Auction phase of The Nerdies 2010 has started.

Dirtbin Lingo – I miss it.

One of the reasons I love my mate ExMi is because she’s a Durbanite at heart, like me.  Although we’ve both settled into Hoburg life, our roots will forever remain that which is humid.

Whenever I go to the coast I pick up the lingo within a split second of being around my homies, this is something I noticed over my holiday in December.  Some of the things I have had to explain to Jon go as follows:

Rash: Stop rashin’ me, bru. <- you happen to be irritating the bejesus out of me.  Halt.

Tjoon: I’m gonna tjoon him when I see him ‘gen <- The next time he is in my company, I’ll let him know how I feel, vehemently.

China: She’s my china, vatachillpill. <- I consider her a close and personal friend.  Don’t concern yourself over this, I’ll sort it out.

Watfor: Yus, bru I gave them watfor! <- My friend, I gave them a very strong talking to, promise.

Oath! <- you may trust me with your life, I’m telling the utmost truth about this.

Can you think of any I’ve left out?

A Call to South African Bloggers…

Just wanted to ask: why are so few of the bloggers getting involved in this years Nerdies Awards?  It’s gone crazy over Twitter but I’m not seeing much response from the bloggers.  Come on, choplets – go out there and campaign!  Nomnom phase closes tomorrow afternoon!

Click here for more info.

Smooches!

The Journey.

It’s been a bit of a journey, hasn’t it?  I decided last year while living in Glenwood with my awesome friend Cath, that this whole tweeting and blogging thing was too fun to do all the time without getting paid.  The only problem was that in Durban, the market just wasn’t big or futuristic enough to see that I should’ve been employed & deployed into the industry, to tweet my way to into the hearts of brand, company & business lovers.

Starting NerdMag was my first step in the right direction.  It got me noticed enough in the industry for people to realize that this was something I am passionate about and determined to do professionally.  I love the art of wording things to a bunch of people in an educating yet informal way – just enough to get people interested about the brand and what I have to say.  And so my move to Hoburg happened, along with the beginning of a career hunt of tremendous proportions.  You see, I didn’t want to just land up writing out menus for a food magazine, or just tweeting about competitions for one company either.  I wanted it all.  I wanted to conceptualise, envision & make an impact, through all forms of Social Media.  Most of all, I wanted to write.  And creatively at that.

And so started the interviews.  The 27Dinners.  The TweetUp’s.  The networking.  The nagging of everyone I’d been lucky enough to encounter whilst getting pickled at the social gatherings of the geeks.  I spoke to a few heads of departments, a few MD’s, a few recruitment agencies.  I trolled BizCommunity and furiously applied for any job that was remotely similar to what I wanted.  I went for a million interviews.  I even got offered a few positions, but a few of them had the missing X factor and none of them were what I wanted.

All through this I was still helping out at Submarine, doing Project Management, Content Editing & Research.  I loved my job with the Submarine team, but due to the MD taking a job with another company, it was drawing to a close and my contract was expiring shortly.  Stressed out to the max, all I could do was hope.  I knew what I wanted, and short of selling my body on the streets before someone woke up and realized they wanted me back, I refused to accept anything that wasn’t in “my” industry.

In comes Aqua Online.  This agency has it all.  They do the digital, creative & exciting accounts.  They have big names that I’ve probably only dreamed of working on.  It took three call-back interviews, a trazillion emails back and forth, a couple of phone calls.  They have an opportunity for me to get paid doing what I love.  They have an acceptance letter sitting on their desk, after the position of Social Media & Copywriter was offered to me yesterday.  I’m so happy and so enormously excited to be working with this crazy bunch of people.

In celebration, I have a strawberry cheesecake sitting on my desk being devoured by the Submarine girls, all of us randomly shouting “Sheena found her dream job! Yaaaaaay!” and I sit back and remember.  I remember the days when all I was, was a girl monitor tanning at her desk churning out words and chatting on Twitter.  I remember the first day I ever blogged or heard of FaceBook.  I remember when someone once told me to get onto Twitter.  I remember falling in love with the wonder of it all, and I remember that so much has changed since then.  I remember that all my real life friends said that I was wasting time & not living my life.  I remember when Cath and I moved in together and she looked at me one night while I was surrounded by my laptop, Social Media articles spread out around me and she said “I get it.  I wish they did too.  Have patience”.  Well, the patience paid off.  I can finally say I’ve cracked the nod and my career is about to embark on a journey of self discovery, experience & opportunity.  I’ve found my dream career and it starts on February 15th.

