Rubenerd

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

So I decided to overhaul my business card vanity site. Checking my ClaimID links and metadata:

Thank you!

After 7 years, 6 months, and 20 days of service, ClaimID has ceased operations. It was our pleasure to help hundreds of thousands of people manage their online identities, and we thank you for your support!

So much for trying not to say goodbye as much this year. I’m just thankful for my skepticism of OpenID in the first place.

In what has become an annual tradition around new year, I post a Wordle of the previous year's posts. A thoroughly unscientific attempt at data mining my own stuff, but fun nonetheless!

At least according to the headings, I continued to talk a lot about anime in 2013. More surprising still, I seem to have spent a long time saying goodbye and happy birthday. Here's hoping 2014 will have more of the latter, and less of the former.

Previous Rubenerd Wordles:
2012,
2011,
2010,
2009 and
2008.

I'm not entirely sure how true it is, but the legend goes that Sydney is one of the first “large” cities (whatever that means) to get New Years. Images of the Sydney Harbour Bridge erupting in fireworks are broadcast around the world while sleepyheads in later timezones are only just waking up for New Years Eve.

I've been back in Sydney for a few years now, and have done the firework thing. One year, I went with my old man to Circular Quay and watched from a relatively poor vantage space. Last year, I stood on Vadim's apartment roof with friends and watched the harbour from there. It was very pretty.

This year, I felt as though I'd ticked off “See Sydney Harbour Fireworks” from my list. While fun, being shoved into a mass of drunken people staggering towards Central in the CBD afterwards is somewhat less so. To each their own, but I had little motivation to do it again.

After a day of watching some Hong Kong cinema and playing Wii, Clara and Seb joined me on a train towards Chatswood. We eagerly watched our smartphones tick down to midnight, then filled the otherwise empty train carriage with Happy New Year! cheer and tweets.

And you know what? It was great! If you're a quiet person, there's no reason you can't celebrate New Years—or any other obligatory Western tradition—with close friends in your own style.

Peace, health, sillyness and happiness for the new year to you all.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Singapore and Hong Kong~ Why must I want to live in two of the world’s most expensive cities?

That said, both are cheaper than Sydney!

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Uh oh!

During a classic South Park episode, Cartman dresses smartly to impress Kyle. When Kyle retorts "that's not being nice, that's just putting on a nice sweater" Cartman replies that he doesn't know the difference. "I know you don't", Kyle says.

We can claim whatever we like about ourselves. We can claim to be fantastic bloggers, or inventive, or impartial. Our peers judge the validity of our assertions by assessing our actions. "Ruben claimed he's a fantastic blogger, but Rubenerd.com is absolutely terrible!"

Make false claims about yourself repeatedly, and you lose credibility.

Niceness is one such judgeable (judgeable?) trait. It doesn't matter if your social network profile has a unicode peace sign, or if you append every sentence with a smilie. If enough people feel slighted or burned by your remarks, you'll develop a reputation contrary to what you claim about yourself.

@FakeTwitterUser☮:
"Just got off the phone with some fanboy. What a tool! :-)"

Fortunately, there's good news. If you're nice, people in your circle won't need you to tell them.

Going through my archives, I found this post written from an O'Briens Sandwich Bar in Singapore. My dad and I had taken shelter in their Jelita branch after a particuarly nasty monsoon swept across the island, and we were more than a little fearful about driving on the increasily river–like road near Ulu Pandan. Another blog post from that time has some pretty unbelievable photos from that event.

When I went back to Singapore in 2011, that branch had long since closed shop and moved on. In fact, much of the Jelita shopping centre looked completely different. I can still recall having birthday parties in the Pizza Hut upstairs. Sometimes after school, we'd get a cool drink at the 7-11, back when the Australian International School had its campus nearby. Then they moved the school again to Lorong Chuan, which we dubbed the biggest traffic island in Singapore.

Last year, a bunch of us from Anime@UTS found ourselves at North Strathfield. Craving a bite to eat, we found an O'Briens Irish Sandwich bar, and proceeded to chow down. Despite being thousands of kilometres away, it tasted so good, and surprisingly familiar.

I'll admit, part of me loves globalisation just because I can relive some childhood memories in a completely different part of the world. Even locally, if a branch of a store meant a lot to you, you can always go to another if the original closes shop. Sure, its not entirely the same, but nothing ever would be.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Ping Tab Closed; Didn’t Read.

During those dark hours when trolls, pedants and trolling pedants are throwing mud as they are wont to do, I remember this Michael Franks song and go about my day.

When you meet… someone who inspires your worst angry voice
Just retreat… happiness is always a much better choice
Why chagrin? If you’re insisting on the last word, it’s quite over-rated
Like our mothers taught: Unkind words we just ought not to

Hey, everything you’re saying is so contra-bliss
Okay, I think I can see where you’re going with this
True, We have had our differences there all along
But who, Who of us can say he has never been wrong?

Like the sky, this is all shadows and light
I guess I would rather be happy than right

Every day life is like a mixture of sugar and sand
On the way we are given lessons we misunderstand
If I fail
To no avail
Still I always try to be
Like the wise ant who
Takes the sugar home
And just leaves the sand alone