Letter to Marlis Sept-Oct 2020

 

Altona 7 November 2020,

 

Hi Marlis,

 

First of all, a very, very, very belated happy birthday! I know it was a while ago and I sort of completely forgot to send you a card…but I am just terrible at those things, so I hope the previous letter might count as a ‘card’ too! 😊

 

Quickly moving on from that embarrassment, I hope you’ve been doing well and managed to get out a bit more now the weather is improving. It was so nice to hear from you in September on the phone, always a nice surprise. Well, it has been another eventful 2 months here in Victoria, so let’s dive straight into it.

 

My new job at Bombora furniture

5 weeks ago, when cabinet making school started again, I ended up talking to one of the teachers and he mentioned he might have a job opportunity. Having heard that many times before and not exactly having a good time applying to jobs and hearing back, I wasn’t that optimistic. But hey, you have to be in it to win it, so I sent in my letter and resume on Tuesday, had a phone conversation on Wednesday , interviewed on Friday, got the very welcome “you’re hired” call the same afternoon (best birthday gift ever!) and started on Monday the 12^th.

 

It’s in Torquay (Tor-key), which is about 90km away from home to the West, but only takes about an hour to get to. The drive up to Geelong and beyond is just the best. I used to love it when I still worked at/for Deakin University and this is just 25km further and twice as nice as scenery goes. The team is made up of nice and extremely competent people and it’s such a change from my previous apprentice spot. No one is angry, no things get thrown, no sulking, no chaos, just calm and friendly people making very cool things! Also, there’s another 100% Dutch lady and two others who are 50% Dutch and their mom is from Rotterdam too, so they are definitely good people, ha-ha.

 

Did I mention they also have a kelpie dog? He’s just the best bundle of energy and always makes me laugh, running around and getting into trouble, chewing on pieces of timber and barking at birds. He’s everyone’s friend and probably thinks he’s quite the tradie himself too 😊

 

We (not me, really) make lots of bathroom vanities, tables, tv cabinets, beds, benches, shaving cabinets and some other small items. It’s all timber and mostly hardwood which is a lot more technical and rewarding to work with. I clean, sort, organise, oil and polish, lift stuff, sand stuff, go on delivery and pick up runs and generally try to be helpful where I can. They are very serious about safety and teaching me the right way of doing things and I could just not be luckier and happier to have landed here. We get paid 5 days a week, but if the work is done on Thursday (almost always) we just get the day off and still get paid, that’s pretty good however you look at it, right?!

 

If we’re both still happy to be working together after Summer next year, Yumi and I might just decide to move up that way, because it’s just gorgeous out there. For now, I am happy to commute and see where things go.

 

Yumi’s work and studies

Yumi is as busy as ever and has been working with 3-4 different clients as usual. The two major ones couldn’t love her work more and she’s still such a happy worker bee that I wish she’d started her own business much sooner. She’s also started a new business training course. I won’t bore you with too many details, but it’s very much aligned with her way of working and thinking, based on an idea from a man called Ricardo Semler and he was a bit of a sensation in the late 90’s and early 2000’s when big corporations were looking for new and better ways to run their businesses (and make even more money). His South American business, Semco, was run completely democratic, with staff making most of the decisions and taking responsibility for all key processes. It took about 20 years to be turned into a management theory/model that can be transferred to other businesses and now it has found its way to Australia. Yumi will be part of the very first cohort getting trained and I predict that this will end up being the way she goes when both her business partners retire. She’ll learn very little from the course itself, but she will make lots of new work friends and get a good sense of how far ahead she is in her field of expertise. 2021 is looking to be a very goodyear for her once more!

 

Going back to school

I was very stoked to finally start school for real. It was just four half-ish days from 5 to 8 October and I would have loved to have done more, but my first project (Garden bench) is taking shape and I am already well ahead of everyone else. Not that it’s a competition, we’re all there for our own reasons, but this means I don’t have to wait on anyone else when using the big machines, which is awesome.

 

We’re a group of 16 students, I am the oldest and there’s 2 more older students, the rest could be my kids, haha. The teachers are nice to chat to and happy for me to just do my own thing, which I really like and appreciate.

 

Now that I am working again, it also means I can take my project with me at the end of the week and work on it during my lunch breaks and out of hours. The sooner I get it done, the better! The coming week I’ll be going to work in the morning, work from 7 to 11.15 and then drive to school for a 12.30 to 4.30 half day for four days in a row. I hope to have my bench done by Thursday afternoon, but we’ll see how it goes, I am not in THAT much of a rush!

 

SES volunteering

It’s been quiet with jobs to go out on, but quite busy with training. I am so very much over the online meetings we’ve been having instead of training that I now only log on every other week. There’s just not that much happening on those calls and I prefer to just read the email update instead. Save me 90 minutes of sitting and listening while I could be doing other, more fun, things. We did have some trees fall over, roofs leaking and even some people getting stuck in the mud out on the bay which required quite the rescue effort, but all in all, it’s been calm and uneventful. We had a good job on Tuesday night when a tree dropped a sizeable branch on a car and I got to play with the chainsaws for 20 minutes or so. The car wasn’t a complete write-off and we worked well as a team (as always) so everyone was happy in the end and we were out and back home in 75 minutes 😊.

 

We’re training up a group of newer recruits to complete their basic training so they can progress to…even more training! Today is the exam for 8 of them and it looks like they will all pass. They’ve put in the time and lots of effort and I think they are ready to move on to the next level. Once this is behind them, they can go on to train for roofs, chainsaw, boats and incident management, so I hope they all do well and become available to go out on jobs more often to do different things. It’ll be strange to have options, because at the moment it’s nearly always me and maybe 5-6 others responding to most call outs. Time to let others have a go!

 

Victorian lockdown

From this Monday, we’ll be officially out of lockdown and the ‘ring of steel’ around Melbourne will be taken down. It’s been such a strange time, but overall, it wasn’t too bad for Yumi or myself. We could still do most things we wanted to do, just closer to home and for shorter periods of time. Yumi’s work happens mostly online and my work is in regional Victoria where there’s almost no noticeable impact any way. It’ll take some time for things to feel like ‘normal’ again. Last Tuesday was really warm here and the beach was just packed. Not much social distancing going on and only half the visitors were wearing facemasks. Ah well, what can you do. And in two weeks’ time everyone is outraged because we’re in a third wave. Stupid is as stupid does, I guess. We turned around halfway to the beach and decided that further away from the crowds was just as much fun as anything else 😊.  

