Letter to Marlis December- January 2026

 

Bellbird Park, 10 February 2026

 

Hi Marlis,

The new year sure is off to a flying start with heatwaves, bushfires, the US invading other countries (again), it’s enough to turn off the news and just listen to music on the radio! I hope you got to spend a lot of time in the garden, away from all the excitement, just getting along with the plants and the birds😊. I have lots of adventures to share from the past two months, so I’ll dive straight in.

 

Car troubles

We were almost ready to go on holiday up North with our trusty Ford Escape (who we call Eski) and then she developed issues with the engine. It was all downhill from there. First, we brought her to a service garage, but they couldn’t find anything, then we brought her to a ‘real’ repair shop and they found it was a leaking head gasket.

 

This is bad news on the best days, because the whole engine head needs to come off to fix it and then you still have to figure out what was actually broken to make it leak. All in all, it was going to cost $6-8,000, possibly more. She was only 8 years old and we bought her practically new, so we were not expecting this at all. A mechanic friend of ours said it would be smarter to write her off, so instead of the $12,000 that she would be worth if her engine was fine, we got $1,250 for the recycling parts. Ouch. And then we forgot to ask for the plates, so the wrecker got the money for the rego that we’d already paid, boo! Oh well, lesson learned, but I hope we never have to go through this again.

 

It was quite emotional for us as we’ve had a lot of adventures with Eski and she’s always served us well. I’ve spent so much time in her driving to and from work, on holidays, volunteer events, day trips and driving around greyhounds to their new homes. I did get to drive her onto the tow truck myself, but it was a sad Friday, and I was sad for the whole following week too.

At the same time, we had to find a replacement vehicle and my heart was not in it at all. Fortunately, Yumi had her mind set on an Electric Vehicle (EV) for a while and had looked around for what was available. I wasn’t very excited about the whole process and the amount of money they cost because everyone wants one now. An average model easily goes for 40, 50 or even $60,000 new. No thanks! We landed on a Build Your Dreams, the Atto 3 model for a much friendlier price of $33,000 for the 2023 model. It’s only 2.5 years old and has 16,000km on the odometer, so we feel it’s a pretty good deal.

 

Like most EVs, it’s from China and gets the best reviews from all the car review magazines. We’ve called it Zappy and it is a very fun car to drive, be it a bit smaller than Eski and almost completely quiet, because there is no engine, just a big battery! It has incredible acceleration, so now we’re constantly watching our speed, but all the funky new technology helps. It also comes with a full sunroof, many safety features (so many!) and the best part is that ‘fuelling up’ with electricity costs a few dollars, instead of the $70-80 every week, nice!

 

 

 

 

Then we brought our other car in for a service and found out it needed new brakes, new tyres, new sparkplugs and a few other things to the tune of $2,400. Sigh… we thought it would be just an oil change and a few other bits! We want to keep Polly (It’s a small Volkswagen Polo) in good repair, as he will not be making as many kilometres as before, now that we’ve swapped cars again. Yumi drives Zappy to work, but because we had one car for a month or so, I have started cycling to the train station again and found it’s actually just as fast as driving and I can be there in 11 minutes and get a bit of a workout. Not too big of a workout though, it’s an e-bike, so the electromotor does most of the work, haha.

 

Solar Batteries

Since last year we’ve been looking to get a solar battery installed, because we have so many solar panels that generate a lot of electricity. When the unexpected cost of the new car came around, we weren’t sure we’d go ahead, but I ran the numbers and our plans should all still work out, so we’re getting them in May-ish of this year.

 

We’ve experienced a few power outages over the past year, three or four I think, with one lasting nearly 20 hours and those batteries will be able to power our whole house for 3-4 days or even up to 6 if we only use what we really have to. There are some government grants available too and with the additional charger for the car, it’s not cheap at just under $20,000 but it will increase the value of the house and also give us the reassurance that everything will keep running, no matter what happens.

 

Thanks to smart technology that comes with it, you can even make money selling back electricity to the grid. My friend Michael has had them for about a year now and uses 10 times more energy than us (they have a pool, 2 kids, 2 EVs) but still only pays $3/month. That’s right, three whole dollars per month. He calculated they’d recover the investment in 4-5 years, which will be longer for us, but it’s nice knowing we’re getting all this clean energy from the sun, without burning fossil fuels.

 

Painting the fence

Oh my goodness, what a project it was to paint the fence. All 85 meters of it, some parts even 3 times! I did it in the week of Christmas, because I worked until the 20^th and the weather was going to be bad from the Wednesday, so I started on Saturday and spent 3 days and twice the amount of paint I thought I would. I used a battery powered spray gun and it worked very well, aside from having to change the battery every 15 minutes or so. Good thing I have 7 from all the different appliances!

 

 

 

 

I could work from 6 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon and then it would be so hot (37 degrees) that the paint would instantly dry in the spray gun nozzle, so that made it easier to just stop and cool down inside. I could have continued with a brush, but the spray gun is so much faster and 7 hours of non-stop painting is a lot! I think I drank 5-6 litres of water every day, next time I’ll do this in any other season but Summer!

 

The last day, the temperature had dropped considerably and the rain didn’t come, so all of a sudden it went twice as fast, which was exactly the boost I needed, because I was pretty much over everything to do with paint by then. The end result is pretty good, if I say so myself. There are a few spots that will need a touch up, but for a first time, I think I did a good job.

  

Yeppoon Holiday

Our holiday to Rockhampton and Yeppoon was a good time away. We had to get a rental car that would fit everything, so we hired a Nissan Xtrail and drove in comfort for the two weeks we were there, with enough space for Dash to move around in the back seat.

 

We stayed at a horse farm, that’s somehow only had 2 horses and 1 pony, and enjoyed the peace and quiet in our very comfortable shed-house or shouse as they called it. It had everything we needed; a decent bed and good water pressure and the internet speed was better than what we get at home, haha.

 

 

We didn’t get up to much, although I drove to the beach every morning to walk and practice my karate moves. The beach was long enough to walk for an hour  one-way, but I only walked half of that every day, going back in time to pick up Yumi and Dash for the morning walk. The sunrises were worth the early start and it didn’t surprise me to see 20-30 people there with me, all with their own thoughts, their dog and the waves.

