Springfield Lakes 6 August 2024,

 

Hi Marlis,

Another 2 months gone by in a flash, I hope you are staying warm in the mornings and getting some sun in the afternoons. The mornings here are really quite cold with -2 degrees as the coldest so far this week! But once the sun gets out, it’s still 23 degrees so nothing to complain about really.

I have lots of things to share, so let’s get started.

 

Yumi has a job!

After running her own business for five years now, Yumi decided to take on a role with the Queensland Alliance for Mental Health, as their Senior Advisor Workforce Projects. In normal people speak that mean that she leads a team of people who work on projects that draw more workers into the sector to deal with their labour shortages.  Despite all the benefits of work from home and being her own boss, she now gets to make a much bigger impact. The project is funded for five years, which is also Yumi’s rhythm of how long she stays with an organisation. We could not be more different if we tried, haha.

Last week was her first week on the job and everything is different of course. New office, driving the car to work, new morning and evening routines, getting to know new people, and dozens of small changes all happening at once. It’s a lot, but she’s a trooper and will make it into something amazing for sure. 

It’s also an adjustment for Dash and myself, because we’re used to her just always being around, but so far so good. Instead of going for a walk with my litter gripper and Yumi walking Dash when I leave for work, now Dash and I now go for an early morning walk at 5am, while Yumi get’s up at six and leaves at seven. On Monday and Friday I’ll still be home most week, so he’ll have some company, but on the other weekdays he’s going for mid-day walks with his new best friend, Raine the dogwalker. He really likes her and by going for a 30-45 minute walk in the afternoon, both Yumi and I can rest assured that he’s comfortable and entertained until we get home. Now we try to walk him together in the weekend and evenings, because those are moments all three of us value 😊.

After one week we’re starting to establish a bit of a new rhythm already and it will eventually all settle down. From Dash’s perspective the great thing is that we now have a double income again, so we can buy him even more snacks, clothes, beds and toys!

 

My work

I just ticked over on seven months on the job at Super Retail Group and that’s normally when I start to get restless. This time it’s a bit different although there are moments when I do think about what might be next for me, but not yet. The big project I am on is starting to take shape after what feels like years, but is really only 6 months. We’re putting a new system in place to improve our human resources processes and a bunch of other boring but necessary things and on top of that there is a bigger program that my project is part of that is also picking up speed and keeping everything aligned can be quite the challenge.

We’re now getting more people involved and have selected a supplier/partner who will help us with the project, which should be complete by October 2025. That sounds like it’s far off, but it’s really not, when considering how much work there is to be done. Fortunately we have really good people to work with and things are coming together now, so we’ll see what the next few months bring. If I make to one year, that would be an achievement in itself. I had my performance review early July and it was uneventful, no real issues or point of improvement. I do sometimes sense that my manager (who is very good as managers go) had expected a bit more perhaps, but he didn’t mention it, so maybe that’s all in my head. The plan was that I would lead a team of people, but that looks unlikely and to be honest, I don’t know that I’d want to do that in this organisation, I like my leader, but overall, the senior leadership team hasn’t impressed me too much so far. I am happy where I am, I work with smart people, get to contribute to things that matter to the business and the pay and work-life balance are pretty good too. Just thinking about finding a new job again makes me tired, so I guess I’ll stick around for a bit longer!

Change Management Institute activities

I’ve been keeping busy with volunteering for CMI. We’re doing a lot in the next few weeks, organising catch-up, putting on events with interesting speakers, half-day workshops and networking drinks that are always good fun. It’s also very good to see other team members step up and starting to organise events. Normally I would take all the initiative and then be a bit grumpy about others not doing as much, but now I just let things be, make some introductions, share some ideas and support from the sidelines.  And guess what? They are doing just fine without me! We’re planning a big end-of-year event for November, which is really just an excuse to have a party and celebrate all the hard work we’ve done and the wonderful community we’re part of, lots of feel good vibes!

It's very cool to see some ideas that worked really well in Melbourne when I was there, still work six years later in Brisbane. More and more people are starting to find us and make a real effort to come to our different events. Now there’s even talk of Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast getting involved and we have no shortage of sponsors so things are looking bright for the committee. As a feather in our cap we saw some figures that show that we are 1/3 the size in population compared to NWS and VIC, but has nearly as many members as the other chapters. We only need 4 more members to be the biggest chapter in the world of CMI, so of course that’s what our goal is now. Not because we have to, but because we can, haha. We might even make it by the end of the year…

Rural Fire Service training and fire season

It’s been really good to have training to go to and actually learn useful things again. It’s just so much fun to play with hoses and water, set things on fire (in a controlled burn kind of way) and then put it out too. 

We train every Thursday and I make it to most training nights, plus I get to read lots of manuals and training books about what to do with the equipment, different types of fire scenarios and how to be really good at firefighting. Lots to learn still, I’ve just finished fundamentals and am now doing the course for Firefighter Minimum Standards and then it’s on to Firefighter Advanced Standards and that’ll be 2026 before I get there. I don’t necessarily want to lead a team, but if I want to, I can also train to become a crew leader. One step at a time though, having fun and being safe is more important than progressing and telling others what to do, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where I end up eventually, it’s the story of my life…

This brigade is such a different experience from SES that I actually look forward to training again and there’s good natured banter and poking fun at each other while we’re also learning new things. We also have a such a diverse crew, from car towers, to snake catchers, traffic controllers and nurses that there’s always something to talk about. Last Sunday we had a longer training session where we practiced with different types of pumps, foam, hoses and connectors and also to completely empty the 2,000 litre tanks we have to then practice to fill them up again from the standpipe on the watermains in the street. It’s funny how I never noticed all the infrastructure there is to help with firefighting in the community, but there is a lot and we get to just use it, which is good fun.

