Letter to Marlis Nov-Dec

 

Altona, 31 December 2021

Hi Marlis,

By the time you read this it’ll be 2022, so Happy New Year! Let’s hope it’s better than 2020 and 2021 because it hasn’t been the best of times has it?  Of course it hasn’t been all bad, but you get what I mean. It’s been busy and not busy at the same time, so here we go with our adventures of the past two months.

First things first, we’ll be stopping by in Canberra if all goes well on Monday 24 January or Tuesday 25 if our plans need to adjust a bit. We were hoping to stop by around 10:00 and then hit the road again by 12:00 for the last 700km back home. I hope that works for you, but I’ll call you on the Friday before to confirm the final date and time. Of course you can also call me any time if you feel it’s taking too long or you just want an update!

Maple the foster doggo

After 5 months, 1 week and 2 days Maple the foster doggo has finally found her forever home. It’s been a bit of challenge to get her back to health at her advanced old age but she is such a lovely dog that we did it with pleasure. About ten trips to the vet, so many different medications, looking after her paws, making her feel at ease and relaxed, this dog was more than a handful! 

Her new owners are Joel and Annie from eastern Melbourne and they are just the loveliest people! He’s a professional musician and she’s a legal assistant and they wanted an older dog. We made a whole manual about all the things we learned about Maple over the past months with plenty of pictures and they just loved her at first sight. Funny story that, Joel was thinking of getting his first ever dog and that he would call it Maple if she was a girl. So he goes on the Greyhound Adoption Program (GAP) website and finds Maple looking back at him there and that was it!

We all met in Seymour where GAP is located, about 100km and 90-minute drive for us (and Joel and Annie) but it was totally worth the drive. Also gave us an opportunity to see the facilities where the dogs start their new lives. So.Much.Barking! Haha, it was deafening at times but I guess you get used to it. Maple thought it was all very exciting and when she saw that her new parents had a big white car, we were basically old news and she was happy to go! She’s always had a thing for big white cars, truck and vans, probably because she used to be driven around in one we think and she does love her car rides!

It’s a bit strange to not have a dog in the house after so long, but that’s what we signed up for and she really has found a better place. We got a message from Joel on Christmas day telling us Maple was getting more comfortable and relaxed which was just the best news. Yumi will continue fostering (with my help) next year and hopefully we’ll get a few more fosters before we go and live in Queensland. I made Yumi a hall of fame picture frame with her 5 fosters so far and space for a few more, so let’s see if we can fill up all those empty slots .

Sydney travel

It feels like ages ago, but early November Yumi and I got to travel to Sydney together because we both happened to have work with clients at the same time and just 20km apart. I was facilitating a session with 100 leaders at Sunnyfield in North Ryde and Yumi was working with her client One Door in Parramatta, the neighbouring suburb. It was great fun to fly again and be able to see a totally different side of Sydney. Well, technically Parramatta and Ryde are different cities, but it’s all still part of the greater Sydney area although Paramatta is building its own light rail and has more skyscrapers than the ACT. 

We went for walks just because we could and out for dinner, which was a whole adventure in and off itself, just looking at all the people. Yumi found us an apartment on the 20-somethingth floor with a big balcony and I just loved being able to see so far and you could even see Sydney CBD about 40km away in the East! We also managed to visit Yumi’s business partner and friend Caroline at her home, but her husband wasn’t there because he was at…his furniture making classes. Turns out I was a bit of an inspiration for him to take it up as well. I saw his handiwork (desk and bench) and he definitely has skills! They also have an old dalmatian dog called Rhino and he’s just all about getting pats, which we dutifully obliged.

It was really good to do work with people in the same room again. They worked very hard and I think they really loved me and there will be more work to do with this group of people in the new year which I already look forward to. Yumi then went back two more times in the two weeks after to do some more training, so she got her fill of flying and hotels and then some.

SES

It’s been a freakishly busy year with SES. We had another stormfront come through which missed most of Altona, but still made us turn out to a good couple of jobs. It was mostly trees misbehaving and some roofing jobs but it has kept me and the team entertained every week with a few call outs. We’ve also been getting a remarkably high number of children stuck in swing sets in playground (8 in as many weeks) which makes me think those kids are either too old for those swings or the design is flawed. At least we now know exactly how to deal with it, having had quite a bit of practice, haha. 

We’ve also been doing a lot of maintenance on our chainsaws and other equipment to make sure we’re ready for whatever summer throws at us, but if the past years are anything to go by it will all happen while I am on holiday! A few newer members have stepped up to take ownership of some things that always seemed to not get done and that has really helped to get us more organised. Most importantly am now officially in charge of snacks and drinks and have crowned myself the Chief Snack Officer who also gets to run the unit BBQ a few days after we get back from Queensland, which should be fun! Sure guys, put the vegan in charge of the meat fest, what could possibly go wrong, haha.

On a more serious note, on Christmas Day I attended my third ‘fatality’ event in my 5 years with the service but as far as fatalities go this one was relatively peaceful. A man of my age, maybe a bit younger, had drowned and was revived, but while we were carrying him across a dam to the ambulance his vitals dropped again and he just slipped away under the ambulance worker’s hands. Not a good outcome, but at least he was on dry land and his family had the body to say goodbye to. It‘s not always fun and games with chainsaws and jobs like these remind me to enjoy life as much as possible. We always get great support afterwards, not that we often need it, it’s not like we were involved that much, but it’s still a strange experience to see someone pass away while you’re carrying them (on a stretcher) to safety and it’s good that we talk about it.

Diving

On a much more positive note, Yumi and I went diving in Williamstown (just 5km away from Altona) this week to get used to diving with rental gear for when we go on the Queensland trip. We could use our own scuba gear but servicing it for just a few dives cost $600 and then it’ll just lie in the garage for another year or so and we’d have to haul it around with us for 3 weeks while only plan to make.4 dives. Convenience won out and we decided we’ll rent the kit instead at the various dive spots. 

It was good fun to get under water again, even though the visibility was extremely poor and we both got stung by jelly fish across the face and hands. We saw a few rays, a crab, some brightly coloured sea stars and lots of spiky urchins. There was talk of a potential shark sighting, so we were hoping to catch a glimpse, but it didn’t see us and we didn’t see it so it might have been a seal or dolphin who drop by more often.

We were only under for 40 minutes and didn’t go deeper than 4.7 meters but it was good to get familiar with how everything worked with hire gear, lead weights and regulators (the breathing thingy) again. To me it’s like riding a bicycle, you don’t really unlearn, it but Yumi wanted to be absolutely sure that we’d be comfortable which is also important of course. I generally just go and jump in and sort things out as we go and that makes for good adventures, while Yumi is probably the reason we’re still alive after more than 125 dives 

The Bad Change book

We’ve finally done it! The book is out in the world and we’re on our way to have sold more than 100 copies! Our aim is to sell 300 in total and that means we’ll be able to donate $7,500 to the National Homeless Collective, the charity I used to be involved with and whom we also gave the profits of the Chameleon Cards to. They do such good work and there’s never enough money, so this is our way of helping out a bit.

It feels very special to have created something like the book while it also doesn’t quite feel like a ‘real and serious’ conventional book. All the same it has about 20,000 words in it, so it’s not exactly a leaflet and we’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished. I am hoping Australia Post manages to get this letter to you after the book has arrived in your mailbox, because of course I wanted you to have one too!

We’ve shipped to all the states and territories of Australia and various parts of the world, how cool is that?!  However, the whole Covid situation still throws spanners in the works by delaying shipments or countries like Canada and Ireland just being closed for parcels altogether. Fingers crossed that the USA, UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland and Hong Kong stay open. 

Online teaching

On 29 November, after many totally predictable last minute and frantic adjustments the Deakin University Change Tools course I helped develop is now live and we have 8 students from all parts of Australia. That’s 3 more than I expected for the first run so I am quite happy and also impressed by the quality of their work so far. I really enjoy the teaching and interaction with students who come from all age groups and walks of life. Because everything happens online it’s very easy to keep track of what’s working and what doesn’t but the feedback has been very positive so far. I think the offering is very competitive and excellent value for money compared to everything else that’s out there but I would say that of course, having created most of it, haha. 

