Letter to Marlis Oct-Nov 2017

Gilbert and Yumi

1c Body Street

3018 Altona, Victoria

Altona, 9 December 2017

Hi Marlis,

That’s 2017 nearly done already, letter writing time! I hope you’re warm and well in the ACT ow that summer is here, it’s been quite wet for the last couple of days in Victoria, but summer seems to be on the way now. Not too much has happened in the past few months, but a few big things did come to pass, so here we go.

We’ve moved house!

Three weeks ago, we moved to Altona, which is near Hoppers Crossing, Williamstown and most importantly, the ocean. We’d been looking and looking in Brunswick, but couldn’t really agree on a house or area so we kept going in circles, looking throughout Melbourne until Yumi changed her requirements of being close to work and suggested we look in Altona. We found at least 10 houses we liked, did two weekends of house inspections and got it all sorted in no time. The house is much newer and modern (2011-ish), the gardens are maintained (yay!), we’ve got 1 room less, most of our furniture moved with us, aircon in all rooms and it just feels like more of a home. I can see much more of the sky, feel much less enclosed and it’s a lot quitter even though we live fairly close to the train tracks. Oh and did I mention we pay about $800/month less in rent? Pretty good huh?! 😊

Because of my being self-employed the whole move worked out quite well. I had enough time to prepare everything on the days I didn’t work and managed to make it all happen around Yumi’s busy travel and work schedule. The move to Melbourne from the ACT was a bit fragmented because of the distance and I did most of the work, but this time Yumi worked like a beast too and we moved everything in one day. There was an inspection planned on the Saturday we moved out and we literally vacated the house completely 5 minutes before everyone went in to look around. So funny, it was like loading a move truck to an audience of about 15 people. I was planning to go back and clean the house later, so after the inspection (we waited outside and took a break) we chatted to the real estate agent and he was commenting how clean it all was, haha, we had only vacuumed, but thanks! I had arranged to go back on Thursday and do the cleaning, but the mandatory carpet cleaning guy and I had a misunderstanding and he ended up cleaning the whole house as part of his services. I’ll readily admit, best extra $125 dollars I’ve ever spent, that house was CLEAN for real. Mowed the lawn, I had lain myself in the first week there in 2016, dropped of the key, got a haircut down the road and that was it for us and Brunswick. Even though it’s been good to live there, I will not miss it at all.

Living here changed a lot of things. For example, now both of us no longer cycle to work, but we take the train together, which is very nice. We always used to drive into work together and Yumi would drop me off and pick me up in the city, when we lived in the ACT and we missed that time together when we moved to Melbourne. Now we at least ride the train in together on most days, which is safer than riding a bike on any day in Melbourne. I do miss cycling a bit, but not the risk of getting hit by cars and having to look out for stupid people on their phones. Also, the ocean is a 5-minute walk from our house, which is really nice. Close enough to enjoy it, not close enough to get flooded when the weather gets feisty. There’s less restaurant options, but we’re simple people anyway and there’s so many neighbouring towns that we have options enough. Also, the city is 25 minutes away by train (15 km), it’s not like we’re living in the outback or something. Actually, it’s very much like living in Casey again, without the Brindabellas on the background and the hills, but with Canberra close enough for comfort and Gungahlin for shopping (that’s Werribee now). It was always a dream of ours to live near the sea and now we do! I’ll tell you a bit more about what it’s all like in the next letter, when we’ve lived here a bit longer. Right now, it’s just nice that every single time we say we moved to Altona, people always go: “I love Altona, well done!”

Pluis passed away

It wasn’t completely unexpected, but our second and last cat, Pluis (Fluffy) passed away two weeks ago, only one week after the move. She’d been getting old and slowing down, getting sick more and more and then we had the whole blind, not blind and blind again episodes. She stuck with us through so much and we with her, but she was just done and as far as passings go, hers was calm and dignified. On our first weekend after the move I found her in a state downstairs and after having been to the vet in Altona once already to see if there was anything we could do for her still, we decided it was enough and we’d let her keep her dignity till the end. As fortune had it, it was a beautiful sunny morning, so I woke Yumi and we took turns with Pluis on our laps, sitting in the garden and morning sun from 6.30 to 11.20, got in the car for her last ride at 11.25 and it was all done by 11.45. She was so calm and restful through it all, which is not like her moody, grumpy and ferocious self, that we knew we’d done the right thing. Of course, we are very sad to lose our last pet/guard dog, but out of the three we lost, Pluis went out on the best possible terms (hers). I picked up her ashes this Wednesday, so now she’s back home with the other two, forever sleeping in the sun, she would have liked that 😊. I managed to find a cat rescue shelter to come and pick up all the cat stuff we had no need for anymore so there’s no visual reminders and they were really happy to have the litterboxes, feeding trays, food, toys, brushes and some of the medicine. It’s amazing how much stuff we had, but at least they’ll put it to good use! It’s still a bit strange to not have some one to talk to when I am home alone or when we go to work and come back, but we’ll get used to it and have agreed that we’ll not have a new pet for a good long while after having had pets for the past 18 years. Let’s see how that goes.

Back at Deakin University

Right after the last letter I sent you, I got a call from Deakin University if I’d be interested to come back and the terms were so favourable that I could not say no to such a great place to work. So I am back, for a ridiculously well-paid three days a week doing what I love in change, communication and staff engagement. Yep, that’s a job nowadays 😊. I get to work with all these great people I used to work with and some new ones that are quite impressive as well. This second time around I see new and different things again, but have the advantage to know how things work. It’s great to come in and get cracking straight away. I am involved in two projects that will redesign the study content of two major degrees (the Master of Business Administration, or MBA and the Bachelor of Laws). My job is to explain to everyone else how this will impact their jobs and the way things get done, oh and to stop them from killing each other, but they are generally very friendly, be it a bit confused and distracted at times. I do enjoy the pressure of having to perform every single day and it’s not that I am ever impressed with myself, but I work really hard for the money they pay me and we get so much done every week. Love it! I’ll be there until end of February/mid-March and after that we’ll see. By then I’ve made enough money for a year, like I said, ridiculously well paid…