 

Doggo!!

 

These are some pictures of Early, the foster greyhound who will be staying with us for the next three weeks. He’s 5 years old and ran 134 races in his career. Now he’s retired and needs to be trained to be around humans and different situations after living at the tracks for 5 years. It’s Yumi’s volunteer project that she signed up for 7 months ago and due to COVID-19 it took until today for him to come and stay with us. He’s still very skittish and needs to process a lot of new experiences, so we’re leaving him alone in the back yard, which seems to work for him too.

 

Yumi will go on walks, teach him to walk up and down stairs, interact with other dogs, get used to riding in the car, hearing trains and cars and how to be around humans. It’s all very exciting and very cool to have an animal in the house again (not counting myself) after 3 or so years going without. Once the three weeks are up, he’ll get his report card according to Yumi’s very impressive training plan and then he’ll go to his new family. We’re happy to be his first real human home. It’s calm and quiet most days and just like us, he’s not crazy about kids and small dogs. We’ll get along really well, I think!

 

 

Cert-4 Training course

I am still diligently powering on with my “Training and Assessment” course, but it’s just so much paperwork! I’ve passed all the theory, passed 6 assignments and only have to do the last 3 of 9 assignments with 3 months to go still. I’ve done a few presentations and online training deliveries, filled in about 150 pages of forms (not even kidding) and now I just want to be done with it. This is one of those things that was never going to be a lot of fun, I knew that. Somehow, I think that if we’d done it in a classroom setting face-to-face, we’d have had a better experience. Some things are just a lot harder and the requirements so oddly specific and impractical that I’ll be happy when it’s over and done. I just keep reminding myself that this is a useful qualification to have and SES pick up the bill so I don’t have to pay a cent, which is kind of cool 😊.

 

Donna’s Award

Maybe you remember that around this time last year I was doing this clean up and organise project with the National Homeless Collective in Brunswick? The lady who masterminds it all has been recognised as the Victorian Australian of the Year and I am just so happy for her. Organisations and people like her work very hard for very little recognition and I truly hope that this opens even more door, but especially that she gets more access to the funding that she needs for her many projects. Since my school and apprenticeships took up most of my days again, I’ve drifted away from them a bit. I am planning to stop by next Friday to see how they are going and see if I can help in some way. Their store and central point of activity has been closed for months and I am sure they didn’t take up all my recommendations and suggestions, but we’ll see if there’s something I can help with in their constant quest to end homelessness.  

 

2020 Road trip…cancelled

We were planning to go on a big road trip from Melbourne to Cairns and other places during the Christmas break, but with this whole COVID-19 situation it’s probably not going to happen. We might still come to the ACT and spend a few days, but that’ll be it. Hotels and other places to stay have pretty much all been booked out until February 2021 and are so much more expensive than before. I get it, they have to make up for 9 months of lost income, but the day I pay $250+ for a very mediocre room with no aircon in a backwater town in Queensland hasn’t quite come around just yet. Ah well, there’s always next year. I might still be able to convince Yumi to move to WA instead!

 

I am getting old!

At least it feels like it sometimes. First, I had the tennis elbow on my right and left arm, then the golf elbow on my other arm. Then I hurt my back two weeks ago and the skin condition on my face got a lot worse. It’s all much better now, but it did feel like my body was just slowly breaking down, ha-ha. I managed to keep working and aside from some Voltaren (that stuff is magical) and a few visits to the physio, I am good again. The physio suggested I try ‘dry needling’. That’s sort of like acupuncture but with less needles or something like that. It was very cool when his colleague pushed the needles in.  They looked huge, but I didn’t feel a thing. Not sure that it actually helped, but it also didn’t hurt, so I’ll just add that to the list of things I tried once!

 

Small stuff

·       Family and friends are good. Moving house, having babies, starting new jobs, new relationships and all that life stuff.

·       I am so happy the US elections are over, finally something else to listen to on the radio again. Going by the coverage you’d think Australia was electing their own new president, but we have Scotty from Marketing, our very own Trump already, ha-ha.

·       I’ve been vegan for about 2 months now and have to say it’s not nearly as hard as I thought! I don’t really miss cheese or eggs at all and have some new yoghurts to munch on. It probably helped that I was a vegetarian for 15 years already.

 

Okay, that’s us all caught up and up to date again. I’ll be in touch if we plan to come to the ACT to see if we can perhaps come and visit.

 

Be well and stay safe,

 

Gilbert

   

 Altona, 8 September 2020

  

Hi Marlis,

Spring has finally arrived and it’s started sunny and well over here in Altona. We had 23 degrees yesterday, not complaining at all 😊. I hope you’ve been keeping well too; it’s still strange times and I hope you’re staying safe and healthy. It’s been a very…interesting 2 months, so it’s about time I brought you up to date on the latest.

 

Work at Mason Cabinets

I got fired for the first time in my life! Well, I got close about 22 years ago, when I still worked at McDonalds (I know…don’t ask…), but this was a life’s first. I didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just that the business dried up and my boss had been struggling for a while to pay everyone (I always got paid) and two weeks ago I got the faithful news. I am a bit conflicted about losing that job. For my studies and future career, it would have been better and easier if I’d remain employed. But at the same time, the atmosphere and team spirit was so poor that I don’t really mind. There were so many things to be frustrated about. No work or job planning, dozens of last-minute changes, everybody getting blamed for my boss’ mistakes and material shortages. In the end, everyone was just angry all the time and I had to manage my way through that. As Australians say: “Too hard”.

I did learn a lot and got to work on many different ‘real’ work projects, but in the end, there was just not enough to do. I got told on Thursday night after a very long and frustrating day and a 4-hour trip to Bendigo with the truck (my 12^th by that time in as many days). Then my boss decided that he either didn’t need me or that I was too much work because he called me that same night on a very bad line and told me he had to let me and my colleague Barry go. I was still a bit shocked, although the writing was on the wall. But me being me, I showed up the next day, did a good job n finishing the last bits, cleaned the whole factory and packed up my tools by lunch. He did say that when work picks up again, he’d gladly take me back, but he’s lied so many times about so many things, that I will probably decline and it will likely never happen anyway. That’s chapter 1 of my apprenticeship done.