Small things

Lots of short mentions this time, just because it’s been that kind of two months with not too much going on by our standards

• I looked it up and it turns out that I’ve written you more than 35 letters so far, this being 36. Let’s go for 35 more at least and see if we can go for 100, which means you’ll have to stick around until you’re at least 97. Not a problem for you I reckon . 

• I bought one of those high pressure cleaners and it is just the best! It’s so very therapeutic to calmly and slowly blast away all the grime and dirt of the front driveway, roof, backyard concrete and everything else I see a speck of dirt on. I wished there was a way to save the water though because it feels a bit wasteful to just let it all run into the sewer. Then again, it’s not that I do this every week, so perhaps it’s not that bad…

• Yumi and I both got our Pfizer Covid booster shots last week. Yumi let me go first to see how I would go and this time I really felt it. Sore muscles and the first night after the shot I was so warm, but it was strange because it was just my joints and it didn’t feel like a fever at all. Anyway, after 48 hours I felt much better already and now we’re as safe as can be. Which is a good thing, considering the skyrocketing numbers. Yumi and I will also take a test before we come and visit you and if it turns out we’re positive, we’ll only drive by and yell at you from the car, haha. No, we won’t do that, but we’ll make sure to keep you safe.

• I was strangely proud of myself for finishing one of the hardest, frustrating and challenging video games ever made, called Dark Souls. You play as a knight who has to overcome many difficulties and it’s famous for its catch phrase “You died”, which I did, a lot. But if you persevere for 115 hours, you get to the end and it’s not that hard anymore because you’ve gotten really good at it. So in a way it’s like life, but with big swords and dragons! Good thing they also made Dark Souls 2 and 3, just for those people who needed more punishment. I’ve just started on #2, let’s see what that’s like .

• We’re soooo looking forward to the QLD trip now that it’s almost there. Three weeks of seeing different things, scoping out potential places to live in Townsville and Brisbane, going on adventures, doing a bit of diving and being somewhere that is not Altona will be great.

• I’ve completed my studies of corporate governance for all but the test and exam which I’ll do when we get back from the big trip. I have until April, but want to get it over and done with, just not right now, it can wait until next year. Shouldn’t be too much of an issue really, I’ll just review the materials one more time and then see how I go.

• At the end of the year Yumi and I always make a list of things that we’re grateful for and happy about. It was a good list yet again this time around, they are mostly mine, but of course Yumi also plays a part in a lot of those. Here’s the list in no particular order:

1. Completed a year of trade school

2. Got a Cert 4 training and assessment

3. Got a truck driving license

4. Worked with many interesting clients

5. Delivered series 3 of Change Masterclasses

6. Wrote a book about Bad Change

7. Developed Purpose in Practice

8. Finished and built furniture with my own hands

9. Taught myself how to work with a Mac laptop

10. Finished Dark Souls

11. Fixed my PlayStation

12. Started the AICD Directors Course

13. Developed a micro-credential on Change

14. Redirected my consulting career with Purpose at Work

15. Learning about Quality, Safeguarding & Human Rights

16. Deployed to the Floods with SES

17. Fostered 5 greyhounds for new homes

18. Grew our networks professionally despite COVID 

19. Record number of jobs with SES

20. Taught myself to work with new software

21. Collaboration with Peter on different things

22. Read a lot of new books

23. Still vegan, still around 90kg

24. Still vegetarian, back at 61kg

25. Walking and podcasts

26. Still writing and talking to Marlis

27. Less on Social Media, more in the real world

28. 24 years together, married for 14

That’s us done for the year Marlis, I hope we get to see you by the end of January in person! 

Be well, stay safe and have a happy start to the year.

Gilbert

Letter to Marlis Sep-Oct 2021

Altona, 11 November

Hi Marlis,

It’s hard to believe how fast the past two months have gone by, but here we are, getting ready for Summer! I hope you are doing well, despite the lingering Covid restrictions, fingers crossed that things will get back to normal (or whatever that means) soon. Here’s what’s been happening for us since the last letter:

Post-lockdown life

Now that the curfew, lockdown and restrictions are finally in the rear view mirror we are finding not that much has really changed for us. Yumi hardly goes anywhere other than walking the dog and my three most often visited locations are two supermarkets and the SES unit…Yep, our lives are just full of excitement! But seriously, we had expected that we’d want to go and do some shopping, go to the movies or anything else ‘out there’ but we realised just the other day that we’re still behaving as if the lockdown never ended. Maybe I just need to go to Bunnings again for everything to start feeling like normal again, haha! 

I’ve been to Melbourne CBD a few times now and it’s so much quieter that it feels like a different city altogether. The buildings and stores are the same, well most of them, things are getting built still and there’s people walking around, but it’s not even half the normal busyness than what I am used to seeing. Trains are basically empty, a lot less noise and cars and shops don’t have as many visitors as usual. It must be very strange for all the business owners to make sense of what to do next. I heard on the news that restaurants in Melbourne will get government support to attract more customers, but now they can’t find the staff to cook and serve! Those people have moved on to different and better things. Well, good for them, I hope they get paid a lot better and cop less abuse in their new jobs :). 

We find ourselves making plans and then postpone them, make new plans and postpone them again because things keep shifting. We’ve had a few good weekends weather-wise and despite the mess they make, it was really good to see the beaches full of visitors. One day was busier than I had ever seen it in the four years we’ve lived here now, people were setting up tents and whole outside entertainment areas at 6am, talk about true dedication to getting the best spot on the beach!

Maple the foster doggo

This dog is a story and a half for sure! She’s now been with us for four months and it looks like she’ll be around for at least another 3-4 weeks. Not that she’s in our way but it has all gone quite differently than planned to say the least. First she had to gain some weight, then she had the whole desexing operation and then there were the corns. It’s a greyhound specific ailment that can have serious complications, like operations to remove them or even amputate a toe or paw if it gets bad. Maple needed to get her left outside toe on her right paw amputated 4 weeks ago and she’s been soldiering on like the trooper she is!

                                                               

 

First there were a few vet visits to determine if they could fix her toe with medication and a small procedure but all of that didn’t work so she ended up losing the toe. She’s taken it all very well, even though it must be annoying to have your leg and foot bandaged up for weeks and to have to wear a plastic cover every time you go outside. Just yesterday we were at the vet to get her stitches removed but it turned out that she had popped some of those last week and now she’s looking at another two weeks of being all wrapped up, poor thing!

She’s doing really well though and we’re sure she’ll find a good home. There was someone who wanted to adopt her but they fell off the face of the earth a while back, so the adoption team at GAP (Greyhound Adoption Program) will find her a new home. Yumi monitors the adoption website and sees old dogs getting adopted all the time now. Maple has a lot going for her once her medical issues are behind her and we think she has at least another 3-5 years in her. She’s still very much the queen of the sofa and snoozes her days away, but she’s just lovely, affectionate and super relaxed about life in general. The only times she gets excited is when we go out with the car or when it’s time eat. She’s also taught herself to jump into the back of the car and she just looks like the proudest dog when she’s done that, haha! 

She’s also very cheeky and has a mind of her own, but in a good way. She always wants to go forward, walk a little further, sniff another bush or tree and she’s forever curious. She’s supposed to wear a muzzle when she goes out (it’s the law) but I’ve not done that for months and now even Yumi is just letting that go and Maple loves it. Sometimes when we go out into busy areas we have to put it on just in case and as soon as we’re back in the car she’s just shaking her head and pushing into us to get it off. She’s also not supposed to go off-lead, but when I walk her early in the morning and late at night I let her wander home by herself the last 50 meters or so and she just doesn’t run away, always sniffing and never further away than 2-3 meters. Good dog! It’ll be hard to give her up again, but she can do better than our small house and back garden and I am sure there’s someone out there who will love her almost as much as we do.

