Hi Marlis,
Spring is
finally here again and we’re looking to get our very first 24 degree day on
Tuesday, good times indeed. 😊 Lots of things have
happened over the past 2-3 months, so here we go!
Happy
birthday!!
I hope this
letter still arrives on time for your 48th birthday (84, 24, who
really knows, right?! 😊). I thought to put in this
gift card, I am sure you’ll find a good use for it. I hope you have many
healthy and joyful years ahead of you. Upwards and onwards to 100!
Litter Picking
This litter
picking hobby of mine is getting a bit more serious every day. From January to
end of July this year, I picked up about 100 collecting bags (about 250kgs),
took pictures and made a big collage, wrote a piece for my professional network
and merrily started on bag 101. Over the month of August, I picked up another
50+ (!) bags and the way this is going, I’ll reach the next 100 by the end of
September. I am really starting to see a difference, but at the same time I
realise that I can only do as much as one very energised and motivated person
can do. I’ve also found that littering has many different causes, it’s not just
smokers, fast food eaters and people with not enough braincells. It’s also bins
not closing properly, wind gusts, overstuffed bins, leaflets and many, many,
many tissues. I’ve written to the council and might even start an Altona
chapter of Love Our Streets (not the greatest name, but the cause is okay).
That’s like the Beach Patrol people, but not on the beach. I’ll have to see how
that evolves but can totally see myself and Yumi do it. It’s not very costly,
just re-use plastic bags or buy a roll of biodegradable ones, maybe a litter
grabber for a few dollars and off you go! I’ve found some pretty weird things,
lots of clothing items, some questionable DVDs, a phone, keys, money (no
suitcase unfortunately, just coins 😊) but most of it is really cans, cups, bottles, plastic bags, wrappers
and like I said, lots and lots of tissues. It’s nice to do something for the
environment while I am out there walking anyway, and it’s great to be outside
now that winter is over. I even got a response back from someone on social
media saying that her friend in Canada was also planning to start picking
litter with her walking group, renamed to Waste Warrior Walkers, haha. This
weekend Yumi and I will take part in Spring Clean the City, about 300+ litter
pickers making Melbourne that much cleaner, should be fun. I’ve learned so much
about litter and the various initiatives that I’ve now written to the council to
see if I can help them with their new Litter and Waste Management plan. When I
walk around I got an app on my phone that allows me to send pictures of really
big issues I find for the council then to follow up on. So I got a call last
week and they thanked me for my effort of finding 200-300 dumped plastics pots
in a nature reserve but they’ll wait a few months because it’s crawling with
tiger snakes at the moment, yikes!! I’ll not walk there for a bit then 😊.
ACT visits
I so love
coming back to the ACT. Not just because I got to visit you, even though that
was very cool and welcome, it’s also because it’s familiar and Yumi and I had
such good times there. I think it will always have a place in my heart. And
everything is close, the air smells cleaner and there is virtually no traffic.
I was there last week for 3 days, but this was really just work, work, work,
with a few after work drinks and on Wednesday I got to entertain myself by
going to the cinema and exploring the new and improved Canberra Centre. They
really did do a good job in sprucing it up a bit. It’s much nicer than many of
the Melbourne ones we have and I am always amazed by how big it is for such a
small place. I also drove or walked by some of the places I used to visit
frequently and even managed to get a Dobinson’s chocolate chip cookie, which
was an unexpected bonus! Yumi and I will be back again next week, just working,
working, working again and maybe visit some Dutch friends who just had their
second baby boy. And we might go to eat at our favourite Indian restaurant. I
mean, as long as we’re there and it will probably be my last trip to the ACT
for a while, let’s make the most of it!
SES
I’ve now taken
on the financial role and apparently this means I part of the management team.
