Back when I was in primary school, I remember coming home with my family from a parent teacher evening and we were all starving for dinner and demanding Macdonalds. Dad drove us through the drive through and attempted to order our dinner.

We get to the window and he ordered himself a Big Mac. The women replied by saying ‘Sml, Med or Lge.’

Confused about her question he replied, ‘Ok, how about a Quarter Pounder.’ Once again the woman replied ‘Sml, med or lge.’

I have never seen such confusion on a grown man’s face in my life. All he wanted was a simple meal and instead he was faced with too many confusing options.

So imagine how hilarious my life became when Foxtel IQ, Mac Book, Facebook etc. came into existence!

Steve at work

I was in Brisbane for his 50^th birthday a few weeks ago and unfortunately my extended family can become quite exhausting. In an effort to take time out, I went upstairs to watch a show that has been taped from the TV.

As I went to turn on the machine he came running up the stairs screaming at me to leave the TV alone. Apparently there are taping machines that will not allow you to watch what you have taped at the same time as it is taping something else. As I have never been exposed to such an inferior machine, I did not understand this concept and complained that his machine is ‘stupid’. My dad was very emotional about the whole situation and made me help him research taping machine options for the rest of my weekend in Brisbane.

Two months later, I went back to visit him and he was (and still is) so excited about his discoveries. He came home from work with a skip in his step explaining to me how he has worked out which taping system he wanted and that it will be installed in a week (unfortunately he has too many TV’s and is getting it installed to the wrong one so that next time I need to escape extended family it wont help me at all), but I was happy for him anyway.

He then went on to tell me how in his research he had discovered the IPad. He has owned the IPad for a few months thinking it was purely an online newspaper. Imagine his excitement when he discovered that it does so much more such has allows you to write notes and keep a calander etc.

Now although he is hilarious and I love how behind the times he is, is it really appropriate to assume that people (excluding media) who have tried and tested methods of doing things for years just have to change their thoughts and adapt. The fact that he is actually trying is a huge credit to himself but on top of getting used to the new options out there, he is also faced with 1000 different versions of the same thing. It’s confusing!

Technology may be taking over the world but maybe some of our old and current methods should be preserved. For example, reading the newspaper over my Sunday coffee is something I cherish and look forward to every week. I should not have to change that. Imagine bringing your laptop to a café on a Sunday morning to read the paper over a coffee? How is that enjoyable?

Now although this is not entirely true,  (because if you are smart enough you would have at least saved a bit of money or travelled)these words stayed with me, and I was determined to make sure that I am out of the industry before my time is up. It amazes me how a small statement made from someone I can’t even remember the name of will stay with me forever.

I got back to Australia a year and a half ago faced with a question that haunts most people in their adolescence…. What do I want to do with myself!!!

In the past I have wanted to be a lawyer, a vet, a nutritionist, a detective, but that is another 4-6 years of studying and work experience, and I am now accustomed to a certain lifestyle. How can I go back to being a student?

Although I was completely burnt out from the fashion industry, it is pretty ignorant to let 7 years of experience go to waste, even if I am bored. I decided to start sourcing ways to make it work while still keeping myself entertained.

I am a very lucky girl in the way that I have managed to make friends with people of all ages, all over the world and in completely different industries. Now this is a benefit over most models because many girls world- wide start very young and do not finish school.  They are not encouraged to be business minded or to make relationships with clients (other than to do a good job), and when no one wants them anymore, they are often left with nothing!

In Australia particularly, I have experienced agents/ managers acting like they are my mother to the point that for a while I couldn’t even get my hair cut without permission, and lets not begin to mention the bullying to make you think that no client would want you if the agent didn’t talk them into it! Not the best thing to say to a young, impressionable girl.

Determined to find a job that I enjoy and will be able to climb the ladder due to my own success, I asked all my friends to take me to work with them.

Job 1- Removalist….. that didn’t work out.

Job 2- Work experience with a male friend who was starting up a social media company. I trekked in and out of the city almost every day learning about social media. The guys I worked with were lovely, but I constantly kept being promised a paid job every 2 weeks and it never happened. I stopped going in and was actually asked why I stopped coming!

If you were continuously told you would be paid over 3 months, would you show up again?

Job 3- My friend is the advertising manager of Instyle magazine, so I went in to work with Instyle and Who. Honestly, Pacific Publications is one of the most amazing companies I have ever worked for. Everyone was so nice and helpful but I was still determined to try my hand at Public Relations before I made the plunge into a full time job.

I was at a shoot one day and casually mentioned to the make up artist that I want to be in PR. She got me in touch with her friend, who took me under her wing immediately.