(this was a very controlled hazard reduction burn, nothing scary happened but it makes for great pictures!)

Fire season starts here on the first of August and we’ve already had some very small fires, mostly lit by kids and dumb people who don’t know what they are doing trying to burn some leaves and yard clippings and then the fire gets away and almost burns their house down. My commander tells me I am ready to go out to fires and help, but with work and the distance to the brigade I think I’ll mostly be the back up or switch out crew and that’s fine for me too, small steps keeps it fun to volunteer.

 

House hunting

Our rent has now increased to $645 a week which is not all that high in the neighbourhood here, but it’s enough for us to start considering buying a house instead if continuing to pay rent. The market is nearly unaffordable as it is and our thinking is that we better get something now before prices get to a level where we really don’t want to pay that much money for an average house.

Our initial plan was to buy land and then build on it, but now we’ve inserted one more step to first buy a home, before we buy THE home later on. Yumi wants it more than I do, but if she wants it, I want it for her too and I can see the benefits of having our own place.

We’ve been working with a mortgage broker who has been great and have already been pre-approved for more money than we want to spend, but it’s nice to have a buffer if we run into the right property. We’ll probably not be able to stay in Springfield Lakes because for what we want to spend, there aren’t that many homes available. Really average homes go for $800,000+, while in other parts of Brisbane and surrounds you can still get some decent plots and a good house for 650-700. If you say it fast enough it doesn’t sound like a ridiculous amount of money is what I tell myself.

Lower prices often mean the property is older and further to travel for work, but I am okay with that, our lives change all the time and it’s not our forever home. While we both work we can save so much money that in a few years’ time we’ll be able to upgrade and buy our own land and do what we want for the house. It’s been very good this Saturday to go to 6 properties and see what’s out there for what price. A lot of the homes are okay, but some are really ordinary or even overpriced. I am sure we can find something and we have our eye on one house which is quirky and different, stands on 900m2 of land and doesn’t need a lot of work.

Nowadays you can get so much information that it’s really important to move quickly and don’t wait to long. That’s more of a challenge for Yumi than it is for me as she always wants to explore all the options and check all the details, but this being such a big purchase, I keep reminding myself that her approach is the smart play and I should try to be patient. See, I can be an adult when I try! 😊

 

My new bike

A few weeks ago my bike got stolen from the train station! I had it locked and everything but I came back from work one night and it just wasn’t there. I stood there like a dummy for a while just not understanding what had happened, but then I went home, filed a police report and used Yumi’s bike instead for a few weeks. I did finally get around to securing a spot in the closed off bike locker but after parking my bike outside in the rack for at least 250 times and never having had an issue, I wasn’t expecting this. I’ll probably never see that bike again, which is sad because it used to be my dad’s and I have travelled so many kilometres on it in the ACT, Melbourne and now here! Then again, it was 20 years old and all but the frame had been replaced by now. Still, it annoys me that people couldn’t just leave my stuff alone, get your own bike!

Anyway, I was thinking about buying an e-bike (bike with an electromotor) for a while and now I had the best excuse to do so. I bought a cheap one to figure out if it is for me, but after just 2 weeks I can say I love it! (see picture, it also has mud guards now). Especially here in Springfield Lakes, with steep hills everywhere it’s a lot more fun to ride my bike than before. It used to take 10 minutes to get to the shops, now it’s 4. Time to the station was 7 minutes, now it’s just 5. It’s not that I am racing everywhere now more than I was, but the time lost crawling up the hills, out of breath and sweating like a race horse really are a thing of the past. Yesterday I did get a new saddle fixed because the other one hurt my backside, it was as hard as a plank and my 45-year old behind needs a bit more comfort than that, haha 😊.

 

Yumi’s dancing

Yumi’s done another performance with the Common People Dance Project three weeks ago and this time around she was even more of a pro than last. She had so much fun with the outfits, hair, routines and training and practicing. Their Ipswich group did the ‘girlband’ songs while another team did the ‘boyband’ songs, which is horrible music, you might not even call it music, but they had so much fun and the performance actually looked good! I think between the 6 teams there we 200 people joining in, so that was a lot of big hair, spandex and glitter!

She enjoys the dancing so much that she’s joined another group here in Springfield Lakes which is just 3 minutes down the road and they’ll also do a performance that I get to show up for and enjoy somewhere in October I think, which is just after the big September finale of Common People so she’ll get lots of exercise before then. And I get to vacuum all the glitter out of, well, everywhere!

Yumi’s new look. She decided it wasn’t for every day, but just right for this performance which was very over the top.

 

Small stuff

There were a lot of small things that also happened in the past 2 months.