SES-activity

I don’t think I’ve ever been this busy with SES. Most of September was quiet, with us slowly going back to in-person training, doing some maintenance and a small number of call-outs. Nothing out of the ordinary, just keeping busy. But then October came around and everything changed since we had a big weather event pass through. The one in June, when the state had 11,000 call-outs was very big and mostly concentrated in one area (Dandenongs) with lots of damage to very big trees. The storm that came through two weeks ago was totally different though. Just over 10,000 jobs got recorded and not only did it hit other places, but it was also some of the hardest wind I have experienced since coming to Australia! Trees and branches everywhere, lots of building damage, trampolines flying and fences falling all over the place. In a regular month we do about 10-15 jobs and call that ‘busy’ for our unit. This time we did about 95 in just 15 days!  Most of them we got to do in one weekend and then we just kept mopping up after. I was out every day and night for eight days straight and even this week spent a few hours in people’s front and back yards, on roads and on roofs putting back tiles or covering up holes.

We only have a team of about 15-20 active volunteers. In out unit but thanks to a lot of effort going into training and them being very dedicated we did an excellent job if I say so myself. Our area wasn’t hit too hard, so we got to go out into neighbouring areas to help them out and got to make ourselves useful. A lot of the jobs were trees on the road or footpath and those we just cut up and leave. There was also a job where a whole tin roof had been peeled back, some trees through roofs that were so big we’d need a crane and more than a few trees on or in cars that always provide a bit of a challenge to get them off without causing more damage. Those jobs always draw a big crowd for some reason, especially if the alarm goes off, haha. Almost all people are very friendly and very appreciative when we rock up. Some even want to feed us and give us money but we just get on with it, after all there’s still a few things waiting for us, so yeah, we’ll just keep going!

Thanks to a clever training plan we now have a very skilled crew with very useful qualification like truck driving, chain sawing and rooftop repairs. My role is changing a bit too. Where I was just always ‘the guy’ because I ca do any job and am almost always available, I now have to stand back and let others do some of the work too. I thought I’d find that annoying but it’s actually very cool to see the people I helped train do such great work. It also boosts their confidence when they get to work on complicated jobs and big trees. After all, the only way they get more experience is to do the work and after five years and more than 300 jobs I should just step back and let them do it. Three of us were in a backyard earlier this week where a tree had split and 80% was lying down on part of the house. That took a good hour and a half to cut up/down with different saws! We were quite proud to have caused zero damage dropping it in parts and when we were done the yard was just full of branches in big piles. Good times, even though I didn’t touch a saw and let my two colleagues do all the cutting, only giving them advice when they asked for it and they did a very good job.

There will always be jobs for me to do, like 2 nights ago when a tree dropped a 5-6 meter top section in the middle of a busy road in a town nearby. Off we go and 15 minutes later the tree is in pieces and dragged off to the side. It’s always rewarding when the police go: “Oh, that was fast” and my team go: ‘Yeah, that’s Gilbert!” Even the local council crews know we can get the job done now, which wasn’t the case when I started out with this unit four years ago, yay us!

Work

It’s been crazy busy the past two months, mostly just because I keep saying yes to everything that sounds fun. Here’s what’s been keeping me busy:

• Right on Board sessions

Across September and November Yumi’s business partner Alan and I delivered a whole range of training in public workshops and to six organisations in disability care on quality, safeguarding and human rights. We call the program Right on Board, a bit of a s of a play on words with them being executives and boards of directors, learning about rights and responsibilities. Feedback from participants has been very good and I get to do interviews, research documents, write reports and do workshops/presentations with a very broad range of businesses, some quite small, but also the biggest provider of services in Australia. It’ll be good to take a break from it in two weeks when we do the last one for the year and then review the materials for next year. Next week I’ll be running an in-person full day workshop and I haven’t done that by myself for nearly two years so I am equal parts excited and stressed but it’ll be fine, we have good materials and I know my half of it by heart by now.

• Purpose in Practice

This project involved translating the many materials of a Dutch author who is on a mission to make organisations focus more on their customers and less on the processes they operate. I am a big fan of his work and so is Yumi’s business, so I got to create a whole workshop, a 70-page workbook, a set of 80 cards, 40+ worksheets and a website to pull it all together. Wouter, the Dutch guy, likes what I’ve done with it all and now it’s a matter of finding clients who want to buy/run the program. It’ll take a good few months for it to get some traction and attention but that’s alright, I mostly wanted to unlock it for the rest of the world in English and enjoyed the challenge. My original plan was to have it up and running in September but I had to wait for others to sign off and it took longer than I would have liked so we only launched the whole thing very quietly in October. Anyway, we’ll see what happens in the next six months or so.

• Comic Book

Remember those Chameleon Cards that I made in 2019? Well, I’m working with the same friend (Peter) to create a comic book about bad change management practices and how to do better. There will be 50 comic strips and about 260 tips (50x 5-6 tips for each makes for a lot of tips!). We’ll donate all the proceeds to charity like we did the last time and hope to sell 300 copies, leaving us with about $5,000 to donate. It’s been such a fun process to write it! Peter always wanted to create a comic, but it’s more than just drawing funny pictures. You need a set of topics, scenarios, characters and all sorts of stuff, but most of all, you have to be funny. And being funny on demand is not easy! I now appreciate stand-up comedians even more than before because you have to write and construct the joke in advance and then deliver it so that people can enjoy reading it, despite it being all staged and designed. Good thing we have a team of reviewers across Australia (and Belgium and Hong Kong) to tell us if it all works. I’ve done all the writing (about 20,000 words, which is a small book) and Peter has drawn more than 300 images! It started out as a quick list of 50 things that don’t work in change I wrote up on the train home after meeting Peter for lunch and now it looks like we’ll launch the book on 6 December. Here’s an image of the cast of characters to give you an idea, once it’s done I’ll happily send you a copy or if it all works out I might be able to drop by and hand it to you in person.

• Change Tools Masterclass

Round 3 of the Change Tools series is done and dusted once again and this time around it was different yet again to the previous years. Deakin university has already asked me to do it again and because I’ve rejigged the materials considerably and will do some more work on updating it over the next months I’ve agreed to do it once more. The part I like best is the interaction with students, but it’s also pretty cool to see what they end up writing in their change plans. Some were very good, although all of them make it a bit of a rush job. Fair enough, they have busy lives and it’s not like they need to be fully experienced change practitioners after four weeks. Then again, it’s always great to hear the very positive feedback and see a few of them get very inspired by the possibilities change work has to offer if done right.

• Change Tools Micro-credential

Six months ago my ‘old’ team at Deakin university asked me if I wanted to get involved in developing an online change management course that would be fully online, with students learning at their own pace. I say old team because I had worked with them in 2017 on this exact topic of online learning design and I felt it was an excellent way to come full circle working with some very talented people. A micro-credential is basically a small portion of a university degree packed up in a neat little package that will give a student 4-6 weeks of learning at university level with credit that goes toward an actual degree. They call them ‘stackables’ because you can stack all these credentials on top of each other to end up with a university degree that you can sort of pick and choose. It doesn’t quite work that way, but let’s leave out the boring details for now.  Deakin being Deakin it then of course took another 3 months for things to get going, but 3 weeks ago I finished my part of the job of converting the Change Tools masterclass to online learning and now it’s just waiting for final reviews and quality checks. It’s been a good experience working with my learning designer Jenny and the production team, but Deakin is just so disorganised that it took them 5 months to get the contract sorted. I’ll spare you the drama but after 4 months it looked like it would all fall apart because they got all silly about $1,000 insurance on a $10,000 job but fortunately we found a way forward and now we’ll launch on 29 November. There are 15 micro-credentials for students to choose from and the very first course Deakin sold was….mine! Yay!

No wonder I feel like I need a bit of a break, right?! it’s been a bit busy. Considering how I started the year building tables and cabinets and now I’ve written about 60,000 words, created books, cards, websites and online learning I don’t think I’ve had a more creative year so full of learning and development. 

Yumi’s Work

Yumi has been quite busy too, mostly being a foster mom for Maple, but work has been very full on and creative for her too. She’s been designing a series of three workshops for National Disability Services (NDS) full of practical tips on how to get more out of the workforce through smart use of capabilities and tools instead of just squeezing people for more hours. She had to create all of it from scratch and spent weeks putting it all together, crafting tools and reviewing 100’s of options. Safe to say her classes were very well attended and got very good scores, as always. She’s also going to do some coaching work with a big client in NSW in a few weeks and it looks like I will be in the neighbouring suburb working for a different client at the same time, so we might be travelling together if it all works out, how cool is that?! She’s also been working with this team of enthusiasts who are all about reinventing work and how it can be done in different ways. They are planning to represent Australia in an around-the-world 24hr global event by hosting a 4-hour event on good practices in ‘new ways of working’. It probably all sounds very fancy to you, but there’s actually quite a lot of merit in getting people to think about work in different ways now that we no longer want to go to offices and do things the traditional ways. Yumi seems to enjoy herself with it and that’s what matters most to me.