SES

That’s another thing that’s changing now we’re in Altona, I have to move units from Essendon to Hobson Bay City (Altona is part of that council) and there’s always paperwork in the SES. But before I said goodbye to my old unit and great volunteer SES buddies I got a heap of training done. After completing my General Rescue (qualified SES person) I also got Safe Working At Heights (SWAHS) where you learn how to work on roof wearing a climbing harness and do 100 safety checks and most importantly, I got my CHAINSAW license!!!!! That was so much fun. We were a group of about 10 people and had one day of theory, which was really boring, but two days of chopping up trees and making a spectacle of ourselves. I think between the 10 of us, only 5 trees were felled, so my nature loving heart was okay and they were all pines, which are not native and apparently the training company gets paid to take them down. All joking aside, I really learned a lot about staying safe, tree hazards, different cutting techniques and how heavy trees really are. On the third and final day, in 30 degrees, we had to debranch a 15-meter tree and then cut it up. It took 6 of us about 3 hours to make that happen, most of the time being spent on hauling away branches and dodging huge spiders who were not at all impressed with our noisy chainsaws and home wrecking. Seriously, some were as big as the palm of my hand! It’s funny though. In the Netherlands, when people see even a daddy longlegs it’s cause for great alarm, lots of swatting and trying to crush it with a shoe. Here a plate-sized Huntsman sort of casually strolls over your boot/leg/arm, makes eye contact (all 8 of them) and then casually walks away while everybody eats their lunch like it’s no big deal. I think I was the most excited by far. Gotta love Aussies 😊. I’ll have to wait a few weeks for the paperwork to clear but have visited with the new unit already, they seem nice and train on the same Monday, so I’ll get used to that fast enough. Also, it’s just a kilometre from my house. I wasn’t expecting that they would turn me down, being fully trained and all, but I look forward to meeting new people once again and who knows, maybe I get to do a land and water search course, which involves boats and potentially even scuba diving, which happens to be the next topic too!

Holiday time

Next Saturday we’ll be on a plane to sunny Queensland and a few days of finally diving in the Cairns part of the Great Barrier Reef. It’s one of those live-aboard things where you stay on the boat for three days and basically dive all day (3-4 each day). It will be our first time to dive like this, but we’ve been on our fair share of dive boats and it’s a skill you don’t really lose even though it’s been close to two years since our last dive ☹. We just had all our gear serviced and plan to do a refresher dive when we get to Cairns in the first few days, but there’s also a trip to the rain forest, some crocodile touring and probably just a bit of relaxing too. It’s only a week to try it out, but if we like it, we might go on a longer one next year. Western Australia is on the calendar for April 2018, which might also involve diving and maybe Yumi will go to the Netherlands in May/June 2018 for work ,so it could be that I accompany her now that we have no pet to look after. I hope Cairns is still as nice as we remember it from 7 years ago when we first put foot on Australian soil. When we were on the East Coast in 2010 we planned to do some diving on the Whitsundays, but then a cyclone hit Airlie Beach and it all got cancelled. We’ll be back home by Christmas day and spend the rest of the time off traveling the neighbourhood, maybe do some more diving near Williamstown, scout the neighbouring towns and maybe go to the Alpine Highway area. We’ve still got a lot to see there and the views can be spectacular on sunny days.

I am writing a book

You’ll probably not be too surprised about that, but it’s not what you might think. Having been to so many events and meeting so many different people in the work of change, I started to notice that there’s this cultural thing with Australians where they are culturally incapable of saying they’ve done a good thing. Tall poppy syndrome and all that. The change management profession could really do with some good examples of when change worked out really well to inspire others to give it a try. So I’ve decided to take the whole of next year and make a project of collecting these stories, grouping them in some way and publish them on a website or maybe in print if that works. Not to make money or promote myself, I just want to give back to the community of change minded individuals.

I’ve named it “The Small Poppy” project and so far, I’ve got 5 contributions (aiming for 50-100) but that’s just on the first message out there. One from the NT, one from Perth, one from Melbourne, one from Canberra and even one from New Zealand! My plan is to contact individuals in my network and have them recommend me to others. I will learn so much and hear great things for sure. I will also attempt to not go for the big organisations, but rural and regional or the unlikely suspects like disability care providers, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and organisations you never hear about in the news for a change. I asked 25 of my closest change people and 24.5 thought it was a great idea, so I will get going and let you know how it goes.

Family and friends

Mostly good things going on in the family and friends department. My parents had a really nice holiday early October. All our friends’ kids are either doing great in school, sports or just growing up and there’s no health or medical issues, so lots to be grateful for. Some are changing jobs, some probably should and others are just happy where they are 😊. Yumi’s best friend Hester is almost done with her 18-month MBA studies (besides being a mom of 2, having their house renovated and having a stupidly busy job), which is a truly amazing achievement. My friend Alex is starting a new job next year in the rail and train business, which is great because his old one just didn’t work for him. Another friend is rebuilding part of her house and those pictures look like one of those tv renovation shows, wow! Other friends just sold their house and bought a new one, while starting new jobs and all that. The Amsterdam mob are also doing just fine with all sorts of projects and activities and Yumi’s parents are stable and steady as always. My parents are doing okay. My dad got great news on his leg, the bones have basically completely regrown and connected in all the right places after just 7 months, which is quite the achievement for a 64-year old. I am not a great believer in acupuncture and all that, but he was having really bad nerve pain from the break and now he is doing much better so we’re all very happy that it works for him. Unfortunately, he also developed shingles and it’s a pretty bad case according to the doctor but somehow my dad manages to stay positive through it all. 

Short mentions

·    - Yumi’s been crazy busy at work, but she seems to enjoy herself so I just help where I can and get out of the way for the rest of it.a

-  I’ve joined the Change Management Institute Committee again, felt that I had left too soon and am looking to organise a conference end of next year, that should be fun!

- Still not getting this Xmas in summer thing, maybe next year.

- I got my ears cleaned, had to use eardrops for a week and was nearly deaf for 3 days, that was so weird! But now I’ve got full stereo once more and leaning forward doesn’t hurt my neck anymore and makes me less red in the face, funny thing that.

-Thank you for the birthday card, our Xmas card is on the way 😊

-Can’t believe it’s almost 2 years since we said goodbye in person, I should really visit the ACT soon.