• ·      Surgery appointment

We went to the plastic surgeon appointment to see if I could get another operation, but that turned out to come down to almost $50,000!! I was ready for 20, maybe 25, but 50?! That’s crazy money. I was so disappointed when I opened and read the quote, but I am over it now. I still got some good advice out of it and my diet has stuck since then and I am now at 86, with 85 on the horizon by the end of the month. Maybe I’ll revisit the option in 5 years, but right now that seems like so much money we could spend on other things, like a house, a car, renovations, a holiday to antarctica for 3 months or a lifetime supply of dog treats for Dash. 😊

 

• ·      Cameras in the house

As a bit of reassurance for ourselves, we’ve installed 2 cameras in the house so we can see what Dash is up to when we’re at work and it is just the funniest thing to see him sleep in all sorts of positions throughout the day. He doesn’t get up to much, that’s for sure, but if he ever gets scared or panicked, we can talk to him through the camera as well. We tried it once and he looked so puzzled we couldn’t stop laughing (he couldn’t hear that) but it’s good to know we can let him know we’re there, even if we’re not. I wish we had the cameras in the backyard too because I turned my back for just a minute and he immediately started digging the hole he had started on with Bella when she visited in May. Grrrr. I had just closed it up and neat again. His backyard privileges have now been revoked!

 

• ·      New phone

I’ve also bought a new phone and it’s such an improvement over the old one. I bought that one cheap and thought it use it for a year, but it lasted for nearly 3 so I got my money’s worth, but it was not a great phone. The new one let’s me connect to the car again and I can listen to music and podcasts much easier now too. The best part? It was even cheaper than the previous one! Let’s see how long this one lasts 😊

 ·      Family and friends

Everyone is doing well, it’s summer in Europe, so everyone is on holiday or thinking about it and my parents are having the best time taking the caravan out for weekends away. They are about to go to France for a few weeks and I hope they have a great time of it. I’ll catch up with my friends soon and always love hearing their holiday stories

 ·      Coming to visit Saturday 31 August September

I’ve booked my tickets to come and see you for the early celebration of your 90^th birthday. I even booked an electric car to drive just to have a bit of fun myself driving around the ACT. I might do a quick trip from the airport around the old neighbourhood where we used to live before zooming over to your place. If all goes well, I should be with you around 9.30-10.00. I have to get back to the airport around 3pm, but other than that I look forward to visiting after almost 2 years!

 ·      9 years in business, new website

Last week I had a mini-celebration myself for being in business for myself with Kruidenier Consulting for the past 9 years. It’s not like I wanted to grow the business and become a real consultancy employing others, but it’s been good to think of myself as a business and it’s brought me lots of great people to meet and work with and some opportunities that I might not have had otherwise. My friend Peter, who I wrote the book with, even created a new website for me so I look all modern and professional in the 10^th year and beyond. I love it!

 ·      Citizenship application

Pfff, I’ve finally completed all the paperwork, scans, pictures and anything else you can think of and it’s now in the works with the government. I expect to hear back somewhere November, December maybe, just in time for Australia Day perhaps. Not that it matters too much, but I am just curious to go through the process and see what happens.

 ·      New glasses

I had to go to the optometrist again this week to check my eyes because I was starting to get headaches again. My eyes have gone backwards quite a bit, so now I am getting varifocals so I can see close up and at a distance equally well. They also told me to be smarter about wearing sunglasses but it’s a hassle to always bring two pairs and half the time I forget, so now I am getting glasses that change to a darker colour when I am out in the sun. Problem solved, ha, take that sunshine! 😊

 ·      Student papers

I got no less than 7 papers to grade form my Change Tools students and for once most of them were really good. Two were what I would call ‘professional quality’ and it was just so nice to get confirmation that it is possible for students to do a very good job at these plans. There was also a lot of very positive feedback about the course materials and me as a teacher, which is always a good day when that happens.

I think that’s it for this time around. I really look forward to seeing you in a few weeks and I am sure we’ll have more adventures to talk about then. I’m going to try and come up with a good gift for your very significant birthday. I know I don’t have to, but I want to, so let’s see what I can think of!

 

Be well and stay warm until spring comes along.

 

Gilbert

 

Ps. 2 more pictures on the next page of Dash living his best life in his pyjamas to stay warm and lazing about in the sun when his yard privileges were still in effect…

 

Letter to Marlis Apr-May 2024

 Springfield Lakes, 10 June 2024

Hi Marlis,

Can you believe it’s winter again already?! I hope you are staying warm and Canberra is sunny and dry most days. It’s been quite the sudden drop in temperature here, with mornings as cold as 3-4 degrees, but then it still gets up to 20-22 during the day, so I am not complaining 😊.

Another two months gone and this time it really felt like not much out of the ordinary has happened, but let’s see how it went when we get to the end!

Work

I’m coming up to 6 months on the job at Super Retail Group and it’s been an interesting time to say the least. Lots of movement in staff, new people joining, a new manager for my manager, a bit of a scandal in the news that went away pretty quickly and me just jogging along getting things done. I’m getting pretty good at staying out of the drama that other people are creating and just focus on my tasks to get done that week.

The job hasn’t become what it was made out to be, yet, but things are far from terrible for sure. It’s just that all but one of my team mates, who work on other big projects, are not having a good time. And that’s what I have to look forward to, now that my smaller projects are wrapping up by the end of this month. I do feel like I’ve made difference and built some good working relationships. There are a lot of very smart and capable people in the business and my team are very good at what they do, so I learn a few new things every week.

I am also still enjoying the commute by train 3 days a week. I get to read a lot, see some funny characters and on busy days I get some work done even before I get to the office. With technology today you can really work anywhere and have everything you need, so I make the most of it on those days and others I just relax and read while ‘my’ driver gets me to where I have to go. It sure beats standing in traffic and crawling forward!

 

Yumi’s activities

Yumi has been busy working with a client she’s done work with for a long time. She even went to Melbourne twice the past 4 weeks to do a few workshops with them and meet some new people. It might become a much bigger project, but right now they are sitting on their hands trying to figure out what to do next, so she’s not waiting around and looking around to see what else is out there. I am sure she’ll find something worthwhile to do, it’s only a matter of time.

