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 26th 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
