fields of maiZe in the morning

A lot can happen in a year, and this past year has definitely been filled with unexpected surprises. It’s amazing that today marks International Wota’s 2nd anniversary. So first and foremost, I want to say HAPPY CAKE DAY IW!!! <3

For this special occassion, my brother, johpan (of boylikesmusic), and I baked a special cake for IW.

Please take note of the ridiculously long message on our cake. Last year, on Ray’s cake day announcement post, he called bloggers to celebrate the day by taking a picture of some backed good and putting a message on it for IW. The particular example he gave for the message was “Happy Birthday International Wota and Many Happy Returns In The Blogosphere For Years And Years To Come”. Last year, johpan and I also made a cake, and my goal from the moment I read Ray’s message was to get that message on my Cake Day cake…. Except, as you can see from last year’s cake, I failed in my mission – though I partially blame that on johpan for using the wrong pan to bake the cake in.

Anyway, this year, while not exactly the same message Ray suggested (I had to cut out a few of the words to get it to fit on the cake), I got the main gist of his message – and highlighted the ridiculous length (it took me 45 minutes to write out that message… It hurt my back leaning over the cake for so long, and my hand ’cause that evil icing tube didn’t want to share the icing).

Last year on this day, I was a fledgling IW contributor, having been on the IW staff for a mere 7 days (I did my first write up on March 11). At that time, the IW staff was still fairly small, consisting of about 10 people, of whom only 3 were consistently writing up posts. I joined the group with a load of enthusiasm and quickly became a regular contributor.

Now, a year later, IW has more than doubled its staff (we currently stand at about 22 staff members – you figure out the “about”…) with around 10 regular contributors writing up posts. And I somehow got myself promoted up to an admin position, which I currently share with my partner in crime, pengie of unchained. In addition to the staff growth, the number of blogs covered by IW continues to… well, if not grow, at least turn over at a regular rate. The current IW opml has approximately 250 blogs, and that’s after a fairly recent clean up, so the majority of those are currently active blogs that the staff all try and keep up to date with.

It’s great to see the community continue to grow and it’s an aboslute pleasure to work with all of the staff of IW. Please feel free to drop by IW’s offical chatroom (see the #wotachat link in the Aya sidebar) and celebrate cake day with us (or drop by anytime, really XD… There are lots of bloggers and Jpop fans to chat with). Almost all of IW’s editors and many contributors are usually in wotachat at some point during the day, and I’m sure they’ll be around at various times today in celebration of cake day!

To end off this celebratory cake day post, I just wanted to share photos of the “Making Of” maiZe and johpan’s IW Cake Day cake… It makes me feel like I’m in H!P. XD Please note that in one photo, one of the blender’s beaters is covered in cake batter… That was johpan’s fault for ejecting the beaters, but only catching one of them. The other one decided to take a swim in the batter. XD

HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY INTERNATIONAL WOTA!!! <3 Here’s to another great year as we move forward towards IW Cake Day Episode 3.