It was so much fun. Preparing photo shoots and events all day. For the first month I learned so much but after that I was asked to clean dishes, be a taxi driver and be an errand girl constantly. I was even escorted out of the QVB by security after being told that I was allowed to park in the loading dock (turns out that conversation did not actually happen which I ended up paying for)!

The final straw was when a model threw up at a shoot due to jet lag and I was asked to clean it!! Eww.

I never went back. There is a certain point when you need to draw the line when you work for free all day everyday.  I was surprised that I was treated this way after all of the hours and hard work I put into it but you live and you learn.

After several false starts, things are starting to look up. I am doing experience with a great company and the girls are amazing and genuinely helpful. One important point I immediately noticed is when you call people from this company, everyone is happy to talk to you and hear from you. It only goes to show how important reputation and being nice to people is.

Transition is not an easy road, and I still don’t know where it will take me, but the change and learning has been very exciting and everyday I find I am looking forward to see what will happen and what I will achieve.  A year ago, trying new things after 7 years the fashion vortex was an intimidating nightmare and the statement that girl made when I was 15 haunted me.  However, although I haven’t succeeded yet, maybe it was the best theory I was ever told.

Preparing for the next chapter for life to begin……

How does a plane stay in the air?

Does the pilot really know what all of those little buttons mean?

Am I really comfortable with the fact that I am stuck in this little sardine can with my life in the hands or the pilot, the engineers and traffic control? What if they are having a bad day or if they just found out they are being laid off?

All of these questions led to me becoming claustrophobic. They also ended my international modeling career because, although I am aware that I will have to travel in life, 3-4 days a week for the next 4 years is not an option.

Now, because this is just a recent development, I often forget that I am in a confined space until a little later. For example, I may be sitting in a sauna with other people from the gym when all of a sudden I get a vision of Jennifer Love Hewitt being trapped in a solarium in ‘I still know what you did last summer.’

This vision will send me running and panicking for the door, and in turn, everyone in the sauna mistakes me for a psycho.

This week did nothing to help my fears.

Tuesday I had a job on the gold coast. This is just a 1 hr flight however, it is too short for valium and I had to work when I arrived so I couldn’t get drunk.

I woke up Tuesday morning doing all I can to not think about the flight ahead. There was no escaping it.

I looked out the window and see tree branches, umbrellas from the cafes, chairs etc. flung all over the street. There had been a bad storm the night before and the wind was still strong. Immediately I being in panic.

I walk downstairs and the guys at the cafe are telling me its dangerous to fly and they bet that the flight will be cancelled. I panic more.

I get on the aeroplane and take as much stress remedy as I can and try to sleep. It was bumpy and horrible, but I got through it because it was early morning and thankfully I was tired enough to sleep.

A few hours later I am in Jupiters casino. I get in the elevator with 12 other people, and as the doors are closing I realize something is wrong.

I tried to get through everyone to get to the door but I was too late and the door closed on me. Sure enough, 5 seconds later, we are trapped in the elevator!! Talk about the worst day of my life.

So there are 12 people, the elevator is not big and god it was hard not to panic. Unfortunately, the elevator was non negotiable for the rest of the trip because I stayed on the 19th floor and the staff would not allow me access to the stairs.

My flight home was even worse, partially due to the stress I was still feeling from being trapped in the elevator. I was alert because it was the afternoon so I couldnt sleep, I ran out of my stress remedy and I didn’t have valium. Luckily I was sitting in the back row, the closest to the attendants.

They begin to come through the cabin and I ask for a glass of wine. They wouldn’t serve me because it wasn’t my turn and they had to start at the front of the plane.

I try my hardest to distract myself. I played my ipod on full volume to distract me from the bumps, but it ran out of power. I started watching the TV, but then it turned off just so I would have to pay for it, I tried drumming my fingers on the little table, that didn’t work either.

20 mins later when they finally get back I am borderline freaking out. I ask for wine and they guy told me that he had to do other things first and would be about 10 minutes. I start breathing heavily and trying to hold back tears. Have these attendants never seen someone stress on a plane before?

Then, as luck would have it, all of the guys sitting in my row demanded that the attendant stop being ignorant and give me alcohol. They each bought me one (so I had 3) and I skulled them so fast that I didn’t even taste them. I fell to sleep immediately. Then when the plane landed I could hardly walk and needed to be helped out of the plane.

In conclusion, to all flight attendants out there, if someone is stressing and wants a drink, just give it to them. It will save speed drinking, a hangover and an inability to walk out of the plane by themselves.

Talk about the worst days ever!

It all started as a pretty crappy day. The weather in the current European country I reside in is depressing, its cold, I was up all night working, didn’t sleep and just found out that I was doing a fashion show in my new market (that I just started in this week) that went from 330 pm till 10 pm.

