Bellbird Park 8 February 2025,
Hi Marlis,
I can’t believe January has come and gone already, but
we’re really in February! As usual, it’s been a busy two months, but at the
same time not so busy at all. I don’t know, it seems like the days rush past, so
I am happy to take a moment and write to you to see what’s really happened over
the past few months.
Also, we might be in Canberra from 2 to 4 March for Yumi to meet with her business partners to wrap up Purpose at Work, now that 2 of the 3 business partners have gone on new adventures. We thought it would be a nice opportunity for us to visit you on Saturday or Sunday afternoon if that suits your day? I’ll give you a call to ask in person and work something out. Please don’t go to any trouble, just tea is fine, and we can the cake to save you a few hours of baking😊.
Christmas Break activities
We spent our 10 days of Christmas just staying at home
and going on day-trips, it was great! Finally, a chance for Yumi to spend some
time around the house and for Dash and us to go on walks around the
neighbourhood. We feel it really made a difference to his comfort and
confidence levels, he was much more excited to go out and explore instead of
wanting to go straight home after 5 minutes.
We went to Stanthorpe, a regional town about 200km to the Southwest of Brisbane just to see what’s out there. Turns out it’s lots of nothing and beautiful nature, so exactly how we like it. Unfortunately, I had rolled my ankle while out walking/litter picking that morning and didn’t think too much off it, but when we arrived, I found my ankle had gone quite stiff and I couldn’t walk very well. Not to be deterred we pushed on, me hobbling along and took Dash for a walk along the river, through a park and some ancient giant rocks before having a nice lunch and driving all the way back. It’s always nice to just drive and see the big skies and rolling fields, I need that every now and then.
Dash is not much of a beach dog, but he enjoyed it quite a bit this time, even went to lie down in the water to cool down, only to be flushed by a wave, which of course he did not like at all, haha. Normally he wouldn’t get near the water, but more recently he’s okay to stand in it and walk around a bit, so he’s happy, we’re happy and everyone has a good time. We had an improvised lunch with salad and bread rolls from Coles and lots of water and then went home again. Look at us being adventurous…
We also did some shopping, go for longer walks with and without Dash and discovered a massive shopping centre not too far away from our house, so we spent a good few hours just seeing what was there, buying clothes and some glasses for Yumi! She’s not had glasses for at least 15 years or so after getting her eyes lasered, but old age comes for all of us and like me, she started having trouble reading the finer and smaller print. Ever the bargain hunter, she found this shop where she could buy four pairs for, wait for it…$15. Actual, professionally made glasses! And she could have gotten five but ran out of different variants to choose from. For comparison, one pair of my multifocals, with rebate from insurance, came to $800. Sometimes life and sales are just not fair, haha.
I also went out to donate blood for the 49th time, so next time will be a photo opportunity (they do that every 50 or so times) but there are people on that wall of fame who have donated 600 times, so I am not even really competing, but it feels good to do such a small thing.
Other than that, I did some reading, tidied up the yard, did some chores around the house and we made our last will and testament because it seems like the responsible thing to do. Last time we did was nearly 20 years ago in the Netherlands and since then we’ve gathered quite some stuff and a bit of money, so we thought to better get that sorted. It was a bit more involved this time, but we’re about to hand it over to a lawyer and then we can drown, eaten by sharks, get in a plane crash, car crash, get struck by lightning or get trampled by a herd of goats while on holiday in Anatolia.
Just kidding of course, nothing like that will happen (perhaps the goats, you never know), but it’s nice to have it all sorted all the same.
The garden project
This is taking a bit longer than we thought, for no
other reason than that it’s the holiday season and we said that we were not in
a hurry. The lady came around twice to take some measurements, sent some emails
with questions and then it was nothing again. Then she asked that we get our
plot surveyed because it helps with the design, so sure, for an eye-watering
$1,500? Why not! Sigh, well at least we’ve no got the drawing and know exactly
where our boundaries and other stuff are. In the grand scheme of things it
doesn’t matter, but soon enough we’ll have spent $5,000 on what is essentially
a set of drawings, with nothing done in the yard to show for it.
