Rubénerd!

And now for something, completely different.

Forgive me for this post, I haven't written anything like this before!

So I was stressed from assignments. The subjects I have this semester combined have more workload than I had when I was working full time in a corporate office. I'd say almost double, as a conservative estimate. You can tell from the sudden drop off in the frequency of blog posts here!

Clara saw that I was stressed out, so she drew me Yuki and emailed it to me. A few days ago, she gave me the original in a little wooden frame to keep. She's sewn me plushie whales, snow bunnies and birds. She's held my hand, squeezed my arm and given me hugs. She's pretended to find my jokes hilarious! She's written me letters, typed me emails, and commuted from Hornsby to Bardwell Park to see me. She's shared udon with me, and long evening walks. She's gentle with me, loves me and respects me, no strings attached. At times, I wake up and can't believe it.

I can tell she's stressed now too, so I'm posting this here to say what a wonderful, talented, creative, smart, generous, considerate, cute, beautiful person she is. Regardless of whether she believes me or not, I'm the luckiest guy in the world.

I'm so excited to be spending my future with you, Clara. I love you.

@hanezawakirika saw I was stressed lately, so she drew this picture for me. I haven't had much time to blog lately owing to family commitments and other stuff, so I thought what better way to break the radio silence by posting it here for you all to see ^_^.

First, make sure you're proactive about privacy and security by using NoScript and a cookie manager. Head to a Blogger powered site, like this one. Marvel at the blank page! Temporarily allow blogger.com in NoScript. Marvel at the spinning gears... that just don't stop! Spin spin spin!

It's pretty poor form for a company as large as Google to require JavaScript to even load content, but to require a cookie? Madness.

In a related note, @hanezawakirika forwarded me this epic flowchart showing when to require Flash when loading a site. Same principle applies!

With the pressure of exams and courses ending and work and a bitterly cold winter and shops closing early and other such whatnot, it was lovely to spend an evening having dinner with some epic friends to celebrate @hanezawakirika's birthday! Smiling cake!

Para... Para... Parramatta

It'd been a long day for all parties involved on Thursday. The future birthday girl had been slaving at work and getting over another bout of sleep depravation. @maidforclass, @Sashin9001 and I had spent the better part of the day studying frantically for our programming exam on Monday. Writing six Java applications, on paper, without access to the API, and without shorthand, because that's how you do it in industry! @JamieJakov had been packing for an overseas trip, and playing games. Needless to say, we were all exhausted!

As the day wore on, more of us arrived at the Parramattattatta station (named for Rattattattatta, of course). By the evening, the illustrious @Sebasu_tan arrived escorting @hanezawakirika, and together we hit the town looking for a place to eat.

Forgetting that we were in suburban Australia and therefore everything closes at lunchtime (or may as well!), we eventually found our way to the self-described Excellent BBQ Hotpot restaurant across the road from the Parramattattattattattatta Westfieldieldieldieldield.

It's a joke that just doesn't get oldololdoldold! :DDDDD

Having had our chopsticks replaced with spoons (it's what you get for hanging out with angmohs!), we asked for them back then proceeded to order a ton of food and chow down! Crispy chicken, sweet and sour pork, vegetables, some very high quality rice... there was plenty more dishes but I've already forgotten! Even some more traditional Chinese soup which transported me to my 14 year old self back home :'D. @hanezawakirika commented that it tasted authentic, and I would trust her judgement!

The atmosphere was quite amazing too. Along one side of the restaurant were floor to ceiling panels of glass which looked out onto the gloomy street, and reminded us how lucky we were to have found a warm place inside to eat! The walls along the other side were covered in small drawers; I was half tempted to get out of my chair and open each and every one of them to unlock their secrets! Mild OCD, I can assure you ;).

As depicted above (ahem!), when we'd finished the mains, we whipped out the cake we'd bought before for @hanezawakirika, and the staff were kind enough to bring us out some plates and forks. @Sebasu_tan had suggested we eat the cake with chopsticks, though I suspected a great deal of mess would have resulted XD

After we'd eaten, swapped presents and talked long into the night, we said farewell to @Sashin9001 and scuttled back to the train station to get warm again! The trip back was a journey of nostalgia into Pokemon, some Twittering of terrible, terrible puns and general laugher :D

Onto today!