-Just a few more months and we’ll be living in Australia for 4 years, which means that I can apply for citizenship. Doing that means I’ll have to give up my Dutch citizenship because the Dutch law has changed and dual citizenship is no longer and option. Not sure if I mind that too much, I’ve always felt more connected to Rotterdam anyway, but I have to think about it a bit more

Have a lovely and drama-free Christmas with the family and a healthy, sunny and prosperous 2018

Gilbert

Letters to Marlis Aug-Sept 2017

Brunswick, 13 October 2017

Hi Marlis,

I hope all is well with you and the ACT, Melbourne is windy and all over the place weather-wise, so all is as it should be 😊. Sorry I am somewhat late this time, it’s been a bit busy the past few weeks and I wanted to sit down and write a proper letter and not have to rush things, so here we go!

Adelaide and Kangaroo island

We had the opportunity two weeks back with the silly Victorian national holiday for AFL Grand Final day to have a nice break. Yumi needed to go to Adelaide for work anyway, so I just followed her, travelling by myself after not having been there for almost exactly 5 years. From a brisk 5-7am morning walk on Friday I can report it hasn’t changed much, but I still like it better than Melbourne. It’s still a big city and the CBD seems a bit more developed, the botanical gardens are still phenomenal and the buildings are not as crowded and high as in Melbourne. I’ve asked Yumi to see if she can get a transfer there for work, but she didn’t seem too keen, so I guess we’re stuck here for a while, haha. Our actual destination was Kangaroo Island, which is a nice 45-minute fast ferry ride to the south and it’s a great holiday destination indeed. I had to entertain myself in Christies Beach, but managed just fine with some reading, shopping, beach walks in the sun, feeding fries to the sea gulls and doing a small bit of work until Yumi finished her work and we left for the ferry. Before we even got on we’d already spotted two dolphins just relaxing in the bay, hiding from a really big storm just 10 kilometres out which just passed us by without a drop of rain to bother us. Funny thing was, while we were standing there, after a bus, train, plane and car ride of 850 kilometres, I end up standing on a dock waiting for a boat and the guy next to me also happens to be Dutch…(I think he was from Amsterdam, not great) The Dutch are truly everywhere, haha!

Kangaroo Island was very nice. We stayed for 3 nights, arriving Thursday, leaving Sunday and that’s enough to see most things. We took a very entertaining guided boat tour and saw some more dolphins, a few of them sleeping on the surface and heaps of seals, but no whales or sharks (that would have been very lucky). The coast line itself is also pretty spectacular. In places, the rock texture looks very much like Swiss cheese, holes all over. We had not yet seen that sort of rock formations before in Australia. We also saw koalas, a blonde echidna, black cockatoos and of course a few kangaroos (but not as many as you’d think for a place called Kangaroo Island). I think we stopped by four or five lighthouses, a place called Remarkable Rocks (they were indeed remarkable, courtesy of wind erosion) and about 15 beaches. Yumi and I just love watching the ocean and there was plenty of wave crashing going on with rather strong winds. A really good break!

Pluis

When we go home we got quite a fright when we found that Pluis has gone completely blind. She’s better now, but here’s what happened. The week before we left, we had noticed she was behaving a bit strange, but we put that down to her generally being a strange cat and expected it to just pass as it usually does. She ate a bit less, moved a bit less, miaowed a bit more, but that was it. Only when I shone a light in her eyes and her pupils did not contract at all did we realise she was as blind as a bat. We went to the vet, got a referral to the animal eye clinic (I did not know we had one) and they could not find anything really wrong with her, but agreed that she was indeed completely blind. We got meds to treat for inflammation and what do you know, 5 days later the light went back on and her pupils started contracting, yay! Since then she’s been pretty much her grumpy loveable self again. We just visited the vet for a check-up yesterday (after a gruelling 90-minute car trip through Melbourne traffic with a very unhappily yowling Pluis) and they tell us her left is not as good as the right yet, but the sight recovery is a very good sign in a cat her age (she was not impressed with that 😊). We’ll continue with the meds and go back 3 weeks from now for a final check. It was amazing to see how fast and well she adapted (but perhaps she’d been going blind for a while, who knows?!). After just 1-2 days of softly bumping into things she basically moved more coordinated through the house and yards than I do myself on a good day. The vet told us that cats and dogs have much better spatial awareness and memory then humans and she definitely proved them right!

Yumi’s work

Yumi’s very busy still. Just this morning she said that there’s quieter times coming and I just laughed. Every time she says that, new and interesting things come her way, but it would be good because she’s been working long days at all hours for the past 6-9 months. Good thing she’s having fun, meeting heaps of people, doing all sorts of great things for the disability sector. In just 2 weeks she went from Melbourne to Adelaide to Hobart to Perth and back, with a last-minute cancellation from the ACT, but she’ll go there in just a few weeks anyway. They were remodelling the office during that time anyway so she was happy to be away but it’s not a sustainable pace that she has now. I am trying to help her think of new ways of doing things, but she has to do it her way (as usual).  

Done at Deakin University

I always used to say that my job at ACT Government was probably the best one I ever left, but I am now thinking that it might have been bumped to second place by Deakin University. I had such a great time and we achieved so much in a short time that people were amazed when I announced that I would finish up after 5 instead of 7 months. It’s a simple case of being done. Of course, there were more opportunities, but it just didn’t work out with the timing and I am never one to ask to be included in something, it has to happen more or less naturally or it’s not meant to be. My manager and a lot of other people were so very nice it was both heart-warming and a bit embarrassing. I mean, I was hired to do a job and I did it, what were they expecting? I learned so much about education, how universities work, new tools, new themes and I met tons of smart and very nice people. I would definitely go back there if the opportunity presented itself. For now, it’s okay to leave. I came in to a job that was just under my level and I knew this but wanted the experience of having worked at a university. But when new and bigger opportunities arose, people did not necessarily think of me because I was just a level x,y,z employee and not the level a,b,c they were looking for. A few people advised me to leave and perhaps come back for something else. We’ll see what happens, I have had a great experience regardless!

