WahWahWhitney

Awkward stuff happens to me heaps. I'm also trying to run a startup which is ridiculous in itself. www.thebestday.com

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Salmon in the Yemen (at Bellevue Hill)

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Komor surprise vacation is underway!! First flight leg to unknown destination 1 is Singapore. So lucky to have this adventure! @cheesykumar

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#thebestday

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http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/c90.0.403.403/p403x403/486278_10151240002038258_146859507_n.jpg

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DYING at this blog.

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Yesterday, while watching the US presidential debate live from my home office in Sydney, Australia, I made a FB status update comparing Obama and Romney to the infamous engagement party speech in Bridesmaids. I received a handful of likes and, as likes on my social media account tend to do to me, my head inflated with the idea of viral internet glory: a mashup of the debate and Bridesmaids. So, I spent two slightly tipsy hours last night making this video. Please God let me get some likes. 

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My Dad is bananas and organises surprise vacations for the family. He's just given us our first clues for this year's trip over January and in honour of this crazy and ridiculously fortunate tradition here's a video of our 2010 surprise trip to Madagascar and Mauritius. Next trip we're bringing 'partners' so someone better love me down quick. 

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Reblogging this because my last post was serious susie and now I feel awks. Who wants my family to pick them up from the airport?

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Why Are People So Mean?

Sometimes I get so deeply sad by how mean people can be to one another that I just cry. It's a helpless cry that comes from the bottom of my heart, that expression is such a cliche but it's a cliche for a reason because when you really feel something it does physically rise up from inside you. I don't normally write about serious things because I like to try and be a source of positivity and humour but I want to share this story tonight. 

Today a video has begun to go viral of a 15 year old Canadian girl named Amanda telling her heart breaking story of years of taunting at the merciless hands of total strangers and class mates. Devastatingly, Amanda committed suicide this weekend, just over a month after sharing her story. 

If you look at her video on youtube you can see that there are many others just like it, that there are thousands if not millions of people suffering and hoping to find comfort in people's attention so I know this is not a particularly unusual tale. What really struck me about Amanda's story was how long her fight was, how tough she was to move schools three times and how hard she tried to give herself a chance.

This isn't the case of an irrational teenager suddenly snapping and making a terrible mistake. This was a slow suffocation that should have been stopped. That there are people out there with such hatred oozing from their hearts that they can bring so much suffering to someone else is obviously disturbing. However, what really sickens me is how many hundreds of normal-ish people missed the chance to make a difference to Amanda along her descent. 

To me this is the real problem, that it's more convenient to just lay low, to ignore the hate flying over our heads. I know this isn't an original thought but it's just something I'm becoming increasingly fired up about. With the whole possibly-gay thing I have experienced on a very small level what it's like to be hated by strangers. I get hate mail on this blog every week. If this was happening to me when I was a vulnerable teenager I wouldn't have the armour to deflect it. I would have needed others to come to my defence. 

Sometimes I wish I could go back to school so that I could have the chance to be the sort of person who opened my eyes to others' hidden suffering and made the effort to be kind to them when it was more convenient to just stay out of it. I don't think I was a bi*ch but I certainly wasn't brave enough to stand up to protect others. Maybe I would have been though if it was cool to speak out and do the right thing? Perhaps this is where we can make a difference? How do we create a culture that rewards someone for speaking out, rather than mocking them for caring? Even writing this I feel like I'm being really lame on my moral high horse and that people are going to judge me for it. Whatever, YOLO and I'm determined to make some sort of difference in this area in my life, I'm going to start small by publishing this. 

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Help a sister out and share this pre-launch love from Pedestrian TV! Hope everyone is having the best day... never gets old...

(via pedestrian.tv)

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Have You Lost Your Dignity? Full analysis here. 

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Preparation for my next blog post has gotten out of control. All I can say now is that I have created a legitimate formula for calculating dignity levels in texting relationships.

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This right here was one of those perfect moments where all of my senses felt completely happy; the wind in my face, sun on my back, music blasting, country air and hanging with my sister.

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Sunday lunch at the farm #drunk "why don't you have a boyfriend Whitney?" #awkward (Taken with Instagram)

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I now believe in ghosts

Yesterday I got home from 3 weeks in the US for my first big girl business trip and I went to bed about 8pm exhausted from my drunken flight across the Pacific. As I was drifting off I felt this immense pressure on my chest like someone was pushing me into the bed with their palms and my bed creaked really loud. I instinctively tried to stay calm and said softly "Peace be with you" (WTF, WHO SAYS THAT?!) to try and not show my fear to my visitor. The pressure waned for a moment and then came back again this time with a feeling of fingers around my throat, again I tried to 'welcome' the ghost rather than offend it. The split second I felt the pressure lift I got the fu*k out of bed and ran into my parents' room and slept in their bed. So, two things to take from this: my business trip did not make me an adult and I am likely crazy. 

UPDATE to the zero people that have cared about this: apparently this is called Sleep Paralysis and it happens to people sometimes when super exhausted (tick) where the mind wakes up but the body is still asleep so it can't 'move' and it feels like a ghost is sitting on you.... I'M KINDA NOT CRAZY.  

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This explains a lot... #sanfransisco #boozecruise (Taken with Instagram)

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This is Leroy and I at dinner before the political chat. 

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I'm about to get political

So last night I arrived in Austin and hopped in a cab to go to a family friend's house in the burbs. I was feeling hungry and weird and so naturally I asked Leroy my crazy cab driver from New Orleans if he would like to stop and get some Texan BBQ for dinner, my shout. Leroy flipped out, like flipped out, he told me this was the first time anyone had done this for him in 16 years of driving cabs in Austin. In the line to be seated at the restaurant he even started telling fellow diners what was happening, that "this beautiful young woman from AUSTRALIA is buying ME dinner! I'm just her cab driver!" 

We sat down to eat our BBQ ribs (and for anyone that knows me this was difficult because you have to be in the innermost VIP circle for me to be able to eat hand-held food in front of you) and soon enough we found ourselves broaching the topic of the upcoming election. 

After dancing around the issue for a few minutes neither person wanting to say any direct opinion, Leroy made a break for it and laid it all out: that he could not vote for Obama, despite him being black also, because Obama supports them gays' lifestyle. 

I was instantly so sad. 

Not because he's anti-gay but because this was the issue that was defining his vote. 

This election is absolutely massive, it represents the greatest fork in the road that US politics has probably ever seen. Leroy's daughter can't find work, he's getting a divorce from his wife so he can be with his other lady, his son's girlfriend is an illegal immigrant who may be deported, and his nephew is a marine in Iraq. These are real, tangible, important concerns that will greatly effect Leroy's life and yet he is choosing a direction for the future of this great country based on not wanting two strangers to be married. 

It's so weird to me that if I had told Leroy whom I'd prefer to hold hands with he could have instantly gone from thinking I was his favourite person to hop in his cab in 16 years to thinking I was going to hell. It's even more disturbing that he would sacrifice caring about his daughter's employment or his nephew's life to ensure that I may never be able to put a ring on it. 

Something has got to give. 

Here's a picture of Leroy and I.