I’ve worked there long enough to know I really enjoy the work, even though it’s not building houses (yet). My supervisor thinks I can become a really good cabinet maker and I hope he’s right, because I really do enjoy it. I’ve started applying for new jobs straight away and enrolled in an apprentice support program, but that’s government-run, so I am not holding my breath, haha. There is work out there, more than I expected actually. And people are interested in mature age students more often than I expected as well, so I am trying to be positive and not worry too much. Yumi and I discussed that we should give it at least another six months before we decide if this experiment is going somewhere or that I move on to something else.

I’ve had a few positive responses, but everyone in Victoria is waiting for stage-4 lockdown to be lifted and things to re-open, so I am guessing I’ll be home for a few more weeks. We’re very fortunate to not have to worry about paying bills or things like that, I can’t imagine how stressful that must be for many others right now.

SES activities

It’s been quiet and busy at the same time for me and my buddies in orange. Our area has had a few storms and a fierce one is visiting right now. This always happens when the weather changes suddenly and most of the times the trees stay where they are, but when they don’t it gets very exciting. We’ve not been back to face-to-face training at the unit since March and it’s been okay with the online meetings so far. People are trying to make the most of it by doing presentations and training online, including myself. It’s okay, but I am starting to get over it because no one but the trainer really speaks up. We just all sit there and listen and then in the end we all say bye and that’s another week done. Some weeks are better than others and last week was quite full on. Not so much for our area, but a storm had gone through the bay area and we’d gotten about 3,000 calls (that’s a lot) for help, mostly in the East suburbs. So, on a beautifully sunny Friday we went to help in the Dandenongs/Lilydale area, about 60 kilometres away and that was something else.

Trees on and in houses, cars, yards and driveways everywhere! And so many water mains broken and powerlines ripped off and tangled that it’s a miracle there weren’t any major fires or more than 3 deaths. And these are not small trees, but what we call home wreckers, shed busters and car crushers, the really big ones. My team and I did about 10 jobs from 8am to 8pm and were then stood down, along with some 10 other units. It’s terrible for the people involved, but we had a great time using all our skills and tools! The first job was a big tree in a house that the occupant and his five friends had started on already with chainsaws. It’s before 11am and they are drinking beer and working saws without any protective gear…righto! We sat the six of them down and let them watch me work. I must have impressed them because there was lots of applause and cheering when the tree parts fell as planned and they could get back in the house.

It’s always hard to disappoint people when we arrive on any street that has multiple incidents like this street where there were trees literally laying down everywhere you looked. Everyone urgently wants your help, or even worse, are doing things themselves that just make matters more dangerous. In reality, once it’s on the ground/fallen, it’s not that big of an emergency anymore, but try telling that to someone when there’s a tree in their living room or passenger seat. There are many safety things we have to consider (they really don’t) and we have to say no so many times. But people are generally very good and so very appreciative it’s almost embarrassing. We only had one job where the lady was just so fussy! There’s a big tree/shrub blocking her driveway. She wants it gone. It’s crushed a lot of other plants and items. It’s a simple enough cut-and-drag job but she just made it so much harder by continuously stepping in, pulling on branches and telling us where to stand. I play dumb most of the time, just ignoring them as long as they stay out of my way. That’s the great thing about loud saws and earmuffs, haha!

We fixed a few skylights, liberated a car from under a tree (total write-off), cleared some driveways, roofs and paths and called it a day. Then that Saturday I was out in our own area doing a few more jobs and then on Sunday again for the final clean up. Well, I can’t say I never get to play with the chainsaws. Last night at 11.30 we got called out for a tree across a major road, but just as I walked into the unit we got stood down because it was actually more of a branch and not that big a deal for the police to solve themselves. This happens quite a lot and is always a bit annoying when you’re just about ready to go, but at the same time, I’d rather be in bed anyway 😊.

Yumi’s business

Yumi has had a bit of a break, which I think is great because she’s been going non-stop for six months now. New clients are still finding them and the ones they already have could not be happier with their advisory work. Good times for Purpose at Work indeed! She’s also going to do a training and certification program in ‘Semco’ style as the first cohort for Australia. I won’t bore you too much with the details but the concepts and ideas are very much in line with her principles and values about how people should be allowed to organise their own work and how businesses can be a fun place to be as well. She gets along really well with the guy having set it all up for Australia and I expect good things to come from it for her personal and professional development.  I’ve always been a fan of Ricardo Semler from the day I read his in 2002. He used to run Semco, a South-American business that was doing things differently in the 80’s already, allowing staff to get involved in every part of running the business and it worked really well for most of them. I think she’ll gain a lot of new ideas and perhaps even some confirmation that she is a leader in her field and should really get going with that movement for better workplaces. All in all, she’s doing wonderful things as always!

Things I’ve built

I’ve been practising my new carpentry and joinery skills as much as I can with the limitations we have to deal with. Yes, Bunnings is open for pick up, but it’s not quite the same as going there and looking around. I use what I have/can find and make the most of it, which has resulted in a doghouse for our (hopefully) soon-to arrive foster greyhound and a very sturdy workbench that holds most of my tools and allows me to tinker a bit. Doesn’t cost a lot of money. The doghouse probably $100 and the workbench was all pallet wood. Not the best building material, but good enough for this kind of project.