Workshop

For my personal and professional development I attended a 3 day workshop in September and it really helped me to further focus my activities. Can you imagine, me even more focused? People are about to call the police, haha! I was hosted by a man I respect deeply, Daryl Conner, who’s been a founding member of the change management community in the 1970’s and 80’s. 70 years old and still travelling the world, working with aid and not for profit organisations to help them be more effective. The workshop title was, ‘Raising your game’. How American can you get,huh?! but it was really all about character and presence. There were only 12 of us to keep it manageable and I got sooooo much out of it. I found out many things about myself and how and why I work, but also about how I can get beyond some things that have been holding me back for years. The main take away for me was that I just need to start doing things again instead of waiting for permission, it’s not going to happen that people will come to me, so I will go out and find them. I feel like I can take more ownership for my own career choices and that somehow, I see things much clearer now. Not because I learned new things, but because I was affirmed in so many things that I always thought were true already. I thought it was just me thinking these things, but it turns out I am not the only one at all. I was very relieved to not be unique it was kind of funny. My next challenge is to find jobs and work that really bring out the best in me for my clients and not to just go for jobs I know I can do. Should be exciting…

Change and Culture Conference

A few weeks back I was asked to speak at a change management conference in 2018 and I was quite excited, worked out all the details and then I was told that the spot promised to me was given to a more prominent and renowned speaker and I could pick something else but less attractive. I politely thanked them for the opportunity and mentioned that I would rather not be anyone’s second choice and withdrew. They did not appreciate that at all. Oh well. A few days later I was contacted by a very different group of people asking me upfront if I was willing to step in because their original chair had to cancel. I was a bit hesitant at first, seen to my previous experience and not having been a conference chair before, but decided that I should give it a try. Normally you hear these things weeks if not months in advance. I heard it on 5 October and the event was from 9-11 October. I thought, why not celebrate my birthday (thank you for the lovely card! 😊) with 40 random people, learning new things while doing a new thing? They were three great days with really inspiring speakers, meaningful discussions about culture and change, nice snacks and a great way to see where our profession is at currently. I got lots of compliments on how I did things, one person even mentioned that she could tell we had prepared for months (ehm, not quite, haha). The best part for me was a small session on Wednesday that I got to host with just 4 people from very different organisations, discussing ways to improve corporate culture, much more my cup of coke zero 😊. Now that I’ve done it I can say it’s not really something I enjoy immensely. I’d rather be in the crowd than up on the stage for these sorts of things. It was a pleasant experience and I am happy to know I can pull it off if required but I’ll leave it to others next time perhaps. Either way, I got to be there for free while others paid between $2,500 to $4,000 for the privilege of seeing and hearing some of Australia’s best and biggest companies talk about change and culture. (yep, that’s still a lot of money!)

Cycling adventures

I am still cycling a lot and enjoy it a bit more every week. It hasn’t become any safer, but at least now that the light is back on in the mornings and evenings, everyone can see everyone a bit better. Remember how I once mentioned that I was (rightfully so) chastised by a fellow cyclist for running a series of red lights? I learned my lesson and will mostly wait now. There are times when there’s really no point (as in, no one in sight and no traffic) and I ignore them and that’s when another fellow found it necessary to speed past and hurl some abuse my way on behalf of all of humanity who was ever endangered by my utter disregard for red lights and the central order of the universe. I thanked him in a typical Rotterdam way by yelling back at him. He just kept on. Not my finest moment…I might have mentioned before that I have a bit of an authority complex and some random yahoo who feels it’s his job to educate me on the finer points of red lights and empty roads just doesn’t do it for me. (well, he was there, behind me, clearly endangered by whatever I did at 18 km/h on an 8 meter wide road). I am sure he could be angry about many other things or maybe he is 😊. Anyway, I plan to cycle more than 100 km in one day very soon to get closer to my devious plan of cycling from Melbourne to Adelaide or beyond in the near future. If I plan it a bit better and take enough food and drink (I’ll be burning some 3,000 calories and lose about 4 liter of fluids) it should be fine. My bike is starting to wear and tear a bit but after nearly 7,000 hard kms in Oz, I can’t really blame it, perhaps I need a new one soon.

Summer holiday

We’re almost done planning our summer holiday to the East coast, the only thing left is to decide if it will be in a campervan or by plane. We’re going diving on a liveaboard (sleep on the boat) for a few days for the first time and I think it will be great. It is quite expensive so we’ll do a short one first and if we really like it, we can always go for a longer one next time. I was happy to dive and fly, but Yumi wanted something more so now we’re looking at options for flying to Cairns and then driving a campervan down back to Melbourne. It’s a good 3,000 kms, but we should be able to do that in a week easily, see a bit of the inner country too if possible. I wanted to go from Cairns to Alice Springs but that’s another 1,500 added and perhaps a bit too much for the fun of it.

House hunt

We’ve been looking at moving to a new house for a while now. Not that that there’s really anything wrong with this one (aside from the heating being broken again), but it’s just too big and two rooms are empty. We could probably do with something smaller and a friendlier rent. By now we’ve got a pretty good process for finding options and have viewed about 12 houses across town. I am not fond of Brunswick (or Melbourne) but it’s not terrible and living outside of the city is just not a real great option now. We came close a few times, but either the house is great and the neighbourhood isn’t (busy road, next door to a primary school, at the bottom of a steep hill) or the neighbourhood is quite nice but the house is just a bit dodgy (cheap fixtures/appliances, grimy walls, shoddy carpets). We’re not really in a rush and we pretty much know what to look for so now we just wait for the right one to become available. A strange thing about these viewings is that the weekday viewings are so incredibly busy with 15 couples/individuals/families showing up as the rule and then the Saturday ones are just a few people or just us. Suits me fine 😊. Now that I have a bit more time on my hands, I am hoping we’ll make the move soon and get it all sorted.

Some short mentions

·       My parents are just back from a short break in Spain, with all the drama in their lives, they could do with a holiday and they had a great time, with my dad already up and about and his leg healing nicely.

·       I’ve passed my SES exam and am now a real team member.I am currently learning how to be safe on roofs, will soon do a chainsaw course and will also take a storm and flood damage course.

·       All other family and friends are in good health, nothing truly spectacular there, which is good

·       I am thinking of writing a book on Australian business change success stories, doing some thinking and talking to people who are smart about those things. I think the profession needs it and so far feedback on the idea has been good, I’ll let you know where things stand next time

I think that’s all I have to share for now. I hope you get to enjoy the sun enough in the next few months and that your family is well.

Until next time, be well

Gilbert

Letter to Marlis-June-July

Hi Marlis,

I hope you are well and staying warm, I saw that the cold has really hit the ACT by now. Here in Melbourne people are complaining about 3 degrees, ha! They have no idea really 😊. The past few months have been crazy busy, but at the same time quite uneventful, here’s my main adventures of the past few months.

