Brunswick, 13 April 2017
Hi Marlis,
Sorry it’s a bit later than usual, but
it’s been an unusual two months since I last wrote. As always, I hope this
letter finds you in good health and high spirits. It’s nearly ANZAC day and
with that comes the ‘cold snap’, but I am sure you’re well prepared. We’ve had
some cold mornings here, but no scarfs and gloves for me just yet 😊. Like I said,
it’s been an unusual two months, so here we go!
My
dad broke his leg!
Last Friday my mom texted, saying that
my dad had an accident at work while out with the truck. He was at a customer
and unloading goods when things went wrong and he had to jump off a loading
platform to avoid crushing his foot with an automated handheld pallet truck. He
landed badly and broke his bad lower right leg in 3 places and got first degree
burns from battery acid (from the handheld pallet truck) that spilled on his
back. He was rushed to hospital and got a very impressive metal rod in his leg
and fast acting treatment for his burns. He’s still in hospital today, but
doing well after a bit of a relapse yesterday and expected to fully recover
with 6-8 weeks of rehabilitation and physio. He’s a trooper about it all, but
it gave us all quite a scare. I know my way around those pallet truck and know
exactly how this could have happened, but also that it that pallet truck and
load had fallen ON him instead of near him, he could literally have been crushed
to death. That didn’t happen fortunately, so let’s not go there!
SES
volunteering
I am really enjoying the SES volunteering.
I have so many orange coloured clothes now, it’s like celebrating King’s day
(Dutch annual holiday) every Monday night with a bunch of Aussies, haha! I do
learn a lot of useful things though about ropes, lighting, weather conditions, disaster
preparation and community engagement, but most of all we’re just having fun. This
Monday we finished our foundational training, which means that from 1 May on I
can go out on calls and be a local hero for some person who needs help with
whatever. Already looking forward to it now that winter is coming. Our area is
Essendon/Monee Ponds and its relatively quiet, nothing like Geelong or West Melbourne
where trees seem to get uprooted every week and floods occur every other
Tuesday. After ANZAC day, we’ll start our General Rescue (GR) and that’s where
it becomes a bit more serious and detailed. We’ll learn how to chainsaw, get up
on roofs, work pulley systems and tie 529 different types of knots. If we didn’t
have a bondage fetish before, I am sure some will after all this 😊. We also did
a fund-raising campaign at Essendon shopping centre (where the plane crashed a
few weeks back) and it is amazing to hear how positive people are towards the
SES. I also figured that to the general public we basically all look the same in
our orange jumpsuits and they love knowing that there’s people willing to come
and save them from themselves. Let’s see how they like me when I politely
explain that I will not clean their gutters, save their cat/dog/rabbit from a
tree (maybe I will) or start my chainsaw on their driveway at 3am on a weekday,
haha.
Change
Management Institute volunteering
Phew, that’s been a bit full on. We had
a few new committee members join and as I was the one who more or less talked
them into it, I felt responsible to help them find their ways a bit as well. I keep
having these ideas for things we can do for our members and then get permission
to follow up on them so I ended up doing a lot of things at the same time. Then
again, I also get to meet a lot of nice and smart people who seem to care about
change management in the same way and as much as I do, so it’s a bit addictive
and keeps me going. We’re doing some really cool events about topics that go
into the future of the profession and how it’s changing and what we as a group
of professionals will do about/with that. Good times and very inspiring
Job
search and work
I’ve been doing some piece work for NDS
(where Yumi works), delivering those workshops I designed for them late last
year. It was fun. Attendance wasn’t great but I learned a lot myself as well
about the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), Yumi’s workspace and met
a lot of great people who care so deeply about what they do every day it’s hard
not to admire them. Also, all that work landed me another job at….Salvation
Army! Finally made it to the headquarters! It’s a part time office job where I
get to decide myself if it’s 2 or 3 days per week and depending on my workload
they just let me do what I want. I am supposed to help them get ready for NDIS
in 8-10 programs across the East and South coast and that is quite the job in an
organisation that is very old, but almost completely new to modern change management
practices. I’ve been there for 5 weeks now and it’s been pretty good, but not a
Change job at all. I figured that out on day 2 and told my manager she should fire
me and hire a communication person but she wanted to keep me and see what we
could accomplish. I am now taking it week by week and feel like I am adding value
and as long as I do, I am happy to stay. In the meantime, I am applying for
other jobs as well, two look really promising with Kmart and Deakin, but I’ll
count my chickens when there’s more clarity. I am also getting involved with a
group called the AgileEleven, who want to change how change is done and I think
we’ll do some good stuff together. We’re meeting on ANZAC day to see what our
plan of operations would be, so I’ll share more in the next letter. Looking
back onmy job search it took MUCH longer than I thought and of my 48
applications, 33 I never heard back from, 11 rejections and 2 I turned down
myself because there was no click with the person interviewing me. All in all,
I think I am in a better place now and my network is slowly starting to build.
