absolut love

This post is a big shoutout to Absolut and their new Absolut Botanik range. They taste so ridiculously good and I have about 7 empty bottles in my room at the moment just because they are too damn pretty to throw out.

Lucy and I decided to check out one of the Absolut Botanik House Parties at the Centennial Parklands Heritage Cottage.

On entry you were given 4 drink coupons which basically meant you were set for the night. As well as an Uber voucher to help you get home. And considering the event was free this was a pretty killer deal!

Met some pretty amazing people.

And made some pretty hilarious gifs in the gif studio.

This was a massive highlight of the night. A vodka tasting. You went into the room and were presented with these plates of fruit and jam, plus a free shot of vodka. In the room they were playing this native bushland background music and before we even tasted anything we were blindfolded and had to try and guess these different herbs and plants. It was such a cool experience and it really gave you such a greater appreciation for the product being promoted.

It was literally a house. In the bathroom there was a bathtub full of drinks and various rave lights. In another room people were singing and there were instruments scattered everywhere that you were encouraged to play and join in. The backyard had these big jacuzzis full of black balls, there was no less dirty way to describe that..

Everyone there was so friendly and the whole environment was just so inviting and interactive. I ended up meeting the organisers of these events. They are called The Projects and they specialise in interactive events which is actually such an insanely simple and genius idea. They end up creating these personal connections between the consumer and the product which I believe from personal experience after this event makes me so much more likely to buy the product as a consumer. To be fair the drink is actually so nice but when I see them in the shops I will always think back to this night and it will make me smile and that in itself is a pretty powerful thing for an events company to create.

At the end of the night I managed to drop my wallet on the train and the police met me at Central Station to return it to me. All in the space of 20min. Major shout out to the Surry Hills police for saving my ass that night. You guys are legends!

These were taken much more recently. I ended up winning an instagram photo competition from the photos I took at the event that they gifted me these two babies. Thankyou Absolut for keeping me hydrated this holiday season!

Reuniting with Mahria and the crew.

And bumping into this babygirl.

Always drink responsibly ;)

erica

Telstra Imaginarium

One pretty fantastic thing that happened this year was being chosen for the Telstra Imaginarium. I was one of 70 chosen out of around 500 people across Australia to be a part of this truly amazing program. The competition was to submit a business idea. Any idea. I am still working on mine so I am going to keep it to myself for now. 

Basically over the three days we were mentored by leading industry professionals who assisted us in developing our ideas. The first day we had to workshop our personal ideas and then pitch it in front of everyone which was such a terrifying experience for me. I have a dead set fear of public speaking but I am so proud of myself for getting past this stage. Every moment I got anxious or wanted to pull out I just reminded myself of the amazing opportunity I had and that I needed to make sure I took advantage of everything available to me. Which included being able to practice public speaking in front of such important people.

Day two and day three we were put into groups and in these groups choose an idea and pretty much develop a solution for it and present it! We ended up not picking any of the members ideas and came up with a completely original idea that revolved around communication with the government. 

This was our mentor J.D. He really pushed us and helped us all find our different strengths. And he also helped us in working on our weaknesses.

Pedestrian tv. were a major sponsor and I read their articles daily so I was pretty chuffed when I saw this major fangirl moment in the promotional material.

Oh yeah so OUR GROUP'S IDEA WEGOV WON! We didn't get through to the next stage but I was so incredibly thankful just to have had our baby idea win. We had put so much hard work into it over those two days it was such an honour to have been selected out of all 5 groups! We also won another award to do with most modern idea or something like that but that was just a little prize. Our idea was the overall winner and I am still so happy about it.

The greatest people you will ever meet.

Our very professional very super expensive trophy.

Matt took me to probably the best house party I have ever been to in my life.

There was a lamb! Do I even need to go on. That's really all you need to know. There was a lamb at the house party and a killer night was had by all.

Met more amazing people and this cat Meemow (not sure how to spell it) belonged to a couple of them. Possibly one of the coolest and friendliest cats I have ever come across.

Always time for ramen. Kuro Neko, Sutherland.

Oh and in this time I also started my degree studying a Bachelor of Business (Marketing) at Martin College. Here is a toilet selfie to commemorate the experience (it's not actually bad I just don't take photos at uni).

I was pretty happy as a lot of the people I became friends with over the Telstra weekend were actually selected in the top 15 which meant they were all coming back to Sydney and staying here for 8 weeks for the incubation part of the Imaginarium. I spent a lot of time with them all while they were here and their accommodation at UTS became somewhat of a second home to me during their time here.

I came into work with them a couple of times and helped them out with their market research.

And then I would go and dance in the H&M change rooms for hours. You can stay updated with my dumb changeroom shenanigans on my snapchat @yeswanderlust

I think at this point I had probably lost a bit more weight and I had gone down a dress size or two so trying on clothes and figuring out what size I was was interesting.

At this point in time I was pretty fed up and decided one day to get a spontaneous but not so spontaneous tattoo. I had been wanting to get this for so long I had just never had the time or funds. It says 'let go or be dragged'. It means a lot to me and I think it is pretty self explanatory.

Introducing Chloe to El Loco Hotdogs, my favourite. 

Drunk karaoke nights out with the fam.

The two people I became closest with Chloe and Matt were in the same group called Face to Face and their team won!!!!! Their idea is called Fox and you can check out more about it in these videos. I am so damn proud of them and so over the moon happy because it means I will be seeing these 5 stunning faces again in January!!!

Face to Face video

Sadly all good things must come to an end. Thankyou Telstra for bringing together such an amazing group of such talented individuals. The hard work these people put into the eight weeks really showed and to be able to have gotten together three such powerful and applicable ideas in such a short amount of time is something pretty impressive in itself. I hope I can be a part of this amazing process again next year. Feeling so lucky to have been a part of the first ever Telstra Imaginarium!

erica