We’ll see about that, because I really don’t like that idea. It gets in the way
of me doing fun stuff, so I’ll see how I can get away from that! I did manage
to get them into the 21st century with internet banking. Will you believe that
we were still handing out cheques to our members for their expenses, how
1924…The books are all up to date now and we’ve got some better processes
moving forward. I am also planning to make our team aware of how much money we
actually have, no one seems to know really. I also went on my very first police
assistance search in the area. I’ll spare you the details of the crime (a
murder), but we were looking for knives, clothes and a bicycle, so obviously
the Dutch guy needed to be there, with my bike spotting skills. Well, we found
2 stolen license plates, lots of litter and absolutely nothing else. And still
we had fun and it’s a good thing to do, the police detective was also very appreciative,
especially because it rained for most part. This weekend I volunteered at a
community engagement thing at Bunnings, which was mostly just chatting to
people and hanging around near our boat, trying to entertain kids. The weather
was nice and we got some donations, so not too bad a way to spend a Saturday. A
week or two ago I also got to pick up our lighting trailer, which is always
popular with other emergency services because when you turn on its 10,000 volts
of lights, it’s literally like you are working in daylight. I just had to pick
it up after it got some work done, but it was my first time driving with a
trailer in a long time (you need a license for that in the Netherlands). I am
sure you saw the big fire near Altona/Melbourne on the news, another one of my
SES mates actually dropped off the trailer there, the pictures looked like a
war zone. Happy I did not have to go there with goodness knows what still
floating around in the air…
Parents’ house
As mentioned
when I visited last time, my parents have managed to sell the house and are now
living in a holiday home for 6 weeks until they move into their rental place.
The past few months have been full of change for them once more. Having to
throw out a lot of stuff they would not be able to fit in the new house and
stuff from even my childhood (get rid of it, haven’t missed it), thinking about
selling the old and buying new furniture and packing up all the boxes, it was a
big job and while they are not quite ‘old’ it’s no walk in the park. Fortunately,
a few of my very good friends were willing to help them move most of the stuff
into storage and will help them again on 12 October when they move into the
rental place. One of those times when friends really are better than family 😊.
Motorcycle
license and car accident
Now that I
have time and money on my hands, I am once again thinking of getting my
motorcycle license. I don’t have to explain the appeal to you, just wished I
had done it earlier so we could talk motorcycles too! I’ll do the theory and
test first in the next few weeks, just to see if I have the personality for it.
I can’t see myself owning a motorcycle just yet, but maybe I’ll do the tests
first and see how I go. I am equal parts excited and scared. Excited to try new
things, scared because I don’t want to fall or get into an accident, but
apparently the statistics tell me that this is unlikely. However, when you do
get into an accident, it’s better to be in a car I reckon. On that topic, I got
rear-ended last Friday! Not my fault, but still felt bad for the other guy as
he had just had his car out of the shop for 3 days after he got rear-ended
himself! We were very friendly and polite about it and it wasn’t a big bang (no
airbags were hurt during this accident 😊) and it gives us an opportunity to get a small scrape and the other
mirror repainted. We lost the right mirror cover a while back in a super market
parking lot and got a new one, but it costs like $90 and doesn’t even come in
the right colour. Anyhow, I get to pick it up from the shop on Thursday after
dropping it off today. It will look like new-ish, I hope 😊
CMI
My volunteering
for the Change Management Institute is drawing to a close by the end of this
month and while I am happy it will be over, I do recognise that I’ve made many
friends and got access to things that might otherwise not have happened. At the
same time, there’s always this amount of drama and clashes of personalities
caused by miscommunication that I found too hard to deal with after a while.
People are very appreciative of the things I made happen, but I want to see
ACTION and people getting involved and while I have not completely fulfilled my
promise of a full year (I did 9 months), they all seem to agree that I did the
work of 2 years in those 9 months, so I guess everyone wins and they get to
have a great leader in my friend Anna, who will be so much better at dealing
with all the stupid posturing than I will ever be. Again, no patience for that 😊.
