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10 March 2019

Letter to Marlis Jan-Feb 2019


Altona, 10 March 2019

Hi Marlis,

I hope you are well, it’s been fairly calm with the weather and bushfires in the ACT if I am not mistaken, let’s keep it that way, shall we? 😊. It’s been a busy 2 months with lots happening, but at the same time not much change in other areas. Here we go!

New car
It was about time to trade in our Holden Astra 2008. He served us very well for nearly 5 years, but it was getting near 200,000km and some of the noises I heard every now and then didn’t sound very healthy. So, three weeks ago, after we did our research (extensively, because Yumi did most of it) off we went to buy the car. First dealership, first buy. It was only the second car we bought in Australia, but we still can’t get over how comparably cheap cars are in Australia. Ours was $26,000 before trade in and that’s what you would have paid in the Netherlands in Euros, so 33% more! I wanted a small, economic environmentally friendly car, but Yumi wanted a bigger SUV-like kind of vehicle, so that’s what we got. We bought a 2018 Demo burgundy coloured Ford Escape, which is quite a bit higher but not much bigger than the Holden. Everything is so new and fancy, the aircon doesn’t smell weird, the radio doesn’t crackle, the seats are comfy and the steering is more precise. Such an upgrade! It’s one of those: if you don’t have it, you don’t miss it, but once you do…”sort of things. We like to give our cars a personality and a name, so the previous one was Tootie and he liked being around other cars so was always happy to stay in parking lots at the airport, but the new one is Eski and she’s more of a classy lady who likes to cruise the highway with the wind in her grill, haha. Ah well, a bit of silliness will keep us young I guess 😊



Trip to the ACT
Mid-January we did a lightning visit to the ACT so Yumi could work with her partners on the new business. We were all the way in the top end near Franklin and basically just worked through the Friday and part of the Saturday. We drove Tootie back and forth and it was great fun to do the road trip (1,500km) in a few days. We always stop in Albury to referesh a bit and this was when it was 40+ degrees basically everywhere and it was sooo warm. But we got a tub of my new favourite ice cream Halo Top, which comes in 12 flavours, but has almost no sugar and is very low in calories so it’s all the joy and none of the guilt 😊. Anyway, we got through most of their actions, got a few walks in the neighbourhood in and visited some of our favourite restaurants. Kokoro (Japanese) in Gungahlin wasn’t as good as we remembered, but Yumi has now decided to also be a vegetarian, so that might have taken away from the experience a bit. I love that there’s not too many (enough) options, she just likes to look at the menu for 15 minutes and then agonise another 15 over what to pick. By that time I am usually already over it. We also had diner at Bicycletta (Italian) in the city, which has so many good memories that the food is just half the experience, but it was good all the same. Next time we go to Canberra, I’ll definitely try to schedule a visit with you as well, would be real nice to see you in person again.

Yumi’s 40th birthday trip
Yumi turned 40 two weeks ago, but because of her Asian genes of course looks no day of 33 and it wasn’t a big deal to her anyway. All the same, we did a trip for my birthday to the NT, so for hers I suggested New Zealand, or maybe Bali, but she wanted to go to Tawonga, in the Victorian Alps. As always we had a great time. Yumi had found a cosy little house to stay in, nicknamed The Pod and that’s exactly what it was, a little self-sustained unit with all the amenities and great views. And the night sky was so dark we could see all the stars (well, maybe not all…) and we think we saw the Milky Way, but I always think that, haha. We did some hiking over 3 days, seeing waterfalls, hillsides, lakes, mountaintops and lots and lots of locust. No seriously, there must have been 1,000’s of them, it was a bit freakish. It’s funny how these ski-towns take on a different sort of vibe when it’s summer. Everything is so quiet and subdued, like they are all just snoozing in the sun, waiting for the masses to return. We enjoyed the views, some fairly nauseating mountain roads and at some point Yumi made us climb a mountain that took 45 minutes to drive up at 20km/hr, all the while being chased by about 100 mopeds that were doing a historic drive. There was also this weird town being built (I forget its name) that was full of investment properties. Huge houses that would cost upwards of $1,5 million in Melbourne, but here they go for $500-800k and you can live there with 3 families, 6 dogs, 4 grand parents and 20 chickens and still have room to spare for a swimming pool. What made it weird was that it’s out there, in the middle of nothing and virtually deserted. I love that kind of thing, but it was a bit spooky too. On her actual birthday (25th) we made a day of it in the city, having lunch, Yumi getting a 3,5-hour spa treatment while I entertained myself elsewhere and then we had a nice Indian dinner. Good times all around.

