Because archives are so much easier than having just hundreds of posts on the home page. I learned that the hard way.
For those interested, my fabulous sister Elke has not only started using Twitter again, but she has started a weblog of her own over on WordPress.com. The embarrasing thing is she’s doing a better job than I am already.
You can find her at http://lettuth.wordpress.com/. The name was inspired by her favourite image from I Can Has Cheezburger. I’ve been told that site has images of cats, or weasels, or other furry animals having serious intellectual discussions.
Solo advertisement on a tram, by Ian Green
My sister Elke refused to buy Solo (an Aussie brand of lemon soft drink) at the supermarket yesterday because she says she hates it. Instead, she chose to purchase a 2 litre bottle of… Lift Lemon?
In related news, oat porridge tastes fantastic, but muesli made from oats and fruit tastes repulsive. You read it here first!
This is an open letter to one of my sister’s friends, typed from a net cafe, and is in fact not related to free and open source software, open standards or something fun and silly.
It’s often said that it’s during times of crisis that people’s true colours shine through, and you learn who your friends really are. When my mum passed on at the end of last year after her epic 12 year battle with cancer, every single one of my friends were supportive, warm, friendly and knew exactly what to say. It didn’t matter if they were in Singapore, posting through Facebook from Australia, or even if I had met them face to face in the US, the UK or the Netherlands. You all know who you are, and you’re all great people for putting up with me through those tough times.
Unfortunately, my sister wasn’t so fortunate. As I posted about a few months ago, instead of supporting her and cutting her some slack during the worst time of her life, many of her friends chose instead to attack her character, calling her in as many words an "attention seeking bitch". Well last night in true soap opera fashion one of her so called "friends" in particular was exposed for continuing to make such remarks, the earliest of which were made less than a month after the disaster happened. When my sister read about this last night, she burst into tears.
Given such circumstances, I thought it would be useful and constructive to post some comments here to voice my concerns and to address some of these cruel, unjust accusations being leveled against my sister.
The Boeing 737-200 is not a widebody commercial jet!
I’ll be the first person to admit I have no idea what would motivate someone to make such cruel, petty comments against a young women going through the toughest time of her life, but I suspect it could be partly explained through several factors including personality, upbringing and experience.
It is true that many of our thoughts and actions result from our own experiences; it’s the reason why we have cliche phrases such as "learning it the hard way". For most people being told that something is wrong, inappropriate or will result in harm to themselves or others is an inadequate, and ineffective, substitute for real life experience.
In the case of my sister’s so-called friend, she has never lost a significant person in her life before. It could be that she is just so confused or unable to imagine what that experience would feel like that she doesn’t know how to react. One would think though that even if such a person didn’t know, she would still have enough empathy, respect and intelligence to at least cut a person going through the experience some slack and provide emotional support rather than backstabbing her.
Upbringing would also no doubt affect a person’s ability to a certain degree to be empathetic and supportive towards someone who has just lost her mother before she turned 20. In this case of this friend, she was raised in a conservative Christian environment. I’ve made no effort to conceal my own Atheism and the reasons why I chose to be (logic, respect for women and the human condition, morals…) but I also know that much of Christian teaching (in its current contemporary interpretation) is about instilling the love of thy neighbour and he who is without sin casting the first stone. Why did this friend find it so difficult to adopt these doctrines towards her friend when she needed her the most? Does she not see the connection or is she unwittingly being a hypocrite?
A South Australian high road!
No, as much as I try to reconcile external influences and reasons for why someone would be so childish during such tough times, I keep coming back to personality. Even if she had been taught that her friend was the devil, even if she could not relate to the loss of a close loved one, I can’t help but think she could have at least tried to be supportive, or at the very least pretending to give a rat’s arse.
We can learn a lot about the reasons why she labelled my sister with such insults by looking at the words themselves. She referred to my sister firstly as an "attention seeker". Could this friend in fact be so childish that she became jealous at the attention my sister was getting from others - attention not bestowed upon herself - that she would accuse her of intentionally stealing her thunder? Could she be so shallow as to assume that my sister in fact didn’t care as much about her mother’s premature death as her social standing?
These are all possibilities. Perhaps though her reasons, personality and character can all be explained by the crude, tacky, uninspired final insult she slung at my sister: "Bitch". One would think that given the circumstances, she could have been a bit more original with her insults too.
So to my sister’s friend, and all those who agreed and sided with her over this abhorrent behaviour, please grow up and start acting your ages. You’re not little kiddies in a playground anymore, you’re in the real world now. Save yourselves.
