Rubénerd!

For the first couple of years since we lost mummy on Yule Eve-Eve, the 25th of December was a pretty sombre affair. Last year was bittersweet.

This year, for the first time, I felt as though Yuletide joy was with us again. My dad, sister and I sat around and exchanged presents to an awful vinyl record of 1980s pop stars butchering holiday classics, then had a nice late breakfast (Schade family savoury French Toast!); talked and joked for hours about life, the universe and everything; played some traditional Nintento Wii bowling; and chowed down on an amazing home cooked turkey dinner made in the way only my parents know how.

Along with a can of original, imported Irn-Bru and a registration code for OmniFocus (YES!), my sister and old man also bought me a MacBook Air which should be arriving on the 31st. Speechless!

A few days prior, over some coffee, tea and cuddles at a lovely French cafe in Sydney, my beautiful girlfriend Clara gave me some of the most thoughtful presents ever. She is responsible for practically my entire nendoroid collection at this stage, and to have one of Nagato Yuki from the enduring Suzumiya Haruhi franchise is particularly apt ^^. I'd argue she's cuter than Yuki though.

Above all else though, as with my family on the day itself, the best present I could have ever wished for was her company. I hope to share in that with her for many years to come :'). Happy belated holidays!

Al Lewis of Market Watch discussing the alleged stupidity of holiday presents:

But there are some economic inefficiencies to gift cards too. Among them: About 10% of gift-card value is never claimed, Waldfogel wrote, and retailers can’t book the unclaimed cards as revenues for years.

Yeah, people buying slivers of plastic for $50 and not redeeming them must be a real financial burden.

We swapped gifts, had a turkey roast and freshly made fruit cake, played Wii games, flew a RC helicopter to scare the dogs courtesy of the illustrious @omegatron, built Lego, then took a long family walk in the park. The first real home Yule we've had since my mum moved on, and it was absolutely wonderful :).

My old man and I decided to call it Yule given our German heritage, because the holiday was originally a winter festival before it was adapted, and because "solstice" isn't entirely accurate. We're precise scientific folk, you see!

@dHeinemann: My Christmas present from my sister. Now I can join @rubenerd with Haruhi figurines on my desk. :D pic.twitter.com/U4Zl6djs

I am honoured to be in this exclusive club with you good sir! And thank you for the Christmas donation too, Merry Christmas :).

This could very well be the greatest idea of all time: a Star Trek Voyager Christmas ornament! Not only does it look spiffy, but it can be lit up from the inside by plugging it into any standard standard string of incandescent Christmas lights!

I can already hear Tuvok telling me it would be illogical to get one of these.

Yeah you should see Polythene Pine...

I don't remember exactly when, but at some point in the early 1990s my sister and I were helping my mum and dad decorate our Christmas tree. We were so little we could barely reach half the branches, but my dad would lift us up onto his shoulders so we could reach the top. As the professional artist in the family my mum would stand behind us judging our performance and telling us where to put things, and my dad would scuttle around the base of the tree to help us get to where she wanted. The tree was so massive it lit the room at night with a warm glow, and allowed plenty of space for presents underneath!

As I'm sure is the case with many Western families, decorating the tree was always a family tradition for us that we all looked forward to almost as much as Christmas itself. Even as my mum started her decade and a half long chemotherapy treatment, she'd still make it to the loungeroom in early December to help out, even if all she could do was sit in a chair and observe. It was unspoken, but we were celebrating the fact she was still with us for another Christmas as much as we were celebrating the holiday itself.

A few days before Christmas in 2007, she left us peacefully in her sleep. We kept the tree up that year, but we never had them again.

That would be a great Beatles song

Four years later, and we decided we were finally ready to have another tree. Again. Maybe. So we navigated the family sleigh to Big W, a reputable organisation selling plastic trees from sustainable petrochemical plantations, and bought a modest but lovely 1.8m pine.

Over the course of the afternoon, we unpacked the decorations we'd left in storage for years, and decorated the tree to the same cheesy Bing Crosby music and the same doggies looking inquisitively at us. Surprisingly, we were in good spirits for most of the time, and the tree turned out wonderfully. If she couldn't be there with us, at least we were using the decorations she largely chose and bought for us over the years, and we were thinking of her the whole time.