Small stuff

And then there’s just a few small bits and bobs to keep you up to date on:

• AICD-course: I’ve started a Company Directors Course, which will teach me what you need to know if you want to be on a board of a business. Seen how I advise people on boards on how to do things better for their clients, it seems like a good idea to know more about their jobs. It’s a highly regarded course to do so if I ever want to join a board at least I’ll have the shiny certificate of competence for it. I’ve got until March next year to complete the 2,000 or so pages of reading but I plan to be done by the end of December. I am 70% through the reading material after 6 weeks and it’s not all that hard.

• Podcasts and walking: My walks are still a daily thing and now that daylight savings is turned to summer settings I get to walk in the light a bit more, which is nice if you listen to episodes on true crime, murder, abductions and other terrible things in Australia. After 200+ episodes I feel like I’ve learned a lot about the Australian justice and legal system and even a bit of history!  

• Volunteering: BeachPatrol has been slow with the lockdown, even though Yumi and I did a big clean over two days of our neighbourhood as part of Clean-Up Australia day a few weeks ago. Tomorrow is the first clean up in a long time and it promises to be raining cats and dogs (well, not really of course, that’d be very messy ), so we’ll see how many people turn up. 

• Family and friends: not much going on in this department, just people living their lives mostly. Kids are growing, jobs are getting done, all is good with the world.

• Queensland: we’re still hoping to travel to Queensland to go and see where we might live next year, but the border situation is a bit unsure still and it’ll be still fine if we go early January or even February really. But it would be nice to go for a very long drive.

• Knock down rebuilds: The house across the street, that stood empty first and then got rented to a series of shady characters dealing drugs and getting up to no good has now been knocked down and hauled away, got riddance. It got a bit noisy, but nothing too bad. And now it turns out that the house at the back will also be demolished and that’s literally 4 meters away from our living room, so that’ll be interesting. I think they won’t start until next year though. Ah well, we’ll be gone by this time next year, so we’ll be surrounded by tradies for most of it, haha.

• Birthday: It was so nice to hear from you on my birthday, thank you for calling. We didn’t make a big deal about it due to lockdown and I always feel the celebration of being together for 24 years this year is much more worthwhile anyway. 43, which means that next year I’ll be half as old as you exactly :).

That’s about it for the past two months, I really hope I get to see you if our travel plans all go well and I’ll call you to check if we can visit, but if not you’ll get another letter in two months with our latest adventures!

Be well, stay safe

Gilbert

Altona, 9 September 2021

Hi Marlis,

I hope you are doing well in these strange and unpleasant Covid-times. Well, at least it’s Spring and it got off to a very nice start here in Victoria with a few days of 22 and 23 degrees. Not bad at all!

According to my calendar, which is not always correct, it’ll be your birthday on the 21st! To me you are forever 80 years young, but perhaps it’s more something like 86 or 87 by now? Who’s counting anyway, right? Only 13-14 more years to go to 100! I hope you’ll have some family visit on the day, and I’ll be sure to give you a call as well. If it turns out not to be your birthday, we can still have a chat at the very least !

It’s been busy but not busy if that makes sense? We’ve been in lockdown 5.0 and are now in 6.0 and it’s really getting a bit old. Hopefully we’ll see restrictions lift by the end of the month if everyone would just do the smart thing! All the same, there was enough to do, so here we go with the going-ons of the past two months.

Work

I’ve been keeping busy and then some over the past few months, but you won’t hear me complain at all. I’ve been interviewing people, writing reports, delivering workshops on the internet, creating new things and working with friends to make cool videos about work stuff. I really enjoy working on all those different things and while it’s not the same as building beautiful furniture, it still gives me a lot of satisfaction to work with clients and students

For Right on Board we work with disability and aged care providers to make sure they do their best work when it comes to quality, safety and human rights of their clients. I interview between 10-20 people and then read close to 50 documents before I write a report with recommendations on what they can do better. Some are really good already; some are just a bit full of themselves but are still willing to listen because they can get into real trouble ($500,000 worth of fines kind of trouble) if they get caught doing the wrong thing. Most of them are really good though and I enjoy meeting all these different kinds of people from all walks of life. This month we also delivered that public workshop I mentioned last time and it was really good fun hearing experiences from all over Australia.

I’m making good money right now and the rest of the year is covered income-wise, but I’m still thinking of picking up a part-time contract for a change role if one is available, just to stay in practice. It doesn’t have to be the most challenging work, just enough to keep my skills sharp. Apparently, there’s a lot of demand for change people right now, but I’ve been avoiding going on job boards so far because it’s just so depressing to see how poorly described and uninspiring most roles are.

I’ve also started work with Deakin university to convert the masterclass materials I’ve been teaching for the past 3 years into what they call a micro-credential. It’s a fancy word for a chunk of specific material that’s lifted out of a standard degree and tailored for the professional market. I thought I could convert what I had in 3-4 days, but it proved harder than I thought, and I ended up doing it in 6 days. It’s a lot easier to show people a few lines of text and image and then talk through it than to write for an audience that I will never meet. The idea is that we’ll build a learning environment on the internet, where people can do their own learning, week by week and step by step. I’ve always been a fan of the concept because it just makes sense to me. None of the boring stuff and only what I really need. My kind of learning!

Finally, I was waiting on some feedback and comments on the Purpose in Practice workshop I have put together based on the work of that Dutch guy I mentioned last time, but after 4 weeks of waiting it turns out my reviewer had forgotten about it…Right…Oh well, Yumi will have a look over the weekend and then I’ll send it off to the Dutch guy for final approval and if all go well I can still be ‘ready for market’ by the end of September. I will admit that I’ve lost a bit of enthusiasm by now, having not worked on it for 5 weeks, but hopefully the wait will be worth it 

Yumi’s work

Yumi landed a new contract with an existing client who used to be her employer, so she’s set for the next three months and will have other client things to keep her entertained. She’s been having a bit of a slump motivationally speaking and I am just happy that she’s taking a bit more time than usual to do other things than just work-work-work all the time. She’s always doing things and keeping busy, but it’s good for lots of things to take it a bit easier every now and then I think. If only I would follow my own advice a bit more, haha.

Maple the greyhound

Last time I wrote, we were about to have Maple visit for a while, likely up to 6 weeks because by then we’d have a trip to Tasmania planned. Of course that didn’t happen with the lockdown and as she wasn’t getting as fat as we liked fast enough for her to have her desexing operation, we decided to have her over for a bit longer.

She’s a lovely lady, very well-behaved and low maintenance, sleeps most of the day and just loves ear scratches and belly rubs. She has this really weird way of clearing her throat where it sounds and looks like she’s choking on her own tongue, but after a while we even got used to that once we realised she’s actually just fine. Because she is an older lady (11.5 years young) she’s the first dog to be allowed on the sofa and boy does she own it! One of the nicknames for greyhounds is “long dog” and she certainly stretches herself out to the max, haha. Like all dogs her tongue lolls out of her mouth when she sleeps and when she wakes up it takes a minute for the muscles to work again, which makes her look like she’s not completely right in the head.

Just last Friday she finally had the operation and while she was out they also cleaned her teeth and clipped her nails so she’ll be ready for her adoptive parent when she’s recovered. Apparently it’s a vet student with a small dog, so she’ll be in good hands and have a little friend for company. She’s been back to the vet this week to stay for 2 nights to get more fluids and pain medication in because greyhounds are notorious for not eating when stressed and it doesn’t get more stressful than this at her age. She’s doing quite well, but she’s lost a lot of weight that she couldn’t afford to lose, so we’ll fatten her up with lots of chicken and then it’s time to release her to her new parent and forever home. It’ll be nice to sit on our own sofa again!