Oh and by the way…
Big and silly happy birthday wishes going out to my little sister and Rubenerd Show Computer Game Reviewer Elke Schade who turns 19 today. She’s three years younger than me, and somehow more mature… speaking of which I used the most embarrassing photo I could find 
She’s not as cool as those of us born in March, but she wasn’t too far off. We can’t all be perfect I guess 
It’s interesting how some people really don’t like admitting that they have problems, and those same people get angry when other people do admit their problems, especially medical. For some reason they get angry because they think that by admitting problems you’re:
It’s really quite a tragic state of affairs when you know they’ll always be those who will look at you with scorn when you’re trying to cope with problems in your own way.
I’m not one of those people! I’ve just come out of my latest bipolar deep blue funk (sounds much more poetic than "down cycle"!), the first substantial one since my mum died last year. A lot of problems which had been building up since that happened seemed to reach a climax last week, and my brain just went into standby mode. As anyone who has this damning condition knows, there’s really no way to describe it other than to use a string of inadequate words: pain, anger, depression, helplessness… it’s not good whatever it is.
Seems it wasn’t just my MacBook Pro that was having trouble charging this week!
I’m still feeling a bit exhausted, but it’s good to be back to planet earth again. I have to start learning C++ again this next semester, my glorious exploration of Smalltalk, Objective-C and Ruby will have to be put on standby itself. Which is a shame, because I could really use some help with my small talk
Don’t worry, this is not a post about how Our Beloved Yahoo might be being bought by the Evil Empire, I’m at the stage when even I think it’s been done to death already.
It’s been over a month since my beautiful, artistic, cheeky hippy mummy died in her sleep after fighting cancer for over 12 years, and the feelings are still very raw and hard to live with. What I can appreciate though is the overwhelming support from all kinds of people around the world from close friends and family I’ve known since I was a child to my fellow Twitterinos and Rubenerd Show listeners who I’ve never met in person but who make every day that much more fun and enjoyable. The faculty at my university have been extremely supportive and understanding as have my Rubenerd Labs clients. To use the technical sociological terms, all you guy rock!
My poor sister has had somewhat of a different experience. Without going into too many details, most of her polytechnic teachers have been cold and completely devoid of empathy. Some of her so called friends, to put it politely, have repeatedly backstabbed her when she’s been too upset to fulfill obligations, answer calls or meet up. I can’t fathom what they could possibly be feeling or how they can justify such retched treatment.
In any event, as we continue to rebuild our lives I know I speak for all the Schade Trio (catchy name is it not?) when I say thank you to all the fabulous people who have helped us, and screw all of you who have chosen to be arses. Using technical sociological terms again you see :-).
It’s been just under a fortnight now since my sister, dad and I came back from our Sydney trip. Obviously the main reason for going was for mummy’s funeral, but we tried to do other things while we were there too.
I’ve taken stacks of photos and haven’t really organised any of them very well but I’m taking some time tomorrow to filter through them and get some up here and on my Flickr profile. I could shoehorn all of them onto one post, but for your sanity and mine I’ll be splitting them up.
I hate posts without any pictures. Here’s a photo I took of the legendary Oak and Hungry Jacks rest stop sign on the highway between Sydney and Taree.
I’ll also be doing another Rubenerd Show early this week, not sure if I should talk about mum or whether I’ve already said enough here. Either way, I have some cool stories and funny stuff to share, as I hope I always do! Cheers.
On Saturday the 29th of December 2007 some of our closest friends and dear family from all across Australia congregated at Woronora in Sydney, Australia for my mummy’s funeral. It was a beautiful service with lots of flowers, plenty of her favourite music playing and some sweet and heartfelt tributes from Ted and Margaret, my dad Rainer, Sharon, Megan and Lynn.
I can’t think of a single moment in my life where I have cried more or felt so much grief, but I also laughed and remembered all the great times we had together and enjoyed talking to so many people, some of whom I hadn’t seen in over a decade, about mummy and her incredible life.
I’ve already thanked everyone I could see while I was there, but I wanted for the record to make a note of it here. Thank you to everyone who attended, thank you to all the people in my fabulous family for helping to organise the celebration and thank you to all my friends from school and university, to my teachers (well, most of my teachers!) and to everyone here on my website and on Twitter for all your love, help and support during these long, trying 12 years. I couldn’t have done it without you guys.
I love you mummy.
In case you couldn’t make it to the funeral service, you can download the photo and PDF versions of the handout below. Unlike all the other original material in posts on this site, these are not released under a Creative Commons licence; the Schade and Ross families retain all copyrights.
A macchiato of Mac and FreeBSD whatnot by Ruben Schade from sunny Singapore and Adelaide.