I drag myself to work at 330, end up being lectured by the security guard in French for like 10 minutes (I still don’t know what I did to deserve it but he seemed pissed so I guess I must have done something wrong). Then I end up walking in circles for about 15 minutes because I am still not a pro at translating French to English, but eventually I end up at work.
Now I am already not in the best mood because it was dark and I hadn’t eaten all day (the client also didn’t feed us just to add insult to injury) but then, what usually would make me quite livid, was all made so much more interesting by the clueless people screwing up around me.

All of a sudden, I became like a fly on the wall, observing in awe the scene unfolding before me. Bossy models, clueless models, clueless people in general.

My first endeavor happens when I go and sit in the makeup chair. I knew I was going to be at work for hours so I was pretty chilled and not really caring how long it took. The young lady beside me however was in a whole other mind set.

The girl starts whinging to the makeup artist
‘Oooo am I done yet?’
‘NO, I have only made up one of your eyes.’
‘Ooo but I don’t think you really need to do much more!’
‘Yes, one of your eyes is silver, the other one is bare.. Perhaps the other needs to be silver as well.’
‘Ooo but it won’t even make a difference, everything you do, I will just look exactly the same.’
(No one made any reaction to the last comment she made.)
She presently starts talking very animatedly on her mobile headset, moving her head in all directions as the poor makeup artist is trying to put sticky silver shadow around her eyes. Later she ends up getting in a one sided argument over when she will do her mascara, lipstick and when the makeup artist would get off his ass and fetch her some water.

My next endeavor started because the designer was very concerned that I hadn’t eaten all day and told me he would go and buy me a muffin at star bucks… The same girl from the makeup chair then comes up to me
“o what is this? You are not dieting?’
Me: ‘ No, do I look fat to you?’
Her: ‘No but I have to starve myself and I am still not skinny. Here you are eating a muffin.’
Me: ‘Yes. That is correct. (I point at my muffin and say very slowly for her) a m u f f I n.’

I go and sit in the corner to eat my muffin in peace (or half of it before the client in charge confiscated it and made me reherse) when all of a sudden I hear this loud, shill voice in my ear.
‘O I hear you are from Australia as well!’ the girl screams
I just kind of look at her.
‘Wow do you like Europe? I really like Europe. The Australia agencies are shit. They know nothing. They think I am not good enough. I tell you, If it were the 1980s I would be famous. They liked shorter girls in the 1980s. The would have loved me!
Me: ‘ Oh okay but there were also other famous girls in the 1980s that would have probably still been famous instead of you.’
Her: ‘You tall girls don’t know what it is to fight. You get everything handed to you because you are tall. Any agency would take any girl who is 5’11’
Me: ‘Not true. Some girls are not what the agencies are looking for. Just because they are tall does not mean they are going to work.’
Her: ‘O you don’t know anything Brittany. Tall girls can get agencies everywhere. If I were as tall as you I would be in a better agency to. I would have been famous in the 1980s.

Now here is when I start to have an epiphany back to Jenna’s blog last year. She mentioned that she met an Aus girl at a casting who ended up lecturing her on the fact that vaccines give children autism and she would rather have her children have the chance of dying of tetnus, hepatitis, measles etc. instead of having there brains turn to mush in there heads and become autistic.
I had to know if this was the same girl. Couldn’t help it!
She starts coughing
Me: ‘O are you sick?”
Her: ‘Yes, maybe I am just a little sick because of (….. Cant remember)
Me: ‘Haha maybe you need some sort of v a c c I n a t I o n so you don’t get sick so often’
Her: ‘I DON’T BELIEVE IN VACCINATIONS. I can’t believe you agree with that. How would you like your brains to turn to mush and become a vegetable in hospital, not even be able to feed yourself and become autistic.
Me: ‘I didn’t realise that all autistic people were complete, hospitalised vegetables.’
Her: ‘Vaccinations make people turn into vegetables. There is no way around it. My children will never be vaccinated.
Me: ‘I was vaccinated for some diseases and I am not a vegetable.’
Her: Well you should be ! (and angrily walks off and sits in the opposite corner).

Wow. I don’t even know what happened last night.
This was the highlight conversation.. It was maybe a little better than the girls who couldn’t count to ten during rehearsal. But even though I ended up working until midnight and only got fed half a muffin, maybe these scenarios were worth staying up for.

I send out a big thankyou to my French agency for sending me somewhere to get some sunshine! After being uninspired and freaking out every time I even have an hour off work (because I have nothing to do and Paris is bloody cold!) I booked a nice editorial job in Morocco for 6 days. I went with low expectations but by the time I was on the plane decided this would be a good experience.

The job worked like this.. There were 6 of us (everyone so cool and nice to talk to..I couldn’t believe that I was actually enjoying the conversations I was having!). On the first 2 days I shoot an editorial and on the last 2 days the other model shot her editorial thus, forcing us to each have 2 days off.