Obviously, I cannot keep building things just for the heck of it, but it’s just so much fun! My next project will probably be a book cabinet, which I’ve been planning to do forever. I just never felt confident enough to do it and trust I will get a good outcome. Now I know that it’s all about doing it and it doesn’t have to be perfect as long as I enjoy it. This is the doghouse; the roof is a lid and opens up for cleaning. It’s so big we had to take it in through the front door as it didn’t fit through the door in the back by just 3 centimetres, great…

 

 

And this is the workbench I made last week. Definitely not a masterpiece, but it does the job and is 100% level, which is quite the achievement as basically all the timber was warped or bowed. I’ll happily admit I was quite proud of myself that day! I might still put it on wheels as originally intended, but then I’d have to saw off a good part of the legs too or it will be too high. 😊

 

School and training

My schoolwork for the apprenticeship is going well. Or should I say, very, very well?! All of the theory stuff can now be done from home, on my laptop via e-learning which is a fancy way of saying that I get to work through dozens of presentations on topics like screws, glues, joints, safety, more safety, different kinds of timber and so on. Most of it is quite interesting and a good confirmation of what I was doing at work every day. When I started on 7 August, I think I must have misunderstood my teacher. I asked when it needed to be done and he said by 28 August, so off I went, powering through all 50+ online modules. After 3 weeks I was done and quite impressed with the amount of work I had to do.

 I contacted my teacher and told him I was done and that it was quite a lot of work. And he goes: “Yes, those first 5 are always a bit hard to get into, but don’t worry, you’ll get there, the next 5 only have to be done in February 2021.” And then I realised I did the work of three years in three weeks, oops! He and I had a good laugh and decided I should quickly complete the practicals the first of six projects too, even if they only have to be done by 9 October. Yep, done those too! I am quite keen to now go to school and get some time on the tools, but it looks like that will be a few weeks away still.

 

To keep myself busy and entertained, I also started a training in Training and Assessment, which has been on my mind to do for the past five years. It’s at the Cert-4 level and always good to have. It teaches things about how to design, deliver and assess training and it never hurts to have a bit more of that, whatever I do next. SES got a bit of grant money for skills development and now I am doing this with 3 other team members. It’s not anything new really for me, most of this I’ve been doing when I was a consultant, but that only helps to get through the boring bits a bit easier.

Very much like my cabinet maker school stuff, we’ve got 6 months to complete it and I finished all the theory in about 6 days. It was mostly just a lot of looking up and referencing. I don’t think I learned all that much, but if someone hands me a free $2,000 opportunity to get a qualification and learn a few tricks, I will not say no of course. The practical part should be fun, as it involves delivering a few training sessions to our own crew members at SES, easy done!  

Lockdown week 5

It’s almost impossible to miss all the drama going on in Victoria with our stage 4 lockdown going into its final week. Oh no wait, we’re getting 2 more weeks or 4, or 3, or…. well no one really knows. Yumi and I have been mostly unaffected. It’s a bit inconvenient to wear a mask, but that’s about it. We go for walks, I go to the shops, every now and then I go out with SES and because I was working until end of August, I got around quite a bit still.

I really do struggle with all the panic and fear the media is trying to rankle up every 24hrs. I get it, they have to draw attention to sell advertising, but the bar is set so low now that all the experts and the non-experts, plumbers, bakers, dog trimmers and aunt Betty from Karingal have now been on the news to share their story. There’s very little actual news, every story is a disaster, a crushing blow and a devastating set-back. Sure, it’s not fun at all and a lot of people are doing it tough in many ways but the media and all those ‘influencers’ missed a great opportunity to be a guiding light and calming voice, but they just couldn’t resist the opportunity to make it about themselves and their ill-informed views.

We’re all bored, we’re all worried for ourselves or others. We all have opinions about how it should be done differently, but no one seems to be volunteering any real and viable plans. I get so sick and tired of all these people telling the premier and his team what to do, while they themselves can’t even follow a simple set of instructions and point to a few exceptions to discredit how the vast majority is trying to do the right thing. To stay positive and sane I am off social media, don’t listen to the news and only read a few unbiased sources to stay informed. In a few weeks from now things will probably start opening up again and by the end of the year, we might even be allowed to leave the state if not the country 😊.

 

Getting out of Change Management

My move away from change management is progressing slowly but steadily. I’ve stepped aside from a new community group that I helped set up and that’s now in the very capable hands of people still working in the profession. I’ve done my best work setting up some things, creating a few documents and sharing ideas and now it’s time for me to fade even further into the background. I am pleasantly surprised by how many people still keep an eye on what I am doing as an apprentice, I wasn’t expecting that at all. I do the occasional guest appearance in online sessions and am always happy to help a change friend if they have a question or concern, but that’s about it.

When I was in Berlin last year November, my friend Sarah and I discussed how it would be very cool to get the same Change Days concept that we were going to in Berlin over to Australia. It proved really hard, too hard for me, but she persevered and will be hosting the very first edition of the Australasian Change Days this weekend. I bought a ticket to support her and the team and gave it away to a very talented newcomer because I didn’t feel like going myself. But then Sarah gave me a free ticket all the same and I decided that I can make this the last thing I do as a change manager. After this, I’ll start to politely decline requests for appearances and redirect requests for help and support to people still practicing. I’d like to think that I ended on a high note and don’t want to become ‘that guy’ who keeps coming back and going away.

 

The big move North

Yumi and I are cooking up a big new plan to move to Queensland and live mortgage free in a few years from now, maybe as soon as 2022. We’ve been reading up and watching a lot of videos and documentaries about how to make that happen and we think we can do it. We’ll have to find either a piece of land and build a simple home which I can then finish off myself or we buy some property a bit more remote and make that work somehow. It’s not much of a plan just yet, but we’ve made a budget and for us that’s always the first step. Once we have the budget, everything else always happens more or less as planned.

In the ideal scenario we’ll have a small 2-bedroom home, on a bit of land with a good internet connection and bunch of animals. Yumi will do what she does now and I’ll find a job as a cabinet maker and/or diving instructor until I have enough experience to become a teacher or until something equally interesting finds me. Like I said, it’s not much of a plan and we might get there in unexpected ways, but we’ll make it work somehow.

Going vegan

A few weeks ago, I decided to give the vegan lifestyle a go after being a vegetarian for nearly 15 years. That means I now avoid animal products and food/clothes made from animal products. No real reason other than that I can feel I can do more to prevent cruelty against animals. I thought it would be really hard to give up cheese and eggs, but it’s actually not that hard. There is a vegan variety for most things and although it’s not the same, it’s good enough. Well, maybe not vegan cheese, the smell is just terrible. But not the good kind of terrible that cheese can have, but really nasty almost making you puke kind of terrible. Then again, the vegan feta is pretty good and coconut milk-based yoghurt is not so bad.

