Altona, 6 November 2019
Hi Marlis,
I hope you are well and enjoying the
warmer weather. I started this letter in very cold Berlin (zero degrees!!) over the weekend and kept writing while
travelling back home to Altona. It’s been a busy two months, so it’s about time
for an update.
Chameleon Cards events
Remember those cards I showed you when I
last visited? Well, we sold out the 250 boxes by now and decided to print a
final 50 more so that we wouldn’t have to disappoint the pre-orders and the
people at our last event in Brisbane on 21 November. My partner in all this,
Peter, is going to do the Sydney event on 13 November alone because I’ll be
working all the way in West-Victoria that day and can’t make it back on time. I
did the Adelaide event on 17 October alone because he was holidaying with his
partner and her family in South Korea. At least we’ll do the Brisbane one
together and get to finish the trip how we started, together.
Yumi’s business
Business is still very good for Yumi
& Co. I know that doesn’t really surprise anyone, but I am just so very
happy for her. It’s one thing to think that you’ve got something worth telling,
but it’s something completely different to back yourself and go in business
with nothing but some money and your wits. New clients seem to find her every
week and collaborations spontaneously emerge every other day or so it seems.
She works as hard as ever and seeds that were planted a few months back now all
seem to burst out in flowers all at the same time. It’s still a bit of a
challenge sometimes for me to hear how they approach things and what priorities
they set, but then I just remind myself that this is not my business, literally
AND figuratively 😊. As long as
she’s enjoying herself, I will do my best to support her and we’ll find our
way, as always.
National Homeless Collective
I’ve been super busy with the people
from the charity I got involved with as volunteer project manager in July and
we’ve made good progress on many fronts. They had the money and ideas, but not
the time and organisation to get the projects done. Say no more, here I come!
In a span of 6 weeks, I cleaned everything up, reorganised a couple of things,
painted lots of things, got an aircon system and bathroom installed, painted
some more, created a meditation room, prepared for a new kitchen and had a
pergola built. There’s a method to the madness here, let me explain!
There’s a store in the building that
drives it all. It employs women coming from homelessness or a domestic violence
background, the sales of clothes go towards their wages and offers employment
and training. The meditation room will be used to make money by offering
meditation sessions and that money will go towards supplies and resources for
one of the 10 projects run from that space too. Then there’s the kitchen that
will provide food for a small café style space, under the pergola and the
bathroom is for people without a home or safe place who would like to freshen
up and maybe take a break for a bit.
Aside from all that I am helping them
build an organisational structure and better website so that the organisation
can grow in a way that allows the boss to not have to do everything herself.
It’s very satisfying work and I can almost always do what I want. By the time
we have the reveal party (21 December) they’ll have so much new and cool stuff
that it’ll be a completely new place. Yumi and I will then go on holidays and
I’ll let them decide how they’d like to continue on and what I could do for
them. The boss asked if I’d consider being on their Board, but I think they can
do better than me. We’ll see how that goes.
SES activities
I’ve been quite busy with the people in
orange the past few months too. We’ve got a whole bunch of new recruits and
getting organised around them took some doing, but they are doing quite well
and it’s good to add some fresh blood to our thinned-out team. It’s also good
practice for all of us to remind ourselves how certain things are done the
right way, instead of the way we do them…
I also participated in two events where
we visit people’s properties that have been affected by bushfires and we cut up
trees that have fallen in inconvenient or dangerous spots. The first day was
rainy, working in swampland with fairly small trees. After 6 solid hours we’d
worn out most chainsaws and ourselves, scoring about 50-75 cut up trees. Not a
bad day’s work and the elderly lady owning the property was so very grateful it
made us all feel very good that we’d been able to help her, never mind the blistering
rain, hail, snow and mud! The second day a few weeks later could not have been
more different. Bigger team of 4 instead of 3, no swampland, no rain and we
even got help from the very legendary 75-year old owner and his massive
chainsaw. Score at the end of the day? 2 trees.
Well, 1.5 really, but they were massive
and real technical challenges to our chainsaw skills. We ended up almost
finishing the job (it got dark) and very impressed by the old guy who just kept
going, and going, and going! They also had two dogs that were very funny and
not afraid of the saws, but the true hero was a totally fearless chicken. She
was just everywhere around us, sometime just inches away from the blades and
not giving 2 hoots about anything, pecking away at the ground for snacks and
bugs. We almost crushed her a few times just rolling big cut-offs, but she
managed to scoot out of the way just in time every time. Cheeky bird!
Ah, looks like we’re about to board here
in Berlin, I’ll continue writing in Amsterdam when waiting for our flight to
Dubai.
New Career update
It’s a few hours later now (20.00) and
I’ve safely arrived at Amsterdam Airport, met up with Yumi and her parents and
did a bit of shopping. Now we’re waiting to board the bird that will take us to
Dubai. Since the last time we spoke my resolve to change careers has not
diminished, actually it only got stronger. Every time I go online and see what
people are doing and saying about change management, it doesn’t seem to apply
to me anymore and I often just feel annoyed or frustrated, where I used to feel
inspired. If nothing else, that’s a good signal to start looking for other
things to do. I went to the intro session for a carpentry pre-apprenticeship,
where they teach you what side of the hammer is the business end and how not to
drill your own hand. I liked what I heard. 3 months of practical training to no
longer embarrass myself and then a 3-year apprenticeship to become a carpenter.
There are a few practical things that I will have to think long and hard about
before committing to that, but let’s see how the 3-month pre-apprenticeship
goes first.