We’re a bit scared to ask/think about how much this
whole yard project is going to cost, but we tell ourselves it will look really
good in the end and increase the value of the house. The thing for me is I
don’t even like gardening, in fact, I hate it, but okay, once it’s done we’ll
have a much nicer looking spot and I will only have to mow 100m2 of grass
instead of 500m2, which I very much look forward to! We hope to have the plans
by end of February, then find a landscaper by end of March and have the whole
thing done by end of April or May. Let’s see how that plan works out!
Contract extension and the job
My new contract at Lactalis (they make milk products
like Icebreak, Paul’s Milk, Lemnos Feta, Vaalia yoghurt, etc.) is going really
well. So well in fact that, they’ve offered me another 6 months of work to help
out with a range of things, all to do with people and systems, but nothing with
cows and farms unfortunately. Just yesterday we threw ourselves a party because
we actually got the impossible done and quite successfully too, setting up a
new process for timesheets for about 1,000 employees. We’re not anywhere near
where we need to be, but people are filling out their timesheets and the data
is flowing in every week now. Soon enough we’ll be able to take the next steps
in stopping people from working crazy long hours. I think it will be very hard
for the organisation to change its ways, but all we can do is try.
I am enjoying it a lot because my team members are
very nice and knowledgeable, I get to do a lot of different things and because
there are almost no processes and systems there are virtually no rules to stick
to. It’s a good thing I am a mostly responsible adult who tries to do good
things for people because it would be very easy to just wing it and get away
with it, but where’s the fun in that, right? That’s not much of a challenge! I
am also helping out with the communications for our office relocation, setting
up a change management framework, and some other small things. That’s not even
mentioning the super-secret project I am working on, that I am not allowed to
talk about because it’s all very commercially sensitive, but safe to say that
it keeps me busy. I work from the office 3 days a week, then work from home the
other 2 which are the same for Yumi, so I get to spend more time with her and
Dash.
For my breaks I get to walk along the river or through
the Southbank part of the city, which is fun because all the museums and
tourist things are there so there’s always lots happening and people to watch.
It’s certainly different from Strathpine when I worked at Super Retail Group
last year. I do miss the train rides where I could read, write and work. Now I
drive into work, which is much faster and shorter because the public transport
connection isn’t very good at this office, but maybe when we’ve moved in May, I
will get back on the train and have more time to myself where I am not
navigating peak hour traffic. Better for the environment and cheaper too, as
public transport now costs $1 for return trip, that’s practically free! This is
the view from the Skydeck of the Star Casino that is open to the public, I can
see my old and new office from here!
New flooring
It finally happened over the long Australia Day
weekend! We have new flooring in the bedroom and dog stuff storage room. It was
a bit of an adventure getting it sorted, but we got there in the end. They told
us we could pick it up at a store on our way home from work, but of course that
changed to ‘pick it up at this warehouse 45 mins from your house between these
impossible hours on an inconvenient date’. Or…. we could pay extra for delivery
to our door. That deal that looked really good turned out to be not so good
after all, but at least Yumi has the colour she wants and that’s what really
matters. To her, haha, I was so over it already I would have put in black,
yellow or orange floorboards if it was up to me. Good thing I don’t make the
important decisions around here. 😊
We cut out the daggy carpet, it rolled up nice and neat, got rid of the underlay and cleaned the concrete floor like our lives depended on it. In these sorts of projects Yumi has a lot of opinions about how things should go, without doing any of the work, so I always try to go along and only when it gets really impractical, expensive or annoying will I go against it. The secret to a good marriage, am I right? The bedroom took about 5 hours in total, of which 2 hours was spent on going around corners and making sure everything looked good. The dog room was much faster the next day and Yumi even got on the tools to help out!
She wasn’t keen on handling the power saw, but I always tell her that anything I can do, she can do to and should try it, doesn’t matter if it’s traditionally a ‘man’s job’. She did a very good job and things went pretty quick. We even had the Monday left to hang around the house, because I went to the tip to get rid of all the packaging carpet and other random items on Sunday, so we were all set when it was time to get back to work. Did I mention I had such sore muscles from making all these movements you normally never do in positions I am not sure a human body is supposed to be in? Maybe I am just getting old because man, I felt it!
Yumi work, volunteering and dancing
Yumi’s been super busy throughout December and January.
