Just some interesting stats on the cruise liner. Via Wikipedia:

The Queen Mary 2 has:

• fifteen restaurants and bars
• five swimming pools
• a casino
• a ballroom
• 1000+ seat theatre
• capacity for 3,056 passengers and 1,253 officers and crew
• and weighs a massive 148,528 tons!

It’s not the largest ship on the seas, with the MS Oasis of the Seas currently holding those honours.

More pics after the jump.

See more pics of the Queen Mary 2 on my Flickr stream.

So apart from the buzz and excitement we experienced in Long Street during the 2010 World Cup Draw, we booked ourselves into the Protea Hotel Victoria Junction, just around the corner from the V&A Waterfront. I’ve stayed at a number of hotels, but I’ve never had the feeling like I was family at a hotel! Somehow, they got wind of it being my anniversary (how, I don’t know) and proceeded to decorate our loft bedroom with candles, rose petals, Lindt chocolates and balloons.

If that was not enough, they printed pics of the 2 of us (found on my Flickr photostream I guess), and put them in the room, read my blog to find out I am a massive Ferrari fan and bought me a small replica Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa with a magazine, and bought my wife a Cosmopolitan mag. Along with that, there was a bottle of champagne and a strawberries and chocolate platter that had Happy Anniversary written in chocolate on it.

The handwritten card they left for us said the following:

Dear Jason and Karina

Welcome to the Protea Hotel Victoria Junction! We are honoured to have you with us!

We’ll try steer clear of any weird vegetables and keep them as far away from you as possible! Apart from that we hope you have a fabulous time with us!

Regards Pieter and Team VJ

P.S. Chelsea vs Manchester City, Sat 19:30, Supersport 3. Biltong and beer from room service!

For those that know us, I’m not a big vegetable eater and we are both massive Chelsea fans – they really found out as much as they could about us and personalised the entire experience.

Dinner at their Moulin Rouge restaurant on the Saturday evening was just as special. We had a complimentary bottle of wine (which we swapped for our favourite JC le Roux Rose champagne), and another amazing chocolate mouse dessert platter (also with “Happy Anniversary” written on it) sent to our room after our meal – the soccer was about to start, and didn’t want to miss it!

So, what was going to be an ordinary hotel experience, turned out to be extraordinary! I’ve never had much of an affiliation with any hotel chain, but I’ll definitely be looking out for the nearest Protea Hotel if and when I need a place to stay.

So a big thanks to Protea Hotels and all the staff at the Victoria Junction. I’ll definitely be back soon!

The view from our hotel room at the Protea Hotel, Victoria Junction

As always, a small disclaimer: I won the 2 night stay in a Twitter competition about 6 months ago and was never asked to blog about it. The rest, was completely of their own initiative.

Please note that these pics are not mine. :) If they are infringing on copyright, I’ll remove them.

The biggest highlight for most of us was Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Wordpress, coming out to South Africa to speak and mingle with us bloggers. As part of Younique, we somehow managed to organise a pretty smooth running event, and over the past few days I have had the privilege to spend some really quality time with Matt. He really is the most humble and down to earth online personality I have met.

Sunday, a couple of us headed off to the Stormhoek farm where Graham Knox braaied us some awesome steaks and veggies, not to mention the number of different bottles of wine he whipped out for us to try. It’s these type of relaxed, chilled environments out in mountains, where you can really get to know people. Matt shared with us a number of really interesting stories, upcoming projects and personal things, that I’ll never blog about, nor tell anyone, but they just made me realise how genuine an “oke” he really is. (Matt thought it was strange how we called everyone “okes” here in SA. Hehe)

Back to the event – Tyler and I learnt tons about organising Wordcamp. One thing is for sure, it’s a lot of work! There are a ton of things we will improve on for next years event, so expect an even bigger and better Wordcamp SA next year around!

I have to say a big up to Henk from Skyrove – he really made sure everyone at Wordcamp was sorted with Wifi – even bringing in a 2nd hotspot after we managed to bring down the 1st one!

Secondly to Matt and Warwick for coming out from the US to attend and speak at Wordcamp – I learnt a great deal from your talks. Not only was it great to hear you talk, but to also spend time with you guys after Wordcamp.

Check out my Wordcamp SA wrap up video on Zoopy that I created just after Wordcamp. See you all next year!

Wordcamp on Zoopy

Check out the custom channel of Wordcamp SA on Zoopy that Mark from Yellow Llama designed, and check out the uploaded photos and videos of the event.

