What to do when a date goes SOUTH

By Arnia Kiara Oosthuizen

Has your face ever been like this on a date?

Why am I doing this to myself-face

Say what-face

You're kidding-face

This ain't gonna work-face

Kill me, you're boring-face

Yeah, so we all know that dating can be hard and that it doesn't always go the way we planned or the person was a complete ______. Fill in any word you wish.
I have had many bad dates, where I wish I had Harry Potter's invisible cloak, so I could just disappear, but unfortunately I don't.
Many times, I was forced to ditch the guy and run for it. Apparently, there are better ways of getting rid of the person. I asked a few people for their advice on what you shouldn't do on a date and I turned it around, into what you should do, when trying to get rid of your date.

What to do when the date is going SOUTH

• Honesty is the best policy: tell them you are a serial killer, it will shock them, and afterward they will run away, screaming.
• Plot your ex's death loudly in front of date (Karen du Toit)
• Urgently, jump up and scream you have to go and wash your gold fish (Leanle)
• Eat Buffalo Wings (Leanle),but I'll add: smudge it all over your face and smile with a mouthful of food.
• Spray on so much perfume, that he'll need a gas-mask.
• Have a friend on SOS-call, talking flirty to friend on phone, in front of date. (Jonanke)
• Dig for treasure in your nose. (Ruan)
• Have a few personalities, but just don't be yourself! (Francois & Ruan)
• Flirt with your waiter. (Mizan)
• 'Accidentally' get your food all over him (Mizan)
• Brag about how awesome you are. (Mauruschka)
• Forget all your manners. (Mauruschka)
• Whisper loudly all the things that your date is doing wrong and talk to him/her like nothing is wrong.
• Run into the wall and sit down like nothing happened.
• Laugh uncontrollably, when your date is quiet/saying nothing
• Tell your date that there are more squid than fish in the ocean and walk away.
• Tell them you are a hobo and just wanted free food *walk away.
• Scream at him/her that you will not change for him *run away.
• Last but definitely not least: Climb through the bathroom window and disappear

Some frogs aren't even worth kissing and you should abort mission, while you still can.

Please tell me about the bad dates you had, I would love to hear them!

I am a Feminist.

By Arnia Kiara Oosthuizen

Feminism (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 2011: 522): "The advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of sexual equality".
Usually, when people say they are feminists, it gets linked to man-hating. But quite frankly, I like men a lot.

I am a feminist, because:

• I believe I should earn the same money as a man doing the same work as me
• I believe that children can be raised to be literally ANYTHING they want to be, even if my son wants to be a ballerina. 
• I believe there are no gender roles, for example, women belong in the kitchen. (BULL!)
• I can do anything a man can.
• I believe it is fine if a boy wants to cry and it is fine if he is in touch with emotions.
• I believe a girl can play with cars and become a mechanic if she wants to.
• I believe in gender equality, in each and every aspect. 

I only recently discovered that there is a word for how I felt, when ladies complained that men don't open doors for them, but they won't do it for the men. It infuriated me. If you are not willing to open doors for men, why should they open it for you? I even open doors for girls, it's called common decency. 

It infuriates me when women, who are promiscuous are seen as sluts, whores, or whatever other names there are, but men are seen as legends.

But it it doesn't help talking about it and not doing anything about it. We should be the change we want to see. We should be the difference. We should raise our kids to be blind to race, so racism will be a thing of the past. We should raise them to become anything, because we never laughed at their ideas if they wanted to become something that is not according to their gender. WE should let them wear anything and play with anything they choose. We should let boys cry and girls be able to be strong or any way they choose to be! This is how we will reach gender equality. Women and men can be feminists, if you believe in gender equality. Please watch this video of Emma Watson launching the He For She campaign. 

If you cannot see the video please click here. 

She is one amazing woman, and I hope she accomplishes everything that she wants. I believe she will make a big difference. 

Are you a feminist? If not, why? I would love to hear your thoughts about this.

