Altona, 8 March 2021
Hi Marlis,
I hope things are going well for you in the ACT and
that you had more of a Summer than we had down here in the South. We had a few
warm days but that was about it. Then again, last year around this time the
whole country was on fire, so maybe missing out on one Summer isn’t all that
much of a drama 😊!
The past 2 months have gone by really quick, but I don’t feel like much has happened. Oh well, let’s see what happens when I start writing!
Upcoming road trip
We’re quite excited to go for a bit of a drive at the
end of the week. Destination: Albury, of all places. I’ll be there to help run
a workshop for an aged care service provider together with Yumi’s colleague
Alan. Him and I developed the materials and program together last year and this
is the second delivery. It’s pretty cool that people are warming up to the idea
of more modern practices for quality and safeguarding in aged care. You might
have caught some things on the news how bad the situation sometimes gets in
these homes and service facilities. I just get so mad every time another
scandal comes up, it’s like we never learn! At least we’ll be doing something
about it on a small scale with people who make the decisions and hopefully make
some changes. Yumi will travel with me and just do some work at the hotel most
of the day, I think. We’ll be sure to spend some time around town and go for
some lovely Indian food while we’re there. I hope they survived all the Covid
unpleasantness…
Easter break
In 3 weeks from now, we’re taking a week off at work
for Easter, which means we get to go travelling once again. Yumi’s slowly
turning into a hermit and hardly needs to go out as most of her work can be
done online or over the phone, so it will be good to get out and see some
different scenery. We’ll be staying in Hamilton, which sits in the middle
between Warrnambool on the Great Ocean Road and the Grampians, so we’ll be
getting some sea and some mountains. I predict lots of walks and reading and
lots of food of course!
Work
Work has been the good kind of busy. I am very slowly
progressing to more complicated things and so far, I have made 2 tables
(pictures below), more or less by myself. The one with the black legs was about
2.7 meters long and 1.2 meters wide. The White-legged one was 3 meters by 1.2,
but out of 60mm timber and so heavy! I think that when it was all done, it
weighed at least 100kgs. Good luck getting that through the front door! Then
again, most people who can afford our furniture probably have double doors and
servants to carry stuff, haha.
I truly enjoy the work of selecting timber, gluing and sanding and then finishing. I also do the maintenance of machines, keeping inventory, cleaning, making samples, packing away timber, fixing on the backs, doors and shelves and virtually anything else that needs doing. I’ve now been there 5 months and that’s the longest I’ve worked for a single employer in the past 4 years, so that’s a bit of an adjustment. I also like the variety of no two days being the same and the team is good to work with too. We’ve been producing like crazy and sometimes there’s so many items awaiting shipment that it’s hard to move around, but it’ll be a long time before I complain about being busy. After Easter I might get upgraded to building simple cabinets, which is something I really look forward to as well.
School
By some kind of miracle, my school has finally figured
out how to get organised. I’ve gone to school in early February for 4 days and
managed to build most of a ladder chair (see picture). It was a comedy of
errors to get it done and I am still amazed that it came out the way it did.
I made up heaps of time in the glue up
phase because I brought some glue from work that cures in 20 minutes while the
glue from school takes 4-8 hours… The next part
for this block is building a desk. I hope to at least get all my timber sorted
so that I can take it home (or to work) and finish it there. That way I’ll
still be able to finish my first year on time without any difficulty. I hope
that I’ll feel better and like I am progressing with this whole career change
thing when I get to call myself a second-year apprentice.
Yumi’s work
Yumi’s been busy as always. Not only with her clients,
but she’s also doing 2 training courses at the same time because, why not?! 😊
One is about a certain kind of management system that
is called Semco-style and based on the practices of a South American company
that decided to change the way they do business in all ways that matter. Staff
hire their own colleagues, make their own decisions about work rosters, pay
checks and bonuses. It worked extremely well for them and although she’s not
learning a great deal, she’s ‘meeting’ new people, expanding her network and
doing something else than working all the time. And the trainer has asked her
to deliver the next set of classes in Australia, so I think she’s on top of it!
The other training was a free ticket for a 4-week course based on the work of a
very famous speaker from the US, Brenée Brown. She’s all about courageous leadership and
people around the world (millions and millions of them) love her work. I am
very impressed by her delivery and smart business model but can’t say that her
message of fearless leadership really works for me. Yumi is the same, but to
her credit, she’s giving it a go and hopes to get some useful pointers from
those 5am and 6am starts, haha. I’ve also starter raising with her that even
though her biggest client loves her to pieces; she’s been working with them for
about 18 months now. Maybe it’s time to look for a new challenge? Obviously,
it’s literally none of my business, but because I am a bit further removed, I
can see that she’s starting to get incorporated, which is never a good thing
for an advisor. Ah well, she’s smart,
she’ll sort it!
