Update.
Ok well that last post didn't work. Damn you photo.
So I guess I'll update my ever changing life once more.
Last time I gave you the spill on my life when I was in party mode. I was thin, working in a completely superficial salon where life was all about designer clothes and fashion week and I was drunk pretty much four nights a week, partying between clubs and my city pad and hooking up with many a male. Life was FUN. I needed it. It was about time I finally felt amazing about myself, had awesome clothes and a cool house and was just having fun.
Then things changed...
I was really over the salon. Like incredibly over it. To the point where you'd wake up for work each morning and want to cry. You'd take 5 minutes to walk 50 meters on the home stretch to work of a morning because you just didn't want to be there. I'd cry at work in the end and not realise that it was just a fucking salon! They were just hairdressers for fuck sake! Hairdressers with massive egos though because they took care of 'celebrities' and worked Fashion week, and had spreads in editorial and did Harpers covers and all of that fun stuff. But still, it was living Hell most days.
So I began looking for new jobs, ones where I'd earn more money and be back in an office. No more Saturdays at work and somewhere with a good team of people who didn't judge you if you had a bad hair day - God forbid! :)
So I applied for jobs and knew things were going to change. I just didn't expect them to change this much.
I woke up for work one morning in October (2009), grabbed my iPhone off charge while I was still lying in bed half asleep and did what I obsessively used to do; check Facebook. Now I'm a generally selfish person who doesn't really read people's travel emails etc because they usually just don't interest me, but my friend Romy who had been traveling for about 6 months had sent me a message to my Facebook inbox and something was screaming at me to read it. So I did. And it turned out that she was asking a handful of Sydney girls to head over to Morocco to work in a nightclub that her brother had just scored the spot of Resident DJ for. It said that all flights, accommodation and food was included and that we'd basically have to pack up and leave straight away. I wrote back "YES!" as soon as I read it. This was completely insane. I had no money, I had a lease and a full time job but it just didn't matter to me. I knew this is what I had to do.
So a week later I was on a plane to Casablanca and my new home was El Jadida, Morocco...Northern AFRICA! I used to look at a map and laugh because never in a thousand years did I ever consider living in Africa. I didn't even know where Morocco was at the time.
I got there after 35 long and stinky (literally, I WREAKED when I finally got off the plane. I learned that flying for that long necessitates a costume change at every stop over)hours, was chauffeured to the resort that the nightclub was in and met the managers and the other Aussie girls who had got there a few days before me. Including my beautiful Rommers who I hadn't seen since she left months before. The it was ON! I slept that night - luckily, because the other girls didn't get too even though they'd been in transet for more than a day! - and from the next day I was working 16 hour shifts in preparation for the grand opening of the club and the resort.
It was tough! We had one day off in nearly two weeks and were literally working 16 hour days, sleeping for a few hours and then up at the crack of dawn again to train the staff and potter around stressing over table set ups and how much everything was on the menu. There were tears in the first few weeks and since my life back in Australia had finally hit its peak, there were times when I was going to say "fuck this!" and jump the first flight back to Sydney to reclaim my party girl life.
But I stuck it out. Things HAD to get better. They just had to. We had to get more freedom, right? And eventually we did. The opening went really well. We had Naomi Campbell, Lindsay Lohan, Guy Ritchie, Naomi Watts, Kelly Slater and a handful of others there for the big night. Including our multi-billionaire boss lurking around the place with his tall, thin New Yorker wife who was about 30 years his junior, on his arm. Ca-ching $$$.
We ended up only working four nights a week, which resulted in us basically having four days a week to ourselves, which resulted in travel! We started by driving to Marrakesh for our first weekend of freedom. It was amazing there and the first time I'd seen tourists in weeks. Very tourist orientated, it was all about the hustle. Snake charmers, henna artists, men trying to shove monkeys on you, people grabbing at you to the point where you'd literally have to rip your arm away and firmly say "NO!" or "LA!" in Arabic. Bartering for fakes and not being lured in by "Come in to my shop, come in to my shop, just look, you look for free, don't have to buy!". This was my first attempt at bartering. I didn't understand the currency very well, and I had just as little idea about what everything was worth over there. So when I paid 500 dihrum for my fake vintage Chanel bag, I was laughed at by my friends who were locals. Ripped off! But its leather and amazing so I don't care :)
To be continued. I can't be bothered typing any more haha...