World Roundtrip already a year ago

On Facebook (I know you weren’t on it then but perhaps you are now? 😊) you sometimes get these reminders of what you were doing 1,2,3 or more years ago. During July I got these constant reminders of our round the world trip last year. Some beautiful memories of Tokyo, Rotterdam and New York and it always makes me want to travel so much more. A lot has happened since that time and that always amazes me, how much can happen in just a year. We’ve been in Melbourne for a year and 4 months now and it feel like so much longer. Still haven’t really warmed up to the place, but made some new friends and met a lot of really nice people, so that’s a good trade if you ask me. Of late, I do find myself thinking of the ACT and the places and people there, after 3,5 years in Australia there’s still not 1 day I regret moving here, but there are days when wished I was still in Casey (who would have thought, hahaha) and the boring, but beautiful and spacious surroundings, maybe one day…

Biking

I am now finally a real member of the Melbourne Cycling Community as I got hit by a car. Don’t worry, it wasn’t very spectacular so I am not a full member just yet. I think that requires being thrown of your bike and traveling at least 3 meters through the air and landing on a hard surface or into oncoming traffic. That’s my next performance target! I was on Sydney Road, in the morning and this yahoo needed to turn right and I though he saw me, but then he just turned and I was there. I banged into his side, managed to stay upright and everyone in traffic just froze. He was very apologetic and as I didn’t suffer any damages just wished him a nice day and pedalled on. The look on his face was priceless, he probably expected abuse but he looked so freaked out already I really didn’t feel that getting angry was the way to go. See? All good! I cycle between 80 and 100 kilometres every week now to and from work and there’s a couple of near misses every week unfortunately. Mostly just people not looking out for bikes in their own world with their thoughts and phones and radios, sometimes it’s me being stupid and impatient. I get better at ducking and weaving but I guess it just comes with being on a bike, at some point you’re going to end up on a car or the ground, my goal is to postpone that as long as possible!!

Pluis

Our grumpy, fluffy lady has recovered fully from her cold. We spend a bazillion dollars to find out there was basically nothing wrong with her. Just to make sure we’ve now been giving her antibiotics for weeks. I am not a fan, but Yumi wants to keep going. There’s this story about that. A guy walks past a field and sees a man throwing around white powder. He observes him for a while and then walks over and asks him what he’s doing. The man says he’s dusting the field with elephant repellent. The stunned guy exclaims that surely there’s no such thing. The powder covered man gives him a smug look and says “Do you see any elephants, because I sure don’t!”. That’s how I feel about the meds. We force a pill down her throat twice a day for 10 weeks while there’s nothing visibly wrong with her. I hope that when I am her age and need to be force fed medication, I’ll just be taken to the woods and shot 😊. In the meanwhile she now has gone back to the routine of back yard, front yard, growl at other cats, sleep, eat and sit on Yumi’s lap, so I am thinking she’s good for a few more years.

  

Yumi’s work

Yumi has been really busy at work. Travelling all over the place (mostly to Canberra, go figure) and doing important work to improve the disability sector. She’s building quite the reputation and makes things happen that actually work in the community that needs it so bad. She’s also made a really cool animated video for one of her projects with a friend of mine, who is also working on making a video of a change management article I wrote at some point. I’ll include the picture and link next time, perhaps you can look it up sometime. There was talk of her office moving, but now they’ve decided to stay in the same building, just a different floor. Some of her colleagues have left and she is just soooo busy that three out of five nights she just falls asleep on the sofa after coming home from work. Can’t say I’ve never been there, so I’ll be the last person to judge, but I worry about her not having any sort of other thing going on outside of work. She’s not been to Kendo for months and that’s just shame as she really seemed to enjoy it but cannot find the peace of mind to spend a few hours a week on herself. She’s a big girl and makes her own choices of course, I’ll just be Mister Supportive 😊.

My dad’s leg

It’s been more than 3 months already and his leg is healing quite well. He can move about the house, do chores and even walk without crutches but it’s slow going. The weather seems to bother him a lot and him not being a sissy to begin with, it’s saying a lot that he actually asked for his pain medication to be upped as he can’t sleep on some nights. Perhaps he should consider moving to the Mohave desert, less rain there 😊. We joke about it a lot, but it’s really tough on him, such an active man with nothing but time on his hands. As I know from personal experience, at some point you run out of things to do and are left with your own thoughts too long. Doctors tell him it will be October or November before he works again, he’s not liking that one bit. They’re going on holidays to Spain at the end of September, so that is something to look forward to, but still, would be good if he could get back into things. Their personal situation hasn’t really changed, the house is still on the market, my mom is working, one day at a time is the way to go for now.

The job at Deakin University

The past two months have been quite the learning experience. I’ve done so much and poured a lot of energy in things and it is starting to work, be it slowly. It’s a strange sensation and experience when I feel that they are doing the absolute minimum required to even be successful and most of them feel like they are making massive strides forward. That’s not to say they are not trying, but they are questioning the need and use of basically everything I want them to do, which is a new experience. It’s like going to the shop to get your car fixed and then arguing with the mechanic about every tool and repair she suggests. I mean, you don’t have to fix your car, you can also just take the bus and wave at those other universities as they pass you by 😊. I guess they are trying and they’ve seen a lot of change so there’s that and I might just need to be a bit more patient. In a moment of frustration, I applied and interviewed for a job (pays about 50% more) with Metro Trains, but I don’t think it’s for me. At the very least I got to brush up on my interview skills. The next few weeks will prove pivotal at Deakin I think. The busy work is slowing down, things are falling into place and when I had the tough conversation with my two bosses they basically offered to let me write my own ticket as long as I would stay. They’re very good that way and I appreciate them even more for it. While all this unrest goes on, I am happily connecting the dots with my newsletters, strategies, workshops and checklists. We’re getting there, just not exactly sure where that is, haha. The environment is nice, I sit at Docklands, right next to Southern Cross station and the river banks, meet all sorts of interesting people and learn a lot about everything education and university world. Like everywhere I’ve worked, most people are very nice and collaborative and I get to visit the campuses every now and then, which makes me feel inspired and very, very old at the same time with all these 14-year old students walking around (I am sure they are 18+, but they look 14to this old man 😊).

