Hi Marlis,
Summer’s gone and done and I hope you’re
doing well. From what I see on Social Media and the news, things have calmed
down in the ACT when it comes to the weather. By now you’re probably worrying
more about the Corona virus and I hope you’re careful around other people. Good
thing you have heaps of common sense and that you don’t like going on cruises
and I guess you don’t have any plans to visit China, Iran or Italy! It’s been
an eventful two months since I last wrote, so I’ll get started right away.
Carpentry School
I have been enjoying myself so much
over the past eight weeks, I really feel I could be good at this and made the
right choice to go and try my hand at this. The first two weeks we only worked
with hand tools and took some time to get to know each other a bit more. My class
is 16 people, one guy older than me, two 28-year-olds and me as the ‘old guys’,
the other 12 are kids ranging from 16-21 and 3 lady-tradies to be. Being 25
years older than most of them is a bit of a challenge some times as their work
ethic still needs to develop, they have different definitions of a job done
well and can’t sit still for more than 15 minutes without having at least 3
conversations about everything going on in their lives. All that beings aid,
when you can get them to work, the kids are alright.
We’ve made a saw stool, a toolbox and
some other small stuff since we started. Four the past four weeks, we’ve been
working on a scaled-down house. Mind you, it’s still 7.5mx4mx3.5m, so not all
that small and it gives us the possibility to practice roofing, framing,
windows, set out and all those other things I am sure you know more about than
I do. 😊. I love finding out how it all works, how you can solve things and
create things with you own two hands and some power tools. It’s also pretty
amazing to see how much you can learn in just a few weeks. I mean, most of it could
be a lot better, but the teacher feels we’re doing really well for our first
time.
We have two teachers across five days
a week and they are very different but both very good at what they do. One
shows us everything by doing it, the other wants to show the process behind it
and talk us through things. You can probably guess who the kids like better, I
like both of them just as much and get a lot out of it. We’re going to finish a
week early because (and this is the teacher talking) 2 of the old guys have
been doing more than the 12 kids combined and more than 50% of the work. Yes,
you guessed it, one of them is me, haha. I just don’t stand around and get
stuck in, always finding something to do, cleaning up as I go (there is so much
mess every day, I love it!) so that when we go home at 3.45, it’s all ready to
go. I remind myself that these kiddos have their whole lives ahead and should
really just experience the last few weeks of their freedom in peace without me
telling them what or how to do things, they’ll find out soon enough that
everything the teacher said about work is 100% true. I think some of them will
be fine, some…not so much just yet.
The next big thing is finding an
apprenticeship and so far I haven’t been very lucky. Of course, I knew it would
be extra hard for me, being older and thus more expensive. I will just have to
keep going at it, despite being rejected 23 times so far, eventually I will
find someone willing to take me on. It’s not that different from consulting
really, what matters is what you do with the time you are not working. I also
think I might have started too early. Tradies are not the best of planners and
now that we’re nearly done and I can say I can start in the next few weeks, I
might be more appealing and suited to their immediate needs. There are some encouraging
signs, but I’ll just have to keep my spirits up in the meantime. It doesn’t
help my confidence levels though, when the teacher says that you are (one of) the
best student in this class, but still likely to be the last to find a job…because
I am old, haha. Guess I’ll have to prove him wrong somehow! Even if it all
doesn’t work out, I truly feel I’ve learned heaps and can now at least
confidently build a deck, construct small things and understand the language so
much better.
Anniversaries
February and March are always special
months for us because it’s the anniversaries of Yumi’s birthday (1979), our
arrival in Australia (2014), my big belly-buster operation (2015), our move to
Melbourne (2016), our new-ish car (2019) and Yumi starting her own business
(2019). That’s not even counting the many birthdays of friends and family! Some
we celebrate by going out to dinner, most we just chat about, reminiscing and
look at some pictures to remember the good bits. Every time we still realise
how very fortunate we’ve been to experience all these wonderful things, the places
we’ve been and how many wonderful people we’ve met along the way. We have a lot
to be thankful for, that’s for sure.