So I guess I'll update my ever changing life once more.
Last time I gave you the spill on my life when I was in party mode. I was thin, working in a completely superficial salon where life was all about designer clothes and fashion week and I was drunk pretty much four nights a week, partying between clubs and my city pad and hooking up with many a male. Life was FUN. I needed it. It was about time I finally felt amazing about myself, had awesome clothes and a cool house and was just having fun.
Then things changed...
I was really over the salon. Like incredibly over it. To the point where you'd wake up for work each morning and want to cry. You'd take 5 minutes to walk 50 meters on the home stretch to work of a morning because you just didn't want to be there. I'd cry at work in the end and not realise that it was just a fucking salon! They were just hairdressers for fuck sake! Hairdressers with massive egos though because they took care of 'celebrities' and worked Fashion week, and had spreads in editorial and did Harpers covers and all of that fun stuff. But still, it was living Hell most days.
So I began looking for new jobs, ones where I'd earn more money and be back in an office. No more Saturdays at work and somewhere with a good team of people who didn't judge you if you had a bad hair day - God forbid! :)
So I applied for jobs and knew things were going to change. I just didn't expect them to change this much.
I woke up for work one morning in October (2009), grabbed my iPhone off charge while I was still lying in bed half asleep and did what I obsessively used to do; check Facebook. Now I'm a generally selfish person who doesn't really read people's travel emails etc because they usually just don't interest me, but my friend Romy who had been traveling for about 6 months had sent me a message to my Facebook inbox and something was screaming at me to read it. So I did. And it turned out that she was asking a handful of Sydney girls to head over to Morocco to work in a nightclub that her brother had just scored the spot of Resident DJ for. It said that all flights, accommodation and food was included and that we'd basically have to pack up and leave straight away. I wrote back "YES!" as soon as I read it. This was completely insane. I had no money, I had a lease and a full time job but it just didn't matter to me. I knew this is what I had to do.
So a week later I was on a plane to Casablanca and my new home was El Jadida, Morocco...Northern AFRICA! I used to look at a map and laugh because never in a thousand years did I ever consider living in Africa. I didn't even know where Morocco was at the time.
I got there after 35 long and stinky (literally, I WREAKED when I finally got off the plane. I learned that flying for that long necessitates a costume change at every stop over)hours, was chauffeured to the resort that the nightclub was in and met the managers and the other Aussie girls who had got there a few days before me. Including my beautiful Rommers who I hadn't seen since she left months before. The it was ON! I slept that night - luckily, because the other girls didn't get too even though they'd been in transet for more than a day! - and from the next day I was working 16 hour shifts in preparation for the grand opening of the club and the resort.
It was tough! We had one day off in nearly two weeks and were literally working 16 hour days, sleeping for a few hours and then up at the crack of dawn again to train the staff and potter around stressing over table set ups and how much everything was on the menu. There were tears in the first few weeks and since my life back in Australia had finally hit its peak, there were times when I was going to say "fuck this!" and jump the first flight back to Sydney to reclaim my party girl life.
But I stuck it out. Things HAD to get better. They just had to. We had to get more freedom, right? And eventually we did. The opening went really well. We had Naomi Campbell, Lindsay Lohan, Guy Ritchie, Naomi Watts, Kelly Slater and a handful of others there for the big night. Including our multi-billionaire boss lurking around the place with his tall, thin New Yorker wife who was about 30 years his junior, on his arm. Ca-ching $$$.
We ended up only working four nights a week, which resulted in us basically having four days a week to ourselves, which resulted in travel! We started by driving to Marrakesh for our first weekend of freedom. It was amazing there and the first time I'd seen tourists in weeks. Very tourist orientated, it was all about the hustle. Snake charmers, henna artists, men trying to shove monkeys on you, people grabbing at you to the point where you'd literally have to rip your arm away and firmly say "NO!" or "LA!" in Arabic. Bartering for fakes and not being lured in by "Come in to my shop, come in to my shop, just look, you look for free, don't have to buy!". This was my first attempt at bartering. I didn't understand the currency very well, and I had just as little idea about what everything was worth over there. So when I paid 500 dihrum for my fake vintage Chanel bag, I was laughed at by my friends who were locals. Ripped off! But its leather and amazing so I don't care :)
To be continued. I can't be bothered typing any more haha...