Work
Work has been okay. I am working with NDS (Yumi’s now former employer) to design a document for boards and directors and it’s nearly done. It was tough at the beginning to figure out where all the parts had to go, but now it’s just a matter of finishing it up. I am also coaching a former colleague from Deakin who wants to do some things differently and if all goes well I will return to Deakin for what will be my 8th engagement by the end of the month. This time around I will keep it to 2 days a week so I don’t become part of the problem like some of the previous times. We’ll hammer out the details in the coming week, probably 2 days a week until the end of the year, which would mean I don’t have to do anything else to have enough income, which is pretty awesome.


Yumi’s new work
Since this week’s Tuesday Yumi is now also self-employed and I could not be happier. It’s a bit strange to have her at home all the time now, but I am also enjoying it immensely. She’s been really busy cleaning up her old files, setting up processes, drafting proposals and sorting out all sorts of small things. She’s appropriated the study, which is fine by me as I am not up there anyway, and has made it into her own little office. This week the website should go live and then Purpose at Work is open for business. She’s already got a few contracts and they are doing a conference at the end of April in Sydney, which will surely raise their profile. They are also working with partners in the UK and Netherlands to do other cool stuff in the business of making people enjoy work more. I think it will be a great success and even if it doesn’t work out (highly unlikely, it’s Yumi after all) she’ll learn so much from it. Initially I tried to help with everything, but after a while I realised that she actually wanted to do all of it by herself. That was a bit disappointing at first but I get it, she just has to feel like it’s all her own doing, so now I just keep my distance a bit and leave things be whenever I feel I need to give her ‘advice’. They’ll have their share of failures, which is fine of course 😊.

5 years in Australia
On February 6 we celebrated our 5 years in Australia! We’ve gained so much from being here in so many ways. Lots of new friends, like you and so many new options that I am not sure we would have explored if we’d stayed in the Netherlands. Yumi has really made a name for herself in the Disability sector and due to all my volunteering and change work, I’ve built a very solid network of interesting people that keep me inspired. People still ask if we’d go back some day, but so far nothing has even come close to making us think about it, I think we’re here to stay, but perhaps not in Melbourne. Yumi recently mentioned that Queensland might be more suited climate-wise and I can easily see us living there. Once her business has taken off, we’ll look at that option more seriously, but that will be 2020 for sure. The list of things to be grateful for in this country is so long I won’t bore you with it, but the natural diversity, big skies, friendly people and good earnings are all big pluses. Now if someone could fix the politics, it would really be paradise!

Litter picking activities
A while back, Yumi and I took up some more responsibilities in the litter picking group we’re part of every month. We’re helping out with administration and data collection, which happens to be something we’re quite good at. Over Summer I did a few ‘lone wolf’ clean-ups too and I keep being amazed at how much rubbish and litter ends up in the street/fields/road/beaches/nature reserves. But by now I don’t worry too much about it, I set a timeframe, break out the bags and get going. We’ve got an app on our phones to help track litter, by counting bottles and cans and other stuff. It’s still being tested, but over the past few days I counted 480 bottles and about 70kg of rubbish, just by myself. Imagine that there’s at least 100 of me out there doing the same or more. It’s pretty devastating to see how much waste there is. First I just put it in the bags and didn’t think about it, but now there’s numbers against it, it’s actually a bit demotivating, so much junk!!. This morning I was out and collected another 88 bottles and other rubbish which was easily 11kgs. Ah well, one day this will all be a bad memory. Yumi and I are planning to do a ‘best effort’ clean-up on a road nearby which looks like a litter bomb went off. We’ll see what we can do in a few hours…


SES
I’ve been keeping busy with the people in orange. It’s been fairly quiet with the emergencies, but as I live close by and have good availability, I generally go out on jobs to help the community. It got a bit exciting with the winds picking up, but aside from a gazebo that climbed a roof to get a better view a few gardens up the street, nothing too exciting. We did get to perform some support tasks for the fires near Nar Nar Goon and Koo Wee Rup (who comes up with these names?!) like bringing lighting trailers and providing logistics support, but the most danger I’ve been in was either getting a paper cut when doing the finances or dying of boredom on the drive back last Friday which saw me and a SES buddy stuck in log-weekend traffic. Sigh, note to self, no more picking up materials on Friday afternoon! I am still trying to get my leadership team to spend some money, but either I am not speaking the right words or they just have different plans they are not telling me about, but the money stays where it is. Of course, we don’t HAVE to spend it, but that’s what it’s there for, to keep us operationally ready. I am just happy to do the numbers and provide that bit of transparency, I’ll leave it to the other 25 members to ask the questions for a change. Recently I missed a few events because of work or travel, so not much to share from that. Let’s see what the next few months do.