At work she’s smashing it in every way imaginable and now that her probation
period is over, she’s got 4.5 year of project work to look forward to. I really
enjoy seeing her work as the best version of herself, she’s making the impact
that she wants to make, improving people’s lives as she goes. Her colleagues
are great, they do fun activities at work and have lunch together too. January
was Yumi’s turn to do what they call the ‘interest table’, where one of the
team is in charge of sharing something about their hobbies, culture or skills.
Yumi came up with a few things, like showing them the basics of Kendo (Japanese
sword fighting), the weird things about the Dutch language and a culture
session on Luxembourg. It sounded like they had great fun and even copied some
of the words, which were of course all the swear words and inappropriate
sayings, haha.
It's also been a busy month for the greyhounds, with lots of new fosters, dogs going to their new forever homes and walk, yard checks and intake interviews. Most of her evenings were filled with phone calls and forms, but things seem to have quieted down a bit now. It always happens in January, once people have come back from holidays, they are ready to foster and adopt again, so Yumi makes hay when the sun shines as they say.
Her dancing is still a thing that she enjoys doing too. Right now, it’s only the burlesque dancing, but soon enough the 3rd year of Common People Dance Project will kick off. They did another performance mid-December, and it was a lot bigger of a production with about 150-200 dancers if I had to guess. This time there was even some topless action from a group of instructors (so not for Yumi) just to make people like me even more uncomfortable. I had already positioned myself a bit further at the back, but there were so many dancers that they ended up in the isles between the chairs anyway. Yumi had asked around with her dance partners and some of their husbands felt equally awkward sitting there looking at women of all ages in what amounts to their underwear or less. Good to know it’s not just me. I’ll keep going to the performances to support Yumi, but I really don’t need to see that many women in so little clothing!
Clare and Goose come to visit for a week
To Dash’s dismay we had 2 girl greyhounds visit one
after the other for two weeks. The first one, Clare was a favour to one of Yumi’s
foster families who had to go to Newcastle for a few days so we looked after Clare
for the week. She is four and just couldn’t quite settle down. She did well for
her whole stay, considering that she’s in a new environment, new greyhound and
new humans but pfff she was a lot of work. Taking her for a walk was just me
fighting her on the lead the whole time, in the house she would be in your face
the whole time, trying to steal food, getting in the way.
Then she developed a limp out of nowhere, which we could manage with some pain meds that Dash gets for his shoulder anyway and she was fine after that. She also briefly escaped when we came back from a walk, but I followed her on my bike and eventually grabbed a hold of her. Good thing it was at 6 in the morning on a Saturday or that could have ended badly. She sounds like trouble, but was also lovely, very affectionate and had a very funny habit of hoarding all toys and items she could get onto her bed and then falling asleep on them. Dash just let it all happen and sighed a big sigh of relief when she left.
Little did he know that Miss Gooseberry (Goose) was about to make an appearance for an unexpected week-long visit after the person she was going to unexpectedly fell ill and needed to postpone taking her in by one week. That was the same weekend we were putting in the new flooring, so we had to get a bit creative to keep two dogs out of the way.
Dash normally wouldn’t care one bit and just sleep, but if Goose went to have a look, of course he had to have a look too! And look she did, every 5 minutes. When we were done and cleaning up, I forgot to check if the garage door was closed and at some point, we noticed she was gone! A very frantic 10 minutes of searching followed, until Yumi got a call that someone had found her walking around on the other side of a very busy road near our house. Yikes! We quickly went to pick her up and didn’t leave her out of our sight since. The Friday before she left on Saturday, she started leaking small droplets of blood from her behind so we then found out she had a urinary tract infection that we caught early fortunately. Yumi did a quick trip to the vet to get her checked out and get some meds for ‘only’ $350…Wow! She also was an early riser, so when I got up at 4.30am she’d join me and f things didn’t move fast enough, she’d start to howl, which Dash than took as a cue to join in. Wonderful! She also howled when an emergency vehicle drove by with its siren on and Dash, the goof, happily sang along with her!
She left on the next Saturday as planned and Dash just slept the whole day. He’s a good host dog but really prefers to be alone, haha. Can’t say I blame him; it’s like having kids when it’s two dogs instead of one!