Flight Center: The growth of Social Media

By Arnia Kiara Oosthuizen

Today, we had a visit from Flight Centre's social media manager, Mercia Lampen, who came to our Communication class to talk to us about the importance of social media and digital marketing.

Mercia Lampen gave the presentation about the importance of social media. She is the Social Media Manager of Flight Centre. What makes her even greater is that she was also a Communication student here at the North-West University of Potchefstroom. Her journey in social media simply began when she started helping family and co-workers to become involved on Facebook and other platforms. She then later started helping more and more people and now she is teaching big companies like MTN, how to manage their social media profiles.

The rate at which social media is growing, is fascinating! They have shared the following two videos on YouTube and afterward put it on other social media platforms, without even paying for marketing. They relied on word-of-mouth or should I rather say world-of-mouth. Give them a look!

These ads make me want to travel, while I'm still young. But that is besides the point. I am fascinated by Flight Centre's social media presence! They are everywhere on every possible platform you can think of.
They are also very  good with their Social Media Marketing-

"The process of gaining traffic,attention and interaction with customers through social media" (Part of the presentation that Mercia gave).

For example: If you're in Google and you start to search for flights, their name pops up first because they pay a lot of money, but even without paying for ads, their website is listed first. It takes approximately 6 months for a website to be on top of the list. But you have to list the right keywords and keep your content up to date, for your website to stay on top of the list.

The social media marketing platforms which they use are:

• Social network
• Blogs 
• Micro-blogs 
• Customer rating sites
• Online video websites
• Digital photo websites

They have to pay to use these social media marketing platforms, but it pays off because they have almost 100 00 likes on Facebook and 4 100 followers on Twitter. There is benefits by using Facebook:

• Discoverable: When people search for you on Facebook, they’ll be able to find you.

• Connected: Have one-on-one conversations with your customers, who can like your Page, read your posts and share them with friends, and check in when they visit.

• Timely: Your Page can help you reach large groups of people frequently, with messages tailored to their needs and interests.

• Insightful: Analytics on your Page will give you a deeper understanding of your customers and your marketing activities

There are many ways to use social media marketing for the benefit of the company, but the best and most reliable source for millennials, like me, is word-of-mouth! We would rather believe our friends than an ad telling us how great they are, but to create word-of-mouth one first has to do some advertising to get the people talking.

Today's presentation has taught me that you can succeed anywhere with your passion. Mercia has a passion for social media and that, has and is, making her successful in her job. What an inspiration!

Thank you, Mercia, for the great presentation, for your time and inspiring us to get more involved in social media, because it truly is the future of any and all companies. I have learned so much, for example, that you can create your own job description in a company if you are passionate about it.

Today's presentation has stirred-up the wanderlust in me again! I want to travel each and every corner of the earth three times, then I'll be content and then I can kick the bucket. Flight Centre, I'll be one of your VIP's because I'll be travelling so much with your help!

*This is not a paid for advertisement.

The importance of 'I'

By Arnia Kiara Oosthuizen

I, is a very important word. Why? Because it all starts with YOU. With me.

I really think I should become an ambassador for this quote, because I've been promoting it and using it constantly. This quote has been a symbol to me since my life made a change for the better, and my life made a change for the better, because I realized that HAPPINESS IS AN INSIDE JOB!

Yes, Millenium Lady is preaching again or as I would like to call it: Soapbox! Constantly, I hear friends complainig that their significant others are not making them happy.
Now, the problem is that I don't go into a relationship to make someone happy for the duration of that relationship. I go into that relationship, because I like them. It is not your task to make someone happy and it is also not their task to make you happy! You have to contribute to each other's happiness, not take it from unhappiness to happiness.

YOU! YOU! YOU! You are responsible for being happy. You determine your own future. You have to realize that YOU determining how your life is. No one made the choices for you. If you don't like where you are in life or about the choices you made: Today is a good day to start changing it.

