#NerdsUnite for the love of @spirithoods!!!

AWW!! Just got to kick it with Rishe ... she dropped me a tweet the other day saying she was going to be on a layover in LA ... and oohhhh my goodness - she's just the sweetest thing on this planet. For reals, teeny tiny lil thang that I could just put in my pocket. I tried to place her in my pocket at one point ... but she's fiesty. Lesson learned Jen ... lesson learned.

Thanks a heap for all your support and writing for TNTML, Rishe!! Really really REALLY appreciate it!

Had SUCH a blast this afternoon!!

Now ... off to VEGAS VEGAS VEGAS!!! CES TIME BABY!! WAHOOOOOOOOO!!!

#nerdsunite

Unapologetically #Awesome: Our Global Village

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @RisheGee

What a FABULOUS, AMAZING, AWESOME, insert superlative here, day!

Lucky I signed Jen’s permission slip way back in the day because this is it, children, New York is going to be pretty fabulouskies within the near future.

In a town populated with thousands, there are many who wander the island, alone. It’s a known fact that everyone runs to New York City to be alone, among the myriads. It’s a rare phenomenon, unique to this city that I now call home, and I’ve been a casualty of it myself in recent weeks. Meeting people constantly but wondering which of them I can actually call on to hang out when the going gets tough. Forging closer relationships with family and finding myself missing that casual social camaraderie that was always at my fingertips back home, and during the European adventure.

Today wasn’t supposed to be a big day, but I had some plans I anticipating a fair bit. I was meeting up with J, a brand ambassador and guerrilla marketer I’d met while we worked together at the US Open tennis; and then to perhaps head to my friend P’s cocktail party in midtown in celebration of the Jewish festival of Sukkot.

Turns out in a city full of strangers, New York has it’s own way of springing surprises on you…

J and I caught up for coffee near the Columbia University area. I have no friends at Columbia – or so I thought. I had clearly forgotten my friend A, a fellow Aussie spending a few months here doing some study with a bit of volunteering on the side. He had mentioned his work at the Jewish centre at Columbia, but that didn’t stop me from being shocked out of my mind when J and I casually bumped into him cycling a Sukkah on wheels around the Columbia campus this afternoon!

We hung out, we chilled, and then it was time for J to go. No worries, I had a drinks date with my other ex-pat Aussie, D, an Upper West Side native and former classmate. We had drinks with D’s friend, also known as the lovely lady who donated her gorgeous Ikea furniture to me the other day, and I embarked on the trainride downtown to head to P’s cocktail party.

Not so fast, little lady – says the universe. Because as I head down into the subway, I bump into the gorgeous R, a lady I have known for several years who once spent some pre-college time studying in Australia and I have since encountered here and there on most of my trips to New York City. Oh, the Jewish universe. So tiny and so bloody beautiful.

It’s not over yet, though. P’s party downtown is gorgeous – twinkling lights under the stars in Bryant Park, and I’m trying to switch on the Ms Fabulous within me by talking to strangers the way I do. All of a sudden out of the corner of my eye, a guy approaches.

Hell to the you have got to be kidding no.

It is none other than Mr J, a New Yorker I had encountered precisely one month ago, in a YOUTH HOSTEL IN SWITZERLAND. Mr J was attending an event put on by P’s organisation for the first time ever – and I just happened to be there.

J and I catch up and I meet up with his lovely Israeli friends. P introduces me to some more amazing people, and I head back to Brooklyn for drinks with my cousin S, who is in town with her husband Y for a short visit. I find an Australian beer on the list – Cooper’s, who wouldathunk it? – and start talking to the guy on my left – who informs me he is none other than P’s husbands brother. Yup. No kidding here.

Oh, little tiny Jewish New York universe. Today I love you so.

Click here to follow @Rishegee on Twitter!

#SocialMedia To the Rescue – Furnishing my Apartment

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Rishegee

Everyone talks about how social networking is the new advertising, the face of marketing, the future of communications, the solution to all of life’s problems from world peace to what the hell is all that gunk that is clogging up my kitchen sink?

So being a new resident of the greatest city on earth, and faced with many crazy obstacles to overcome, I’ve become ever-reliant on these so-called tools of the future. With my Google Maps telling me where to go, my NYTimes app keeping me abreast of the news in the 3G-service-unfriendly subways, and Foursquare and Yelp making sure I find the Starbucks and kosher restaurant in my nearest vicinity, I can feel it – I am swimming in a sea of technology, and loving every second.

But here’s the challenge: Everyone says people are now connected, more than ever, through social media. I’m a huge proponent of this theory and will blabber about it incessantly when given the chance (I’m particularly talented at cornering the person most likely to fail at hiding their glazed over look while demolishing sushi at a cocktail party, in fact).

But I know that there are many who live in a blind universe, who don’t worship at the altar of SM as we do, and still prefer to follow the footsteps of their forefathers, papering the walls with their printed resumes, buying the Saturday paper to peruse the apartment listings, and combing curbs on the 1st to find furniture bargains.

Having already found my apartment (through online listings, natch) and job (through a friend of a friend, of course), it was time to face my fears of being unable to make it independently in New York – and ask for help.