Cycling
Last week Thursday it was more than a
bit windy, so I decided it was the best day to break my cycling distance record
of 66km in one go. I did make it to 75km but it was terrible on the way back! I
rode down to St.Kilda and along the coast, which was nice enough with all the
villas and coastal landscape and nature, but the wind, THE WIND!! I knew I was in
trouble on the way down as it was going way too smoothly uphill on some
stretches but only when I turned back and got hit full frontal with gale force
winds did I realise it was going to be quite terrible. I had set out to do
100km that day and I am sure I could have made it but I ran out of easy road
and in the end I was happy I turned back when I did, what a mess 😊. Now that I
am working some days it’s not so easy to go out and do 20-30km on the non-working
days, but the morning rides are still very good in the weekends.
Yuum
work
Yumi’s turning in to quite the legend at
work and she’s travelling nearly weekly across Victoria and interstate, doing
workshops, delivering innovative new ideas and building a whole new part of the
business. They finally sorted her contract and she’s good for another year at
least. I am a bit worried that she’s working long days and weeks and seems to
have forgotten where the off switch is, but we’ve been together for 20 years
this year (which means I’ve been with her longer than without her for the past
3 months 😊) and I know
that nothing I say makes a difference when it comes to how she fills her days,
as it should be!
Small
stuff
Everything else has been going forward
pretty much unchanged, not too many more exciting things going on fortunately,
but there’s some short things to share:
· Gaming: I am really enjoying Mass Effect Andromeda right
now. My crew and I travel the universe in a cool spaceship, fight aliens and
colonize new worlds. It’s a game that only releases new instalments every 4-5
years so whenever one releases I play it with a passion. Yumi and I also game
together in a very simple but oh so satisfying shoot-em-up game where we go on
missions, yell at each other and shoot aliens from the comfort of our sofa, it’s
great to game together and a fun thing to do when the weather is not so good.
·
Neighbours: we’re
getting new renters in the house behind us, which is okay because one of the
student renters had a bit of a psycho girlfriend and he and she got in nightly
shouting matches (never in the afternoon, nooooo, at 2am, that’s when you do
it!) under our bedroom window which was not great. Well, that’s done now they
are gone. We have a huge ‘For Lease’ sign on our garden fence, so on Saturdays
people line up in front of our house, admiring my lawn (at least they should 😊) only to find
out that it’s the house at the back, which is much less cool.
·
Car: our car has
been in and out of the shop, losing first the right-hand mirror glass when Yumi
was driving and then the left one when I parked at the house. I fixed that one
myself (it was really easy, but still felt proud) and then it needed a service,
which was also when we found that it needed a big $800 150,000km service ☹. It’s still a good
car though, so we decided to keep it up to scratch, especially now that I might
be driving a lot more. The Salvos is 40km away in Blackburn and takes 90
minutes by public transport and only 45 by car.
· Friends’ lives: On the front of friends and other family
things are chugging along comfortably. Kids are growing up, jobs are challenging
and rewarding, health is good and every now and then there’s a knock-down
rebuild renovation. All very suburban and quit, just how we like it. Last week
I met with an ex-colleague from the Netherlands, who now works for Sonos, a
company that has a branch in Melbourne and it was great fun to meet on this
side of the world and talk about the past and life here. Strange how that goes,
hmm. You move halfway across the world and still meet the same people 😊.
Easter is promising to be uneventful,
after a few very exciting weeks it’s a very welcome break from running and flying
everywhere. We’ll donate blood on Saturday and maybe travel a bit around the
region, but no wild/big trips for a few days. That’s of course what I say now,
haha, I’ll let you know how things turn out in the next letter.
All the best to you and the family, be
well, Gilbert.