When she travels, I stay at home to look after Dash, who really lets me know that I am his second favourite human or maybe the third if you count the baker where he gets half a bread roll each week.  As soon as Yumi leaves he goes into ‘waiting until my human comes back’ mode. He actually walks up to the window multiple times a day to see if she’s not already coming back and he’ll restlessly walk around looking for her in all places before finally falling asleep. It’s adorable, but I always feel a bit sad for him and want to explain she’s really coming back. Fortunately, she always does, but he keeps forgetting 😊

She’s also started her second year of the Common People Dance Project, the team dancing context she joined last year. It’s good fun to hear how much enjoyment everyone gets out of studying in new routines and putting on a show. It’ll all come together on 14 July when the various teams have their ‘dance-off’ where every team performs in front of a real jury and the winners get the ugliest trophy you’ve ever seen, but that’s all part of the show. And she also started another dance class here in Springfield Lakes (the other is in Ipswich, 25 mins down the road) for a six-week trial with some other people. I hope she likes that one, but it seems slightly more serious than the other ones but six weeks is a good period to get a sense of that, I think.

Dog things

Speaking of dogs, it’s been quite busy with dog-related activities over the past two months. We had a house guest for a week and a half and that was not the experience we hoped it would be. Yumi responded to a call for help from the greyhound walking group she hangs out with every now and then. They had lost their greyhound a while back, put in a very detailed specific request for a new adoption and instead of it taking five months or so, it took two weeks for a new match to be found. But they still needed to get married and go on a honeymoon as already planned, yikes! So, we said we’d take Bella in and I am glad we helped them, but what an ordeal!!

  

She peed in the house at least 6 times, tried to eat off our plates, dug holes in the yard, stole all Dash’s toys, climbed up on the coffee table, pulled on the lead like a maniac for no reason and basically made a nuisance of herself in any way possible. She’s a lovely dog, but absolutely no manners yet and Dash was so unimpressed with us for letting her in the house. We all let out a massive sigh of relief when she got picked up. Next time we’ll really have to think more about Dash as well. He takes it really well but it’s not fair to him to have such a disruption in his otherwise quiet life.

 

 We visited with our friends Helen and Robert a few weeks ago, who have now adopted their foster dog, Roo the greyhound, and good on them! He is such a clever and lovely dog and stole their hearts in no time! All was well for the first 15 minutes of the visit and then Roo got too much into Dash’s space while he was on him matt that we brought and that turned into a bit of growling and Dash grabbing Roo by the neck. Not violently, but more like a warning. Poor Roo was so scared, he hid for the rest of the evening. It was his own ‘fault’ but he doesn’t understand that, poor guy Next time we might leave Dash at home, he’s such a Mr. grumpypants!

 

    

  

We also helped out with a market stall at a very busy Sunday market and got some good donations and sales in a few hours. I was feeling really unwell since I got up that morning, but Yumi needed some help, so I soldiered on and when we got back at 2pm I went straight to bed and didn’t get back out until the next day. I was sick for the rest of the week, probably just a stomach bug, but not pleasant at all. On the upside, I did lose 3 kilos in weight for a few weeks, haha. The weekend after we did a Bunnings BBQ for charity and made a decent amount for the greyhounds again. Fortunately we only had a 4-hour shift. I just cooked the sausages and onions for four hours straight and that’s quite enough, thank you!

 Meanwhile Yumi just keeps finding new homes for dogs, sometimes with a lot of difficulty and some of the stories are heartwarming and some just so infuriating when people do dumb things. I choose to remember the great ones though. There was Lily, who would do better with a dog friend and she found it in Bruce while they were being fostered together. Placing one dog is a challenge, placing two together at the same time is basically a miracle. But sure enough, a lady contacted the charity and now they are moving up together to 

Hervey Bay. I love those stories with a happy ending!

 

Change Management Institute volunteering

I had a busy time with the volunteering I do for CMI. I wanted to try a new event type, called a Deep Dive, which goes for 4 hours instead of the normal 2, giving people a solid introduction into change management with loads of practical tips and tricks. It took a bit of organising and help from my change friends, but 2 weeks ago we got 25 people together in a community hall on a rainy Saturday morning, so I am calling that a win! We had 5 parts to the event, of which I did 2 and it was good fun to present to a group of people who are not my colleagues. The audience hopefully got good value for their time and it would be great if some of them would end up working as change managers too in a few years.

I also have plans for another session just like this one, but for more advanced change practitioners. I have to be careful though, I am already doing a lot of work and I want the other 10(!) committee members to also have an opportunity to get involved. It’s just that everything is easier for me to organise because I’ve done it a few times. The eternal challenge with volunteer groups like this is that people always have the will, but not always the time and then things fall down and I end up doing it myself anyway, but at the last minute and that can be frustrating. So now I try to stick to my rule of: “if it happens it happens, if not, that’s okay too”. I plan to take my foot of the gas for the second half of the year, but not really sure if that’s going to work. I keep saying that and then I end up doing lots of things more than planned. It’s a work in progress!

I have two people I mentor for CMI and then I also write book reports every now and then for their newsletter and then there’s the events and other responsibilities, it almost feels like a part-time job at times. But I love to see how it builds a community. Since I joined the Queensland chapter, membership numbers have gone up by 35% and we’re almost the largest chapter in the world (of CMI), that means we’ve outperformed Victoria and NSW, who are 3x our size by state population. Not that it’s a competition of course, but it is a little bit 😊.