NDS work
I’ve had great
fun touring the regional parts of Victoria in early August with the National
Disabilities Services crew. It’s not every day I get to go to Sale, Shepparton
or Mildura and talk to people about change and how they can do better. These
were all board members and executives, so you’d think they got this all sorted
and done right? Well, not quite as it turns out. I hope they got something out
of it. There’s always a few people who tell me afterwards they found it very
helpful and I guess that’s enough for me, but I hope I inspire them to take
action too. Either way, I learned a lot, got to positively change my mind about
the big NDIA Government agency running the NDIS scheme (lots of hate from
participants and I will admit I am also not a fan of how they are doing
things). And then there’s Yumi’s boss and colleagues I got to work with and
they are all just such lovely and hardworking people. I just love how I get
paid to travel, see the country and do some good. It’s almost enough to keep me
in the change job, almost.
Failed
projects
It really
stinks when I have to admit defeat, especially when it happens twice in a few
weeks, but sometimes I just can’t seem to make my ideas work. I had this idea
to collect Australian Success stories and share them with the community. Did my
research, asked 25 friends in Change and they all thought it was a great idea,
set myself some goals and then it took me 8 months to get 3 stories and 2
promises of a story. I think in the end I might even have ended up causing
people to feel bad for not getting involved, not at all what I intended. So, I
shut down the Small Poppy Project last month and decided that even if I did not
succeed, I had a few really good conversations and learned a lot more about how
these sort of things work. Another idea I had and carried around so long even I
lost the plot was to make a toolkit for my fellow Rebels. There are heaps of
books written on corporate rebellion, some so good that they hardly need my
help with anything else. I thought I would make a simple overview of about 15-20
things to do and act upon, but in the end it just became too hard and my
passion for Change Management is all but gone so I did not have enough in the
tank to keep me going. What really ended it was a great book I finished this
week, about tempered radicals (a different name for Rebels). It made a lot of
sense and had a lot of good examples. Guess when it was written? First
edition…2001. So here I was, thinking I was doing something new and exciting,
not only was it already done, but it was done 15+ years ago! I did find out
that I am really not that tempered, but it must make a lot of people feel good
that even small acts of defiance can have big consequences if you keep at it
long enough. Yep, that would work for me if I had more patience. Which I don’t.
Oh well, moving on!
Social
volunteering
A while back I
posted that article on social media about my litter picking 100 bags project.
Out of the blue someone from NSW contacted me and we got talking about his
business with a purpose, focused on something else than money. Justin runs a
travel agency and a business that changes how companies purchase their
materials and he thought that I might be interested to learn more about a
project his friends (Ian and Ian) runs in the city of Mindanao in the Philippines.
They are both Australians, but have a long history with the country that I
won’t bore you with. Long story short, they’ve been building a business (Noble
Endeavours) on goat’s milk. Yes, that’s right, goat’s milk. Yuck. And it’s been
so successful they want to expand, need some help and I think I’ll give it a go.
I am flying up to Port Macquarie in two weeks from now and if it all feels
right and I can see a role for myself, I’ll join one of the Ian’s in November
when he goes there for all sorts of business meetings. I’ll probably end up
being the doer of many things, but this is a business idea I can get behind and
maybe even insert some of my own values in. It will make whole communities
prosper and hopefully be scalable across the region and country at some point.