Ofcourse, as I am uninspired and don’t really entertain myself well, I was a little worried about having 2 days off by myself while everyone else was working. So the first day, I did practically nothing and sat by the pool.. Not too bad and actually really enjoyed it but, the other model told me I should go out and see Marrakech as it is a nice place.

Now I must say, given even the guys in the hotel are a little sleazy, I was a bit daunted at the prospect of venturing out into this place by myself when I have NO idea of the customs, streets, language, where to go or anything. I almost didn’t go but decided I must socialise myself!
I went to the front of the hotel, was surprised when the taxi driver spoke English and ended up at some antiques store (somewhere).. So I guess his English was not that good as I was trying to get to the market.

Within in 1 minute, some fucking annoying guy is following me down the street shouting ‘It’s alright! I am a new yorker, I am a New yorker!’ (like it almost makes me want to speak to him.) ‘Come with me to the travel agency and then lets go to the markets’ (I would just like to say that I didn’t speak a word to him other than ‘no’. But naturally he is better than everyone else in the world and we have to accommodate that by wasting our whole day doing boring shit with a random stranger).
I chose to run away and jump in a cab. Fortunately, this time it took me to the markets.

The first thing I saw was about 50 dried fruit store and orange juice stands. Given my current addictions, I was already in love. One guy who had a dried fruit stall gave me some free dates so I gave him some business (he knows the way to my heart). I was incredibly happy and concentrating on that success when I ran into some guy with one of those fake but ‘oh so real’ snakes and started screaming, stopping all those around me in there tracks and getting laughed at because it was fake. He starts chasing me saying ‘buy, buy!’ and I was like ‘U have got to be kidding me!’.

Next I found an alleyway with thousands of stalls all the way down it. The owners are yelling ‘Sister come into my store, come buy!’ Then they are grabbing my arms and trying to drag me in. Then, another store owner comes and I am being dragged around like a rag doll until I run away into another store where the owner wasn’t bothering me.
I was looking at a necklace, and sure enough, the owner just wanted to make a sale. I believe I won this one but. I got the necklace from 80 euro, to 25 with free earrings. Very proud!

I go away for another walk once again immediately run into the fake snake guy. Now a whole group of English tourists are laughing at me. As I try to calm myself down I am dragged away by 2 women who grabbed my arms and are forcing me into a seat (as I am yelling No No!). A thrid woman then starts painting my hand with henna saying ‘Its good luck! You will find the man of your dreams, its amazing!’.
Meanwhile I am still trying to get away. And when she finally finished she says ’1000 dirum’ (I was thinking more like 20).
So I saw ‘fuck off no way!’
she says ‘Its only 100 euro.. No money no honey!’
(I now blame my non successful love life on a curse from the henna lady!)
I ended up giving her 10 euro and She stole my necklace!

As I was running away from the bitchy henna ladies I run into 4 more that are trying to get me.. ’100 dirum, 100 dirum’ (still trying to rip me off but not as bad as the others).
I was like ‘No No go away!’
In my fury and trying to get away from these irritating people, I turn around to discover I am in the circle where the snake charmers are and there is a real king cobra standing up about 1 metre away from my foot.
I left the market faster than the henna lady cursed my love life.
Definitely an experience, and my hand will look like I have contracted some form of skin disorder until this henna finally wears off!

My mum put me into a ‘fashion’ summer program when i was 15.. because like most 15 year olds, I did not get along with her (some would say ‘brat’ but i disagree). The idea behind this was as a sort of ‘deportment’ and to teach me some manners.

The prospect of people judging me based on my skin, height etc. did not sit well with me but I did learn very quickly that it is an efficient way of being able to travel, while earning money.
I moved to Sydney at 16 and decided that it was, and still is, my favourite place in the world. I did a brief stunt in Hong Kong when i was 16 (hated it) and NY at 17 (hated it) and back to Sydney I went. A year ago I decided to ‘bite the bullet’ and head back to NY and Paris for work. I am not going to lie, I still strongly dislike NY but I will bear it for a few months of the year.  Paris takes a while getting used to, but given I do not know the language, it’s a beautiful thing when you sit back and just observe, listen and watch a person’s body language in order to understand them. I hear that some of the things that are said to girls on the street are quite vulgur, but as I don’t understand yet, I will just assume they are nice people.

So I start this blog in order to force myself to do things. I tend to get bored if I have even an hour off work a day and won’t leave the house. Currently (when I am starting this blog) I am in Paris, it’s winter and I should bloody be in Australia when i belong.. with the sun, my family and friends. I am trying to come up with some other life decisions, such as where I want to be and what I want to do (that would require having a home and not having to move my things every other month).

Now, hopefully my plan will work and I will have something interesting to write about! Enjoy