Beach Patrol
After a good two years and most of
that as coordinators, Yumi and I have finally found someone to take over as
leaders of the community clean up group. We’ll still go and do clean-ups, but
what we liked about doing it, the going out walking and doing it together, didn’t
work so well anymore, with one of us always having to stay behind to look after
things. We got a big grant in January and managed to keep the number of
volunteers up and running so we feel we’re leaving it in a better place then
when we started, which is all you can really hope for anyway. Because of school
hours I’ve not been doing my clean up walks around town and I have to say it’s
not as bad as I thought it would be. Sure, there’s more cans and stuff lying
around then when I did pick them up every day, but it’s not like the streets
and parks have turned into dump sites altogether. Victoria has finally agreed
to have a deposit scheme for bottles and cans and all of us expect it will
reduce the litter from recyclables by about 50-80% in….2023. In the meantime,
we’ll have to keep at it! Yumi and I look forward to still being involved, just
a bit less so 😊.
Yumi’s business
She’s still going strong after one
year and that surprises absolutely no one. Now that I’ve been in school for the
past few months, she’s having a new experience as well, being home by herself most
of the days when she’s not out with clients. Work has been steady and the
learnings have been many, with more work on the horizon and big plans for the next
year too. A very positive side-effect is that she’s much more involved in our
own finances and how all those things work. I find that very helpful and a big
relief because in the past I couldn’t get her interested in any of it and had
to do it all myself. Now she doesn’t just get it, she actually makes plans,
budgets and everything. Yay!
Yumi’s birthday party/week
We always try to do fun activities
around each other’s birthday, because we can and it’s fun to do. But as we get
older the list of things we’ve done and still want to do gets a bit shorter. All
the same we had a good time the last two weekends, basically just eating cake
all day in various spots and walking around. As a spur of the moment thing (we
didn’t know it was on until the day before), we planned a visit a Gymnastics World
Cup event two Sundays ago. Yumi did 12 years of gymnastics when she was a
younger Yumi and I had a really good time to, just watching all these super-fit
people running and swaying around. An added bonus was to see a Dutch gymnast
(Epke Zonderland) win the gold medal and qualify for the Tokyo Olympics (If
they still go ahead…). We combined it with a walk through the botanical
gardens, some cake from a fancy cake shop and a nice diner at a Japanese restaurant
in the city, where we ended up getting a 50% discount because our order got totally
messed up and super delayed. We kept saying it was all fine, but they insisted,
so okay, we’ll have that great meal and pay half price 😊!
Then last weekend we celebrated some more by taking the ferry from
Williamstown to St. Kilda, do some more walking, lots more cake eating and a
visit to the Luna Park for a ride in a supersized swing seat merry go round at
15 meters high. It was sort of funny that the very new safety system kept
telling them that a buckle wasn’t closing so they had to run around and check
everyone about five times. Not very reassuring, but as we were locked in from
all sides, we eventually got up there, had the ride, some good views and a lot
of fun. We also had a waaaaay to big lunch and almost had to roll ourselves
back to the ferry. It was a wonderful and sunny way to spend the day though.
SES activities
It’s been the busiest I’ve ever seen
it with SES activities for the past two months. I’ve been out at events,
dressed up in a human-sized platypus suit in 30 degree heat to entertain the
kids, fixing things on roofs, fixing things in roofs, responding to big
trees and branches down, small trees falling over and floods due to heavy rain.
And that’s not even counting training nights and administrative activities. Not
complaining at all, it’s been great fun most of the time and people in general are
very appreciative of what we can do for them. We’ve even been out helping in
other areas when that massive hailstorm struck and every second skylight in
Melbourne got smashed. We had a set of 3 jobs all on the same street two weeks
ago that saw us roll out at 9.30pm and arrive back home at 4.30am! I’ll admit
it was a bit rough getting up 2 hours later to go to school and hear some of
the kids complain how tired they were because they only had 9 hours of sleep
and had been to the gym yesterday…Hahaha, not doing too bad myself I guess 😊.