 

Nothing really happens in Yeppoon, which suited us just fine and the weather was good, so we hung out around the house, read a lot, slept some more, went on a few daytrips to local landmarks and not much else. We did visit the Love A Greyhound facility in Rockhampton where Yumi’s ‘boss’ Jo lives. It was great to see the whole setup with the kennels and the doggos looking very well taken care of.

 

We decided to come home a few days earlier to relax some more at home, which suited Dash just fine too. We took our time on the way back, stopping every few hours to give Dash a walk, get some food and just enjoy the day, which was really nice. Yumi organised trivia for the last 3 hours and those flew by! We’ve now come to realise that Dash would much rather just be at home, surrounded by his own things and familiar smells, so for our next trip, we’ll find a good dog/house sitter and leave him at home while we travel, a better experience for everyone!

 

 

New lawnmower and snipper

I finally buckled and bought a fuel-powered lawn mower and a much more powerful whipper snipper. With the grass the way it is, the electric one just didn’t cut it (pun intended) and the lighter whipper snipper was also struggling. The new tools rip straight through and what used to be a 2+ hour job, I can now get done in just under an hour. I still hate mowing the lawn, but there’s much less time spent grumbling about it for sure 😊.

 

When we got back early from holidays the grass has grown quite a bit, so I got into it with the old Ozito electro lawnmower and just like with the previous one, one of the wheels broke at the axle, but this one also decided to completely fall apart on the side where you adjust the height. Ozito is notorious for not having spare parts, so I just cracked it and brought them straight to the recycling centre and bought the new gear. I thought it was going to be a hassle with the fuel and oil, but it’s not any harder than maintaining chainsaws and I know how to do that!

 

The whipper snipper is a serious piece of powerful equipment that gets quite heavy after a while but man does it get the job done. Yumi has started helping out with yard work, which is great, but we might have to switch roles because this one is quite the workout on your arms and back, but so is the mower which ways 4x as much as the old one, but I am hoping that means it will not break so easily.

 

New garden stairs

In yet other garden news, we also had the garden stairs replaced. The previous ones were really on their last legs and very wobbly already, so we got Dave the Carpenter to come in across 7 days and build us a new one out of the same timber the front fence is made of. It will probably outlast the house and us, but no one will fall off it and it will not wobble with even the heaviest load. Another plus is that now they are finally angled straight towards the hous instead of the previous ones, which were oddly angled off to the left, but now that they are gone, it’s hard to imagine what was there before.

 

The grass is doing quite well, with very few weeds and as long as I mow it every week in summer, it’s not to bad. With the fence painted and the stairs done, it’s starting to look nice. We still have the plants to do and will probably have to cut out some of the dead grass and replace it with pebbles under the roof overhang because nothing wants to grow there, not even weeds!

 

 

 

 

Holiday plans

This year Yumi and I are getting serious about planning our free time. With the busy lives we both have, holidays have been a thing on the to-do list that keeps getting pushed back until another year is gone and we’ve not moved one step beyond Queensland.

 

In early June we plan to go to Japan to visit Osaka and Kyoto, a mix of history and modern culture for 10 days. I’ve wanted to go back to Japan for a long time after visiting Tokyo in 2016. Yumi’s mum is from Osaka, so that’ll be extra special to see where she grew up even though it will be very different from the 1950s and 1960s of course. I get excited just thinking about it, especially because it’s not very far away on the calendar and only a 9-hour flight with a minimal time difference, so we get to enjoy more of our holiday without jet-lag.

 

The plan was then to also go to the Netherlands in September, but it just didn’t work with the schedules. We also thought to switch Japan and the Netherlands, but that didn’t work too. My parents had already booked their holidays for the year and we’ve got work/sport/volunteering/house things going on as well. It doesn’t help that in the holiday periods everything doubles or triples in price on both sides and the weather in October/November in the Netherlands isn’t great either. Next year perhaps!

 

Now we’re looking at Fiji, or New Zealand, or Vanuatu, and I hope we get to do some scuba diving together again, those were always the best trips! By the time I write you again, we’ll have a plan 😊.

 

Cambodia trip

I’ll be going to Cambodia from 13-22 March to deliver two three-day change management workshops with Deakin Business School. We’ll be a team of three lecturers working with two groups of 30 people, all professionals who studied in Australia at some point. I think it will be great fun and such a cool opportunity! As usual, the Australian government is taking forever to get things sorted, but we’ve got a high-level plan of what we want to teach and who does what.

 

McNab (my actual job)  has been very supportive, which is great of them, especially my manager immediately said yes, which he really didn’t have to. I will arrive in Phnom Phen (the capital) on Friday the 13^th, then we work Saturday, Sunday Monday, I’ll work for my real job on Tuesday and Wednesday (only a 3-hour time difference), then the second group on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and on Sunday I’ll fly back to be back in Brisbane from 6.30am on Monday.

 

I think I’ll just stay in the city and see what tourist-like things I can do in the afternoons and evenings. I considered going to see Angkor Wat, a world-famous temple complex, but it’s 350km and a 6-hour car-ride on-way, which I wouldn’t want to do by myself anyway. If I go to see it, it’ll be with Yumi.

 

Work

I’ve been keeping busy at work over the Christmas period and start of the new year. Things are finally starting to pick up some pace and I am keen to get into the details with the business. However, my manager is telling us to go slow and I think he ‘reads the room’ very well, so we’ll do as he asks and go slowly-slowly. I’ve built most things that we need by now and have been involving the team every step of the way, so to me it’s just a matter of pressing play and we’re ready to go.

 

I don’t mind having a team of people to lead, but am also not really enjoying it yet. We’re very much in the stage of everyone finding out how everyone else works and everyone’s busy, so it will take a while for things to come together. I might soon be hiring an additional person on the team, so then we’ll be five and if I get my way, by the end of the year we’llbe seven or maybe even nine, depending on how much change they really want to get done.

 

What I’ve come to see is that everyone loves the concept of change, but the actual work involved in getting to that better outcome, that’s not nearly as exciting. I understand that very well and there’s no point in pushing people beyond their limits, so we’ll manage expectation, as we like to say in the change profession, and see how much we can get done this year.

The past few months a lot of new people (including me) have joined and everyone (but not me) wants to share their ideas and opinions. I quietly got involved in a few projects, started testing some tools and frameworks and kept my head down and busy while everyone else was making noise. Things are much calmer now and in a few weeks the plans for the year will be done, projects will  start to get delivered and then things will slowly fall into place. It really is a marathon and not a sprint!