SES excitement

We had a massive storm front blow over a week ago and I happened to be on duty so spent the whole Saturday going from job to job with different SES teams. It was a great experience because we don’t get too many call outs in our area and now we had 70! I am now one of the most experienced people in the unit. We started with a team of three and we took a tree of the road, than there was roof tiles, a shed with a hole in the roof, a shed where the roofing was coming off, a church with loose tiles, a few fallen over fences, loose signage, broken water lines and an electrified tree (fire hazard). Some things you just can’t do anything about, but it was a lot of fun most of the time driving around with the trailer and in the truck, getting to be helpful. Some jobs you rock up, have a look and the team leader would tell the people to just get a contractor out. The general public sometimes feels we’re also there to fix windows, clean gutters, fix their fences and such. Yeah, not quite, but nice try! We make it safe and then move on. It’s only when people are old and not very mobile (so not you, with the bricklaying your own garden path at 82 😊) or disabled in some way, that we can help with those chores. Then this weekend we had a working bee event which was also a lot of fun, digging holes for drainage, moving a sand pit, breaking down a practice roof and pulling out weeds. We only had a few people and myself show up, but it was a fun way to spend the Saturday morning and afternoon. My muscles are a bit sore now, but I’ve brushed up on my shovelling and gardening skills so that’s a fair trade.

10 year anniversary

On 30 June, we celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary with a very nice dinner at Hellenic Republic. As you will understand from the name, it’s Greek food and so very good. Every dish is just the best possible taste you can think of for that recipe and it’s excellent every time. It didn’t disappoint this time as well. I got Yumi a nice new diamond ring. Not that she asked for one, but it had been 10 years since the last one and it seemed like a good moment for it. The buying experience was a bit weird though. The salesman was just like a used car salesman, but he knew his job so well that I didn’t mind too much.While he was talking I was just continuously thinking that I was so happy not have his job, which seems to consist of telling people half-truths, talking fast and waving your hands around for dramatic effect. I just wanted a ring, I got a bag full of paper work, extended guarantees (at no extra charge because we are friends now…) and a whole range of things I just tossed in the bin. Sheeshhh, I thought I’d be in and out in 5 minutes as I had done my research, took nearly 45 minutes! Oh well, she loved the ring. 9 October will be the 20 years together anniversary and my birthday, so we made big plans and then just dropped them all, too hard. We wanted to go to Perth, but actually want to travel the West Coast and see the country, so that dropped off, then we thought of diving, also didn’t pan out. Eventually we’ll do something, but it’ll be a last-minute thing and probably just in Melbourne. Yumi travels so much already that staying at home is the new luxury.

A bit of culture

The National Gallery of Victoria has multiple locations across town and a few weeks back we visited the one on Collins Square, it’s partly indigenous art, partly other stuff. Most of it doesn’t make any sense to me, but the indigenous collections were very different in a good way from what we generally saw in other places. There were also photo expositions and I just love photography and the storytelling that goes with it, although some of it was so dark and obscure that I just gleaned over it and went back to a lighter display, none of that depressing stuff for a Saturday morning! In the same building, there’s also a glassworks gallery and those pieces were just stunning. We visited the glassworks in the ACT a few times, thinking of buying something and liked their collection but this shop is at least 4 times the size and half the price. We’ll go back again and maybe pick something up later.

Agile11

Remember how I wrote about that work experiment with the collective of consultants, the 100 day experiment/ Well, that ended this week and it was pretty good, I learned a lot about new technology, roles in teams, agile methodologies. I also met 15 new people and liked most of them. In the end, there was a lot of unnecessary drama, with people leaving because of various reasons, not getting along, bruised egos and personal expectations. Also, the founding members almost filing for divorce, yikes. We’re not yet sure of what’s next, but there are a lot of opportunities. I regularly wrote a blog over that period of 100 days and it turned out to be 16 pages of confusion and hard questions. At some point, I just had to call them out that while they were saying that they wanted to change things, they were fussing over coulour schemes and sweating the small stuff, not great. I’ll see where it goes, the whole experience has given me lots to think about, which is always a good thing for me.

Thinking of moving house…some day

We’ve been keeping an eye on the market for a while now and decided we want something smaller a while back, now it’s just a matter of when and where. We’ve made list of things we want and it shouldn’t be too hard. Closer to or in the city or farther away with really good public transport, one less room, no garden, a balcony with a view that is not boxed in, a bath and lots of light. We’ve seen many houses like that in the past few months and I reckon that before the end of the year we’ll be moving some place new. This house is not bad, but it’s big, expensive and the student neighbours on one end and the deaf, wood burning neighbours on the other are starting to get a bit ordinary. We’ll shop around some more and then we’ll land on something.

That’s me done once again, stay safe and warm and you’ll hear from me again in a month or two. All the best!

Gilbert

Letters to Marlis April-May 2017

Hi Marlis,

Hope you are doing well in chilly Canberra with those sub-zero temperatures, brrrrr, not quite there yet in Melbourne, but getting close 😊

It’s been a very eventful two months again so let’s get right into it!

My dad’s leg is slowly healing

It’s taking a bit longer than he would like (which would be 3 days instead of 3 months), but my dad’s leg is finally starting to improve. It’s taking quite long for the bone to grow together, but he’s no spring chicken anymore of course. The prognosis is looking good though and he gets to leave his bed a bit more often moving around with crutches. In two weeks from now he’ll be able to put all his weight on it again and in in the meantime he has discovered Netflix (Internet tv, with lots of options), so that’ should keep him occupied for a while longer. He might never be able to walk without a cane, but we’ll get him one of those gentlemanly ones, with a hidden sword inside in case he gets attacked by a horde of ninjas. Best to joke about it, not much else we can do anyway.

Yumi’s work

Yumi has been crazy busy, travelling interstate to Sydney, Canberra and across Victoria as well. It even looks like Perth in October is in the cards now too. I got to go with her as her driver one time and spent a beautiful day by myself on the Mornington Peninsula while she was being an expert on a panel of smart people. It was a perfectly sunny Autumn day, just me and my laptop on the beach with the colourful beach houses, the occasional dogwalkers and the ocean. She’s becoming quite the celebrity in the disability sector and gets asked to come and speak about doing things in different and better ways so frequently now that she has to start scheduling around it. I could not be prouder of her and her dedication and smarts. Just the other day she was asked to advise one of the biggest consultancy firms in the country how to run their multimillion dollar contract for the government. How’s that for being a real expert amongst experts?! Also, they are a bunch of idiots who make big promises they cannot keep and then worry about how to make it happen. Disgraceful as we’re talking about the most vulnerable people of society here. Good thing Yumi’s there to help them out.