NDS Victoria State Conference
Monday 4 March was a very special day. Not just because I got to speak to a group of 500 people about my views on change, but also because it was Yumi’s last day on the job for NDS and I got to be her co-presenter in her last workshop during the annual NDS State Conference. Then she also got to lead a panel on Innovative Work practices and after the cocktail party afterwards we had a really nice diner in town just the two of us. I don’t think I can think of a better way to finish up. It has been a bit of a process for her, basically preparing 2 months and then still having to sort things last minute because her colleagues could just not get organised. The conference was a real confidence boost for me too, so many people telling me that they liked my talk, asking if we could do business and I might even have saved someone’s job, even though she will never know that I talked her director into rethinking her dismissal, which makes it even better. I realised that I knew many more people than I thought and made some useful new contacts for who knows what happens later. I still have this idea where I set up a social venture for people with a disability picking up litter in so-called hotspots. It’s work no one else wants to do and it still serves a purpose. I think I can get councils to pay for it, just have to work with some disability service providers and the government on how it could work. To be continued.  

Writing and Berlin Change Days
Over the past 6 weeks I’ve caught the writing bug something fierce. I’ve been pumping out all sorts of articles on change management and changing the profession and am building quite following by now. I was more than a little impressed when an article I wrote 3 weeks ago got nearly 3,000 views and 400+ likes. Normally I get about 5-600 and maybe 60 likes and I’d consider that amazingly cool. It was about 15 future roles I could see people do in Change Management and people loved it so much I wrote another one with 15 more roles. Then people started contacting me that I should do more with it and even though I never even considered that (I write mostly to empty my head), I had good fun coming up with ideas and ways of making the content available. Right now I am thinking of developing a deck of cards with the 30 roles and maybe a small booklet to work out the profiles a bit more. A change friend of mine wants to meet next week to discuss an idea she has to make it into a workshop. I am not too sure about that, I don’t see this as a way to make money, but let’s see what her idea is first before I get all ethical and stuff, maybe it will be good fun 😊. Through that writing I met a gentleman called Holger and he runs an event in Berlin in the last weekend of October, called the Berlin Change Days and another change friend of mine (from WA, Australia) said I should put in a proposal. I’ll hear by the end of March if I get to come and have a bit of fun with them. I might also add a quick visit to the Netherlands if it works out!

Small things and dramas
1.     Our landlord was being a bit unpleasant about wanting to sign us up to a new lease even though we served out the first one and were now legally okay to just extend month over month. We ended up agreeing to 8 months, but it really ruined the relationship, so now we’re considering moving, which might just be what they want so they can get an even longer lease…
2.     Our Canada trip is getting closer. We’ll be flying out on 29 July and spend 3 weeks there, including Yumi’s best friend Hester’s wedding. Canada in Summer is beautiful and hideously expensive, so I am hoping the pictures will be worth it!
3.     Not much happening with the goat people, all good things for them, but not much involvement for me. I talk to them every now and then, but as long as they feel they need to do it all themselves, there’s really no point in me trying to help out. Wait mode it is 😊
4.     I’ve had a lot of time to read and keep being amazed at how good the books are that I get to read. Learned a lot about online bullying (terrible), human behaviour (fascinating), extremism in Australia (not much happening, haha) how our brain chemistry works (complicated) and how we all get fooled by economic growth (lies, lies and statistics).
5.     Family and friends are all doing well, not much happening, kids are all fine, some becoming teenagers now and some going to secondary school, how did that happen all of a sudden?!
6.     I’ve been walking, a lot. Like most things I enjoy, I get a bit obsessive and where I normally would be happy to reach 10,000 steps a day, I’ve now regularly clocked 15,000 or even 20,000 steps per day, or 100km a week, due to litter picking, clearing my head and just loving being outside. Fortunate side effect is that I found some motivation to stick to my diet, so I dropped about 8 kilos that I really didn’t need.

That’s it for now, I’ll write again in a month or two and there will be enough new adventures to share I am sure.

Be well,

Gilbert

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