 

Yumi’s work and volunteering

Yumi got a promotion at work, which is funny because I predicted it during our holiday and the Monday after we started work she came home and shared that she’ll go into a more strategic role immediately. She will still be leading her team (half the small organisation reports to her already) but they’ll hire a new person to take on some of her work, so she has time for the bigger picture items.

 

I worry that she’s already very busy, but this is how she wants to do things and it is her work, so I just try to support her where possible because we’re team 😊. She’s going on a weeklong trip to the Western part of Queensland, near Roma, at the beginning of March, to meet local mental health service providers and meet some of the organisation’s members. Fortunately they are flying, because it’s a 5-hour drive one-way.

 

It’s been blessedly calm(er) with the greyhound fosters and adoptions now that a new coordinator has joined the team and that lady is just as action-oriented as Yumi, so things get done quickly. We also spent about 6 hours on Dash’s birthday (Australia Day) doing an inventory of all the dog-related items we have at home for the charity, which fills a complete room by now. Last week we went on a greyhound walk and there were a record 17 dogs. That’s a lot of tails and snoots! I think there’s an event at a pet store next weekend and a charity BBQ soon as well, but I’ll wait to see if I need to help out with any of that, always on standby.

 

 

Rural Fire Service

A small team of my firefighting mates and me are planning to organise a renovation in our fire station to create dressing rooms so we don’t have to take our fire gear home to store it. I’ve made an inventory and did some measurements and once management has had a look at the plan, I hope we can get started. Even if we end up not going ahead, it will give us a chance to do a very thorough clean of a lot of the spaces. I counted how many bottles of (donated) water we have and it’s over 3,000. Enough to give every active firefighter 10 bottles every month for at least 18 months. It takes up so much space we can’t put anything else there. I have a plan to get rid of it, or at least store it all in one place.

 

We (surprisingly) also were allowed to start a group chat on our phones where we can share pictures, tips and stories about fires and other activities. It took forever, but finally I just said I would do it and it was done in 24 hours and now we’re having a lot of fun with it during and after training nights.

 

It’s been quiet with the fires, only a few small ones that were quickly under control and I hope it stays that way in the next few months. I am also hoping to progress in my training this year, but like everything in the fire service, it takes forever to get organised, so I am keeping my expectations low 😊.

 

Small things

·      6 February marked 12 years in Australia for us, wow time has flown by, but I think I say that every year. We went out for diner to celebrate and the Japanese food wasn’t very special, but we had fun reliving some of the memories and listing all the adventures we’d been on and plan to go on in the years to come.

·      Karate practice continues as well, I don’t always feel like going, but if I can get out of my own way, I actually enjoy the training. It’s been 9 months now and become part of my life, just a thing I do (badly) on Monday and Wednesday. In a few weeks I might grade for my second belt, the orange one this time, but there is some more work to do.

·      Works is ramping up for the Australasian Change Days, or ACDC 2026 as we call it. We’re a team of 5 this time, with one previous team member from Melbourne joining again ad it will be great fun to get things organised before we deliver a three-day spectacular in August!

·      Book sales for my new book have been okay so far, with 57 copies sold, but 43 to go until I hit the 100 mark. After that I consider it a success and will move on to other projects. I still want to do a card game and the idea of offering an online course will not leave me alone!

·      Dash gave me a good scare a few days ago. We were on an early morning walk (5.15am) and he had just done a bit of running around in an open field. I was about to connect his lead and collar when he spotted a hare taking off and that’s when I saw him run faster than ever before. He didn’t get it, but he was gone and out of sight within 20 seconds. I ran after him, but despite him being 8 years old now, I think he easily went 65-70km an hour. Good thing there were no roads or cars nearby! When we got home, he was sore for the next two days and couldn’t even jump into the car, but I am sure he’s had many dreams since then of the hare he almost caught.

·      Our neighbours who were planning to move to America have now moved to the Sunshine Coast instead (he will continue the business by flying up and down). Seeing how much junk came out of that house I was amazed they could even fit in there, haha. The house and yard look the best I’ve seen since we moved here, let’s hope our new neighbours are just as quiet and friendly.

·      The volunteering with the Change Management Institute is about to kick-off with a very busy year. We had a team lunch on Sunday the 8^th and plans were made, so let’s see what we can organise for the community this year. 11 February is Global Change Management Day, no idea who decided that, but I’ll be sure to wear extra festive socks that day!

·      I got another certificate done to stay up to date, this time it was my Change Management Master accreditation which proves that I actually know what I am talking about. It’s part of my experiment where I now have one from the Change Management Institute and will get another from the Association of Change Management Professionals and then compare the differences. I have lots of opinions on accreditation and certificates, but thought that if I have opinions, I should at least have done it for myself 😊

 

Okay, that’s it for now I think, I’ll write again once I am back from Cambodia and back at work in early April, be well and stay cool until the Cold Snap shows up!

 

Gilbert

 

 

 

 

 

Bellbird Park, 11 December

 

Hi Marlis,

I hope you are getting to enjoy being outside a bit more now that Summer is on the way. We’ve already had our first few heat waves and it’s looking like another hot week coming our way. It looks like I didn’t take many interesting pictures this time, so this letter has no pictures and just words, sorry!

Like with most letters a lot has happened over the past few months, so let’s get right into it, shall we?

 

New job

I’ve been in the new job at McNab Construction for about 2 months now and it’s surely been a whirlwind! My official title is Change and Business Improvement Team Lead, which is ridiculously long, so I just say Change Lead.

I’ve been to the Toowoomba office (100km to the west), The Gold Coast office (100km to the South), visited two of our other businesses and six building sites, attended a ground breaking/sod turn (lots of shovels and pictures) and met at least 200 people of whom I remember maybe 50 names...

I have a team of three to look after, Jess (39), Marty (64) and Greg (53). We’re all coming at change and business improvement from different angles, but we’ll figure it out. It’s a bit of an adjustment to lead a team again, but fortunately they are all grown-ups and experienced so it’s more a matter of getting comfortable with each other, building trust and collaboration.

Our job is to support the business with the strategic plans and projects they want to run to do things better or differently. The challenge is that when I started there were a number of empty positions that needed to be hired, like the Chief Operations Officer (my manager), the Chief Technology Officer, a Legal person, a Robotics person and about 12 others, so all these new people and me are hitting the business at the same time. Everyone is genuinely friendly and helpful, but I can easily imagine them getting a bit tired of all the new faces and big ideas they want to get started on.