Stradbroke diving

The reason this letter is a bit later than usual is because we were out diving on Stradbroke Island this weekend. Maybe you already know, but Stradbroke is just 20 kilometres or so off the coast from Brisbane, you can get there by ferry in just under 45 minutes and be away from everything for a while. We asked our friends Michael and Kat and their two boys to look after Dash for the weekend, which they were happy to do. They have a 5-months old German Shepperd called Freya and she is quiet a handful. But She stayed outside most of the time and Dash inside, so that worked out alright. Maybe when she’s a bit older they’ll get along better, right now she’s just all over Dash and he’s not having any of it. He’ll keep walking away, but she keeps following him and licking his face, which he really doesn’t like, so at some point she’ll get a ‘corrective’ bite on her ear or neck…

 

Where was I, oh yes, diving! We arrived on Friday evening and I couldn’t figure out the heating so the first night was very chilly but we had heaps of blankets and the shower was very warm. Good thing that Yumi figured out how to get the heater to work, she was also the most motivated to do so of course, haha. The diving was very good on both Saturday and Sunday. We saw lots of turtles, fish doing funny things chasing each other, a few very beautiful eagle rays, bull rays, lots of wobbegong sharks and there was talk of a great white shark being spotted earlier on the Sunday, but when we got that spot, it was nowhere to be seen. That would have been amazing, but better luck next time.

It’s migration time for the whales (and sharks) so we saw a lot of humpbacks on the surface, some jumping and flapping their tails and fins, which is always great to see. We also saw some dolphins just hanging around and took the Saturday afternoon to go around the island a bit but the ocean really is the main attraction. We went out for dinner but it was nothing special. Yumi had a decent pizza, but my vegan tacos were cold and really basic. And there was a large group that had 10 kids or so that kept screaming at the top of their lungs and running around so we weren’t having a great time of it and didn’t stay for long.

It was nice to get away for the weekend, swim with the turtles, go really fast in a very small boat and add another few dives to our list. Yumi now has made 160+ and I have 140+ under my belt, so we’re not exactly amateurs anymore 😊. Our diving gear is slowly starting to fall apart, which isn’t that strange after almost 18 years, so now we’ll have to slowly start replacing items or maybe just buy a new kit package. We’ve also considered just hiring gear from now on. Servicing it every year is quiet expensive and if we don’t go diving regularly it’s almost cheaper to hire than own it. Something to think about before we get to summer!

 

Looking for a new home

We just got our new lease in the mail and our rent is going up by $50 a week, which isn’t terrible, but that’s $2,600 per year for the same house and for the monthly rent, we can get a mortgage for a house (if we add part of our savings). Time to get more serious about finding a house to buy. The housing market is crazy in all the capital cities though, so finding something reasonably priced is enough of a challenge, but the longer we wait, the harder it gets. Yumi always keeps half an eye on the market and we don’t ask for the world, but the day I will pay $1.3 million dollar for a 3-bedroom townhouse is probably never going to come around. Who has that kind of money?! Well, we do, sort of, but the value of the materials is in no way connected to the sales price any longer. Still, we’ve singed the lease and will stay here for at least another year, Springfield Lakes is a great place to live, but buying a house here is not in the cards so we’ll have to cast our net a bit wider in the coming months.

Short stuff

Lots of short mentions this time, here they are in quick succession:

I'm still getting students come through the course I teach at Deakin University and it is always good fun to read their final assignment change plans. Most of them aren’t very good, but every now and then there’s a very decent one. I’ve also added another section to the course which deals with Artificial Intelligence (AI) that you’ve probably heard about on the news. It’s becoming more and more widely used in the change profession, so I thought it would be good if my students understood the basics too.

·      I still go to RFS ten though it’s been 8(!) months and I still don’t have my member number. It’s absolutely ridiculous how long this takes but at least I am enjoying the training on how to be a firefighter. Hopefully I’ll have a number by the end of the month and then training starts for real!

·      I am almost done gathering the documents for my citizenship application. It’s quite the process to go through, but in a few weeks I should have everything sorted and ready to send it off. Fingers crossed!

·      As a favour to a friend, I did a presentation to a group of 125 people working in governance and risk on how to respond when change goes wrong. It was good fun and they loved it, but I don’t really enjoy these things anymore, so maybe I need to stop saying yes every time, haha.

·      Friends and family are all doing well, mums and dads are okay, kids are growing and going well in school, lots of things to be grateful for.

·      By the time I write my next letter it will be August and I’ll give you a call to discuss if you’d like me to come over to celebrate your birthday in September. I would love to go and do something you would like to do. Go for lunch, go to the supermarket, just sit and chat, whatever you like!

·      Since we started living here in September 2022 there have been roadworks going on nearby. It now finally looks like it’s drawing to a close. And on time no less! It’ll be good to finally be able tod rive straight down the road instead of a new detour every week. Listen to me complain about my first world problems, I don’t even use that road that often, but it’s been going on forever!

·      I never gave it much thought but lately I’ve been thinking I should decorate my office a bit. I do spend quiet a bit of time in there and there’s nothing on the walls, so I might buy some vintage posters and frame those to liven up the place a bit.

·      A while back I hit the garage door on the way out, it wasn’t very hard, so I managed to push it back into shape. But today it all of a sudden ran out of its tracks and that was a pain to solve. Fortunately our neighbour across the road saw us struggle and he’d just had the same issue himself a few months ago. With his help we had it sorted in no time and we got to learn a bit more about them too, ha!