All that being said, I’ve decided to
step away from my Finance Officer role since this month. I’ve done it for
nearly 18 months, modernised it quite a bit, but I don’t want to deal with all
the organisational silliness any longer. There were just so many arbitrary
rules, people with weird ideas about collaboration, too many emails and so many
people with opinions who then of course did nothing when the work needed to be
done, just your average volunteering gig. I’ve handed over to another member
who can now see how they like it, handed in my key and are now considered an
ordinary member again. I admit that the decision to not involve/inform me about
some changes they were planning to make to the unit structure (people and
roles) and only announced 2 months later played a part in that as well. I felt
like I was good enough to be used when convenient, but not trusted enough to be
involved in these matters. Never one to make my opinion clear, I handed in my
keys and told them more or less what I thought of that way of doing things. At
the end of the day, it’s still government and they can’t help themselves, but I
had enough all the same. Nobody wins in this scenario, things are just more
inconvenient and take longer now, but at least I hope I will enjoy my
volunteering experience a bit more again. We’ve got a new unit boss, which will
make a positive difference, even if he only does 50% of what he has planned, so
we’ll see how that goes. Meanwhile, I was out 2 nights ago having a good time
climbing in and over roofs with my mates, finishing my 103rd official
‘job’ in 3 years 😊.
Small stuff
- · Kala Space: I’ve not been very
involved with the National Homeless Collective for a while now. They’ve been
busy looking after many things, still not completely organised, but slowly
getting there. I saw some posts on social media from them that I just couldn’t
get behind and that always make me take some more distance, just to see how
things go. They’re still doing great things, but I just can’t be as involved as
a few months back. Handing in my keys today, so they can give them to someone
else who has more use for them.
- · Volunteering: Yumi is planning to
volunteer to be the companion for a blind lady in our neighbourhood. I think it’s
super cool that she’s even considering doing this. It’s also a really good way
for her to get up and move around a bit, much healthier than sitting in her
home office all day. Me on the other hand, I’ve decided to tone it all a bit
down. I’ve been giving away a lot of my time, but I need to spread myself a bit
less thin and focus on my new career now.
- · Dentist: We finally made going to the
dentist a priority and had a very pleasant experience with one very close by. Always
nice to know we still have no cavities, all that brushing must pay off, right?!
I also decided to finally take action on my nightly teeth gnashing, so I am
getting a sleep guard, which will probably improve my sleeping and save my
teeth for years to come! I’ve known for years that I should do this, but I kept
putting it off. Went in to get one fitted last week and it was a very funny
experience with the foam expanding in your mouth and hardening to a mold. Done in
two weeks, very curious to see how it’ll work.
- · Side business activities: I’ve got a
very small business thing still going on the side, working with one of Yumi’s partners
(Alan) on providing some advice to boards and directors on safeguarding and
quality in care facilities. We’re doing a 15-minute presentation at a
conference in two weeks and a trial run with a business here in Altona of all
places later in April. Good way to keep my skills and knowledge up. Apparently,
I can’t bring my toolbelt and power tools, haha.
- · Greyhound fostering: Another idea of
Yumi’s to change things up a bit and get out more. We’ve agreed not to have any
pets for years now, but she found this initiative where you can socialise a retiring
racing greyhound for 3 weeks every few months before they go to a permanent new
home. I think it’ll be good fun, once we get all the paperwork sorted. She’s
promised to be its main carer, let’s see how that goes.
- · Friends and family: Everyone seems mostly
alright. One just recently lost her father too soon (not that there’s ever a
good time, right?), which always makes me want to go to the ACT and show
support, but it’s really not that helpful. On a more positive note she’s got a
new thing going after a looooong divorce process, so that’s good for her. Other
friends are making a big change by moving house in a few weeks to a very
different part of the Netherlands. Our parents are good and things are calm,
everyone’s kids are good and growing. It’s all the very good kind of routine.
- · Long weekend: We’ve got three days of
free time ahead, so today we’re going for a hike in the Dandenong National Park,
do some shopping in the Dutch store, maybe some shopping for ‘stuff’ and have
lunch somewhere nice. The rest of the weekend we’ll figure out as we go.
I think that’s the main items for
these past 2 months, not quite sure what the next two will look like, but I’ll
tell you all about it in 2 months’ time.
Be well and stay warm,
Gilbert