I’ll have to accept that I will only
earn a fraction of what I can earn now, have a very different work environment,
different kinds of people and I’d basically start from zero. Yumi is mostly
supportive (as always), but rightfully pointed out that she now feels a bit of
pressure to make sure that we have income. I think we’ll be fine, but of course
I think about that too. I’ll go to another info session next week to do the
required tests (literacy and numeracy) and paperwork and then, if all goes
well, I’ll start in February. It’ll be something else entirely, but I think
I’ll enjoy it.
Netherlands and Berlin trip
It now seems a very long time ago and
almost as if I was a different person when I put in a proposal in January this
year for the Berlin Change Days, but I did and I got selected, so we decided to
include a trip to the Netherlands as we would be so nearby it would be a shame
not to stop by. We stayed with my parents in their new house for 5 days and then
Yumi stayed with her parents for another 5 while I left after 2 to go to
Berlin. It was such a good experience to see everyone again. All our friends
and family had made such an effort to make themselves available and suit our
schedule, that alone made us feel very welcome and every single time we met
with people it was like we’d never been gone.
That being said, already on the flight in,
Yumi said that to her it didn’t really feel like going home and that stuck with
me for the rest of the trip, because she was right! The Netherlands don’t feel
like home anymore and I don’t know how I feel about that. Is Australia home
now? I guess so. More than the Netherlands anyway. That was totally unexpected
for us, but it is what it is, maybe it’ll change again in a few years.
We also had a chance to do a real
tourist trip through my favourite city Rotterdam with my parents. We explored a
ship called the Rotterdam, a cruise liner from 1959 with lots of history and
stories. Then we had lunch at Hotel New York, which is housed in the old
offices of the Holland-America Line and then we went and visited the Euromast,
a 185m high tower that offers good views of all the places I know and love, as
far away as Belgium. Rotterdam changes all the time and not all change is good,
but it is and will probably always be in my blood, just how I like it.
I also took the opportunity to visit our
old house (felt no connection) and do a few of the walks Yumi and I used to
take around town (all very much the same, but the trees got bigger). It was
very strange to hear Dutch all the time, but great to visit the shops, eat
typical Dutch things, see familiar things and be amazed at how tall the Dutch
are, especially the women!
Then it was time to go to the conference
in Berlin for me, while Yumi stayed with her parents, had some work meetings
and ate some more. We ate soooo much, I still feel full now flying back!
Anyway, I arrived late Thursday in Berlin and it was freezing! Found my hotel
without incident using public transport, which is a big deal for me because
normally I get lost in 2 minutes if Yumi is not with me. Didn’t do much else
but eat and a bit of work, taking it easy for what promised to be three busy
days.
I started the day early and went for a
3-hour walk through Berlin to revisit a lot of the places I went to when I was
there with Yumi and later with my dad. It’s still a great city and even though
it was cold (-1 degrees) the sun did it’s best to make the Fehrnseeturm,
Brandenburger Tor, Museuninsel and Unter den Linden look their best. There are
building cranes everywhere you look and Unter den Linden has changed so much I
had to check if I was on the right street😊.
I won’t bore you with the conference
stuff, that’s really not that exciting, but it was fun, my friend Sarah and I
did a reasonably good job with our workshop (there were 30 workshops across 4
sessions to choose from) and everything else was a bit different in a good way.
I was happy to find that my German is still pretty good, I could follow most
conversations and at some point, I even noticed I translated German to English
before Dutch, which was a bit strange.
I finished the conference on Sunday just
before noon because I didn’t want to hurry back to the airport. It was raining,
I rode the metro and bus and they were so crowded it was insane. Somehow, we
made it to Tegel, where boarding took 3 days, no, just kidding, but it felt
that long because security checks took very long and then I get to the gate and
the flight is delayed by almost an hour. Pffff, let me go home. I met Yumi and
her parents again on Amsterdam Airport and we’ve been travelling ever since.
We’re now in the air from Dubai to Melbourne, all 12 hours and 45 minutes of
it. Good thing we don’t mind flying!
Holiday plans
The Great Australian Road trip is not
happening, booohoooo! Yumi just didn’t see it come together and it takes two to
travel, so we decided to go diving on Christmas Island which is literally as
far as you can get from the mainland and still be in Australia. You might know
of it because of the terrible stories about the immigrant detention centre, or
perhaps you’ve seen the Planet Earth documentary about the red crab migration
that floods the island every year. Apparently, everyone drives around with a
rake in their cars to sweep the crabs out of the way when they need to get past
on the road. I hope we don’t end up making a lot of crab pate when we’re
driving around. We’ll be in the water most of the time anyway. I hope to see
whale sharks, hammer heads, big rays and lots of wildlife under water. We plan
to go from 23/12to 3/1 and dive 5 to 7 days. It will be good to be under water
again.
We’ve been home 24 hours now and I’ve
been jet lagged and really sick from a cold I picked up from my parents who got
it from their grandkids. I can’t remember being this sick in a long time. Because
we hardly ever take medication, the pills really work, so Yumi and I both took
one tablet and we were knocked out until 11.30am…Wow, maybe next time we share
one, haha.
I think that’s me done for now. There
will be lots of things happening over November and December, wrapping up one
career and starting another, stopping some things and starting others,
holidays, bit of travel, bit of work and that’s 2019 done!
I’ll be in touch early 2020, which seems
like a ridiculously long time away, but it’s exactly 8 weeks from now.
Be well
Gilbert
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