·      I finally decided to treat myself and order new shoes. Not exactly made to measure, but I go to choose every little detail in the design and now I have to wait 4 months for them to arrive because I wanted a different pattern on the sides…Me and my big ideas! Oh well, it’s not that I need them right away, although some of my shoes are starting to age after…15 years. That’s good mileage, I think.

Okay, that’s most of the updates done. Next letter I might have more to share, it’s been a bit less eventful than usual.

 Stay warm and be well,

 Gilbert

 

Letter to Marlis Dec-Jan 2024

 Hi Marlis,

I hope you are staying cool and that the warm weather isn’t keeping you inside too much. It’s sure been a true Queensland summer for the past few weeks with high 30s temperatures and humidity thick enough to cut.  Well, we wanted to live somewhere warmer and that it certainly is 😊.

Like every time I sit down to write you a letter, I always think that not much has happened, but going by this letter, it’s been another fun-filled, busy two months full of change and developments, so let’s get into it! That being said, I think I missed a month, I am very sorry about that! I really thought that this month was the next time to write but I missed it. Oops!

Christmas trip

After wrapping up the short-term job with Griffith University, which went really well and they even paid me before my last day on the job, we had some time to take a break and go on a trip. In the end it felt more like Dash was on a holiday and we were there with him, but we had a good time all the same. Yumi had found a fun-sized self-contained unit in a tiny town called Bauple, about 200 kilometres north of Brisbane, or 50 kilometres up from Gympie if you are familiar with the area.

On the way up, we stopped by Diane and Peter, two of Yumi’s greyhound friends who now live near Sunshine Coast. They moved house to retire into what I would call a building site, but the inside looks very nice and new, the outside is a right old mess of building materials, flattened structures and unfinished foundations. They seem to be doing just fine and so are their two greyhounds. They are lovely people and after two hours or so we continued on into the regional farm and bushlands.

The accommodation was another good pick by Yumi (she always works hard at finding just the right thing) and we had everything we needed to live comfortably for a week, enough space for Dash and wallabies out in the yard which was of course very, very, very exciting for Dash. At first, he didn’t know what to make of them, but when they started hopping of course he just wanted to chase right after them! The lady who owns the house was very much into self-improvement and new age beliefs, going by the 50 or so ‘art’ works around the house sharing deep and meaningful insights like ‘strangers are just friends you haven’t met’ and ‘the universe will provide’. Not exactly my cup of tea, but live and let live I say!

The town itself is really just 600 or so people, living on a grid of streets with houses of all different kinds and in various states of disrepair or construction. On my morning walks I reckoned that every street with 15-20 properties had at least 4-5 building projects going on at the same time. It was good fun to see what people do with their land and how some make it into a well-kept and organised space and others just let the bush take over. The only thing outnumbering the building sites were the wallabies that were literally everywhere you looked.

We made a lot of daytrips to the Fraser Island area, national forests and beaches, including to Rainbow Beach, so named for rock formations that kind of look like a rainbow if you have a few beers and squint your eyes, I guess. The fun part for us was looking at the 200 or so cars parked on the beach and people living their best lives, ranging from a guy on a towel with his dog to a family with a kitted-out ute that had a fridge, 4-burner barbecue and extensive sound system. Same beach, different level of luxury. We liked the towel approach better. Dash had a great time, even though he’s not so much a beach dog, but there lots of smells and the waves were far enough away. Another trip was to a town I forget the name of, but that’s where Dash was very brave and walked into the water up to his chest and seemed to enjoy it, but then he got so excited about it that he broke free off the leash and ran around the small beach trailing his lead and a long streamer of plastic poop bags. Everybody just stopped to watch him run like the wind and he had a good time before he came back totally poofed after a minute or two of running all out, haha.  

We had some interesting stormy weather passing through, with most of it missing us, but on a tin roof everything sounds that much worse and the thunder was mighty impressive. So much so that I sat up with Dash for part of the night because he couldn’t settle down. We had great internet, so I just watched some videos and read a book until it all passed.

We visited another pair of friends, Wendy and Steve in their new wonderful home with 450 lime trees, which technically makes them farmers. They bought 10 acres for the price of what would buy you a shed in Melbourne and have wonderful views in what feels like the middle of nowhere, but is only 15 minutes away from Gympie, the regional hub. I used to work with Wendy at Deakin University and she’s a wonderful and smart human and when she contacted me to ask if we could meet up now that she lived in Queensland, I realised we’d be very close by, so we offered to stop by their house. Sadly, they lost their great Dane on the way up (old age), so they were very happy to have Dash trotting around the house and he got lots of pats! They also showed us their impressive sword collection (I know, right?! I had no idea!) and we had a nice meal. We thought to stay for a few hours but ended up staying nearly four hours.

We enjoyed being away, but it also felt good coming back and overall, I think Dash would have preferred to just stay at home with his favourite toys, beds and smells, but at least now we know we can holiday with him if we want.

 

The New Job 

On Wednesday 3 January I started my new role with Super Retail Group, the people behind Rebel, BCF, Super Cheap Auto and Macpac clothing and I am really enjoying myself. The whole process of interviewing and induction was a very good experience from start to finish. I am part of a real team of change managers, my manager knows what he’s doing, the organisation is very energetic, and I work on things that really matter! And the pay is very good too, nothing to complain about! Because it’s retail, we have a lot of stores (750) and logistics to look after, but that’s what my colleagues are doing, so I am assigned to the back office, what we call ‘corporate’. My main focus is Human Resources and Safety (the people who look after people and their wellbeing), who are going through a huge amount of change, and I have about 6-8 projects to look after, not all equally big thankfully.