I just do what I always do, create more clarity through structure, models, frameworks and templates, always good to have for when things kick off in the new year. Our CEO was very clear to the whole organisation about not starting new initiatives until the new year. This was right after I started, but he did explain the first few months would be ‘rocky’ and so far it’s indeed been an adjustment, which is management speak for: “Not sure that I want to do this, but let’s see what happens”. For me it’s mostly that I am not sure I like leading a team, perhaps I am better as an individual contributor. In the previous role with Lactalis I had prepared and helped run a complete system introduction, so that’s what I am comparing it too, which isn’t quite the same of course, this will be a job for the long run.

I thought I would have to toughen up a lot of the change management language I normally use, thinking that these builders and tradies are all rough and tough, but the exact opposite is true! They want us to really focus on the peoples’ experience and consider the organisation 5 years from now, which is very rare and a welcome change from how these things usually go. Let’s see how it all works out, when we get back in the new year.

I might have mentioned it before, but the new office is just 200 meters away from the Lactalis office where I was until August this year. I know the neighbourhood really well, have my favourite routes for when I take a break and go for a walk and I get to walk from the city across the river most days. That’s always a nice start to the day, even when the weather isn’t great. There’s always something to see and it keeps me fitter than just walking from the train station, which is only 5 minutes away from the office.

 

Yumi’s work and dancing

Yumi has been busy at work as always. They keep coming up with good ideas and getting funding for them, so her team is pretty busy and is always on the verge of expanding with new team members. At some point she’ll have half the organisation reporting to her! She went to Melbourne on a short two-day trip a few weeks ago and even if she grumbles about being away from home (mostly being away from Dash😊), she’s really good at networking and always comes back with new ideas and things to experiment with.

Her next dance performance with the Choo La La ladies is on 20 December, so I get to sit through that awkwardness once again, but she has some much fun with the whole thing I am always happy to go and see what they’ve come up with this time. I like her other dance group better because it’s so over the top and outrageous to watch. And everyone keeps their clothes on (mostly) which is always a plus, haha.

 

The Yard Project

Last time I wrote you, the soil and grass had just gone in and since then we’ve run about 30,000 litres of water through it all and I don’t know how much weedkiller. Despite the extremely dry weather since, all that water kept 85% of the grass alive, so there’s only a few dead patches that need to be scooped out when the weather cools down.

It’s very much a first world problem, but oh man do I hate mowing the lawn, every.single.week. Aaaaargh. But…I bought four additional batteries for the electric mower and now I can do it all in one go and be done with it, which makes it slightly better, but still two hours of my life I don’t get back every week. I could of course pay someone to do it, but that thought annoys me even more, so I grumble my way through it every week and get a bit faster every time. It’s just so much grass, and it keeps growing!!

All grumbling aside, it is a massive improvement to what the yard used to be and we think everyone in the neighbourhood is quietly following along how we’re going with it all. When they walk past some just nod in appreciation and others want to know how much it cost, if we’re happy with the gardener we worked with and what weedkiller I use to keep it so neat. It’s not quite where I want it to be just yet, but it’s really hard to kill nutgrass and because we watered the grass so much, the weeds also get all the nutrients. Sometimes I step back and wonder about how I’ve become this person, someone who thinks about weeds, garden hoses and fertiliser too much. I am sure I am being punished for something I did in a previous life! 😊

This week we’re getting the very rickety garden stairs replaced with properly made timber stairs from the same materials as the front fence (Merbau timber) and I hope it’ll look really good. Surely that’s it then for the yard for a while, right?! Wrong! Now I finally get to paint the whole fence (all 60 meters of it, twice and half of it on two sides, yay! Strangely enough it’s something I actually look forward to. I bought a battery powered paint spray gun, and Yumi and I decided on a specific colour of grey we both liked. Now I just need to wait for the Christmas break and three days of dry weather to get the job done. After all that, it’s time for the plants to go in, but that will be in  Autumn to give them a fair chance to settle in. Yumi has big plans, but somehow I feel I will be the one who ends up digging a lot of holes. I hope the end result will be worth it.

Greyhound things

Late Spring and Summer is when the big flies come out here, and Dash is terrified of them. Then there’s the late-night thunderstorms which scare him equally bad. Whenever that happens he just doesn’t want to go outside the next morning. It’s so sad and we feel really bad for him. He just turns into a 35kg puppy who wants to hide in his bed and there I am, making him come outside to go for a walk.

He’s usually fine once he’s outside and better when it’s Yumi and me walking him, but when there’s a big fly buzzing around or trying to land on him, he goes into a panic and starts snapping at the air to try and eat it. Even after he gets it, he just wants to go home right away. I try to calm him down and keep on walking because he's never actually been stung since he joined our family, so I hope at some point he realises that it’s not as scary as he thinks, but it might never happen. Poor guy, I wish there was a way to explain it to him ☹.

 We had Evie the 9-year old greyhound come and visit for a few days and she was right at home once again. Dash didn’t mind her too much, she’s stayed with us before for a few days and he’s always such a good host. She steals all his toys, sleeps on his beds and gets in his way, but he takes it all in stride and mostly just ignores her. Her foster parents had to visit family in NSW and when they came to pick her up you could hear Dash breathe a sigh of contentment and relief from the comfort of his own bed, haha.

Yumi had to deal with lots of mini-dog dramas too. Dogs getting bitten, a dog losing her tail getting caught in a car window, dogs not working out with families, one ate rat poison (twice!), one having to be rehomed because of family issues, all that stuff. But there have also been a lot of adoptions and new fosters, so the dog business is keeping on keeping on! A few weeks ago, we must have had a record 14 greyhounds join on the greyhound walks one of her friends organises every two weeks, that sure was a lot of tails and happy doggo grins!

 

The new book

I might have mentioned it before, but I’ve written a second book and after many, many, many rounds of changes it’s now out in the world. 10 Years Writing About Change is very different from Bad Change, and mostly a gift to myself for being in business for myself for the past 10 years. The hardest part is always the promotion and continuously having to remind people that the book is for sale, I am not particularly good at it, so it costs double the energy to get it done every week. You’d think I’d be more excited about it and I am, but it’s also just another book on Change and I wrote and shared all the content over the past 10 years already, so it’s not as new to me as it might be to others  So far, I’ve sold 50 copies for charity, which doesn’t seem like a lot, compared to the 1,100 copies Bad Change has sold, but any self-published book that sells more than 100 copies is considered to be doing really well, So I am on the right track.