Twitter

How about all the tweets that are flying around? Check out anything tagged with #wordcampsa

More to follow…

Younique

As I said, things have been a little slow as I’ve mostly been trying to find my feet as this is the first time I have been boss-less, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy! Younique is hosting Wordcamp SA on the 23rd of August, and I have been super busy organising the venue, sponsors and all the bits and pieces that a conference needs.

Along with Wordcamp, there have also been a hive of activity up at Younique’s headquarters with a couple of new projects / clients jumping on board, new offices and Project Wolf. :-)

As I’ve said before, when one door closes, another one opens, and that happened this week. I got some bad news about a project that fell through, but the very next morning, I had an email come in from a huge client that I have been chasing for the past couple of weeks. If all goes to plan, it will be my first client that I will bring Younique. So hold thumbs for that!

Events

Tuesday evening saw Vincent Maher call an impromptu bloggers meetup at the Long Street Cafe which was really cool. I had dinner with Vince before the event, and I offered him a position as my intern, which he seemed keen to take up, but wasn’t impressed that he would be working under such an old guy – Tyler. His loss I say.

Quirk

And lastly, I finally met the legendary ginga, Rob Stokes today. I somehow managed to smangle a copy of the eMarketing textbook (signed limited edition nogal!) from him on Twitter, and in exchange, had some valuable feedback on Brandseye for bloggers, which Tim and Craig appreciated (I hope!).

So, with all this happening, I’m off to an engagement encounter this entire weekend, so will have total internetlessness. :( But it does feel like the first step towards getting married! So bravo to that!

Go and register here: http://www.wordcamp.co.za/wp-login.php?action=register

There are going to be some really awesome speakers, as well as full media coverage from Zoopy.com and the Mail & Guardian. The event is being held at The Wild Fig in Observatory, Cape Town. We have the entire restaurant to ourselves, so there will be plenty of place for everyone.

I hope to see you there!

I was slightly disappointed in the 3 players they brought to the store – Michael Carrick, Ben Foster and Lee Martin. I think they could’ve included the likes of Rooney, Ferdinand, Giggs, Scholes or the likes instead of either Foster or Martin, but from what I heard, every 20 minutes the lineup of players changed, and I have a feeling Nike didn’t really have much control over it.

That being said, the biggest highlight was seeing the Champions League and English Premier League trophies. I asked Nike’s event manager if they were replicas and she said they were the real deal. How awesome is that!

I was lucky to get in and even get a postcard signed, as you had to buy a Man U shirt that got you a VIP card. They only had 300 VIP cards, so my Fiancé pulled some strings and we both got in. It really was quite an event as there were hundreds of fans outside just wanting to get a glimpse of the players.

6 degrees of separation

So in my quest to get closer to someday watching Chelsea and meeting some of my teams players, I had to go over after the event and shake the United players hands and thank them for coming out. So I’m now effectively 1 handshake away from John Terry, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole and the likes. :-)

Check out my Flickr stream for more photos of the event!

I have been chatting to Tyler Reed for the past couple of months (first started on Twitter), and after working on a few small projects with him, I asked why don’t I start up Younique’s presence in Cape Town? Well that is officially happening from the 1st of August. Perfect timing as Younique also turned 1 on Thursday!

I’m really excited about some of the things Younique has in the pipeline and where we are heading. Tyler is too modest to talk about some of the things we have been working on, so expect me to break the news and “brag” about what we doing. :)

Not only am I changing where I will be working, but also the direction. I’ve been really try to get myself emerged in social media, web 2.0 and the mobile development scene, and by joining Younique, its exactly where I want to be. So enough talking the talk like I do on Twitter, its time to walk the talk.

Exciting times!

From imod:

A big thumbs up to the following sponsors who made the event happen: Nomad-One, FormFunction, Frogfoot Networks, Radiiate, WorldWideCreative & Butlers Pizza. Without these great sponsors, events like this would never be as amazing!

Personally I enjoyed Adii’s and Rafiq’s talks the most. Adii for his total enthusiasm for WordPress and Rafiq for handing out some really cool tips on SEO for your blog.

Also a big up to Nur from nomad-one.com for organising the event and giving me a quick spot to announce Wordcamp South Africa that will be happening in Cape Town on the 23rd of August. Check out the blog for information or get in touch with me and I’ll let you know whats happening.

Once again, attending these events makes for great networking opportunities and I got to meet Joey from FormFunction, Paul from the WorldWideCreative crew, Marcel the magician, Ashley Shaw, Nur and a few others. (Sorry if I’ve forgotten someone). Also spotted the regulars, imod, Rafiq, adii and foxinni.

There will be a few pics up this evening of the event, and I’ll update this post when they available.

Can’t wait for the next meetup!

Update! The pics are up at Paul’s Photostream.