Queensland adventure

We’ve done some more work on our ‘moving to Queensland’ plan as well. It’s now a competition between Townsville and Brisbane, so we’ll probably end up in Sunshine Coast if our previous experiences are anything to go by! In all seriousness, it’s still very much undecided between the two. Townsville has better weather but rednecks and limited opportunities, Brisbane is a big city with all the plusses and minuses that come with it, so we’ll have to go and see. Quite literally, we hope to go on a trip in November and stop by in the ACT as well, but with the current Covid numbers still rising, I don’t see us going anywhere anytime soon. It’s still a lot of fun to think about the options, what we’d do for work, where we’ll live, what land we might buy and how we’ll go about building our own home. I think it’s starting to get to a point where we can do with some change of scenery again after more than 5 years in Victoria. To be continued… 

Volunteering

Like last time I wrote, volunteering has been mostly quiet and fortunately we didn’t have too many weather events come through. Only a few jobs for SES in the last rainstorm that moved through, so all we do is a bit of maintenance and a bit of driving around to keep the vehicles operational. Any excuse to get out of the house will do at some point! Here are some pictures from last week when an old tree decided it had been enough and dropped a big branch.

Lots of small things

It’s been that kind of period where lots of things happen, but at the same time nothing really major happens. Here are some small mentions and thing going on in a row.

• My diet has been going well! I had slowly crept up to 94kg again and that was becoming a bit uncomfortable, but now I am sitting at 89, which is a lot better. I am planning to drop another 5kg in the next three months and then I’ll be in a really good spot

• I’ve just finished the third round of teaching change management to mature age business school students and their feedback was just the best, yay me!  All I have left to do is grade some of their papers and I’ve already had 4/15 back and done, so we’re making good progress and Deakin has already asked me to go again next year, which should be fun!

• I have a new hobby while doing my morning walks. We have a group of people putting up stickers with misinformation and protests about covid and lockdowns which is just not helpful. I ‘patrol’ different parts of town every day and peel them off or scratch them out and it seems I have helpers who I’ve never met who do the same. One group puts them up, we take them down, they spray paint slogans on the roads and paths, we contact the council to get rid of it the same day. Good fun!

• This Saturday I’ll be presenting at an online change conference called Australasian Change Days Conference (AC/DC, get it? Like the band, haha). I helped set it up a few years back but moved away for a while and this team of legends has just made such a good event out of it, it’ll be good fun. I’ll be talking about the future of the profession and am hoping for a good discussion. We’ve got people from all over the world and lots to listen to.

• I’ve had some time to get back to reading smart books that teach me things instead of just zombies and murder plots. I was very impressed with a book called “Sand Talk”, which is all about how indigenous thinking can change the world. I also read a book that I thought was going to be boring but was actually very good. It’s called “the fish rots from the head” and deals with how to be a good board director. I am now reading “Change, how to make big things happen” which is also quite good (just started) and goes into how change happens at the level of whole societies and communities based on 10 years of research so that’ll be an interesting read.

• Friends and family are all doing well, everybody just living their lives, going on holidays and getting on with things while dealing with Covid in very different ways than we do in Australia. My friend Alex is about to move into his new home, my other friend Just might soon switch jobs and my dad did a bit of truck driving since a long time and seemed to have really enjoyed it. 

I think that’s about it for this time around, not so much to say and share, but next time I’m sure to have new stories and adventures to tell you about.

Stay safe, be well and enjoy Spring!

Gilbert

Altona, 10 July 2021

Hi Marlis,

I hope you are well and warm and already looking forward to Spring! It’s pretty cold in the mornings here at the moment, but I still go on my morning walks despite the ‘near-Canberra’ temperatures. As usual, it’s been a busy two months, despite not having a regular job, so here’s what I’ve been keeping busy with. 

Work-Work-Work

In my restarted career as a consultant, I took the opportunity to focus more on the things happening in the boardroom and work with Yumi’s business partner Alan. Him (mostly) and I have developed a product around advising boards how to take more note of Human Rights, quality and safeguarding and we called it…Right on Board. Yes, we’re nothing if not creative, haha. It’s very well received and Alan has been able to sell at least 6 workshops already. From August on I am getting more involved in the delivery, with Tasmania and NSW on the cards later on this year. August will be busy any way, with the Right on Board workshops, public workshops (where everyone can join) and the third and last round of the Change Tools Masterclass I’ve been doing for Deakin University. They contacted me quite unexpectedly to work with my original team from 2017 to convert the Masterclass into a digital delivery model, which should be a lot of fun if it all comes together.

I am also developing a whole new workshop based on the work of a Dutch author you’ll have never heard of, but he’s doing really well for himself and has been a close work relation of Yumi’s for years now. Last year we decided to make this happen and it took until now to actually start the work. There will be a workshop, workbook, cards, worksheets and even his book. I’ve called it Purpose in Practice or PiP as a working title, and that seems to stick so far, so I might just go with it. I am about halfway through it all, but there’s heaps of things to do and design, so I am thinking it will probably take until September to have it all sorted. It’s good to work on it every day, even though I don’t always feel like it and on some days I don’t feel like it will go anywhere at all, but we won’t know until it’s out there! I am learning heaps again, which is always good for me and I am developing new tricks and skills with new software programs as well, which is a nice bonus.

There are some other leads slowly warming up, you know the kind. People who start out all excited and then you don’t hear from them for a while, then they come back and go quiet again. Then again, it’s been a rather challenging time for everyone, especially the care providers, so I’ll not judge them too harshly!

Yumi’s work

Yumi is as busy as ever working with her own and shared clients and seems to be enjoying herself running her own business. It’s already been two years since she started out for herself and I don’t think she’s regretted it for a single day. Some weeks are slow and then others are super busy, but she always manages to make enough money to look after both of us and allow us to put money aside. It’s a strange time to be in the advisory business because there’s a lot of work to get done, but you can’t do everything online and clients want her to come in and do the work, but every time we get things sorted, some COVID outbreak happens and plans get changed. She’ll keep herself entertained regardless and it’s a new financial year which always means that new funds become available in the sector. Just the other day she got a contact from at least 2 years ago on her work email from more than 2 years ago. Yep, work seems to keep finding her!

Fluffy and Maple the foster dogs

A few weeks ago we had foster doggo #4, Fluffy. He’s named after a huge 3-headed guard dog in the Harry Potter books and if there was ever a misnomer for a dog, this was it! He was such a fearful fellow. Sometimes it was a challenge to even get him to go out the door and walk down the street. But on most days he was such a character! He had just turned five and wasn’t very socialised, so he did all the jumping up to you, gnawing on furniture, barking and generally misbehaving. That went away after the first week when he settled down a bit and showed more of his own very fun personality. He is extremely clever, got most things figured out in no time at all and he loved his snacks, so we had quite some work on our hands. As soon as he figured out that you could run up and down stairs, he often spent hours snoozing on the landing, just so he could keep an eye on whatever we were doing and if there was any food to be had. Not that he needed to gain weight, he was fine when he came to us, but a little bit more blubber on the bones in winter is okay! After the three weeks it was time for him to go back for adoption and he got scooped up in a matter of days. We saw a picture of him with his new family and they all looked so very happy that we felt very proud of our good boy. 

#3, Bronn, had some misadventure and injured his paw in the kennel from which he needed to recover first, but he got picked up for adoption in that same week, so we were doubly proud! It’s a strange thing because we can only do so much and it’s really mostly up to the dog themselves to behave, but after 3 weeks we have a pretty good idea of what they are like and Yumi writes these really detailed reports that must be very helpful for the new family to know about when they adopt. All good work to make sure they get the best chance at a new life. This Wednesday, we’re picking up an old girl (11 years old) called Maple. She was part of a group of dogs whose owner passed away recently and she needs some medical treatment. No need to train and teach her all sorts of things, she’s basically just with us to gain some weight and get lots of food and love, the two things Yumi does best! She needs to get desexed in the time she stays with us, so she’ll be with us for five weeks or so and Yumi is planning on driving her to the clinic, spend a day volunteering and then bringing her back home from Seymour, about 100km away. It’ll be fun and different to have an older dog around the home/office, she’ll probably sleep a lot and only wants short walks. We might take her to the beach and the lake, which is something all the other fosters seem to enjoy enormously as well. We have no idea about their backgrounds, but for some it might be the first time they even see so much water and sand in one place!