I want to thank everyone who along the way has taught me, guided me and listened to me whine about wanting to do this thing professionally and not just for myself.  I want to scream with sheer amazement that I, me – the girl who tries, tries & moves onto something else stuck this out & made it happen.

I want to tell you that I can’t wait to get stuck in.

The Nerdies 2010 Are Officially Open!

HERE WE GO! Please say hello to the launch of The Nerdies 2010 – nomnoms now open! http://bit.ly/5u6uyk GO WILD!

Posted via email from if these (posterous) walls could talk…

TheNerdies10

Is South Africa Taking Over The World?

It hit me like a blinding flash of brilliant light in my retina on the way to work this morning, while 5fm played the new unofficial FIFA 2010 Soccer Song called Hello Africa, which is awesomely mixed between Rasta & Funk.  South Africa is conspiring to take over the world.

On Wednesday night as Jon and I lay in bed we watched an illegal copy a “friends” copy of 2012 and at the end [spoiler alert] the whole of humanity was saved as the Arks sailed to a tiny little place called (in a very thick American accent) “The Drackensborg, Kwo Zooloo Notal“.  Jon and I had a huge kick out of that and chuckled quietly to ourselves.  South Africa saves the day!

But that’s not all.  What about Sharlto Copley?  You know – The Sweetie Man from District 9.  God I loved him and the way he screamed “Fokken prawns!” throughout that movie – he instantly became my new life hero.  Well, now the dude is set to become Murdock in The A-team.  Awesome!

Winnie Mandela’s movie is going to be a hit apparently, and then of course there’s also Invictus – who is starred by Matt Damon & Morgan Freeman.  It’s all just a big cover I think – because not only is South Africa rocking Hollywood [Charlize Theron aside] but now we’re hosting FIFA 2010 too.

I’m telling you, okes, we’re headed for big things.  Even America is copying us now what with having a black president and all.  The rest of the world is just a big fat wannabe.

Needless to say, this makes me very proud and excited to be a South African.  I can feel it in my bones, and it makes me smile.  We’ve overcome so much – and our heritage is finally paying off.

Is South Africa taking over the world?  I really think so.

The Nerdies 2010

Hi! I’ve written a bit about The Nerdies 2010 on NerdMag.  Please hop on over there to read it and see if you can help in anyway:

http://moralfibre.co.za/nerdmag/2010/01/20/the-nerdies-2010/#comment-1229

Comments are welcome!

Jon, backwards.

It was unsaidedly* agreed upon that neither of us do love letters and once when you asked for one, I told you I’d go if you went first.  This made us both cringe and laugh at the same time.  But now, I’m changing my mind.

You see, the thing is, I don’t think you really get how much you get me.  Or how much you have me.  In the random Saturday afternoon naps, when you nap and I don’t, or the late night Friday nights when you sleep and I don’t, I listen to you breathing next to me and I’m at peace.

I’m at peace with the way you accept me, for nothing less than who I am.  And I love the way you can laugh with and at me, but never make me feel any more silly than I already am.

I’m so happy you’ve let me in.  To your home, your heart and your life.  And even though we fight nice, we’re nice nice too – as infuriating as it might be to all our friends, I love that we make other people want to vomit.

Yeah, I’m still pissed that you turned me into a soft and mushy girl when all I’ve ever been was a non-mushy, no nonsense non-girl, but I kind of like who I am when I’m around you.

It’s pretty cool that I get to hang out with you whenever we have a spare moment, and that mostly you WANT me to.

Also, I love that you have agreed to PVR Grey’s for me when I’m not around and that you sat watching Idols with me on Sunday, even though you hate it but couldn’t resist why I was laughing so much at all the auditions.

Mostly, thank you for your unending support, encouragement and the opportunity to fall utterly in love and in like.

You can stay, Noj**.

* I totally just made that word up right now.

** Jon, backwards.