It's technically Kiri's birthday today, so I decided now was as good a time as any to post this, and to remind her how smashingly awesome, friendly and talented she is. She may claim to have trouble relating to people at times, but she's a wonderful friend to all of us, and we wouldn't want her any other way. ^^

She's the modest type, so no doubt she would dismiss such claims, however that doesn't change the fact they're true. So she may as well make her life easier and accept it >:D Surely she wouldn't say no to this face...

While there's still time to say it officially, Happy Birthday! Can't wait for your birthday celebration Part II! Don't you DARE ever stop being epic Kiri! :)

So last night we were Twittering my attempts to eat pizza with chopsticks. I also unabashedly invented the title of UTS Anime Club Moeblob Liaison Officer for myself. Somehow, these two conversations folded into one, and we decided if I were to have a badge it should be of Mugi-chan... eating with chopsticks.

Needless to say, our art director wasted no time sketching up a concept, after I'd already gone to sleep! That she could do that at an ungodly hour of the night and have it look like the character so much it's uncanny only confirms the fact the Anime club voted for the right person for art director. I'm just saying :)

Compared to the horror that was yesterday, today was spent with good friends in one of my favourite places! I'll let the illustrious Sebastian (pictured above) take you through it in detail, but essentially we strolled around the wonderland that is IKEA, shared lunch, cracked jokes and generally had a great time. For someone still coming down from shattered nerves, it was wonderful... well, other than for the sudden floods of course!

Thank you to @Sebasu_tan and @hanezawakirika :)

This site design post is even more fractured than usual, owing to continued sleep deprivation. As such, you shouldn't read it, other than to read the tweets from other people.

The @hanezawakirika observational observation

Something entirely unexpected, from hanezawakirika on Twitter:

hanezawakirika: Though I don't have @Rubenerd 's CSS skill, and I can't find any templates I'm happy with either. I usually edit templates. ==a""

And this when I replied with exclaimed surprise:

hanezawakirika: Well, your blog looks good anyway. :< RT @Rubenerd: I have CSS skills? This is news to me!

This is quite possibly the first time anyone has complimented my CSS skills on Twitter, perhaps ever! Assuming you're not reading this through RSS and are seeing this post on the original site, you can probably see why!

Alas, as owning an easel and some tubes of paint don't make you an artist, my perhaps above-average knowledge of CSS doesn't make me a designer. Still, given my ridiculous workload over the last few days and my ensuing lack of sleep, I appreciated the ego stroking XD.

Now we just need a certain person to start blogging again themselves. Imajustsaying.

The @Sebasu_tan conspiracy

For those who either don't remember or have the attention span of an Antarctic Newt (wait, are there newts in Antarctica? What about Gingriches?), last week I blogged about A Lonely September, the blog site of our close friend Sebastian from the UTS Anime club. I lamented the fact fewer people seem to be blogging now, and celebrated the fact he was bucking the trend. Like the proud Antarctic Newt.

Despite this glowing endorsement however, Seb was quick to mess with our minds. No sooner had I blogged about his blog (yo dawg, I heard you like...) than he changed his site theme. He timed it eerily well, leading me to believe he has hidden cameras installed in my place of residence, or has access to my MySQL tables and was able to see my draft posts. Is it weird to admit I'd be more terrified of the latter?

But I digress. To further mess with our minds, Seb claims to have changed his blog theme again.

Sebasu_tan: Changed blog layout... AGAIN. We'll see how I feel about this one in the coming days...

And now, in the time it took me to quote that tweet, he's announced that he may scrap all these changes and move back to TwentyTen:

Sebasu_tan: I'm tempted to go back to twentyten, to be honest... >.>

We'll be following this story as it develops.

Admittedly my cooking is acceptable, though not fantastic. That said, I do love baking bread, and @hanezawakirika shared a recipe for a so-called Soft Sweet Pretzels that looks like something I'll have to try!

Top egg-washed pretzels with coarse sanding sugar before baking, or ice cooled pretzels with fondant icing.

Their sourdough also looks amazing.

I'm just ashamed that as someone with a German father, I'd never heard of sweet pretzels before! Das ist sehr nicht gut!