I joined in on a book fair a few weeks ago, as a combined event between the International Association of Business Communicators and the Change Management Institute. No wonder we go by the acronyms IABC and CMI, haha, those names are so long! It was a panel of 4 other writers and me, answering questions about what it’s like to write books and what tips we had for aspiring writers and of course people could buy some books at the end. I even sold a few copies of both books and made some new friends, so that’s a good night in my book.

 Funny thing was, I had ordered a bunch of the more affordable and slightly less glossy US version of the book (somehow you can’t print standard quality in Australia, don’t ask…) and they were supposed to arrive well on time before 27 November, the night of the event. Then I got a message they would arrive on 1 December and I was like “Okay, it is what it is”. So I sold out at the book fair, come home late that night and what’s there waiting for me? Exactly! The books had arrived that afternoon… Oh well, I’ll have enough copies to give away to friends like you! I don’t expect you to read it, but wanted you to have one as we’ve been friends for 10 years too this year. I think I started visiting in June 2015, so it’s about six months overdue, sorry!

 

Change Management Institute

It’s been a busy few months events-wise. We had a morning event, networking drinks, a weekend event, the book fair and the mentoring program was also wrapping up. 2025 has certainly been the busiest year for the Queensland community. Oh, and I got a very heavy glass Change Leader award for being one of the three Australian Change Leaders for 2025. Always nice to get some love from the community, but still feel weird getting awards, so I just say thank you and get on with my day.

We have even bigger plans for 2026, getting out to Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Toowoomba, maybe even Rockhampton if we can make it work. I think that is important because the CMI team and I are CMI Queensland, not just CMI Brisbane and we hope to inspire some people to join our team as the regional connections. It’s very simple on paper, but in practice it takes a lot of organising and chasing people.

I’ve decided to finally get my CMI Change Master accreditation (it’s 50% discounted for CMI volunteers, so that’s nice!). After filling out some forms and getting two references to support me, I now have an interview on Sunday 22 December and I think there’s one more step after that, but I’ll see what happens. I think I’ll be fine and once I have this one, I’ll do the other big one, which is from a similar professional body in the United States, called ACMP (the name is too long to spell out, trust me). After that I can finally say I’ve done all the major ones and have an informed opinion. I can already tell the process is very different. The CMI one is all about evidence and interaction, the ACMP one is essentially a multiple-choice test based on their body of knowledge (a book). I expect that by the time I write you again, I’ll have one and perhaps have started on the other. Not sure if I’ll be much smarter when it comes to change but I’ll have a shiny certificate to prove that I know what I am doing.

 

Rural Fire Service

It’s been quiet with fires in our area after a very busy period in October and a wet end to November but this weekend we got to go out in force to a mid-sized fire that had kicked off on Thursday, got put down quickly, but flared right up across 150 metres of bush away from most people on Saturday. We had good fun with water, blowers and rakes for about 5 hours, putting it out and then making sure it wouldn’t get back up again. Learned a few things, stood around and chatted for most of it, which was nice, because 32 degrees is too hot for wearing all our gear and getting in front of flames.

We had a great response time too, because we were at the station with about 10 firefighters doing some mowing, grounds maintenance, cleaning and organising before we go to reduced capacity for the next 5 weeks over Christmas. It’s likely we’ll come in any way, because school holidays mean higher fire danger and the temperatures will go up as well. We’re trying a roster to keep our vehicles ready to go, but it’s a bit hard on the people who have been there for 10 plus years and have seen that being tried and not work. Me and a few newer members (all been there 2+ years too) are willing to give it a crack, otherwise everything will always stay the way it was. Sometimes we talk too much and do too little, but not while I am there, ha!

Early November we got to visit the Airforce base nearby (two of our members are professional firefighters there) for a demonstration of their equipment. They have some pretty awesome tools and vehicles. Their fire trucks are specifically built for airplane fires and are like our trucks on steroids. We carry 2,000 litres of water, they carry 11,000. We can empty a tank in 13 minutes, they can do it in 2 minutes. Our truck has 4 wheels that come to my thigh, theirs have 8 which are nearly 2 metres tall. The coolest part is their water cannon that can reach over 100 meters far and 50 meters high. We’d be lucky to get 20-25 on a good day. Everything is just superpowered and extra big, which is just the best. We all turned into little girls and boys 😊 They were super nice too, taking us through their procedures and equipment. I thought it was going to be a bit boring, but it was great fun and I learned a lot about other ways to fight different kinds of fire. Not that we’re likely to ever do that, but still good to know.

 

Short things

·      I just finished another round of grading student papers for the Change tools course and there might be some changes coming for that collaboration with Deakin University. It’s been running for 5 years now and I always expect it to end, but it keeps getting renewed each year. Just this week I was talking to them about delivering some online work with a group in Cambodia, which sounded interesting. More about that in the next letter.

·      Karate is going okay. I am not making as much progress as I would like and I get so frustrated being told I need to go faster, but when I do, I get told to do it better. On good days I just laugh and keep going, on not so good days I wonder why I show up for this twice a week. I am about to hit 30 lessons with my yellow belt which means I am technically ready for the next orange belt, but I feel like I might as well wear yellow the rest of 2026. I said I’d give it a year and we’re only 7 months in, but at this rate I don’t know if I’ll continue beyond that.

·      For the Christmas break we’re going to Rockhampton and spend some time on the coast and in the bush, without any actual camping. It’ll be good to get on the road again and see some different scenery. We’ll also stop by Yumi’s greyhound charity boss who lives up there with her 5 greyhounds, husband and however many greyhounds happen to be in the kennels, so that’ll be fun for Dash too. Yumi also somehow managed to make a work appointment… We don’t get up there very often so it’s all good, I know a few change people there so might take the opportunity to see them too.

·      We went to a concert by a country/folk/rock band called the Dead South from the US in the Brisbane Riverstage Musci Bowl. It was very, very good and they sounded almost exactly like the cd, haha. They are my kind of music, but Yumi went along anyway. It had been 28 years that we went to an actual concert as we both don’t like big crowds, so it was a real night out and good fun with great music. The average age was probably 40-45, so no dramas or lots of drunk people, just solid music one song after the other, we should really do this more often!