We all have our off-days, when we'd rather stay in bed, watch movies and eat ice-cream out of a tub and that is perfectly fine. But today is a really good day to make a change for the better. The catch is: YOU have to make that change alone. No one is going to change for you or will be changed by you. YOU have to be the change. If you want the world to change, you have to be the change. Start with the person in the mirror- wise advice from the legend Michael Jackson and here is the video- you're welcome!

My challenge for you is to make you own happiness and just be happy!
Peace, love and everything nice!

A toast to a dear friend

By Arnia Kiara Oosthuizen

My dear life long friend has decided to go work and travel in Versailles, France, for 7 months. 7 months! It feels like a lifetime to me! She will be an English assistant at a school there. She will always be able to travel in her off-time. I am very happy that she has this opportunity to broaden her horizons. But she is leaving us behind!

Marinda and me have been friends literally since birth, but actually Marinda is more than that to me:
I looked up the definition of friend in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (2011: 568):
"a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations". But Marinda is way more than that to me: She is my lunch-buddy, my go-to when I need advice, my best friend, the person who understands me best, my soul sister.

We organized a farewell party for her, where we had a lot of fun and the other night, I had the opportunity to be her date to the formal, where it was our final farewell.

We are the complete opposite. We are night and day. The moon and the sun. Whatever you want to call it. But I believe that is why our friendship works so good, we can never get bored of each other, because of the fact that we differ so much. She is my friend that is my missing puzzle piece.

Marinda, I hope you have a wonderful journey of a lifetime in France. I hope you find yourself in ways that will amaze you. I hope you make friends all over the world. I hope you eat and drink as many weird and wacky things there, because you only live once and life is too short to be on the safe side! I hope you love walking down those beautiful streets every single day and that you will walk in the rain instead of avoiding it. Embrace the cold and the winters and maybe even the snow! I hope you do crazy things and make up your own bucket list! Well, this is kinda a demand ha-ha!

My friend, I wish you well. I really do hope that you have one great adventure and I cannot wait to hear all the amazing stories.

Listen to this song, it reminds me of the journey you'll be having.

I love you, Marinda, and I will miss you. But mostly I'm excited for you!

Will your younger self approve?

By Arnia Kiara Oosthuizen

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my younger self. By younger self I mean my 5 year old self. I keep asking myself: Would my younger self approve?

Would the younger Kiara approve?

When I was little, I was a very big tomboy. I used to play with bugs, chase boys around with all sorts of them literally from big to small. I loved playing pranks on people, scaring the living daylights out of them, doing all sorts of silly things and part of being tomboy, I also loved to play with cars and refused to wear dresses, because it wasn't fun to play in it. Yes, that was my younger self. Just writing this blog post is giving me nostalgia, which I can't explain. Is it a part of yourself which you lose whilst growing up?

I feel like I have left my younger self behind on some playground, because somewhere along the line, life said that it is time to grow up. Why is growing up so boring? Waking up, getting ready to go to class, working, eating and sleeping has become my daily routine. But yet, life is fun and it is long enough to both have fun and sometimes be serious and act like an adult. I must just make time to have fun and just be me who I really am. I always make excuses that I don't have time, but my problem is that I never make time.

I miss the days when I made pranks on people. I can never forget the different reactions I got from people and how i laughed until I cried.

I once had a small paper bag, which said "Rattle snake eggs: handle with care". I would take it to school and show the teachers and they were usually curious to look inside, once opening the bag, a rattling sound would come out of the bag.

The trick was that there was a rubber band with a piece of metal in the middle of the rubber band. You then had to wind the rubber band up and hold the packet correctly so it won't unwind. When people opened the packet, the rubber band unwound and the metal piece hit the sides of the packet, making the rattling sound. It scared a lot of people and the reactions were priceless.

My sister brings the fun back

Since my sister's birth, I learned to chill a bit and have fun, because she is only young once and when she's older I won't be cool enough to have fun times with her. She taught me a lot about life and how to enjoy the simple stuff.

Enough of the complaining! This is my decree to myself for all to see: I will go back to my roots and have fun for the remainder of 2014! I will pull pranks on my friends and family! Yes, you heard it... be prepared, I'm coming