A viral meme that escaped into the wild somehow found its way to Paul Chaney of Strategic Blogging, who passed it on to Mary McKnight of RSS Pieces. From there it split into several strains, two of which attacked me yesterday:

• Douglas Heddings of True Gotham
• Tony and Danilo of Real/diaBlog

What is a meme? It’s an Internet-based “game” in which, if tagged, you reveal five things about yourself that others probably don’t know, after which you tag somebody else.

So, here we go…

1. Though Dutch by ancestry and name, I speak very little Dutch. The only time I lived in the Netherlands was for a year when I was four years old, and apparently I spoke it fluently then (at the expense of English.)
2. I’ve spent about 60% of my life in various African countries: Nigeria, Botswana, and South Africa — the first while growing up (my parents worked for a church organization), and the last two while working after college. I’ve also lived in Amsterdam, Vancouver (B.C.), Grand Rapids (Michigan), New Haven (Connecticut) and, of course, the Bay Area.
3. When I was a teacher in the Peace Corps in a village in Botswana, I once had to carry several hundred exam papers across a usually dry stream bed that had become a waist-deep fast-flowing 300-foot wide river after 10 straight days of torrential rains. Living in a mostly dry climate, few people were willing to brave the river, so the students who lived across the river from the school couldn’t get to the school to take their exams. I felt pretty heroic…until I realized my “bravery” meant the students would actually have to take their exams that day instead of getting the day off.
4. I had many adventures during my time in southern Africa. One of the highlights was Christmas day, 1995, when a friend and I took ultralight flights over Victoria Falls.
5. My main hobby during that time was paragliding, and my most memorable flight was a gentle three hour-long flight back and across the dunes of Wilderness, South Africa. My second most memorable flight was in the same location…it involved landing in the top of a tree — shaken, but not stirred — and spending three hours untangling the lines of my paraglider.

Here’s how the meme got to me:

Drew of Drew’s Marketing Minute

Starbucker

Trevor Gay of Simplicity

Phil of Make it Great

Kammie of Passion Meet’s Purpose

Success from the Nest

Dave of Rothacker Reviews

Andrea Learned of Learned on Women

Ann Handley of the Marketing Profs Daily Fix (MP Daily Fix is one of my very favorite blogs)

Nedra Weinreich, Spare Change

Toby Bloomberg, the Diva Marketer

Paul Chaney, Strategic Blogging

Mary McKnight, RSSPieces

From there it split into two strains, equally virulent:

Strain 1

Mary McKnight

Jim Cronin at the RealEstateTomato

The boys of Sellsius

Teresa Boardman of StPaulRealEstateBlog
CondoDomain

Maureen at miOaklandcounty.com

Ola at Realtio

Tony and Danilo of Real/diaBlog

Me

Strain 2

Mary McKnight

Drew from Zillow

Douglas Heddings of True Gotham

Me

I now pass this double strain on to the following folks:

Mike Simonsen of Altos Research

Pete Flint of Trulia

Glenn Kelman of Redfin (take 2; Mary McKnight memed him, but he may have been too busy…ah, running a company or writing Redfin’s entry for the Yankee Blog Swap

Nigel Swaby of Salt Lake Real Estate Blog

The White African

Oh, and by the way, Merry Christmas Athol!

Tags: Meme, Real estate
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