Rest in peace Charlotte Dawson.

Social media has put me in touch with so many people from all walks of life - some of these people have been celebrities that I chat to regularly on Twitter.

This morning Charlotte Dawson was found dead in her Sydney home.

Charlotte was often on the receiving end of online bullying. She attempted to take her life in 2012 after an onslaught of attacks via Twitter. Charlotte was open about her depression, which I'm sure helped others to feel less alone.

She was a huge advocate for people who were bullied online, and involved in charity work supporting mental health. She fought for the underdog. She was so warm, she took care of people there and took those fragile people - just like herself - under her wing. She looked after people on Twitter, supporting them and encouraging them.

Charlotte and I have been friends on Twitter for a couple of years now, tweeting to each other regularly. When I was in hospital in 2012, she told me the food I was photographing looked delicious and that she wanted some, and we laughed (virtually) about how it was the first time hospital food looked so desirable! She gave me her phone number too, in case I needed to talk. I sent her a few messages - namely to see how she was during her publicly difficult times. She cheered me on empathetically during my Reddit experience. Yesterday she tweeted me. Saying she was a fan of my blog, and to keep blogging. I thanked her but wish I had have asked her if she was ok.

I feel sad. I didn't know her for her celebrity, TV hosting or modelling work. I knew her for her words alone. Online friendships, they're real, you know. I didn't know Charlotte Dawson away from Twitter, but I feel like I knew what she stood for.

Her death is so tragic. She was present on our TV screens and she reached out to so many yet must have felt terribly alone. Depression does not discriminate.

Rest in peace, Charlotte Dawson. Thank you for the tweets. Thank you for the friendship. My thoughts are with your family and friends - I know they're hurting right now.

If you need to talk to someone, please contact Lifeline: 13 11 14.

 

#abledpeoplesay

(Street art - Hosier Lane, Melbourne)

Yesterday morning on Twitter I came across the #abledpeoplesay meme. There were statements highlighting the ignorance around both physicial disabilities, invisible illness and depression. And I took part straight away, sharing the funny, stupid and insulting things people have said about my skin. Some of these things have been said to me years ago, others more recently. They're the sort of things that just stick, they made me laugh, and I remember them. It wasn't about me being bitter or not letting go. It was about me reflecting on and sharing the reality of how insensitive people can be.

Tweeting these was both humourous and cathartic. And it showed me and the Twittersphere just how intrusive able-bodied people can be towards people with disabilities.

Here are some of the actual things that able-bodied people have said to me. The. Actual. Things.

"You're looking almost 'normal' today."

"I don't even notice your condition anymore."

"I know exactly how it feels to have a severe skin condition; I have my eyebrows waxed monthly."

"Is there a cure for that? I couldn't handle looking like you."

"You want to be treated 'normally' but you still want to maintain your disability identity? I don't understand."

"They don't mean any harm when they ask questions about the way you look. They're just curious."

"Can you still have sex?"

"This is Carly. I've told you about her before. Do you think she's as red as you imagined?"

"Why do you put your photo online if you don't want it ridiculed? You have to expect the ridicule if you look different."

"It's so good that someone like you is out there and not locked away somewhere."

"I've seen Embarrassing Bodies. I know exactly what your condition is like."

"If I was in your situation I'd top myself."

"I will pray for you."

"Don't you wish there was a cure so you'd look a little less...unfortunate?" (Said via an email from an online dating suitor. He didn't get a date.)

"I wasn't sure how comfortable you were with being in a photograph."

"It's easy for you to criticise a diversity conference that lacked diverse speakers. You need to see the bigger picture."

"I don't understand why you only want to discuss your illness on your own terms. Strangers should be able to ask you questions."

"Change your appearance so you can be a little kinder on yourself."

"But dating is just as hard for a 'normal' person too."

"Here's the number of my naturopath."

"You look like that EVERY day?"

"You didn't tell me you were going to be THAT red!" (Said on a date.)

"Quick! Turn on the TV! There's a reality show featuring your condition."

"Is it contagious?"

"Stop scratching. The sound is really annoying me."

"There's always someone worse than you."

"God only gives challenges to those who are strong enough to handle them."

"When I first met you I was a bit shocked but now I realise you're normal and that."

"You've been a silly girl, letting yourself get so sunburnt." (Complete with waggling fingers.)

"What a shame."

"Will your children turn out like you?"

"There's no need to talk about sex around you. You'll never have sex" (Said at high school.)

"But you're not disabled like them."

