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Me meme-meme’d

Kevin Boer, Broker Owner, 3 Oceans Real Estate, Inc. ()

December 20th, 2006 · 7 Comments

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:

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,
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Tags: Meme · Real estate

7 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Altos Research Real Estate Insights // Dec 20, 2006 at 10:57 pm

    Escher as Marketer, Tag I’m it…

    The blogosphere is packed with self-referential commentary. Bloggers-on-blogging, conversing about the conversation, that sort of thing. I look to the topic as an entertaining lesson in effective marketing. The Escher staircase tumbles across my desk…

  • 2 Pete Flint // Dec 21, 2006 at 7:51 am

    Hey Kevin,

    I’m traveling right now and wont be able to get this for a bit. Not sure if the meme will have had it’s moment when I have a chance to write my list of 5.
    Thanks anyway for passing it on to me.
    Happy holidays!
    Pete Flint
    Trulia.com

  • 3 teresa boardman // Dec 21, 2006 at 5:28 pm

    Your meme tracking is broken. Maureen was tagged by the condo domain, because I tagged Anthony, because I was tagged by Sellsius. It is amazing how fast it spreads and where it spreads. I was tagged on Saturday, a non-blogging day for me but decided to respond. Africa? Dutch? who knew? :)

  • 4 Kevin Boer, Three Oceans Real Estate // Dec 21, 2006 at 6:27 pm

    Hi Teresa,

    Whoops! Sorry about that. I’ll make the correction. This thing has indeed spread very fast.

  • 5 Joel Burslem // Dec 22, 2006 at 9:14 am

    Vancouver, huh?

    When did you live there Kevin? I’m a Vancouver guy, born and raised.

  • 6 White African :: where africa and technology collide » Blog Archive » The Meme Attack: 5 Strange Things // Dec 22, 2006 at 4:53 pm

    [...] Max and Kevin recently tagged me with the “5 Strange/Interesting Things About You” meme. I actually haven’t ever participated in one of these before, but thought it might be fun to try. Maybe I’ll give myself a limit of 1 per year. [...]

  • 7 the Property Monger » meme…ME?!?!?! Awwww crud // Dec 24, 2006 at 2:16 pm

    [...] Kevin Boer at 3 Oceans Real Estate [...]

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