My new job at Deakin University

I was sooo excited to start working at The Salvation Army and while I have done some really cool things and my manager was happy, I was just so disappointed after just a few days. It was just like every other office, with people worrying about little things and playing games. I had hoped for more, but just kept my head down and produced my deliverables at a rate that was impressive even by my standards. After 8 weeks of 2.5 days a week, I was done with 4 months of work. The people were nice enough but I really was not the right person at the right time. Once I had moved on and nearly started on my new job they did offer me another much bigger role, but I think I’ll just stick to the people in Bourke Street who seem truly concerned with helping the homeless. Funny how it could be the same organisation yet so different in nearly everything else. Four weeks ago today, I started my new job as change and communication manager for Deakin University and that is something else entirely. It was my dream to ever work for the Salvation Army, but also to ever work for a University. 2 dreams come true in 1 year, that’s pretty good in my book. My project is not that big, but it is ground breaking in the sense that it offers online education in a truly new and engaging way that is a first in Australia and large parts of the world. It’s the same as always, nothing documented, we start from scratch for most things, but the one big difference is that I am not the smartest person in the room by far. There’s professors, Phds and all other sorts of smart people around. And I am continuing my winning streak of female leaders as both my manager, her manager, their manager and her manager (the Vice Chancellor/CEO) again are all women and not just women, but smart, opinionated, inspiring and hard-working women. Great place to work indeed. It’s been like drinking from a fire-hydrant for the past 4 weeks, but just this morning I started to see things in perspective again. Those 4 weeks really flew by though, can’t wait to see what the next weeks will bring. My contract runs until the end of the year, we’ll see how we go. So far they like what I am doing so I’ll just keep doing that in a beautiful office, with friendly people and the occasional visit to the campuses to be surrounded by students and other smart people. There’s definitely worse places to work. 😊

Quitting CMI

Last month I decided to quit volunteering for the Change Management Institute. I had been doing it for little over a year now. With the new job, SES and The Agile Eleven it all became a bit too much and I was putting a lot of time, ideas and efforts, which made others do a bit less than they might have. I don’t blame them, I had a lot of time but all of a sudden I found that I was doing what felt like nearly everything and it started to get to me a bit. We had another very successful, inspiring and well appreciated event at the start of May and right after that I decided that it had been a good run, stopping on a high note rather than get frustrated and low on energy. I am still a member, made some new work friends, developed new skills and contacts and had some great opportunities to learn new things, so just a step down really, but not out just yet. I do feel the change community in Melbourne could do with a bit of a shake up, but everybody seems to be looking at everybody else to make that happen. That’s not me at all, so I’ll go where the action is. Sometimes I get a bit tired of myself, always moving and quitting things, but I just can’t be bothered to wait for things to happen, see, not much changed with me at all 😊.

SES

One thing I am thoroughly enjoying is the Monday night SES antics. All twelve of us have passed our basics training, so we’re no real embarrassment to anyone anymore and now we’re doing General Rescue, which is a bit more serious and invested. I just like that it is so different from everything else that I do on a daily basis that it somehow works for me. Just this Monday we were learning how to tie all sorts of knots and not only am I learning useful things, we’re having a lot of fun doing it together as well. We’ll be climbing rooftops, shooting ropes with slingshots and going out on real calls soon enough. A while ago I thought we were getting called in, but it was a false alarm at 5am. Good thing I was already awake 😊. I’ll be out at Essendon Shopping mall again soon, tin shaking for funds and hopefully will get an opportunity to do some community engagement training by the end of the year perhaps. All good fun.

Anniversary

Yumi and I will be married for 10 years on the 30^th of June, how crazy is that?! I won’t say that I remember the day as if it was yesterday, I don’t, but 10 years seems such a long time ago and it doesn’t feel THAT long ago that we were in Rotterdam city hall and had such a great day with friends and family. Fun fact is that I am still wearing my wedding shoes to work about once a week (they have been re-soled a few times, yes) Later this year we’ll be celebrating 20 years together, which is even more remarkable of course, but also really weird to consider that I’ve known Yumi longer than I have not known her. Blessed life indeed.

AFL match

About 3 weeks back it was national volunteer week and because I am such an asset to the community through all my hard work at SES (show up, eat cookies, go home, haha) We got free tickets to our very first AFL game ever. Well, that was a wonderful experience to have done once. It was the Geelong Cats vs the Essendon Bombers and we could just cheer for both as we have no club allegiance to speak of. It was fun to see couples where one of them was a fan for the Cats while the other was a Bombers fan, that is just so Australian. Can’t remember who won, the better team I think 😊. Was fun to be at a game once to know what it’s all about and to have been in the Melbourne Cricket Grounds stadium as well, but I don’t think we’ll make it a new thing for date night, too cold, sitting too long watching too many hairy and bearded men wrestle each other to the ground and run away with a ball.

Comedy festival

At the end of April we also went to two nights of the Melbourne Comedy festival and that was a lot of fun (no pun intended). We went to buildings you’d normally not get into and the first night was just one performer and she had a great show about how she felt that she had always been a dragon. I’ll not try to explain that, jokes are never funny when I try to retell them anyway. The other event was right in the heart of the city in City Hall and it was so massively busy with about 20 acts going on at the same time in different rooms and people running everywhere. We went to ‘Best of Asia’ which were 4 stand up comedians from Malaysia, Singapore, India and Iran and they were hilarious too. Lots of jabs at their own countries and culture, but also putting some perspective on Australian culture, which we love as foreigners of course. Even though we don’t go out on weekdays most times because it just gets into the way of work day routines, it was fun to be out on Tuesdays and Friday nights for a change. Haha, look at us being adventurous.