"He/she must be very strong to be your partner." (This hasn't been said to be but to friends of mine.)

"Retard isn't an offensive word. I'm not talking about disabled people when I say it"

"My kids aren't scared of how you look, they're just shy." (This one makes me sad when I see kids covering their eyes in fear.)

"Oh but people are afraid of difference. They don't know how to react when they see you."

When it's all laid out bare like that I feel pretty proud to be so resilient. But I can't believe that people just say what they're thinking. Would they say those things to people without disabilities? My Twitter friends were disgusted and apologetic about what I tweeted.

I must qualify though: along with these things that have been said to me over the years, there have been so many more wonderful things said. Able-bodied people aren't all like those who have dropped these clangers. And people with disabilities have also said some pretty gobsmacking things to me too.

The things able-bodied people say show the attitudinal barriers that people with disabilities face. There is a gross sense of entitlement for strangers to know what's 'wrong' or to offer a platitude, because they really don't know what to say to someone with a disability. Education like this meme is a start in creating change.

A person tweeted me asking what's a good thing to say? I've written these two pieces that may be useful:

Tips for having a conversation for people with disabilities.

Preparing children for meeting someone with disabilities.

Check out the #abledpeoplesay meme on Twitter for more insights into things able people say.

And I'd love you to tell me what's been said to you.

 

I don't care what my teacher says, I want to be a super model

In the first week back at work for the year (only 51 more to go, people!) - a week where public transport ticket prices went up, Melbourne weather fluctuated between ridiculously hot and wind chills, each hour during the day felt like three and I took a fleeting interest in cricket (Michael Clarke 329 not out), there was only one certainty. Laksa King for dinner tonight.

When I went to go to get my cider (what a bargain it was at $13 for a six pack!) while I waited for my laksa to be made, the takeaway beeper started vibrating and beeping. I felt very important, like I was very busy in two places at once, being called to attend to a very important situation - picking up laksa. I almost felt like a doctor. A doctor of food appreciation perhaps. I feel very cross-cultural with my Tasmanian cider and Malaysian laksa, all the way from Flemington.

This arrived in the mail today. It's my Darren Hayes fanclub pack. Very exciting! I especially love the patch, which I have considered using as a feature on a handmade iPad case, when I get my iPad (I neeeeeeeed one for BlogHer in New York. I do.).

Progression has been made on the New York trip planning front. I booked my leave yesterday (nothing like preparing for a holiday on the first week back at work for the year). I am taking four weeks and one day off work - one day to get my stuff together, three weeks overseas and one week to recover. I also sourced two luggage tags (I think they're going to be my new interest, the way I love brooches), and got one of my passports acquainted with its new home - a beautiful leather passport wallet which I received for Christmas. I especially like the popcorn luggage tag. My mission for America is to pack light, so I probably won't need any more luggage tags because I shall only take one suitcase and a carry-on.

And I now have a small collection of New York travel books, and a large collection of travel brochures. All I want to do is eat street food, visit everywhere Felicity went and perhaps go to Sesame Street, but it appears New York City has so much more to offer.

With these small things sorted, I feel like my trip is becoming a reality. I have a list of questions to ask my doctors when I go to hospital on Tuesday. I am sure I will be over prepared.

Something else that became a reality this week was my excess Twitter use. Just as I sometimes spend time frittering my money away, this week I was twittering my time away. I was tweeting on two devices - my iPhone and MacBook (hello Apple!) and my cerebral something or other in my brain was getting quite the intellectual workout. I spent quite some time thinking of 'less ambitious books' - using the hashtag #lessambitiousbooks. Some of mine were 'Snugglepot and Cuddlepastry', 'Charlie and the Carob Factory', 'The Guinness Book of MP3s' and 'Pippi Ankle Sock'. LOL indeed.

And today I pretended to be a supermodel. I won't get out of bed for less than $5K. Unless you were giving me any amount of vouchers from the shopping centre to spend, then I'd get out of bed. Or if I was hungry - then I'd get out of bed for free. It wouldn't take much actually. The lovely Cam took some photos of me in different outfits for an upcoming feature somewhere. Vague I know. It was fun, but the constant changing of outfits meant I got a bit sore from the scraping of the clothes. Here is a sneak peak.

It was fun choosing all the outfits and accessories and packing them in my case this morning (the most economical packing I've ever done, and Cam was a brilliant photographer - very encouraging! Whenever I got to Cam's house, I eat! We had morning tea - sampling two halves of sweet tarts - apple and lime - and then went to a bakery for lunch. Meeting up with Twitter turned real life friends means it is acceptable to take photos of food and tweet mid meal. I shared a coke with Comet. I felt like I was sharing it with the Jebediah song She's Like a Comet. Sort of. 