For you mummy. Merry Christmas, and stop mocking the way I'm dancing to Dean Martin. <3 *hugs*

It's a cruel irony that my close friend Jerry Novak lost his wife and I lost my mum and best friend to cancer around Christmas, as I'm sure many others have. My family isn't religious but we always had massive trees, big Christmas lunches and swapped masses of prezzies while we listened to Tony Bennett and Bing Crosby carol CDs. Even decorating the tree was a huge event we all looked forward to, and in the last 12 years even though she wasn't physically strong enough to join in we purposefully rearranged my mum's chemo treatments so she could sit there and watch.

My dad, sister and I haven't unpacked the decorations since and don't celebrate Christmas any more, for obvious reasons. To all of you who are though, have safe and happy holidays, and to my friends in Europe and the US I hope you're somewhere warm.

Peace, health and happiness,
~ Ruben

The back in Adelaide reminiscing episode!

Back in Adelaide again; losing control of RubenerdShow.com for some reason; losing an episode source file again; a silly proposal for an onomatopoeic word to describe places; reminiscing about family trips to Ubud in Bali; our end of year holiday to Singapore; food poisoning isn't as fun as the brochure said; our new family Christmas holiday ritual; story behind my beautiful shiny new Nikon D60 instead of getting a D40 or D40x; remembering I'm supposed to be keeping episodes under 20 minutes; and a lousy joke about wishing I had Nikon VR on my person!

Download MP3 to listen 20:55 9.6MiB

You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.

The sporadic memories and bottled water episode!

You've joined me at a tremendously exciting moment; unabashedly ripping off IntoYourHead; microwaving coffee after I said you shouldn't; Family Guy; Germans can make better Christmas food than the French; family trip to Europe in 1998; asking for the bathroom with sign language; Frankfurt am Main; time speeding up as you get older; Melbourne since 1990; remembering primary school; flag carriers and whatnot; Tom Keene talking about ridiculously expensive bottled water with David Zetland on Bloomberg on the Economy; the political compass thingy; and a Paul Shaffer smoke alarm!

UPDATE: The date for this episode has been fixed to show 2009 instead of 2008 after I received a smartarse comment ;-)

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 21:00 9.8MiB

You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.

Taken outside my bedroom window here in Singapore before I ventured out for a coffee this evening.

Good evening ladies, gentleman and everyone else. It is a positively gorgeous warm evening outside here in Singapore; it has been overcast all day so the temperature is a pleasant 25 instead of being much warmer, plus I love overcast days anyway. I never really knew why I did prefer them, perhaps growing up in the tropics made me appreciate the lower glare and temperatures clouds bring.

I'm going to make more than a few people scoff by saying this, but I'm drinking a Toffee Nut Latte at the Starbucks down in the Orchard Parade Hotel, just across the street from Forum for those who don't know. Aka the building with the sun logo and the giant Toys R Us or however you spell that. Singaporean shops tend to leave their Christmas decorations and whatnot up quite late, sometimes even into the new year. Chinese New Year of course is the biggest event of the year here.

ASIDE: I've always wondered why companies targeting kids always have to spell their name incorrectly on purpose in a vein attempt to look juvenile or young. I've also always wondered what kind of effect these brands have on the abilities of kids to spell properly if every box they get a toy in has words spelled incorrectly.

This whole Christmas season knocked more wind out of my sails than I thought it would given my beautiful late mum's passing around the same time. It's a cruel coincidence that we associate what is normally a happy family time of year with my mum's short life, though I guess in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't make much difference when she left us.

Onto happier topics though, I did get three amazing Christmas presents from my dad this year which just like a little kid I can't wait to talk about here and on the Rubenerd Show. Given the above reason I've found it really difficult to maintain the jovial attitude I wait to have before I write blog posts recently, but I'm hoping that topic (aka presents!) will be a great ice breaker.

For my Malaysian friends, I'll be flying to KL (Kuala Lumpur for those of you not from here!) on Thursday of this week so if you want to meet up for a coffee and chat I'd love to catch up. KL is so ridiculously close to Singapore I regret not going there more!

Anyway it's almost midnight and the Starbucks staff have started shuffling chairs around, my cue to go perhaps?

Enjoy the rest of your 2008 folks :)

Sent from my iPhone