The first 5 weeks have been very good, with me just running around trying to figure out how all the parts come together, but I’ve managed to help some people and projects already and they seem to enjoy having me around so we’re off to a good start. The variety of the different projects will keep me entertained for a good while and it’s great to be part of an actual team of people with experience in change that I can learn from too. I hadn’t realised how much I missed that until it was available again, yay!

The first two weeks, when it was still school holidays, I travelled to work by car, but the past 3 weeks I chose to go by train (writing this letter on the train right now) because the commune is about as long by car as by train, but on the train I have my hands free to read, write letters to you, do some work or let my mind wander, which are all bad ideas and really hard if you’re driving 😊. The train station is only a 10-minute walk from the office, which is really nice too, and by the time I get home I am done with work and can enjoy my evening. By the next time I write I’ll probably have figured out what I am supposed to do, and we’ll have welcomed a new person I recommended so I will no longer be ‘the new guy’.

Artificial Intelligence

You probably heard or read something in the news about OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a software program that you can use for all kinds of things. Think of it as a very, very smart friend who knows a lot about virtually anything you can think of. I’ve been playing around with it for a good year now and it’s helped me with so many things that I can’t imagine not using it. It still makes mistakes, and its creativity has limits, but it does amazing things in seconds that would take me hours or even days to figure out. 

I know technology is not your friend on most days, but I think you’d enjoy having it around. You can ask it all sorts of questions, learn things check facts, create unique images, ask it to write things for you (I wrote this one myself, I promise!), create recipes and 1 million other things that we can’t even imagine right now. It’s amazing in what it can already do, the problems it solves and support it offers. Of course, there are always sceptics, who fear it will become sentient and immediately destroy the world, but that is impossible, it’s not nearly smart enough for that. They don’t seem to understand (or don’t want to, more likely) that it only LOOKS smart, it’s still just a very smartly written software program that does simple things (for a computer) extremely fast. I think eventually we will see AI become sentient, but that’s perhaps still 10-15 years away, so I’ll report back to you on how that’s going then. 😊 

Weather and floods

We’ve had some pretty wild weather in Springfield Lakes with 3 separate storms passing through causing quite a bit of damage. I finally got to go out with SES for some actual jobs and help the community get going again. The week before and during Christmas we had the biggest one and that threw trees and all kinds of loose items around, even injured and killed a few unfortunate people. Some really made poor choices like going into storm drains or driving through flood waters but you never hope they meet their end that way of course. 

We were lucky not to get it as bad as up North in Cairns and Townsville where things got really exciting, after a few days all the water was gone and aside from massive heaps of wood chips from all the mulched-up trees and branches, things were back to their sunny usual self until the next storm hit. Gotta love Queensland! We also got to support SES in Mt. Tambourine, which got hit by a severe storm and it reminded me of the storm that raged through the Dandenongs in Victoria in 2021. The devastation wasn’t quite the same, but it was serious stuff and then those poor people got hit by floods not a few days later. We did what we could, but by the time we got there most of the work had already been done. We helped re-tarp two homes and did a good job there at least. 

 

Springfield Lakes has the best water management infrastructure that I’ve ever seen, so I am not worried about us getting flooded, at worst we’ll be cut off from town and we have food and water for at least 10 days so that should be fine. It was very impressive to see the water come up from the 2-3 meters below the footpath and rush by in a raging torrent for a few days. A few days later Yumi found a fish in an isolated puddle and mounted an expedition to save it with a bucket and bottles of water, which she promptly did! We tell ourselves that it’s still happily swimming around Springfield somewhere to this day!

SES/RFS

After 12 months of not feeling like I would fit in and mostly being frustrated with how little I could actually do, I bit the bullet and handed in my SES gear last week, calling it quits on a 7-year career as an SES volunteer. It felt really weird and in my head, I still am that person who springs into action when the pager goes off, but in reality I won’t be going on any SES call-outs again. Maybe I will re-join at some point in life, but for now it’s okay that we’ve gone our separate ways. I received a very nice token of appreciation from my old Altona unit, a key ring with the SES logo on it and every time I see it, I am reminded of the wonderful time I had with them, and that is how I prefer to remember SES.

But no need to be too sad, I’ve already joined the Rural Fire Service and it’s such a different experience! From the very first day I felt welcome and that these people know what they are doing and talking about. It’s mostly blokes and some are a bit rough around the edges, but they are a good bunch, and I am excited to learn a lot of new things and become an actual firefighter, that’s pretty cool if you ask me. The extra cool part is that my mate Michael (from Altona SES) is also leaving SES and joined RFS, so we can still share in the experience and have each other’s back when thing get ’heated’, sorry, that is a terrible pun 😊. 

Yumi’s Work and volunteering

Yumi’s been busier than ever with the greyhound volunteering. She’s now looking after 8 dogs, helping others out with theirs and also co-organising two events in the next 6 weeks. She’s really enjoying it though and while she complains about how much work it is, she’s quick to jump in when there’s a crisis and gets things sorted soon as. The charity had some setbacks working with the Queensland Racing organisation who weren’t very good about delivering on promises and suffered spontaneous memory loss when things didn’t go their way. In my opinion they are a bunch of amateurs trying their best but failing to effectively support the smaller charities they are supposed to help. Yumi take sit all in stride and makes new friends and connections as she goes. I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up working in this space and I’d 100% support her. She’d be able to do so much good and would probably get a lot out of it for herself too. 