Don’t worry about me not getting enough protein, fibre, calcium, iron, zinc or vitamin B 12, D and E, the answer to all of that is…broccoli! Well, not really of course, but I did my homework and it turns out because we have a very diverse diet and eat lots of fruit and veggies with every meal, I get more than enough nutrients to stay healthy. I’ll see how I feel in a few months from now, so far, I don’t feel any different at all.

 

Small stuff

·       Yumi is turning into a real fitness buff. She’s worked out this schedule for herself where she does a routine with online videos 5 days a week and 2 big walks on the weekend. I am so impressed! It’s like living with Jane Fonda, but without the hair and leg warmers, hahaha. She never used to want to do any kind of sports, but this is her thing and she’s clearly enjoying it. She’ll come out of lockdown super fit!

I have so much time on my hands now, that I get to play a lot of video games. I get them cheap online and play the stuffing out of them. There’s different kind of gamers and I think the label that fits me best is ‘completionist’. Those are the gamers who go to every spot on the map, do all the quests and find all the secrets to get 100%. It’s totally pointless, I know, but it’s a nice way to relax and have a good time while everyone is asleep or at work. I’ve been diving the oceans, fighting zombie hordes in Russia, time travelling to solve mysterious puzzles and right now I am surviving in the wilderness while trying to find my missing wife 😊.

Depending on if and where I find work, we might be moving to the East of Melbourne. We’re quite happy where we are, but the lease for this rental is coming up in 2 months and that always makes us consider the options, so next time I write, we might have just moved or we’ll be here for another 12 months.

·       I’ve hurt my right elbow muscles and it’s not going away. I hope these next few weeks of unemployment give it the rest it needs because it’s quite unpleasant. I know I have a high pain threshold and I am trying to be smart because I’ll need that arm for at least another 50 years. Obviously, the cabinet making work and SES chainsawing is not much help…

 

That’s it for now, you know all there is to know about the past 2 months. I hope to find a new apprentice placement from the few things I have on the boil and plan to just keep a positive mindset while we move out of lockdown slow and steady

 

Be well and stay safe

 

Gilbert

 

Letter to Marlis May and June 2020

Altona 10 July 2020,

Hi Marlis,

It was so nice to hear from you last Thursday and to chat on the phone. It’s strange times at the moment and it’s good to hear you saying in your own voice that you’re doing well enough. I find myself thinking (and worrying a bit) about you more than usual and yesterday I heard the weather forecast for Canberra and I do hope you are keeping warm, because brrrr… 😊. It’s been another busy two months, so here we go with our most recent ‘adventures’.

Mason Cabinets

Next week I’ll complete my first three months and the probationary period with my new employer, Mason Cabinets. I think I mentioned them in my previous letter, but at that time I had only been with them for 4 weeks and I’ve learned a lot since then. It’s been a mostly positive experience, getting to know the team, doing many different projects and learning things about myself in the process. I’ve also got all the tools you could possibly want as an apprentice, but I’ve realised already that there’s always that one tool that you just need to have… I have started to build and fix small and simple things for around the house, like a headboard for the bed and adjusting all our cabinet doors. It’s impossible now not to see some things that I never paid attention to before. At least now I know how to fix it!

I’ve already worked on about 10 different projects, spent weeks on building sites and built big, small, heavy, light and oddly shaped cabinets. I’ve carried many things up and down stairs, visited schools, homes, businesses and spent way too much time in people’s kitchens trying to get things just right. I am supposed to spend at least half my time in the factory making things, but that’s starting to happen only just now. I’ve come to realise that my boss is a very nice person, with big ideas, but he’s not very good at planning or sticking to a plan. One day he changed his mind no less than 5 times over the course of 3 hours. I am starting to understand why the team sometimes get frustrated.

I am slowly finding my spot in the team. It’s a bit like any other job I have had, eventually they’ll come to like me and me them, but they are a bit odd and I am sure they think that of me too. We get along well enough and I get to do real work, well beyond what a younger apprentice would normally do, I think. At the same time, I do feel that the expectations are higher, even though I have no more skill at cabinet making and woodwork than a small child. For now, I am just happy and lucky to have a job!

Back to School

The whole point of changing careers is to get qualified as a tradesperson and then do ‘building stuff’ all the time, so I need to go to school. It’s been less than ideal of course, with the whole Covid situation, but I’ve been accepted for a Cabinet and Joinery course at Victoria TAFE and have signed many forms and other paperwork. It was supposed to begin late July, but now we’re back in lockdown, I am not sure when it will start, probably somewhere end of August, maybe? Who knows! I think it will be fun and a good way to learn what is actually expected of a cabinet maker in the way of skills and techniques.

The teacher I spoke to as part of the enrolment process said that he once had a mature age student who completed the 3-year course in 8 months! I don’t think I can or will do that, but my boss and supervisor think I can do it in 18 months to 2 years, which seems reasonable. I do hope that once school actually starts, I get some credit for all the things I’ve already learned. It will also help that I have all my own tools and will have to wait for no one to do things. One of my teachers will be the same as my carpentry pre-apprenticeship and he’s a nice bloke, so I am sure I’ll do okay. Now it’s just a matter of waiting to get started.

Yumi’s work

Yumi has been as busy as ever, although she’s now taking more time for herself too, which is great and something she never used to do! She’s also started an exercise routine and she’s even taking lunch time walks around the neighbourhood to get out of the home office a bit. All very positive developments. For a while I was convinced that she was slowly turning into a hermit, only leaving the house for a walk with me after work.

The business is doing really well too. She’s still getting calls and requests for quotes from various companies and repeat business for really challenging short-term projects. Despite all the turmoil for businesses, I think she’ll come out of it all fitter, wiser and even more awesome than she’s ever been, haha. She was supposed to do a much-praised director skills course, but just yesterday it got postponed for the 3^rd time, this time until October. All quite understandable, but still a bit disappointing as she was really looking forward to it by the end of this month. Ah well, something to look forward to in 3 months from now!  

Lockdown round 2

I’ve come to realise that, as usual, my experience of the whole lockdown situation is quite different than most others. I didn’t lose my job, we can still pay our bills, get groceries, I go out with SES, play video games, read books and keep busy with online teaching and other small projects. The effects on us are so small it’s really nothing more than an inconvenience that we can’t go to the cinema, or to a few of our favourite restaurants. That’s how ‘bad’ it is for us, so really not bad at all.