I think it’s funny and ironic that the son of a milkman, who hates milk, is now
again involved in a milk business. But this time we’re making ice cream!! Which
I happen to love! There’s another part to the business, called Ethical Harvest,
which is fully for profit and all about finding products that the market wants
and then create crops that are better than anything they’ve seen before. Did I
ever mention I hate gardening?! I am
sure they can find a blind, deaf and disabled person who will be better at it
than I would be, so my organisational, promotional and logistics skills are
probably more what they’d be interested in. Right now, I am just taking it one
step at a time, but it’s funny how when I said I am going to quit Change,
something else found me through my weird litter picking hobby. 😊
Holiday plans
It’s looking
like we’ll have little time to work in the next year or so. Going to the NT in
October for my birthday, then it’s Philippines in November to check out the
goats and the crops, Airlie Beach and Whitsunday’s for some much-needed diving
in December, New Zealand in February when Yumi turns 20 for the second time and
Canada in July when our friends Hester and Aschwin get married. I simply won’t
have time to work, I need to plan all these trips! I look forward to all of
them. The NT is going to be great because it will have nature and starry skies
and jungle and crocodiles and big kangaroos and lots of empty nothing. Don’t
know what to expect of the Philippines, but it will be an adventure. Airlie
Beach is a return visit, we were there in 2010, but so was Cyclone Ului, we
decided to stay on shore and not die. No regrets, haha. But now we’re going
back and do a 3-day live-aboard and maybe some extra dives at ridiculous prices
to see new fish and other marine life. I might do some litter picking… New Zealand
will be super awesome too, we’ve not yet decided if we’ll go one or both of the
islands, but either way we’ll see nice things. I know a few people there, might
stop by to say hi too. Canada will be a whole new level of adventure. I wanted
to spend a few days there and then drift down into the USA along the West
Coast, but Yumi convinced me that we should really stay in the area and see the
sights and national parks. When I say convince, I mean she showed me one
picture with lots of cool stuff and I was like: “Okay, we can do California and
Nevada next time 😊”.
Yumi’s job
Yumi’s work is
still crazy busy. Just take the last month. She’s been to Bundaberg, Brisbane,
Hobart, Sydney and the ACT (x3) and that’s not counting the Victorian work
trips. I am immensely proud of what she’s doing and accomplishing, but at the
same time I am worried that she doesn’t seem to be able to switch off anymore.
I think she’s not had a real day off (without work) for the past 6-9 months.
Then again, I can hardly complain as I used to be the same, but I also know how
tiring it can be and she (nor anyone else that I know) simply doesn’t have the
energy levels I have, so most nights she falls asleep on the sofa until it’s
work again the next day. I am really hoping that once the ACT project is off
her back, she’ll have more time to just calm down a bit and use that big brain
of hers to work smarter and not harder, but I am thinking it will stay the same
or get worse. I know where that leads and it’s frustrating to be as smart as I
am and not be able to find the words to convince her (one of the few downsides
of marrying a very smart woman) to take it slow. Time will tell, I hope the NT
holiday can be a bit of a break and reset.
Small stuff
·
I haven’t spent as much time reading as I normally would, but I am very
excited about a book I just started and plan to spend the rest of the week
with. It’s by this guy I wrote about earlier, Yuval Harari, who also wrote
Sapiens and Homo Deus, his latest book, 21 lessons came out this week and I’ll
surely tell you more about next time. I’ve also got some books on social
entrepreneuring I want to get into, should prove useful if and when I become a
goat farmer.
·
Exercising wasn’t a top priority the past few months, but now I’ve
gotten a bit more serious and the weights don’t feel so heavy anymore and I
bought one of those things that let you turn your bike into a home trainer. I
watch TV while ‘cycling’, once the weather improves I’ll probably hit the road
again, for now, the garage and tv is just fine.
·
I did my 20th blood donation today and it looks like my
blood pressure is slightly creeping upwards. Another signal I need to get a bit
more active and serious about my diet and salt intake I reckon. Nothing
alarming just yet, but I used to be super stable at 140 over 80, it’s now 150
over 90. Let’s not let that get to 160 over 100!
·
I am about to start a new volunteer role for Big Brother Big Sister,
which seems like a worthwhile thing to do... It’s all over the Internet, where
I talk to a young person aged 8-17 in a closed off ‘chat room’ for one hour a
week to just chat and see how their week has been and what’s keeping them busy.
Like with you, but without the living room and cake 😊
Well, that’s
most of me done for now, I hope you have a lovely birthday and you’ll hear from
me in November again.
Be well and
stay safe, Gilbert