I swear the names on the Cokes are strange. I haven't seen my name yet, and my name was a bit common in the Carly Simon era. 

Finally, and don't say I don't regularly do community service work, the highlight of my day on Thursday was when my colleague said to me 'that actor you love, you know the one whose photos you have stuck all around your desk, the one with the scar on his face. Have you seen that ad? He looks a bit gross'. And so I asked her if the ad was for the new Channel 10 show Bikie Wars. Yes she said. And so I did the only logical thing - googled Callan Mulvey on my phone. I was in love. A long haired, scruffy Callan Mulvey. 

No need to thank me. He is hot isn't he?

Ok, I am off to eat my Laksa King, I had to leave it a bit so I wasn't eating at old person/hospital time. I'm starving Marvin!

The week in iPhone pictures

It's been a while since I blogged about the mundane. You know, every day stuff. And so here you go. My week (ish) in pictures. Not in chronological order.

Turning into a vain princess

I had filming for No Limits yesterday. The final shoot of the season. And last shoot I had my hair curled and a bit of lipstick applied. And in three weeks I have purchased three lip glosses and a hair curler. 

My face was a bit sore yesterday, and I have a mild cold, so being pampered was just what I needed. And it was so nice to have someone pay attention to making me look good - I find that really hard to come by with hairdressers.

Even though I was a lot redder than usual, the lovely make-up artist made sure my lippie stood out. Wow. I never thought the day would come when I'd get a little excited over make-up and hair.

No Limits fun

It is always fun on set! Yesterday it seemed pretty quiet around the traps though. We all arrived at different times. We managed to snap this photo between episodes. Pictured: Elvira, Phin and Louis.

And the cast and crew also did this recording/photo in support of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Once again I was a shrinking violet and hung back in the shadows.

Prawn tacos

I made the most wonderful mid-week dinner. Prawn tacos. I was inspired by Sydney Shop Girl, remembering that she'd made them, and so I had to google the ingredients and then go abd buy them after work. It's really easy.

Make a salad out of red cabbage, carrots, coriander and spring onions.

 I grated the carrots and chopped the other vegies.

 Cook the prawns - I cooked them in a little organic salted butter from Tasmania.

Mix up a dressing of mayonnaise and sour cream (and horseradish, but I couldn't find any) and lime juice. Mum bought me the cool lime squeezer. I also have a lemon squeezer similar.

Assemble tacos on a tortilla. I added some jalapeno salsa. Because I am addicted to the stuff and eat it by the spoonful.

 Fold in half and eat. Yummmmm.

Tweeting the the stars

I put a tweet out about Neighbours. And then to my surprise, one of my favourite singers, Bob Evans, tweeted me back!

And again! That's when good rockstars and fans become good tweeters. Indeed.

 Tweet of the Month

 

Speaking of Twitter, I was featured Tweet of the Month in Shop til You Drop magazine. They had a special about shopping away a sucky day - including what the buy when you have a broken heart. How apt. So I tweeted. 

My Tweet of the Month resulted in much teasing by my friends though. 

Mamasita

A friend and I went to the much hyped Mamasita restuarant. Wow. It was amazing. A bit of a queue. But so amazing!

Two margaritas on a school night. This one was citrus with vanilla salt.

Corn on the cob - the most amazing corn we'd ever had. And that salsa in the background - wow!! The corn had spices and cheese on it.

 Ceviche - market fish in coconut milk and lime. It was tart and refreshing and delicious.

Tortilla. This was the lamb one, with cheese and lemon. We stacked it with that salsa, which made it even better.

Goat and corn. It was great. Quite a big serving. My friend had two pieces of goat. I had one.

And this was fantastic - corn icecream with caramelised popcorn!

 Here is Mitch with our second serving of corn. We got hungry.

By this time it was already 9.00pm and we'd been there for over three hours. People were still queuing. We felt quite special to be there eating and drinking at the bar.

The service was attentive and really quick. The noise level was good. It was very trendy in there. The food was amazing - definitely not your Taco Bill type Mexican. I highly recommend eating at Mamasita. 

Mitch and I met in about 1993 when his brother was my wardmate in hospital. His family and I have been friends ever since.

Mamasita on Urbanspoon

Carlyfindlay.com launch

Carlyfindlay.com was launched in a 30 minute lunch break on Thursday.