·      We’re thinking of getting a solar battery installed in the new year. With the Queensland sun being out most days, it means we’ll be fully independent for electricity and can even sell back power to the grid. My friend Michael had one installed a while back at apparently it only takes a day to get it all sorted and set up. We might also pre-install a battery charger for an electric vehicle. Not that we’re planning to buy one soon, but we might in the future and then it’ll be a hassle to get it added. I’ll know more the next time I write.

·      Family and friends are all doing well, getting ready for a new year and rushing to the end of the new one. Nothing to exciting, which is exactly how we like it 😊.

·      Okay, I think that’s it for now, not such a long letter as last time, but work has been busy with me being all over the place and getting up to speed with things. Next time I’ll be more settled in and we’ll see what has happened by then.

Have a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year, I will call you to say just that on Christmas Day when taking a break from painting my fence!

 

Be well,

Gilbert

 

Bellbird Park, 12 August 2025

 

Hi Marlis,

I hope you’ve been keeping warm as you’re heading towards your 91^st birthday, only a few more weeks of winter before Spring arrives and Canberra warms up a bit! Up here in Queensland we had a few cold nights with 0-2 degrees. Nothing that a scarf couldn’t fix or get excited about but of course everyone here treats it like we’re all about to freeze, haha. 

The past few months have been very busy, as usual, with a few endings and new beginnings, so here we go with our adventures of the past two months.

 

Yumi’s work and hobbies

Yumi celebrated the first of five years completed in her role with the Queensland Mental Health Alliance, that has gone so quickly! She now has a team of five specialists who (of course) all love her, she gets along well with her management team and is making good progress to her five-year plan. I am not surprised at all and couldn’t be happier that she’s once again doing work that gives her a sense of purpose. She’s becoming a bit more relaxed about things now as well, so she gets to enjoy herself and do meaningful work most days, not a bad outcome, right?

An even better outcome is that she’s made some new friends at work that she goes to have dinner with and goes on walks with every now and then. That’s such a change from when we lived in Altona and she’d stay in the house for days if I didn’t take her for a walk or a visit to the shops. I think the greyhound volunteering she does has certainly helped with being more social. She’s met so many strangers that became dog friends and she’s in constant contact with her fosters and adopters, not to mention all the markets and other events they organise for the greyhounds.

 

 

Her dancing is going well too. She’s training from event to event throughout the year and there’s always something going on with the two dance groups she’s part of. Last week we had the performance of the burlesque Choo-La-La dancing group, which is the one where 100+ women of all shapes, sizes and ages dance to music in their underwear (and sometimes topless, it’s 18+) for 2 hours and they make a better show of it every time. It’s 100% not my thing and still super awkward to sit there and watch it, but Yumi enjoys the dancing and teamwork, so I can sit there being uncomfortable for a few hours so she knows someone in the crowd is there for her alone.

Each performance I sit further away from the stage and last time I had a guy right behind me who was yelling and whistling (for encouragement, I think), which didn’t do anything for my ears, but it was impressive to see how they keep getting better every time. Next up is the Common People Dance Project in September and in her third year she’s now an old hand helping others settle in. That one I am sad about missing (I’ll be diving in the Maldives) because it’s so much fun and over the top, but I am sure she’ll have a great time.

The greyhound activities are busy as ever. Just last week we had two greyhounds getting dropped off from Rockhampton and picked up in a matter of hours to go to their new foster homes. The week before that we had another one and the events have been busy too. I helped out at two markets, which was just the best fun and a great source of income for the charity as well, but I am mostly there to play and cuddle with the dogs. It’s so wonderful to see all the people stop by for a chat, at some point we had about 12 greyhounds and 6 other dogs, which got a bit busy, haha. We also did another Bunnings barbecue that one of Yumi’s volunteer friends organises so well! We just turn up for a shift and help out getting things started and leave after a 7am to 12pm shift. I got to help out cutting another 12 kilos of onions, which only took an hours and 15 minutes, when I thought it would be 3. I found it does help to have a sharp knife and the cold outside actually helped, because we could leave them outside overnight. Still, the fridge stank of onions, but we got a tip to put baking soda in the fridge to soak up the smell and it actually worked!

 

 

Late June there was a bit of an emergency with vet bills for the charity. Due to a series of unfortunate events all of a sudden there was $11,000 to be paid. Yikes! But the greyhound community rallied together and ended up colleting $10,500 in donations, so that was a massive relief. As I often jokingly say; if you want to feel good about humanity, go and volunteer for an animal charity, you’ll meet the absolute best people!

Work around the house

Now that the new backyard fence is fully in place (we even got that last bit of insurance money and a contribution from the neighbours’ insurance), we were so excited to get started on the front yard fence. Then one day before they would get started the fence guy called to say their order hadn’t gone through at the supplier and now it’s 6 weeks delayed. Booooo! Not much we can do about it, so instead I removed the old brick mailbox that we both didn’t like and put up a new one, which already looks a lot better, even though it’s being held up by two star pickets at the moment 😊. I’ve also found that the best part about Queensland winter is that I didn’t have to mow the lawn for nearly 7 weeks, yay!

 

  

I also tried to remove some of the concrete left-overs from the front and back yard, but that wasn’t very successful. I bought the right tools, but since we have clay soil, it was hard going by hand and as we’re planning to get the topsoil removed and replaced soon, I’ll leave it to the people with the big diggers who will do it in a matter of minutes. We just got a quote that was within our expectations and will probably be a bit cheaper than that, but lets see how we go. There is some preparation I can do, but I’ll let the professionals deal with it so we get a good outcome. By the time the next letter comes around I hope the fence is in place and maybe we’ll even have actual grass in the backyard!

I did the gutters the other day and was expecting to see a lot less leaves with some of the big gum trees gone, but they were still pretty full and I am glad I didn’t leave it much longer. That would be so embarrassing with all my years of SES experience to then have flooding in the house because I didn’t keep my gutters clean. I also tried to clean our retaining wall with chlorine. It works alright enough, but I just feel so bad for all the little lizards, frogs and insects who might get burned or poisoned just so our wall looks a bit nicer (it will never be completely clean) so I’ve decided to leave well enough alone and eventually we’ll get plants to cover it instead.

Our new water tank pump is doing a great job, our water pressure is much better outside now too and I did use some of the chlorine to remove the green algae from the tank and that worked like a charm. I’ll give the remaining Chlorine to my friend Michael, he can use it in his never-ending pool project, haha.