    

    

    

SES

It’s been busy times for the people in orange and I am sure you saw something on the news about the weather events in Gippsland and the Dandenongs here in Victoria. I think it’s now the biggest event in SES history with more than 10,000 requests for assistance over that period of time. I put in a fair bit of time and so did a few other members of our unit which

Is always good for team spirit. 

The fun and games started with a 4-day deployment to Gippsland in our capacity as a land based swift water rescue team. We were supposed to save people from floodwaters and dangerous situations, but soon realised that the conditions were not suitable for our skills and so we basically did nothing more than evacuate some people from their houses and stand around. It was all so very unorganised and confused that after 4 days we were all tired, angry and frustrated, which is not cool if you do this as a volunteer. But SES is a bit different in that way that we do potentially very dangerous things and it’s not something you just walk away from. So we woke up at all hours of the night, drove with lights and sirens (that part was cool) to all kinds of places around Sale and Traralgon, to then stand around and do nothing. We might have saved one person’s life because he was actually considering walking through super-fast moving water which would have drowned him for sure. He seemed confused and distraught, but we managed to talk him out of his plan and back to his car to wait until the water slowed down, so that’s a win. When it was time to go we were happy to do so and get back to our own areas. The teamwork was great as always, working with teams from 25 different units, but the coordination was totally amateur.

To quickly forget about all that, I spent the next two weeks travelling up and down to Emerald and Lilydale who got hit the most by the storms. I had seen bad situations with trees, but this was devastation on a scale I had not seen before. It’s strange but it’s beautiful and terrible at the same time. We did a few very good jobs on trees we could handle, cutting access to homes, removing trees from roofs and cars and covering up smashed roofs. All the while you’re driving through a wasteland of fog, trees and powerlines and only afterwards did we realise how potentially dangerous it all was in the first few days. It’s hard to imagine how big a 40-meter tree is when it’s on the ground, even for people who live there but the worst one I’ve seen had completely bisected a house and completely destroyed it. The occupant was ‘fine’, but at 89 or so, this was something he didn’t need in his life of course. The most amazing thing was the gratitude of the community towards us just coming to help for a few days. If you ever need to feel good about yourself, SES is a good place to get that, haha. 

In between we also trained our latest group of new recruits, who are not really all that new anymore and some of them have really got the orange virus in their blood already. They’ll do this for years if we let them and why not!? A lot of my colleagues got their chainsaw ticket, which means I get to do less cutting because they need the practice, so now I just help them do it safely, which they seem to enjoy. I’d rather do it myself, but hey, it’s not all about me, or so I am told! We also managed to clean up all our clothing and gear and even run our first fundraising Bunnings barbeque in 18 months and with all the media exposure we got $1,100 in sausage sales and $1,200 in donations from the public (and Bunnings), so that’s amazing. 

We’ll put that money to good use when our new truck arrives this Monday after about 6 months delay. Well, more like 4 years, but who’s counting, right?! It’ll be really good to have more modern equipment and everything in neat drawers and behind roller doors. Our old truck still had its trays and lockboxes from 35 (!) years ago, so it was about time for an upgrade. Of course the best part of it all is that I passed my driving test for the Heavy Rigid truck license so now I get to drive it around for real. I was secretly already doing that on the depot grounds anyway, but now I can go out around town, which should be fun. Three others also passed their driving test, so we might have to take turns, but as I am generally one of the people who responds when the pager goes off, I like my chances of getting some miles in. Here are some pictures to give you an idea. The person walking through water supporting the lady with the dog is me, I only found out later it was taken or I would have put my mask on a lot better!

 

 

Personal development

Aside from getting my driver’s license, I also invested dozens of hours into learning more about physical and mental disabilities as part of the new career direction I took. I did a very good course online with the University of Queensland and got a fancy certificate that says I now know more than I did before. I also read heaps of articles and most of a book about learning disabilities and aged care challenges. After a year and a half of working with my hands, it was a bit of an adjustment, but it felt good to put my brain to work in different ways too!

To get even ore certificates and shiny awards, I enrolled in the Australian Institute of Company Directors course for Board Directors. It’s very expensive, so I thought a long time about it and did my research but couldn’t find any bad experiences, so I just closed my eyes and pushed the pay button, haha. I’ll start in October and do it all at my own pace and I hope to have it all done by end of December. Having that piece of paper adds to my credibility with boards and I genuinely hope to learn a lot more about what it takes to govern a business from a distance. It’s a bit like a driver’s license or another course I did, you just get it as a rite of passage. I hope it will open new doors and opportunities eventually, so it’s a bit of an investment is what I tell myself.

In the meantime I can practice being part of a board because I got accepted as a committee member (not exactly a board member just yet) for a disability service provider called Knoxbrooke. Yumi did some work with them, so I know they are solid. The chair of the board happens to be the director of the MBA at Deakin, who I know from the Change Tools Masterclasses. It’s a small world sometimes.

The health care corner

Lots of medical things going on the past two months, most of them good. Yumi and I got our second COVID shot yesterday and we’re lucky enough to have no real side effects just yet. A sore upper arm, that’s about it. It feels really good to know we’re now much better protected against passing the virus on to other people.

I also got my two front teeth fixed last week and that was just so weird! They had chipped form years of grinding my teeth in my sleep and I am sure the excessive amounts of soda I drank for the past 25 years didn’t help much as well. All the same, initially I had 3 options. Crowns, veneers or filler. Mind you, crowns and veneers would be $4-6,000, so I was keen to hear about the filler option. 90 minutes later and $100 poorer I walked out with two completely fixed teeth.

As long as I don’t chew on the furniture or start cracking nuts with them, they should last me a good long time.

You’ll be happy to hear that aside from B12, we now also take vitamin D. I am still unconvinced of the use of vitamins in general, but I can’t deny that my eyesight seems to have recovered considerably. I probably still need glasses, which I am in total denial about, but a few weeks after I started taking the vitamin D capsules, I noticed I could read things that I couldn’t read anymore before. Winning!  

Yumi’s been having headaches on and off for the best part of two years now, but as she can be a bit stubborn (some would say incredibly stubborn) she just kept postponing going to the doctor. Now she’s finally gone and they’re doing some tests. So far, they aren’t finding anything really, but at least she’s got some extra strength migraine medication just in case, which I find very reassuring.

A long list of short things

• Snap lockdown 4.0 came and went an no one even got excited. It’s face masks on, then off, then on again around here and we’re just rolling with the punches. I don’t wish ill on anyone but it’s very quiet all of a sudden with the jokes and comments from NSW and QLD now they are in the same situation as Victoria was a while back. Not so funny now, eh?!

• Friends and family are doing well. A holiday to Italy for the Amsterdam crowd, a super cool and very well-paid new job for Yumi’s friend Hester, my friends Just and Alex thinking about new jobs and our friend Danielle had a daughter (Charlotte) a few weeks ago. Our parents are doing well too, everyone is over the whole COVID thing, understandably, but Europe isn’t quite as well off as Australia.

• On my morning walks I now listen to Australian True Crime, a podcast about, well, Australian crime! All sorts of old cases, cold cases, recent developments and things I never knew about the justice and prison system. Very informative and entertaining although it’s a bit scary sometimes when I walk around town in the dark of early morning and listening to how a serial killer ran around a neighbouring suburb 20 years ago. Good times, haha.

• I have a new laptop and it’s a Mac. For the past 25 years I have always worked in a Microsoft environment and it’s like driving stick when you only ever drove automatic. Some things work really well and others are just really weird design choices. But after 4-5 weeks I am now getting the hang of it and it’s a good challenge to keep learning new things. It needed to be a Mac due to workshop materials I am using, which were all created on Mac software. Now I can live in two system worlds and be part of the cool kids’ team for a change.

• Volunteering for Beachpatrol has been a bit quiet due to the cold weather and the Happy Paws Haven people had some sad personal affairs to sort out, so there wasn’t much for me to do there too. It’ll pick up again for sure, even when I am not sure how much I can really do for them anyway, but we’ll see.

I think that’s it for the update this time around. Please stay warm and safe until the weather gets better and the COVID craziness calms down some more. I’ll write again early September.