Planning a trip to the Maldives
My longtime friend of 28 years, Just, is turning 50 in
August and to celebrate we agreed to go on a diving trip together. I shopped
around a bit to see where would be the most fun and we landed on the Maldives
(off the South coast of India, way out in the ocean). We also considered Cairns
and Bonaire (Dutch Antilles), but the Maldives is new to both of us and
surprisingly affordable if you don’t need to sleep in a romantic hut above the
water. I mean, I like Just, but not in that way haha.
We’ll probably go 8 days, meet on the island of Male, which
is also the capital, where he can do his advanced open water course as a gift
from Yumi and me and then we can do some more diving after that. I think it
will be awesome in more ways than one and am already looking forward to it even
if it is still 7 months away. I might just fly from Sydney to Male, instead of
from Brisbane because that’s like $1,000 cheaper! Wow, worth the extra few
hours in the air I think, as I don’t mind flying anyway.
Volunteering with RFS and CMI
Volunteering is always slower over December and
January, although I did join the training team at the Fire Brigade and did a
few meetings while we were on break. It was an interesting process to go
through because we have a lot of topics and not enough time, and some people
want to do it one way and other in a different way. I just put my hand up for a
few simple things and will see how it goes. I am now trained up to minimum
skills and have 1 bar on my shoulder. Well, I don’t because I don’t have my
epaulettes yet, but I might not even put them on when I get them, I not much
for the whole rank thing anyway. Fortunately, we didn’t have any major fires, yet,
because it’s still summer fire season and I would like some additional training
experience, but let’s hope for some grass fires where all the animals and
people can get away quickly enough.
Change volunteering has been on a break too. We had a
nice team lunch in December to celebrate a very good year for our team and for
us winning the volunteer of the year award 3 years in a row! I plan to do a bit
less this year and let others step to the front. It looks like we’ll have some
new people join too, which is good because we have 15-20 events planned still.
We just kicked off the year with a breakfast event this Thursday and it really
felt like the year of change has started now. We’re exploring the option of
doing a 1-day community event at the end of the year and that will be quite the
thing to get organised, so we’ll see if we all say yes to it because I would
really be disappointed if it ends up being me and two others again like last
year. New year, new opportunities!
Small stuff
· Citizenship ceremony: It’s all happening on 20 February, so just a few more
weeks and I will be a true Australian! I finally got the invite for the
February ceremony mid-January, not quite on time for the Australia Day party,
but whatever, this works too. I was hoping to do it together with Yumi, but she
dropped off early on, so I got to the finish line alone, haha. Well, at least
she’s coming to the ceremony and might just do it this or next year.
· Book sales hitting 1000: thanks to some unexpected publicity, Bad Change has
now sold 1,000 copies! It took 3 years to get there, but what a number. Nothing
even close to a best-seller, but 4x as much as we thought we would ever sell,
so to us this is still a massive success.
· Car #2 is finally fixed: after two more trips to the garage the new VW Polo is
finally fixed and free of clanging sounds. I’ll spare you the runaround and
skip straight to the end, it drives great now and so quiet!
· 3+ months in the house: hard to believe that we’re already living in the new
house for 3 months. Somehow it feels much longer, but I think that’s a good
thing. Once the yards are done and some small inside works get done, I think it
will feel even more like OUR home 😊.
· New computer: I
finally bought a new laptop computer! After being annoyed with my Apple laptop for
3.5 years I allowed myself to buy a new Lenovo ThinkPad which is my absolute
favourite! Everything just works, Marlis! No more stupid, annoying, impractical
Apple! I could not be happier.
· Stupid lawnmower: After 2 years of hard use my lawnmower had a broken wheel. It’s all
plastic and had basically ripped off. I thought to just order a new one, but of
course those are out of stock for at least 6 weeks. How do you not have wheels
in stock, supplier?!?! Long story short, the grass doesn’t ever stop growing,
so I ended up buying a new identical lawnmower because I couldn’t even find
second hand parts. The good news is that I now have LOTS of spare parts and
extra batteries, haha. But seriously, how poor of a service experience is that,
to buy a whole new one for a $23 dollar wheel being out of stock!?😊
Okay that’s most of the updates done. Friends and
family are doing well, Dash is living his best life and we’ll be travelling
soon and hope that we can stop by to visit.
Be well and stay cool while it’s hot.
Gilbert