My friend, work and uni colleague Jess created the site and social media strategy, and I provided most of the content. Here I am pressing publish.

Hooray for CarlyFindlay.com!

Foodie Tweetup at The Provincial Hotel, Fitzroy

On Friday night I went to a Tweetup foodie event at The Provincial Hotel in Fitzroy. Yep, I met a heap of people from Twitter and we all had dinner. I already knew @calfy, @cheriecheroo, @starinmelbourne and @jentopia from previous meet ups (I knew @calfy (Shawn) as we went to primary school together, and Jen and I are blog/Twitter friends). The other 11 people were strangers to me - I only knew a few of them from their Twitter accounts. It's so cool to meet people from the internet. Everyone was so lovely! Meeting people from the internet is no longer the dodgy, seedy and risky thing it once was. I highly advocate it!

The Provincial Hotel is beautiful inside - rustic and spacious. I went there in 2003 when I first moved to Melbourne, and I don't recall it being this dedicated to food - from memory, it was solely a pub. I only took a few photos of the interior.

This giant bottle of Veuve Cliquot was in my direct view.

Some of the group had previously dined at The Provincial and interacted with the restaurant through Twitter (of course!).

The executive chef, Paul Cooper designed a special menu for us - such fine dining at amazing value! In all honesty, I feared a degustation menu would leave my tummy and purse empty at the end of the night. But my fears were allayed early on - it was less than I expected to pay, and I was pleasantly full.

Although the restaurant was full of diners, it felt like we were the only group in the room - great, personal service from all staff.

Like all Tweetups, and this a foodie Tweetup, mobile phones were at the ready, next to cutlery, poised for tweets as the night progressed. Descriptions of food, introductions (follows) and thank yous, all in 140 characters or less. Some of us placed our gourmet street presses on our side plates, folded up like napkins. We were ready to eat and tweet.

I'll write you through the menu now. It seems like the logical step for five courses. We had bread for starters, with really high quality olive oil and balsamic for dipping. No photos. You can imagine bread, I am sure.

1st Course

Heirloom tomato and watermelon salad, with mint, radish and marinated fetta.

This was a pretty awesome salad. I loved the creamy feta, the balsamic and the mint. The heirloom (or 'airloom' as I pronounced it) tomatoes were yummy too. The salad was covered in a gazpacho jelly.

Here I am about to eat it.

2nd Course

Scallop Ceviche, avocado, cucumber, lime, and ginger beer granita.

This was my favourite savoury course. The scallops were so tender (I love salmon ceviche so it was near on guaranteed I'd love this) and I wanted to drink the granita when it'd melted. The green dots are avocado. And the brown slivers were like a cross between a pastry and a flat bread. Such an arty dish.

3rd Course

Wood roasted Yellowtail Kingfish, marinated zucchini, sauteed organic kale, lemon, smoked herb oil.

The Kingfish was so fishy and fresh. It had a crispy skin too. I loved the lemon and herbs with the kale.

4th Course

House corned Warialda Belted Galloway beef silverside, with crushed potato, mustard, and almonds.

Sadly I have never been a silverside fan. I did eat the lot, and really enjoyed the fig mustard and mash. The other tweeps loved the dish. During this course, I tasted one of the vegetarian options - pan fried cheese gnocci with broad beans and fetta, and using Faux Fuchsia's rating scale, I gave it 11/10. I am less of a fan of broad beans than I am silverside, but I ate two broad beans and LOVED them!

5th Course

Chocolate Fondant 'just for Cherie'

This dessert was amazing! Seriously good. Even though chocolate is not often my preference, I rate this a million out of 10. Wow. It was such good quality chocolate, the fondant was like eating a cloud filled with gooey goodness. And the icecream was great too. The smear on the plate is orange grand marnier jam. (Un)fortunately someone had to forgo their dessert, so I shared it with Shawn and Jen after I'd eaten my own dessert.

I really enjoyed the night - met some great new friends and ate wonderful food. I'll definitely be up for another foodie Tweetup! And we may have some new recruits for our food blog!

The first pic of the very beautiful Jen and I. (Ok, so there's another one, but this was the best one of the two, I thought).

And here is our group of Tweeps. A fantastic bunch of people!

Thanks for organising, @calfy and @cheriecheroo, and for your hospitality, Erez Gordon and all at The Provincial Hotel, and especially to Paul Cooper and the team of chefs for the wonderful food.

My blog got a mention...

On the Rob Thomas celebrity tweet page.

Thanks!