Be well  

Gilbert

Letter to Marlis MArch-April

 

Barooga NSW, 7 May 2021,

 

Hi Marlis,

 

That’s right, all the way over in Barooga in NSW today, driving Yumi back and forth to a work thing. I’ve parked the car next to a river and the only thing you can hear is the birds and oh, there’s a Kookaburra! I hope you are doing well now that the ACT is hitting the frosty lows again, it’s hard to imagine sitting in 25degrees just now 😊. The past 2 months have been as eventful as they could be, so I’ll just get into it straight away.

 

Hamilton trip

Not to the musical Hamilton, I always get so confused when they first act, then dance and sing, I never know what to do! No, the place Hamilton near the Grampians national park. We once visited there about 10 years ago when we came to Australia for the second time and the weather was so miserable, we ended up not seeing or doing much for 3 days. This time around it couldn’t have been more different. The weather was gorgeous, the little bed and breakfast we stayed at was lovely and at night the stars were so bright and visible we could see parts of the Milky Way and even the Magellan Clouds (small parts of other galaxies), which just doesn’t happen in Altona with all the light pollution from industry and the city nearby. As always, Yumi had crafted a very good travel plan and we climbed mountains, visited cultural sites and bushwalked to our heart’s content. We drove up along the Surf Coast and great Ocean Road and you just know you’ve become a local when you don’t even stop at the 12 Apostles or any of the other tourist traps because, well, you’ve seen them more than a few times and they’re rocks, so they don’t change much, haha. Instead, we went inland and got a little bit lost in a volcanic crater park because ethe signage was so strange and all over the place. We found our way back and called it a day for then, without Yumi I’d still be wandering around there now… At the cottage we could play with the cat, who also wanted to sit on Yumi’s lap all night, there were some sheep and alpacas and a veggie garden where we could get fruit and some veggies for our snacks and meals. It was all pretty good. Aside from the fire alarm going off full tilt, not once, but twice, so I pried it off the ceiling and took its batteries out. That’ll teach it! On the way back we stopped in Ballarat to visit the regional art museum and it was much better than expected. It was only supposed to be a stop to stretch our legs a bit, but we ended up staying much longer than expected. They had all sorts of interesting paintings, art installations and contemporary works by local people and the building itself is also a piece of art on the inside. You’d never guess form the outside, with its black and brown façade, but the inside is bright, colourful and light.

 

Work/Career change

You know that job I was so happy to have and go to every week? Yeah, I quit that 2 weeks ago…There was very little drama in the whole event and we parted on good terms. Two months ago, my boss had spoken to one of my teachers who mentioned that I was rushing things and wasting materials. The rushing thing is true and I changed that a lot since then, but the wasting material is just nonsense, also, I pay for those materials myself, so I feel I can make a mistake or two. Anyway, my boss spoke to me about it, I said I’d do better and then two weeks ago he felt that it was necessary to repeat the whole thing again. I let him do the talking and then at the end he said he felt like I wanted to say something too. I wasn’t going to say anything, just having promised Yumi that I would give it my best try, but he really opened the door and I decided that enough was enough.

I explained how I felt that this was not going to work if he treated me like a 17-year-old and that it made me feel like this was maybe not the job or even career for me. He didn’t take that too bad but said that he had many things going on and that I needed to sort my sh** out and fast. Now I am never one to walk away from a challenge, so in the calmest of ways I told him that I’d make his life really easy, pack my stuff and leave. Despite being 2 team members down already, I think we was very happy with that outcome. I always felt like I was a bit of a disappointment to him for some reason and life’s too short to live or work like that. I’ve written a blog post abut it that I’ve included all the way in the end, so you can read even more if you like.

 

Since then, I’ve had a think and decided to call it quits with the tradie life. I gave a good shot for nearly 18 months, but this is where I’ll get off the bus. I’ve decided to go back into some form of consulting. I thought I was going to be totally stressed out, but I am actually doing fine. I might end up working with one of Yumi’s business partners on a few things and have a few ideas of my own that I’d like to work on. The Change community was happy to have me back, judging by the dozens of comments and messages I got since announcing my career reversal. Never a dull moment in the life of Gilbert!  By the time I write the next letter, some kind of plan will probably have formed and I’ll tell you all about it.

 

School and training

With me quitting my job, that also means that TAFE is coming to an end and “good riddance”, I say! The teachers are good, but it’s all so poorly designed and organised that things take twice as long and having to ask what I need to do for every step, yeah, that’s just not me. I did manage to finish my desk (see picture on the next page) which also means I completed my first-year furniture making apprenticeship! I’ll get a statement of attainment, so that if I ever decide to go back and finish it, I can start form that point on, so that was totally worth the last 3 days of last week. I also got to hang out with one of the best teachers and he helped me sharpen my chisels to such a point that I can now perform simple surgeries on humans and farm animals if required. Probably not a good idea though 😊.

  

 

On the same day I quit my job, I also got the news that I passed the exam for my Cert4 Training and Assessment. Now I don’t want to sound like a total whinger, but that was one of the most terrible courses I’ve ever done. The people and organisation were lovely, but the paperwork and repetitive work were beyond funny. I honestly think I wrote a 300-page book of forms and templates. I was super excited to get the qualification because it allows me to teach at unis, TAFEs and schools in a casual capacity, but I will never, ever do this again if I can help it. Aside from the refresher courses every few years, those can’t be too bad…Right?! Well, they can’t be any worse than the course itself, if only because it’s just 2 days!

 

SES activities

It was relatively quiet with callouts for a while, aside from the possibility that we’d be going to WA to help out with the cyclone damage over there. But then they went in lockdown and all things got stopped. It’s always a weird feeling, because you want to go and help, but you’re also happy that you don’t have to, because that means things are under control. Well, sort of, because in East-Gippsland, people still need help and not much is happening there now that the media has moved on to the next crisis.

 

I’ve started my truck license and passed the theory exam already, even had an hour behind the wheel of our own very old truck that will be replaced in a few weeks’ time. I need a few more lessons because some habits I’ve developed over time are not good enough when you’re driving a 3-axle 27 tonne block of steel. I had my truck license 15 years ago, but let it expire when we came to Australia. I hadn’t driven a truck for 8 years by then and didn’t think it was safe to just get behind the wheel. I mean, we see enough accidents on the roads around Melbourne and now that I’ve seen the theory exam, I understand why. It was So.Much.Harder. in the Netherlands!

 I am very excited that 9 other members are getting their chainsaw ticket soon and then we’ll go on a fieldtrip to regional Victoria to cut up some trees. We did a test run a few weeks ago and that was heaps if fun. It will also help our unit and response rate because currently it’s mostly me or one or two others doing all the cutting work and that’s just not great. The new recruits are super keen and want to get into things so I am happy to step aside and let them have a go. This and next few weekends I’ll be training a few of them for the next level in their SES career, so that’ll be fun as the weather promises to be terrible…Oh well, we call that ‘a scenario of realistic circumstances’ 😊.

 

Yumi’s work, courses and training

Yumi keeps powering on and working with her clients all over the country. She was in Canberra last weekend to meet with her business partners in person for the first time in more than 12 months. It sounds like it was a good meeting, because she came back full of energy and plans, which is the version of her that I like best. A lot of things that had been on the boil for a while are now finally getting pushed to the next step or will be brought to a close, so that’s progress! Between all that busy business work, she’s also managed to complete 2 trainings. One more in the space of thinking about yourself and how your respond to the world, the other about a certain method that consultants use to get results without making organisations and the people in them jump through hoops. She’ll end up delivering that training to others now as well and will perhaps even do a few consulting jobs for Semco Australia. I think she got a lot out of it and even made the course better for others. Money well spent for sure!