Being independent is not about making it on your own, a wise man once said. It’s about being able to find the means to get help where necessary, without being bailed out. Or maybe that wise man was the little voice in my head, trying to make me feel better.

Either way, it was time to find something as basic as a bed and a cupboard – and not pay through the roof for it. In fact, ideally, I’d be paying nothing for these things.

Fabulous Tours of the Universe (TM, or not TM) are very efficient moneyeaters. They consume all your cash until there’s none left, not even an eensy weensy bit for you to tip the nice man who helps you carry the armoire up the stairs. So this girl had to get resourceful, and resourceful I did.

Part I – this Sunday morning.

I need a bed, I need a dresser, I need everything for my apt, and I’ve got none. I post the crisis call on Facebook.

“Taking all offers of free or very very cheap furniture in the Brooklyn area…”

Two minutes later, I have a response from a friend in my inbox. Her friend is moving out today and needs to empty a storage unit by 5pm – in my neighbourhood. Next thing you know, she has picked me up, shown me the goods and helped me transport back home a fabulous Urban Outfitters dish chair (so ridiculously comfy I want to cry), a grown-up looking Ikea dresser with a fancy glass top, a foam mattress topper so I can dream nice and comfy, and even a boxful of dishes, decorative stuff and – most importantly – wine glasses.

I’m carrying it up and down stairs into storage at my aunt’s place (the official move isn’t until October begins) and my cousins are sitting on the couch and falling in love with this stuff.

“How much did you pay?” they chorus, one ensconcing her baby in the dish chair, the other running her fingers over the fake varnished wood of the dresser, Ikea style.

I’m reminding them of the wonders of social media, and informing them of a promise to take the gorgeous donor out for a dinner in LA next time I make it out west, when my iPhone beeps with a new Facebook message.

It’s the girl from the Upper West Side, a Facebook acquaintance I met once or twice at a dinner back in February on my whirlwind NYC reconnaissance mission.

She’s giving away a queen size bed-frame, and an Ikea bookcase.

Queen nerd bookworm is mucho mucho excited by this news, and somehow all my ancient talents from managing corporate accounts comes into play, and I am the logistics coordination queen. Within two hours, I’ve arranged a tight schedule for the evening involving minivan borrowings, driver assistance, and landlord
cooperation – all without spending a dime.

We drove home via midtown, my furniture safely arranged in the backseat, and I felt a lurch of hope and – yes, finally! – excitement as I saw the lights of Times Square ahead of me.

This city has infinite possibilities. It’s the kind of place where you can furnish an apartment for free through the gifts of strangers, and call on the help of anyone and everyone who has ever done the same thing as you in this big, bad, city. Let’s do this, New York.

On that note: @rishegee is still taking all offers of furnishings, particularly closet/clothing/wardrobe storage items, for her new abode. Pretty and decorative things would be lovely, too. I also kind of need a clock. Let’s harness the power of the nerds and get the social media chain reaction going! Viva NYC!

Click here to follow @Rishegee on Twitter!

The Return of @Rishegee

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Rishegee

Greetings, my lovely nerdlets.

Some of you may have been worrying, wondering, crying, lamenting – where has this nerd been?

It was a sunny day back in May – I lie, it was probably rainy, actually – that I left the shores of my home in Melbournetown and embarked on the Fabulous Tour of the Universe TM. And while I sipped from a coconut on the beaches of Koh Samui, climbed mountains in the Galilee in Israel, danced til the early hours in the halls of Barcelona, explored the beaches of the Southern Mediterranean, and made best friends with every hostel-dwelling backpacker from Switzerland to Southern Spain, I did not fail to remember my nerdy heritage.

Of course, I was the one who purchased the audio guide in every museum, from Malaga to Paris, Granada to Bern. Resident nerd lady also narrated Lonely Planets for fun as we road tripped through Andalucia, interrogated the walking
tour guides in Valencia and Seville, and insisted on visiting every Roman ruin, or ‘pile of rocks’, encountered along the way.

My iphone was my best friend, albeit not a completely reliable one as my clock, notepad, address book, maps, jukebox, camera and – oh, what was it again?

That’s right – PHONE and INTERNET connection ebbed away by midday from overuse and, perhaps, over reliance. I discovered the modern way of exchanging details in a youth hostel – forget scribbling addresses, phone numbers or even email addresses down. In our glorious age of social media, it’s enough to simply proffer one’s iphone, logged into Facebook and ask your companion to search for themselves. Suddenly, you’re finding that it’s been a month, you have 50 new Facebook friends, and not one have you actually requested personally – they’ve requested themselves, and there’s nothing to describe the excitement of seeing the notification of confirmation come back when your new best friend arrives back in their country.

Google Maps, Foursquare, currency converter apps, and of course our beloved Facebook and Twitter – these are the new essentials for travelling in the new millennium, and I’m not sure how I would have survived otherwise.

Fabulous Tour of the Universe, T to the expletive M. It was brilliant, it was beautiful, it was nerdy and it was unapolagetically awesome. Stay tuned for more nerdy travel tales with Rishe G’s bednight stories. It reads like a Foursquare history on steroids, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Click here to follow @Rishegee on Twitter