individually wrapped in two different presents, which meant that they each gave me half a pair =D. I guess in some ways, it meant that I have to use  both their gifts equally and am not able to prefer one over the other… maybe. I thought that was quite amusing =)

Another personalized birthday card made by my sisters, with a two-layer birthday cake and a pair of candles shaped like the number ’27′.

There are presents yet to be received, and those are the ones I am quite excited about!

I am so grateful to my beloved family for the wonderful celebration this year. I have to say this is one of the best that I’ve had in a long time =)

Thanks for all the presents and the well-wishes. I am ninety percent of the way to being thirty. The past three-cubed years have been a journey, and I’m glad I got to share those years with my family and friends, and you guys, my blogreaders.

Thank you for those who’ve been there for me, both in body and in spirit. Those that I haven’t seen for quite a while, do know that I really miss you and would love to have you around. I’ve had nothing but wonderful times with everyone and I hope we get to make more wonderful memories in the coming years.

Here’s to being three to three-oh.

Cheers!

From the article at Mashable:

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I have been using Facebook actively since Fall/Autumn of 2004 (quite early on, I might say) and I have seen almost all the changes in functionality, layout, policies, privacy control, DNS, etc. etc.

The recent layout change is the umpteenth time I’ve seen and I’ve grown indifferent towards all these changes to the look and feel of the site. Whatever it dishes out at me, I accept them and will continue to be an active user regardless. As long as I can keep in touch with my friends and family, and share my stuff with them, that’s all that matters.

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If I can only get one birthday present this year, it would be this:

Nikkor AF-S 35mm f/1.8G

(A short snippet by Peter Tan here)

Seeing as lots of others got their birthday wishes this year, I wonder if I deserve to get mine this time…

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And someone deserves my apology. It seems that I have been quite a nuisance to her. Every essence of my presence seems to have struck her like an unbearable stench. I will stay away now. I’m sorry for having been too much of a bother to your life. Please forgive me for being a thorn in your side all this time.

So many friends and family tying the knot this month. If I were to go to all the weddings I’m invited to, I’d have four or five free buffet lunches every weekend for the whole month.

Just this last week, I went to three out of four friends’ weddings, the one I missed was because the reception was too far away and going there meant that I’d have to miss the other three. Sorry Ayu, I know you had a wonderful time anyways!

Speaking of tying the knot, here I’d like to share with you a (not so) recent photo I took of a knot.

Care to guess what that is?

An electrical cord?

A wire cable?

A fishing line?

Actually, it’s a strand of hair.

A strand of hair, knotted in the middle.

No it’s not my hair, because it’s quite long in its entirety. I found it on a white tiled floor, so I used an off-camera flash and reversed my lens to get a closeup shot of the knot on the hair.

It was my first time getting a closeup shot of a strand of hair, so getting it in focus manually wasn’t that easy. I had to make sure no wind was blowing so that the hair wouldn’t move, so I had to turn the fan off. The room was small and cramped and the windows face east so it was hot without the fan blowing. I only took a few shots until I was satisfied with the results, and then turned the fan on, causing the strand of hair to be blown away and disappear.

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On another note, it feels great to be back to blogging again; I haven’t been blogging for a week and felt so at unease that I had to resume my regular postings today, even though I still have much to do work-wise.

Are you glad that I’m back blogging? I hope you do. Because I’m looking forward to hearing from you all again!

It was a few weeks ago during a family day in Putrajaya that I stumbled upon this peculiar lone mushroom on the ground.

There were no other mushrooms within visual distance.

For a mushroom to be growing here solo, there could be several possibilities: a) One single spore managed to be carried by the wind all the way to this place while the rest were carried elsewhere, b) Neighboring mushrooms were already picked or disposed of, c) The rest of the spores did not manage to grow into a mushroom except this one.

Whatever backstory that the mushroom must have had, it managed to tell me one thing: Life goes on, even when you have to face it all alone.

But, indeed, as a Muslim, I need not fear facing the harsh dealings of this world all alone, for I know when everything else turn their backs on me, I can always turn to Allah for guidance.

I believe in the power of prayers. I have had several answered, both instantly and eventually. And for this I am thankful.

And I believe there are hidden blessings in every thing that most of the time escape our senses and our thoughts.

The lone mushroom did not escape me. It captured me and managed to make me think, and that in itself is another blessing.