Volunteering

It’s been good times with the Rural Fire Service, got to go out to a few controlled log pile burns and even helped put out an illegal one (no permit). It’s never dangerous, everything is very much under control when we get there, especially the ones that we set on fire ourselves, but I can definitely use the experience, so I try to go whenever I can. Most bush and grassfires happen during the day, unless it’s kids at night playing with matches, as they do, so I can’t go too often when I am working as it takes 45 minutes to even get there, but when I can, it’s always a good learning experience.

 

We also got some training on little buggies we can use for inspections and moving materials. Here I was expecting a lot more speed and torque, but instead we got up to a thrilling 25km/hr and the most exciting thing was that they are prone to roll over due to a high centre of gravity. No one rolled it during the training, so we all passes and had a good time.  I also went for a test drive in one of our fire trucks, which are still manuals (they are 20 years old). I did well enough, but didn’t really enjoy the experience as our training officer can get a bit too specific and always finds fault if you don’t do it perfectly. That gets old pretty quick and always makes me feel like I can’t be trusted to drive without banging into everything, so I am not putting my hand up for that again. We have enough truck drivers as it is, so they can drive and I’ll just sit ack. Especially after having driven the truck in VICSES around all parts of Victoria in some very trying circumstances, I don’t want to have to deal with comments about my hand position or not indicating fast enough on a road where we haven’t seen anything but kangaroos and cows for 20 minutes…😊. 

 

I finally got my pants! Not that I was walking around pantless, but we have a lot of pieces of unform, most of it yellow, but my ‘blues’ (cargo pants for formal events) as they are called went missing, got re-ordered, were on backorder, went missing again and finally arrived a few weeks back. Best of all, they are a perfect fit, so now it’s just my epaulettes and name badge. It’s only been nearly 2 years since I joined, so I should get them any day now…That’s the fire service for you, or any other service really, haha!

 

Finishing up at Lactalis

On 31 July I wrapped up the job at Lactalis after 8 months and it was such a good experience. The team had organised a card, a gift (donation to a greyhound charity) and even took me out for drinks, which was lovely. I got so much appreciation while I was in the role that I never felt like I or my work were not valued and we did some amazing things with our small but might team. I won’t list all the things here, because they might not make any sense to you and it’s pretty boring to read through when you’re not in the job! Let’s just say that I did the work of three people and we (for once) got to do what we needed to do. It was a bit unfortunate that I didn’t get to see the end result, but I’ll hear about it eventually if everything goes to plan it will be in the news in a few months. If they run into more delay…well, then it’ll be 2026.

I had done all I could do for the project by the time I finished up, so it felt good to be able to hand over a complete set of communications and plans for them to unpack at each milestone for the project. There’s still a lot to do, but they’re set up for success for sure. The organisation is going through a lot and if they’d ever ask me to come back, I just might as it was such a good experience. Then again, a job I am interviewing on Tuesday is literally 200m down the road, so I can pop by my new friends at Lactalis any time if that all works out.

I don’t have anything else lined up just yet and it’s always funny to me that when I announce I am ‘on the market’ again, everyone always says I will get snapped up in a moment, but that’s generally not how it goes. This new role I might get is at a building company, they want a permanent employee to set up their change and business improvement team and it sounded like such a good job, perfect for me. Then I found out the person who wrote the job description essentially wrote it for me as she knows me and wants to work with me. I am meeting the leadership team soon and feel this is mine to lose, but we’ll see. If this doesn’t work out, I’ll wait until I am back from the dive trip to the Maldives and then start looking in earnest. The building company would like m to get started mid-September anyway, so let’s hope it all works out!

 

Melbourne trip

As a treat to myself, I went on a 2-day trip to Melbourne all by myself, just to meet old friends and visit places we used to go. I started at 3.30am on Sunday and arrived in Melbourne at 9am, picked up my ‘Mystery Car’, which was a very unexciting Toyota Corolla, but it was a good car for a few days.

My first stop was Kathryn, who I first met in 2017 while working at Deakin and we always stayed in touch and connected over our love for Cookie Monster. She went through a lot in the past few years (lost her husband to a long-term illness, then her job, then her mom) but seems to have come out better for it on the other side and that’s just great! We had a very nice brunch in a café and then I zoomed off to the other side of town to meet with my friend Joanne. Joanne and I meet for the first time in 2016 when she trained me in some change thing and we’ve always stayed in touch online, getting together when the time and place worked out. It was so good to see her and hear what’s been happening for her. She’s one of the best change managers I know and always has unique perspectives to share. I even had time for a quick stop in St. Kilda for a piece of cake from a famous cake shop and short walk on the beach. The weather had been gorgeous all day and it was super busy, but that’s how I remember that part of town best.

My next catch up was at 6pm for dinner at yet another part of town so I had time to check into my very average hotel (didn’t want to spend money on it) and I got to walk around the city a bit to see what has changed. Melbourne felt so much busier than Brisbane, not like I remembered it from 3 years ago, but it was good to see it bustling like before Covid. I walked the 4 kilometres to Fitzroy for dinner with Natasha, checking in with lots of spots I used to meet people and some places I worked at or went shopping. I spent a lot of time on the streets of Melbourne, that’s for sure.

Dinner was great, Natasha is also a long-time Change friend who I’ve known since 2018 and we share many views on how Change Management should be done, I’ve been a guest on her podcast and soon will be again, just for fun. By the time I got back to my hotel it was 9.30pm and after a quick call with Yumi (and Dash) I went to bed because it had been a long day.

The Monday started bright and early and not cold at all. I drove to Altona, where we used to live and wanted to beat traffic so I arrived at 7am and it was still dark! I forgot that it takes longer to get light in Melbourne, after all Queensland is 1,800km up the road, haha. It was great to tour the town, and see how everything has changed. The street we used to live on now has three new houses, our old dog-walking spots all have bigger trees and Altona is still Altona, but with more apartment buildings. They started building them when we left, took them 3 years to finish them almost to the day. I really like the new pier they built, it’s much longer and wider and less prone to fall apart. Bit strange that there’s now paid parking in most spots, but that was always going to happen, I guess.

I got the time wrong for meeting my friend Fiona at 9am, I thought it was 8am! I used the time to drive to Williamstown to see the beach and even got to stop by the old filming spot for the tv series Blue Heelers, so funny to see what it has become since they stopped filming 20 years ago, it looks very similar still. I stopped at the beach, got some fresh air, some sea gulls sat on my car for a bit and I made it back in time to Altona to go for a walk with Fiona as we used to do since 2018.