Roadtrips

Every few weeks we go on a road trip, so I don’t feel too boxed in and I am starting to find that it’s really just Brunswick and how everything is built back-to-back that I don’t like. As soon as we get a bit further away from Melbourne, there’s the Australia I love! Some towns look just like the ACT, more similar to where you live and some parts look like mirror images of Casey where we used to live. Perhaps we’ll end up there, I really don’t want to live here for much longer, despite everything being so very close and convenient. Just the other week we went to the Tullamrine airport area and had a very nice walk around parts of the nature reserve there. You can see for miles in all directions and even better, there’s kangaroos and not just 10 or 20, no, closer to 100 if not more, moving around in mobs. Nowadays you then try to break out your phone and capture it for social media so everyone can see how cool your experience was but I just let it go for once and watched them bounce around until every one of them was just picking up speed and really moving. It was beautifully peaceful. On a different weekend, we visited the height of consumerism, Hoppers Crossing, which is such a weird place. It’s a nothing town (well, sort of) with a HUGE shopping centre and people from all over go there to stand in line for the toilets before starting their shopping spree. Must be because there’s nothing else for miles, but even the men’s had a line, now where do you see that?! It was nice to see the shopping centre and know what it’s about. I wasn’t very impressed, but shopping malls have been my thing of interest for a long time and I’ve seen ‘em with ice-hockey rinks inside, so everything else seems small in comparison, I guess. It was nice, white and shiny new though and it had a food court, so Yumi was happy enough 😊. There was also a nature reserve and nice beach walk way close by so we detoxed a bit from all the shopping and strolled the beach looking for sea shells, just the two of us, driftwood and some cheeky sea birds and magpies. It was cool to be able to see the city on the left and Geelong (where Deakin also has a campus) on the right of the bay. Our final road trip was to Castlemaine, more of a historic town than all the other stuff and we had a great time just walking the old trails and visiting some of the oldest settlers’ stuff Australia has to offer. There was this once place where they had these massively wide fir trees. They were only about 30-40 meters high, but at least 80-100 meters wide and while it was a beautifully sunny day (again, I know, we sure know how to pick them!) the temperature underneath the canopy was at least 10 degrees cooler. They also had an old railway track that you could walk and supposedly see kangaroos and other wildlife, so we did and of course, no kangaroos, the wildest thing we saw was wild blueberries, which tasted great. It would be much appreciated if the animals could just stick to the program, but perhaps no one has told them they have a job to do. I’ll show them the brochure next time, haha.

Pluis is under the weather a bit

Our old lady turns 13 (we don’t really know, but we set her birthday for 1 July 2004) in a short while and she’s been having a tough time with sneezing fits. After waiting a few days, reading up on the internet about what it could be, we decided to be responsible parents, go to the vet, pay $700 for all sorts of tests (don’t get me started) only to hear that there’s really nothing they can tell us. Great. We took her home and it’s been steadily getting worse, which means it’s probably an infection that has been getting worse for a while or cancer, which is to be expected as she had a benign granuloma on the back of her tongue for at least 8 years. As we keep each other company in the early hours of the day I hear and see her a lot more than Yumi does and some of those sneezing fits make her shake and tremble all over, but she eats and drinks and grooms most of the time (she’s never been a great fan of coat and paw maintenance) and she’s her grumpy self, so there’s either just nothing we can do, or we’ll get some more bad news in a week or so. We’ve decided it’s best to know, so we’ve agreed to do a CRT scan and the works, which fortunately comes as a package deal at the very affordable price of $2,000…holy moly, I’ve seen enough vet bills by now to know it’s really just the materials and equipment and I am okay with them making a profit as well but wow, good thing we make money. Ah well, what can you do, she’s been with us for too long to just let it go, so we’ll just get it over with by next week Monday.

The Agile Eleven 100 days experiment continues

After 40+ days I am still enjoying working with that collective of business professionals to develop a business that we can all take part in. It’s been a very interesting experience so far, with lots of new things I’ve learned and some very useful skills and new skills that I picked up that made my start at Deakin a lot easier. The two owners (Eduardo and Catherine) are making a real effort to open up their business and let new ideas in, but it’s hard for them too to be flexible and inclusive sometimes, so we’ve had some colourful people leave already and I am expecting that we’ll not all make it to day 100. I’ve also learned that my ideas around team work are really more based on working with friends and likeminded people and sometimes that just makes me want to quit when I find that everyone just seems to be in it for themselves and their own benefit or hobby. I know that’s not true for all of them and most of us have day jobs and obligations, like vet bills, hahaha, but I’d like it to be more collaborative. I do recognise the pattern that I create where I get super invested and nobody else seems to be able/willing to follow. Story of my life I guess, will try to slow it down a bit. Perhaps at the end of the year when my contract with Deakin ends I might step into the Eleven, perhaps I’ll cheer them on from the sidelines, it’s nice to have an option any way.

Some assorted small things

·       Salvos Intersection collection. On Saturday 3 June, I had a great and cold time tin shaking for the Red Shield Appeal from 7-10.30am. It felt good to be part of it again and raise funds for the homeless. It’s a small thing, but it helps and particularly now when I ride into the city there’s just so much of them and they must be so cold. Last year I wasn’t working at this time and while I rode my bike it was always when the sun was out and late in the morning. Those poor people. ☹

·       Cycling and diet. I really enjoy being able to cycle to work again, clocking about 18 kilometres a day, which helps with the diet and I am happy to report that now that I am working again I’ve dropped about 5 kilos and the other 4 I am looking to shed will probably be not too hard. I cut out, chocolate and most sweet stuff and as always, it’s not hard, I just have to keep at it. I work in Docklands nowand can walk in all directions and see the ocean in the distance, which is pretty fancy right?

·       Gaming. I’ve gamed quite a lot right before I got back to work and played probably one of the best games ever which featured a young lady who looked like a tribal warrior but lives in a time where the Earth has seen a catastrophic event and there’s lots of mechanical animals around. Your job is to find out what happened and the story telling and game mechanics are just so beautifully done I kept running around until I finished it at 100% (which almost never happens with me being so impatient). Right now, I am playing a shoot-em-up that plays in Bolivia and revolves around me taking care of the bad guys. I know you don’t care about those games but it’s easy to start and stop, which suits my busy schedule a bit better right now.

·       TV and movies. Now that my job is no longer to watch tv and read books, I have much less time to see the good stuff, but I am still very excited about a film that is based on The Dark Tower book series by Stephen King. It plays in a world similar to ours, but different and time is all messed up, most people have gone and things have meshed together so there’s references to knights and gunslingers, but also Harry Potter and Thomas the train. It’s a bit weird, but great story telling. I’ve read all seven of the books, which he completed over the course of 20 years or so and now the movie will have some of my favourite characters, I am hoping it will be even better than the books.

Well, that’s me done and you updated on most events in our lives. I hope you get through the cold parts of winter alright and I’ll write again in a month or two to keep you updated.

Be well and all the best to the family!

Gilbert