 

Bronn the foster dog

The day after we came home from our Hamilton break, we picked up foster dog #3, Bronn. His whole litter was named after character from Game of Thrones, a popular, be it slightly gruesome, t-series. He’s named after a mercenary and that is just so funny because he is a massive grey hound of nearly 40kgs, but also the biggest scaredy pants you’ll ever meet! In hindsight, the other two gave us a real easy time. He was just the loveliest and most gentle dog, but afraid of the wind, cars, the trains, the train horn, loud noise and fast movements. He probably led a very sheltered life so far. He’ll get there eventually though because he was just so smart. He recognised reflections, understood doorknobs and how he would get a treat if he had all four of his paws on his mat. He was the only one so far that Yumi felt safe to leave in the living room while we were out and aside from the occasional ‘stolen’ shoe, he didn’t get up to mischief at all. He also was enormously food motivated and ate everything we gave him, which was a very pleasant change from the other two. We learn so much from every next one, this is just too much fun to stop doing. His anxiety and stress caused him to lash out to me a few times, but he doesn’t mean to harm you, just trying to tell me he was scared, so I don’t blame him, just kept my distance when I could. He’s back at the shelter now and I am sure they’ll find a good home for him, maybe after a bit more training on how to use stairs because that remained a bit of a challenge till the end. Below are some pictures of him on his mat, exploring the water, proudly standing on the landing of some stairs outside and sniffing all the snack for his birthday on the 28^th of April. The only time we had grilled chicken in the house and he loved it!

 

 

 

New volunteer gig

I’ve started working with an animal shelter in Grafton, NSW just because they asked for help. The lady, Sally, has turned 70 and feels like it’s time to start slowing down and hand over the ‘business’. It’s early days still, but I’ve been asked to write up a strategy, a media plan, a succession plan, a fundraising strategy and a few other things that shouldn’t be too hard. I plan to take it slow and there’s no need to rush as she has a 5-year plan in mind. Then again, she’s had three strokes so far and things might not be up to her completely. I handed in the draft documents this Wednesday and learned a lot in the process. Very curious to see what happens next. There’s a very small chance that Yumi and I will take over the shelter if everything works out just right, but for now I am designing it all for someone else and it’s just good to use my brain for these sorts of things again!  

 

Small things

·       BeachPatrol, where we clean the beaches and streets in Altona has started up again and it’s good to be out and cleaning up again. Now that things are getting back to some sense of normal, littering is back as well, so there’s work to do!

·       My friend Peter and I will be working on a comic book about Change management and what doesn’t work and maybe even design a game where one team needs to make change happens, while the other team does everything they can to make it fail. Even if nothing comes of it, I just love working with him because we have so much fun.

·       All the family in the Netherlands are getting their Covid shots and we feel much better knowing they’ve been vaccinated. Australia is so much better off than any other country I know of, it’s just amazing to see thousands of new infections and no one seems to car that much I hope you also decide to go and get the Pfizer one. There are some very rare problems with the Zeneca one, but knowing how tough you are, you probably wouldn’t even notice it if you caught Covid anyway 😊.

 

Alright, that’s it form me for now, please stay safe and warm and I’ll write soon again with my adventures from May and June.

 

Gilbert

 

 

This is the piece I wrote on my ‘professional’ blog:

To make sense of my career changing events of the last week or so, I imagined meeting myself at a networking event and answering some questions I might have after not seeing me there for 18 months. Here’s how I imagine this conversation would go.

Where have you been all this time?

I decided that I needed a break from Change management and how it was being practiced. I wanted to find out if working with my hands was a better career option for me. After two workplaces and a year of TAFE I realised that the mature age apprentice life is definitely not for me.

What made you quit?

In hindsight it was two big things that were made worse by smaller things. Big thing one was that I had interviewed way too well and got a reference that was so glowing that people all around Torquay had to shut their blinds for 3 days. I could simply not live up to that, despite my best efforts. Big thing two is that I was arguably the worst apprentice ever. My work ethic is beyond compare, but I consider myself too old for most BS that a teenager will put up with. Add to this that my last boss and I have very similar personalities and we brought out the worst in each other by just being ourselves. Being told that I needed to get my sh*t sorted (and fast) while I was trying to explain that I wasn’t sure if this was the life for me, sealed the deal for me. It was also the first time that after six months I was still the least performing person on a team of legends. After a while I got the sense that mistakes were no longer acceptable and that I was simply not good enough to keep around. Life’s too short for that and the team deserves better, so off I went. That’s my version of events, a story with an okay ending and no heroes or villains.

Has it changed you in meaningful ways?

I sure hope so. It would be quite depressing if 18 months of being in a completely different environment, doing very, very different things would leave me unchanged. My patience has improved at least 5-fold! But before you get excited, that’s from 2% to 10%, so let’s hold off on the celebration just yet.  I am less confident than I used to be and I like to think I am a bit more easy-going, less intense. People often mistake my intensity for passion, but it’s really just frustration with the way things are, voiced in a pleasant and sometimes amusing way.

What was the best thing about it?

So many things! Every day is different, new places to go, things to do, furniture to finish and offcuts to set on fire. What’s not to love?! I got to work with truly talented people and make beautiful things that people want to own and sometimes designed themselves. The trade took me all around Melbourne when lockdowns 1,2 and 3 happened and kept me working and learning when so many others had the roughest of times. I’ve visited many schools, businesses, the poshest of homes and lots of other strange and wonderful places that Change never took me.  On top of that I now have a full kit of tools that I know how to use if I ever want to make an okay-ish piece of furniture. And that’s not even mentioning the hundreds of hours of podcast on science and history I could listen to while working in an ‘office’ with the best view and coolest workshop dogs ever. Good times indeed.

What was the worst about it?

TAFE, without a doubt. Imagine a kitchen where 16 incompetent young people (and old me) are cooking a somewhat specified meal, using the same tools, pots, pans and the same space, with little to no instruction and guidance and everyone can stir pots, change the temperature of the oven and mix up ingredients. That’s not a meal you’d serve anyone. Most of the teachers were masters of their craft but the system itself is beyond repair and caused so much frustration that I was looking forward to leaving by the time I walked in. I also didn’t enjoy feeling incompetent for months on end. Apparently, that’s part of the process, which makes me feel that the process is in serious trouble. I figured I’d feel more competent, skilled and trusted as months went by, but the exact opposite was true for me. Perhaps it was one of those: “once you know how little you know, it’s hard to remain confident about what you do know” kind of situations. I’ve been known to be my own worst enemy…

What did you learn?

So many things! Probably the most important thing was to not drill into my hand! Not only does it hurt quite a bit while it heals, it also really freaks people out. Their screaming is a lot worse than the blood. Another thing I learned is that it feels better to work pro bono than for minimum wage. I always had respect for people doing hard work for minimum wage, now that I’ve experienced it myself, that respect has at least doubled. Another key learning was that almost every mistake can be fixed if you have enough time. Also, sometimes IKEA is easier, faster and almost always cheaper than making it yourself from scratch.

Any regrets?

No, it was totally worth it, even though I would not recommend this kind of career change to just anyone and probably never do it again myself. Despite having failed in what I set out to do, the experience of stepping away from Change and fully committing to a completely new trade gave me some much-needed perspective and helped me regain creativity I didn’t even know I had lost.

Did you miss the Change Community? Even a little bit?

I missed the people and conversations a lot, for sure. But LinkedIn and Twitter kept me connected to long-time Change friends and in the loop on the big things. With 2020 being the social and professional dumpster fire it was for so many, I feel like this was the best year to take a break. For once, my timing was spot on! I’m not saying that nothing has changed in Change, but now that the roar of lockdown terror, vaccine anger and all the posts on making sense of a post-COVID world have subsided a bit, I think we’re once again hearing all those good ideas and new initiatives that got drowned out before.  So much new ideas to look forward to!

You’re here tonight, does that mean you’re back to doing Change work?

Short answer, yes. If the right challenge comes along; I’ll jump on it to get back into things. Longer answer: I’m not sure if I want to. From what I’ve seen from 20 minutes on job boards, the change job market is as mercenary as it’s always been. I’ve got a few things I am working on with Purpose at Work in board advisory on quality and safeguarding and if things go well, I’ll be creating a whole new toolkit on purposeful practices in disability, aged and social care. I am also looking forward to the third round of Change Tools Masterclasses for Deakin. I still prefer short term, complex and hard to solve challenges and I think everyone is better off if I am my own boss moving forward.

Good to see you again, I hope the community welcomes you back with their usual enthusiasm!

Thanks for the chat, I enjoy being back and look forward to finding out what people have been up to.