The media is doing a terrible job in providing good information and is a prime example of how these times bring out the worst in people and businesses. Good thing I don’t watch the news and only get the highlights from independent news sources. I think the most impact we experience is some emotional stress from the misfortunes of other people and loved ones.

I understand that lots of people are just afraid and uncertain, some are just born stupid and ‘everybody’ needs someone to blame apparently. It’s so very easy to criticise anyone trying to make these things work. I honestly don’t think I would do a much better job than they are, with us living in the Age of Entitlement and expecting every crisis to be solved in 45 minutes because that’s what happens on tv too. You can’t allow people to go back to normal, unless you accept that lots of people will get sick and die. But then you can also not sink the economy because that means there’s no money to pay for anything. You figure it out, whatever you do, someone will think it’s wrong. I am just happy I am not in charge of anything and will try to do my part to not add to the problems we already have as a country.

I hear lots of solutions from ‘experts’ every day, but I think they wouldn’t do any better if they were in charge. I am no fan of most politicians and I think they can do much better when it comes to living in the real world and worrying about other things than re-election, but can I do any better? Nope. At the end of it all, I just worry about all those poor people losing their businesses, health, safety nets and homes and then you have to wonder if it’s really worth it. Time will tell, I guess.

The Queen’s Birthday Road trip

We went on a road trip over the long weekend of the Queen’s birthday, which isn’t her real birthday, but hey, it’s a day off so why complain, right?! We clocked a respectable 1,000 km across the state, visiting East-Gippsland and visiting some places we’d already been too and some new ones too. It was good to be out and about and see something else than the same scenery of the past 4 months. We stood in the snow in the Victorian Alps, I might have thrown 1 or 2 snowballs at Yumi and we muddied the car so much it ended up everywhere but the inside. We always say it was a good trip if there’s mud on the roof and there was plenty!

The first night we stayed at a huge holiday park near Lakes Entrance in a separate little cabin that was super cute and cosy. There must have been more than 100 cabins spread out over an area of at least 4-5 square kilometres. Quite unexpected to find something so big this far out from Melbourne, but a nice surprise all the same.

The day after we visited a lady that Yumi knows from her work network. She and her husband had us over for breakfast in their lovely home on a hill with enough land to be private but close enough to the sea and nature to make for a nice retirement place. We were supposed to stop by for 30 minutes and stayed for nearly 2.5 hours. What a lovely couple! The husband had Dutch parents and they have an adopted Indian son. She’s been working in education and remote communities for 40-odd years and is now a retired artist using natural materials in her artwork. It looked pretty good as far as I could tell with no sense for art whatsoever 😊.

The second day we drove around some more, walked along the water, saw the devastation of the bush fires and how quickly the forests are recovering and stayed at a totally weird, but super cheap bed and breakfast farm stay. They have heaps of rescue farm animals, including pigs, so I was happy to stay there despite the freezing temperatures. It was near Glenrowan, you know, where Ned Kelly made his final stand. Another thing we can now tick off the list, we’ve seen the Big Ned Kelly and it wasn’t actually all that big. Still, it’s about 4 meters tall, but after the big lobster, banana, windmill, Galah and Goulburn’s Big (HUGE!) Merino, Ned didn’t impress us that much. However much we enjoyed our little trip, it was good to come back home and have another day off. That’s a thing now for me, I get Roster Days Off, or RDOs, days where I still get paid, but don’t have to work! How good is that?!

SES activities

SES has been quite busy over the past few months. We don’t really go to training at the moment because of Covid, but we still go out to respond to calls for assistance with some extra precautions. 

We meet on the internet now for the time being and I help out here and there by doing some presentations on topics that I know a bit more about like chainsaw operations, community engagement and this Monday I might just do a chat about service vehicles we use. We will not be returning to face-to-face training any time soon, but these web-meetings work well enough

A few weeks back we had the unfortunate duty to provide assistance with an industrial accident where a truck driver had his own load falling on him causing him to die. It was quite the technical challenge to salvage the body, but we were happy to provide some degree of dignity for his remains. No one should leave this world in that way. And two weeks ago, we had a mid-week call out to support the fire service with a massive fire just a 10-minute’s drive away from my home. It was a really interesting event to be involved in. There were at least 40 fire trucks, 10 ambulances and police vehicles and 4 different SES units with our big mobile command centre. We get called in for these things to provide logistics support and light things up with our 6,000-watt lights trailer! It took more than an hour to traverse 400 meters to the spot where we needed to set up because of the spaghetti of fire hoses covering the whole street. I got home at 12.30 so it was a short night with work at 6.30 the next day, but totally worth it.

I’ve also been helping out with interviewing the new recruits, which is always so much fun and we get really good candidates. They seem to get better every year, especially the women were strong candidates and we plan to take them all in. We’ve finally also found some non-white people looking to join. Give it a few more years and we’ll be a real multi-cultural unit that reflects the community, hahaha.

MBA Change Management teaching

I had heaps of fun delivering another round of the Change Management Masterclasses with Deakin University. I had a smaller group of 11 students this time versus 16 last time, but they were just as enthusiastic and seemed to really have learned a thing or two about Change as well. So far, I am not too impressed with the papers they are handing in as their final assignment. Out of the 6 handed in up to now, I’ve failed 3 outright and asked 2 more to do some more work. They all seem to have rushed through it as fast as possible and wasted both their and my time by handing in half finished work.

On a more positive note, I also had one student hand in a very good plan, so that’s something at least. 😊 I am not sure if I will do it again, but it’s been great fun while it lasted. It’s just that I feel myself moving further and further away from Change Management and it’s staring to feel strange to tell others how to do things that I no longer want to do myself. Perhaps I can hand over the baton to one of my old Change friends.  

Small things to also mention

1.    All our friends and family are doing well, slowly coming back out of lockdown and trying to stay sane with the restrictions, home schooling and new ways of working for most of them. All the same, they are taking all the precautions to stay safe, which is a load of our minds for sure!