Speaking of getting things, she’ll be loading up the car with 25-30 bag of free dog food again today, so I get to stack that in the garage when I get home, haha. It’s a food supply program for charities run by Petbarn, who have to get rid of stock they can’t sell, but instead of throwing it out, they give it to charities. This really is very generous of them because it runs in the thousands of dollars what they give away for free and it really helps charities financially. 

Workwise not much is happening for her at the moment. She has a small project about to start if that all goes through and she applied for a role with the Queensland Mental Health Commission that I think she’ll be really good at, but it’s one of those wait and sees with many hurdles and tollgates before you get anywhere, but that’s government for you. Well, I’d rather she goes for roles that make her happy than ‘just a job’. In the meantime, she’s doing some studying, the same course I did three years ago for Company Directors, so she can join a board for a charity or not-for-profit. I think she’ll ace it. I did really well on my exams, and she generally does better at anything I do, so they’ll probably give her an award, name a building after her and erect a statue in town somewhere when she’s done… 

10 years in Oz 

Yesterday (6 February) marked 10 years in Australia for us, quite the milestone. It’s funny how I remember us arriving in Sydney like it was yesterday and it doesn’t seem that long ago, but it’s really been 10 years. I’ve started pulling all the blog posts and letters to you in one big document and it’s already grown to 375 pages and close to 100,000 words. I might just print it all out, just to see what it looks like!

I can honestly say I’ve never regretted coming here and starting life anew, not a single day. We’ve had so many opportunities come our way, lived in wonderful places (okay, maybe not Brunswick) and met wonderful people like yourself who became new friends. We travelled the country from top to bottom and left to right and there’s still so much to see and experience that there’s really no other option than to stay for ten more years!

We went out to dinner to celebrate and while the Indian food was good and the company pleasant, it didn’t really feel all that festive somehow. We both felt it the same way and decided that it’s probably because this is now our regular life and 10 years plus 1 day is just as special. We have started the citizenship process in earnest now, which is really just requesting 2 documents from the Dutch government for me and then putting it all together in one big file. Shouldn’t be too hard, so maybe by the end of the year we can call ourselves true Australians, whatever that means 😊.

 

Small things

• Dash’ birthday

Dash turned six on 26 January so instead of getting involved in Australia/Occupation Day, we went for a nice walk in the woods near where I used to work on Mt. Gravatt, and it was great. Very nice walking paths, very well-maintained bushland and some new flowers and trees I hadn’t seen before. Dash was having the best of times, despite it already being 28 degrees at 7 in the morning and many trees, rocks, shrubs and poles were sniffed and watered. He got even more snacks than usual. 

• The Fine

I got a really, really big infringement notice for…hold on…$1,106 and 4 demerit points and it’s the silliest story ever. I got the fine for having my phone on my leg in the car. I don’t recall why I did that or how it happened, but the law is clear on that being illegal, so the government took that opportunity to remind me of my responsibilities. Ouch. Fortunately, I had just sent an invoice to Deakin for my teaching activities for $1,150 so it won’t hurt too much, but what a colossal waste of money for a few seconds of inattention!!

 

• Freya

Our friends the Shimmins family have gotten themselves a German Shepherd named Freya and she’s just the cutes little ball of fur. She’s only 9 weeks old and mostly just paws and teeth but hopefully when she grows up a bit her and Dash can be playmates every now and then. I was hoping they’d adopt a greyhound, but they can look after Dash every now and then. This is her being super cute:

• Puzzles

Yumi and I went to the Brisbane Bookfair to get…you guessed it, puzzles! And not just a few, 25! And we got a great deal of 2 for $10. Yay! We also handed in about 30 of them to be resold for charity, it’s not very likely we’ll redo any of them and it’s for a good cause so everybody wins. That’ll keep us entertained for a while, I think.

• New PlayStation 5

Early December I finally bought myself a PlayStation 5 gaming console after waiting for 2 years since it came to market. They aren’t cheap but I use it so often that over it’s 5-6 year lifespan I’ll get my money’s worth and then some. To really benefit from the new technology we should also buy a new tv but it still works and I don’t think it will make such a big difference so we’ll hold off on that. I bought my first PlayStation in 1997 and just typing that makes me feel really old, haha!

• Change Management Institute

Things are underway again after almost 2 months of not much activity and we’re coming out swinging with lots of new activities and ideas. I was named the CMI 2023 Australian Volunteer of the Year and even got a fancy certificate! It was very unexpected, but much appreciated. I did apply for a national volunteer role to coordinate things in different ways but after the interview I decided that I am good where I am as ‘just’ a general member, I can do a lot of good that way and don’t have to think too much about what I can and cannot say, just the way I like it! They’ve also asked me to write regular book reviews and be part of an informal thinktank, so I’ll have plenty of things to keep me entertained for a while.

 

• Wealth Management

We’ve had some additional money come our way and now that we’re getting more serious about buying a home, we decided to talk to someone about what we should do with our savings in a few weeks from now. It’s so weird to think of ourselves as people who might need a wealth manager, but maybe they have good tips on how we can make our money work for us a bit more, so we can get our very own home organised sooner.

I think that’s all the important bits for now, I’ll write again in 2 months’ time and will make sure not to be late this time!

Be well and stay cool,

Gilbert