 

I went back to the city to park and do some shopping but didn’t end up buying much, just walking around and zipping through town on trams and trains until it was time to meet my friend Peter, who I wrote the book with and did about 20 other projects. We’ve been friends since 2016, he was the first person that I had a coffee catch up with after moving from the ACT to Melbourne and I think it’s great we’re still friends. He’s move away from Change management quite a bit, he’s more into investing in the financial markets on the side to his government job, but we still had lots to talk about, like his engagement (after 12 years), travel plans and new ideas for things we can work on together.

 

My final stop was my old SES unit in Altona, so I drove back after meeting with Peter and finding something to eat and it was so good to see them too. Everyone who had worked with me was still there, well some have moved to other areas, but enough familiar faces. I still miss them and how actively involved I always was in keeping the community safe, especially now I know what volunteering for SES and RFS in Queensland is like. They showed me the new very fancy shed (It’s 6 by 15 meters and 6 meters tall, so not really a ‘shed’ but you know what I mean 😊. Great that they have more space now, that was always a challenge. I stayed for an hour and then drove back to the city for another call with Yumi and a very uneventful flight back the next morning.

Every person I met with it was just like we only met yesterday, sort of like when I get to visit you! It was so good to see everyone and realise I’ve known all these people for nearly 10 years. I might not hold onto physical stuff, but I sure know how to collect people, haha.

Karate

I’m now three months into training two times a week and I am slowly making progress. I can’t say I am enjoying it much, but that’s mostly because I am getting in my own way, wanting to do everything right the first time. I’ve thought about quitting more than a few times, but it’s a better use of my time than sitting on the sofa Monday and Wednesday nights and the people are great. It’s me I have the issue with, and that’s something I have to learn to deal with. I don’t like it when I don’t know what to do or when instructions are unclear and that’s about half of the 60-minute lesson. Then there’s my hands and feet who don’t do what I want them to do, and somehow I still have muscle memory from Kung Fu practice even though that’s now more than 11 years ago. It’s a great exercise in patience and I’ll get it at some point. I’ve told myself I cannot quit until I’ve at least graded for the first belt, which is yellow, or as they say gold. I think gold sounds much better than black, why would you ever want something other than a gold belt? After that there’s orange, green, blue, purple, three browns and then black. Technically you could get to black in 5 years, but me being me it’ll be 7-10 more likely. That’s too much to consider as I have little patience, so I am only focusing on the yellow belt now, then see how we go for orange. No one is making me go there twice a week and I think I can be good at it, If I give myself some time and don’t try so hard!

 

Mum’s retirement

My mom retired! She started working again at 56 after the family business had its troubles and kept at it for 11 years. Her final weeks didn’t go exactly to plan, as she broke her toes 2 months ago and of course didn’t go to a doctor, because what do they know?! Sigh. But then her foot kept hurting something fierce and eventually she went and got a cast for a few weeks. She still went to work all that time, with broken toes…Not cool, mom! Her colleagues organised a nice send-off and just as when my dad ‘retired’ (he still drives a truck 3 days a week) I wrote her a letter to share how much of an example and inspiration she’s been for me, which she really liked, even if it made her cry (not my intention!). I don’t know that she’ll sit still for very long, but the cast is off by now and they have some holidays planned first. After that I bet she’ll get involved in something pretty quickly, she’s never been one to sit still for very long, but I do hope she’ll take it a bit slower

 

Change Management Volunteering

I’ve agreed to help out with the sixth edition of the Australasian Change Days, which means that for the past 5 months I got to work with my long time friends Sarah, Anna and Ro to organise a 3-day online event that draws in the best and brightest Change practitioners from all over the world. It’s a lot to organise, but Sarah (our leader) does most of the work, I just do some promotion and help organise people’s sessions. I think I’ve been involved in one way or another for the past 5 years, either presenting, organising, promoting or just as a participant and every year I tell myself this is the last time, but then I find myself saying yes once again. I never regret it, but it does get a bit busy sometimes. Good thing it’s so much fun and I get to learn from the best change managers and other smart people while we’re at it so that keeps me entertained as well. This will be my last year, I think, maybe, haha!

My other volunteering with CMI is rolling along. I try to step back a bit to let some of the newer members take charge, but they get busy, life happens and then have other priorities, so I often just end up doing things myself anyway. We try some new things, put on more events than anyone else and have fun doing it, even if it can be frustrating sometimes. This year the organisation is celebrating 20 years and we’re planning on putting the spotlight on 20 of our members, but it’s slow going. In the meantime, I’ve sorted out venues, made the plans, contacted 30 new and departing members and made a few proposals. I keep reminding myself not to do too much as it always creates the risk that things turn sour for me, so I’ll back off a bit and let my two leaders lead 😊.

 

Small things

·      After 11 years we finally got a new TV! It’s so fancy and the screen quality is so much better, haha. We managed to give the old one to someone else who was happy to have it as theirs had just given up the ghost. Great that we kept it from going to landfill, it has a few more years in it!

·      I am still working on what is quickly becoming quite the new book on Change Management. I’ve pulled together everything I wrote on Change Management in blogs, articles and presentations and ended up with a 400-page document. Still not sure what I’ll do with it, but it’s fun to see how my thinking and practice have evolved over the past 10 years. It’s nearly 100,000 words, as much as I’ve written to you over the same period of time.

·      I finally sold my old Apple laptop, the one I never got to like but used for 3 years all the same. Got a decent $475 for it after many failed attempts on Facebook Marketplace, which can be the worst place to sell anything. And then when I got home there was a call for donations form a local animal shelter, so we ended up donating the money to them, that’s the best thing that laptop has ever done. Never again will I buy an Apple laptop!

·      The dive trip to the Maldives is coming up quickly, I’ll be away from 4 to 14 September, going with my friend Just for his 50^th birthday. Unfortunately, that means I can’t be there for your birthday, but if I can I’ll give you a quick call.

·      My parents are going away on a 3-week holiday to France, like the true pensioners they are, haha. I hope they have a great time. Yumi’s brother and family just made a wonderful trip through Japan, that had me just a little bit jealous, the pictures alone made me want to book a trip as well, but then I realise I am going in just three weeks now, yay!

Okay, that’s most of it for the past 2 months, I’ll write you again in October, right around my birthday when I turn 47(!).

Stay warm and safe,

Gilbert