2.    We’re thinking of moving house in a few months from now, again. We’ve been in this house for nearly three years now and we’re ready to move on to something slightly bigger. Yumi could do with a bigger office and I might want to set up a small workshop in a bigger garage. A few towns over, in Point Cook, we can rent a more suitable house for the same amount of rent, so I’ll keep you posted on how things go.

3.    I’ve been keeping busy with two side projects called Change Community Hub and Right on Board. The first is a new professional community group that has members across Australia and is hopefully going to introduce a few fresh ideas to the profession. The Right on Board thing is a new consultancy product from one of Yumi’s colleagues. I helped design it so disability and aged care organisations become better at respecting Human Rights of their staff and the people in their care. It’s been welcomed by the sector and the first handful of potential clients have expressed interest. Let’s see where it goes 😊.

Well, that’s it for this time around. Stay warm, safe and away from people with nasty germs.

Be well,

Gilbert

Letter to Marlis March-April 2020

Altona, 9 May 2020

Hi Marlis,

I hope this letter finds you well and warm. It’s been a very interesting 2 months since I last wrote. So much has happened. But most importantly, it was very good to hear your voice on the phone and know you are doing as good as can be expected under the circumstances. My apologies for not following up later on, I got so busy with things that I did not take the time. Here’s what’s been going on for us.

Finishing Tradie school

Because we worked really hard, we managed to finish the pre-apprenticeship course just before the schools closed. I was very happy with that because that way we didn’t have to wait 3-6 months before being allowed back to finish the very last little bit. I really enjoyed it and learned heaps about carpentry and myself too. Patience and accuracy are my biggest challenges, but these are the things I need to do better, because the trade is like that, as you would know 😊. On Thursday the 26^th of March I packed up my tools, drove home and enjoyed a real long weekend before I started my job search and on the next Monday, the whole country went into lockdown. I got my very first official Australian education certificate II in the mail a few days ago! I will not frame it and put it on the wall, but I am still quite proud of it. I really worked hard for this and it was much more fun than I had expected. It was such a good experience to see something come together using nothing more than my own two hands, a bit of skill and lots of power tools!

Big clean ups

Once it became clear we weren’t going anywhere for a while and the job search would be on hold as well, I made a list of all the things I wanted to do around the house. So, the driveway and backyard got a good clean, the car too and paintings got hung and repaired. I cleaned the floors, the kitchen and cabinets, sorted the pantry and all my recipes, reorganised my digital files, cleaned and sorted all the tools I had, reorganised and cleared out the garage and threw out lots of papers and other stuff we would never need again. I love cleaning up and Yumi loves that I love it too because she really doesn’t! 😊

Life in lockdown

From the early stages, Yumi and I didn’t really get all the fuss about COVID restrictions. Sure, I was a bit inconvenient, but not too different from our everyday life. 2 months on, this is still the same for us. Our daily routine wasn’t impacted too bad. Yumi has been working as hard as ever, I didn’t have a job to lose and we don’t have a big social life situation anyway. Yes, I would have loved to go on a road trip and maybe quickly visit the ACT, but that’s about as bad as it got for us. We could get our groceries, go for walks and do most work-related things from home anyway.

Of course, we understand the gravity of the situation, but what really had me worried was the sense of utter panic and fear people felt. As if the world was about to end! 25,000 people die every day of all sorts of terrible diseases and no one really cares, but somehow this virus had most of us spooked. Over the whole 2 months, Australia had less than 100 deaths and should really consider itself lucky. In the Netherlands, that’s how many people died EVERY day!

I got really frustrated with some of the less than impressive responses from the media, governments and community groups. I just ignored most news and waited it all out, going about my business. I couldn’t deal with all the hypocrisy! People that never mattered, like emergency service workers, store clerks, delivery people, all of a sudden, they were all heroes, warriors, battlers and true Aussies... In my view, they always were all that, doing jobs most of us felt too good for, but society felt vulnerable and need to feel in control again. So, we go and applaud people for doing their job. Yeah, that will get them groceries at Woolworths or Aldi! Not.

I think people all of a sudden realised that things they took for granted, could easily be taken away and by something you can’t even see. I can only imagine that this whole thing must have been really stressful for you. All the big words and empty promises of our ‘leaders’, the blaming of everyone else but themselves, the confusion of basically everyone in charge. I think the worst is behind us now, just look after yourself a bit extra please!

My new job

I am much less active on social media now than I used to be, but one of my messages about finishing up trade school and looking for an apprenticeship actually got me one reply from my network! Her nephew was thinking about hiring an apprentice, preferably mature aged. Wonders never cease do they? I was prepared for a long hard slog of rejection and much effort for little return, but I started 4 weeks ago and am loving it. It’s not a carpentry apprenticeship, so I am not building houses, but it’s cabinet making and joinery which is as close as you can get without building the actual house 😊. Mason Cabinets doesn’t just do your basic cabinets, they make really cool stuff for schools, businesses and private buyers in the fancy part of town. It’s about 30 minutes from home to the factory, but I spend most of my time on building sites installing and finishing projects.

I really like how they don’t make me do the simplest and less pleasant jobs, I am doing the work they do, just slower and less well, but they seem satisfied with what I’ve done so far and I think they’re all good guys in their own way. I’ve already built cabinets, hung doors, laminated panels, finished seams and put together 24 cafeteria tables in 3 hours on a Friday afternoon. In the quiet time, I also voluntarily cleaned their whole kitchen (wow, that was next level disgusting), reorganised and cleaned the tools, picked up all the litter around the building, sorted the screws and hinges, organised the spare timber and swept about 20 kilometres of floor space, haha.

The best part of the job is going to the sites, though. We’ll be installing cabinets in a home one day, a kitchen in an apartment the next, a garden wall in a school later on and then it’s off to a day care centre for shelving in a music storage room. No two projects are the same and that suits me very well. I get to work with all the team members and the boss and they all have their special skills, so I am learning a lot every day. It will take a few months for it all to settle in, but so far, so good and so much fun. It’s everything I hoped for when I changed careers. I get paid every week and feel like I’ve earned every dollar of my apprentice wage.  

Getting the tools

Over the past 3-4 weeks I’ve been to Bunnings, Total Tools and Sydney Tools so may times I feel like the next step is meeting the parents of all staff, haha. Sure, I can use the tools of my co-workers and sometimes I do, because I don’t have everything for a job just yet, but I have most things now and the team seem to appreciate that, especially as they are now borrowing my tools and don’t bring their own. Because they are lazy 😊. To me it’s like using someone else’s razor or toothbrush, it just doesn’t feel right. That’s another good thing about being a mature age apprentice, I have enough money to buy my own stuff and I can afford good things, which makes any job that much easier because they compensate my lack of skill quite a bit.

Everybody and their dog have either Makita or Milwaukee tools, so me being different me, I got Bosch tools instead. I already had some tools of that brand and it’s a pain to always have to swap batteries and keep an eye on everything because lots of tools get ‘lost’ on site. I mainly use an impact driver and drill (for holes and screws), but my favourite is probably the jigsaw. It’s just so smooth and goes exactly where I want it to go. Because of the pre-apprenticeship I have most other things too and it’s good to see how the professionals use them in different ways. What really strikes me is how creative they get in their solutions, they just look so competent. Something to strive for!

One big ‘tool’ that I will eventually have to get too is a car. I’ve been fortunate to have the car we have at my disposal for the past few months as Yumi works from home and I am one of the few apprentices who actually started work. But… someday soon she will need to go places and meet people in person again and public transport is not a real option then. My workday starts at 6.30 (a 3pm finish, how good is that?!) and one-way public transport to work 30 kilometres away takes….1 hour and 45 minutes…. So, I looked at utes and other tradie vehicles, but might end up buying a van. It will give me lots of space for lots of things and is considerably cheaper. I might even get someone to do a nice airbrush painting of Rotterdam on it, haha. No seriously, I might!

Yumi’s business

Yumi has been busier than ever. Yes, some of the clients she was working with have paused their projects until this whole Corona thing passes, but their biggest client just needs so much more help and it’s all working out really well. She’s making videos, doing online conferences, coaching, creating content and having a great time with it all. We do miss being at home together to just chat at any time about what’s happening ‘at work’, but I think me being away for most of the day works really well for her and I am so very proud of how she’s making it all happen. Due to some government support plans, they are making really good money and we’ve decided to save it all up for when/if things are slower. I don’t think that will happen, but as with many things, it’s better to have money and not need it than to need it and not have it 😊.

SES

SES has been really quiet for a change. We meet online every Monday night now, just to stay in touch and do some desktop training refreshers. This Monday I am doing a short presentation on chainsaw operations, but it’s just not the same. I do enjoy being at the unit to do a bit of training, tool maintenance and having a laugh, but just a few more weeks and we’ll be back at it, right before the funny season starts with rain and wind and trees falling over. We did get called out to a job with a car having driven into flood water a while back. It’s almost always a Ford Falcon for some reason and it was all a bit of a spectacle. As soon as we figured that the driver was safe, everybody just let him sit there a bit, in his own shame. It’s just so very stupid. There are signs, there are radio campaigns, tv ads. Don’t drive through flood water. And yet…people do it anyway. Police, fire, ambulance, SES, Parks and Council show up with about 10 vehicles and 30 staff to ‘rescue’ one 15-year-old car from its owner’s stupidity. Grrr, not a good spend of tax dollars. At least I made it onto the 7pm news that day, looking quite professional in a 2 second shot of us standing around😊.

MBA Change Masterclasses and Right on Board

It’s a bit strange to be ‘out’ of change management and still teach others about it, but I enjoyed it so much the first time around and the money is also very good, so in a few weeks from now, I’ll be doing another round of these classes. It’s a nice way to stay connected to the profession I used to love. As I really just covering the basics, I feel I can still do this without giving the students outdated information. It’s not like things have changed so much for Change since November. Quite the opposite really.

Another side project I’ve been doing is to create a workshop (Right on Board) for board directors about Human Rights in aged and disability care. It was good to do it, but very hard. I had to read so many documents and watch hours of video on the topic of abuse, neglect and violence against the most vulnerable people in society and it really took a lot out of me. I am happy about the results so far, but this was next level hard. It’s good to work with Yumi’s colleague Alan on this and might provide a nice additional income stream if we manage to sell a few workshops every year. There’s definitely demand for it, but it’s near impossible to be heard over all the Corona noise out there right now.

Friends and family

My friend Alex’ father-in-law passed away from a lung disease, aggravated by COVID just a few weeks ago, which is so very sad. It wasn’t completely unexpected, but still tough. All other loved ones are making the most of a difficult situation, counting their blessings and counting the days until things go back to some kind of normal. My parents are well, being careful as my dad had pneumonia a while back and Yumi’s parents are also being sensible as ever. We bought our cousins a heap of books so they could stay entertained. Well, actually we gave them money and they picked their own books, which is f course way more fun. They sent us a thank you video that was like a full-on professional montage. They are 12 and 10…I was very impressed 😊.

Small things

•  I had a painful toe and elbow for months (nothing to do with each other) and kept putting off getting it looked at, but I went to the podiatrist (toe) and physio (elbow) and it really helped. The physio said that the best thing to do was find another job, but he understood that was not a real option. The foot doctor cut a corn off my toe and gave it a little sock sleeve. Oh my goodness, it was so much better the next day already.
• I also finally got a mouth guard to stop my teeth grinding when I sleep. I’ve been doing that for years and it’s starting to show on my teeth, so I thought it best to take action now before I need dentures. It took a bit of getting used to, but I am okay with it now and it really helps!
• Yumi had some neck pain issues and also took action and she’s now being super sporty! Doing exercises every day and once a week she trains like a madwoman with weights. She’ll be super fit in no time. We also made some improvements to her desk and office, since she spends so much time there, it’s important that she’s set up right and now she is 😊
• Just so we’re absolutely 100% clear: you can always call me. Always. 24/7, 365 days a year. 0438 724 634 is my number. I might not always be able to pick up, but I’ll see it was you and I’ll call you back, even if you don’t leave a message. Just for a chat, or if you need anything, no matter what really, just call if you need to or want to. Okay? Okay!

I think that’s it for now. The next two months promise to see us all go back to work, travel and out shopping so I am sure that I’ll have heaps to share by then.

Stay safe and warm in the best part of Australia!

Gilbert