SES
It’s been blessedly quiet on the call-out front with
SES. We had a few weird jobs, even one that required lights and sirens because a
person was allegedly stuck in one of those close donation bins. We didn’t find
anyone when we arrived on scene, so they either got out or it was a prank.
Another was a sailboat that had run aground. This happens quite often on the
bay, but there’s hardly anything we can do. It was pretty cool that we beat
everyone else there because we happened to be at the unit doing some
maintenance. And then we stood around on shore with the Ambulance people while
we waited for the water police to give them a tow back to the pier. Good thing
we waded through 1.5km of swamp land first and then got told we could go home haha!
I’ve also been busy with the new recruits and their training. They’re nearly done with the first part and it looks like they will all pass their test, yay! Especially good because there are 4 women in this group and we can really do with more of them, so fingers crossed they stick around. I’ve got some training lined up for myself as well later this month. It’s about land-based swift water rescue, which is fancy speak for rescuing people when the water comes on land. They could be stuck in cars, caught in rising flood waters in their homes or a number of other unlikely scenarios that always seem to happen at 2am in the morning😊. Then yesterday I heard I might get my truck license training and even some 4WD train-the-trainer training this year, so lots of fun things to look forward to!
Last week, some of us, including me, got a token of appreciation for our efforts in the Summer fires of 2020 in the shape of a pin. We can wear it on our uniform overalls and it has a pelican on it, so I decided to wear it. I am never really one for awards and that sort of thing, but it’s nice to get some recognition, I guess, even if it’s 12 months down the track. A few exceptional people will be presented with the Service Medal, but that is a much shorter list and I am pretty sure they’ve earned it more than a few times over. Let’s hope the next pin doesn’t get awarded until 2030 or even later.
Podcasts
I’m very much into listening to podcasts since a few
months. A podcast is basically a recording of people talking about different
subjects for different lengths of time. There are 100,000’s if not millions of
them on the internet to choose from! At work we wear headphones all day to
protect our hearing and we all have very fancy ones that you can link
(wirelessly) to your phone to listen to music or whatever you like. I tend to
go for the history and science ones, sometimes a bit of stand-up comedy and
every now and then I just listen to the latest hits from Japan, Korea, India,
China or Russia to mix things up a bit. I don’t have to understand what they
say, some background noise is fine. I started with Dr. Karl and learning about
the universe and all sorts of biology and psychology. Then I started listening
to Evil Genius, which takes historical figures and presents some facts about
them that very few people know. It seems that a lot of them (men and women)
were very racist and rather unpleasant to their kids or family. It makes me
wonder about what people will say about the ‘greats’ of our time in 50 years
from now. Another one of my favourites is ‘You’re dead to me’, which is all
about historical events and people whose stories have become so warped and
romanticised that there’s very little connection to what actually happened. But
never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right?! It keeps me
entertained and I feel like I learn a lot while I learn about furniture making.
How’s that for a win-win!
Changing careers progress
Last week I got a call from a business asking if I
would like an apprenticeship with them. I had handed in my resume 10 (!) months
ago after all. Yeah, nah, thanks, I’m good. My career change is still very much
a work in progress. I expected that after more than a year I would have found
my groove and most days I am fine with the choices I made, but some days I
really doubt if this was the best thing for me. I absolutely hate being an
apprentice, not knowing what to do and everyone telling me what to do most of
the day. Not that they are unpleasant about it, not at all, it just doesn’t
work for my independent and autonomous self. I know it takes time and that my
patience and accuracy need work, I somehow had thought that I would feel more competent
and confident in my skills by now. The exact opposite is true though. I feel
more insecure and incompetent as the months go by, wondering if I will ever be
good at this whole furniture making thing. I feel like I gave up a lot to gain
very little so far. I really hope that this will change in the coming months,
it’s not a great feeling. Ah well, let’s see what happens. In the meantime,
I’ll keep practicing being patient.
Covid snap lockdown
We had a brief 5-day lockdown a months ago to get some
possible outbreaks under control here in Melbourne and it was encouraging to
see how quickly everyone fell back into the routine of mask-wearing and
distancing. For me it was mostly just a week off as Yumi could continue working
and I was basically doing chores around the house and playing video games. I
don’t think this will be the last lockdown we’ll have and with every next one
we’ll have more experience to draw from. Looking at the rest of the world, I
think we can consider ourselves very lucky once again to be living on this big
red island 😊. Last
weekend, we went to give blood and had some free tickets to go see a movie in
the cinema. It felt a bit strange to do things we didn’t do for nearly 12
months. If nothing else, we enjoy and appreciate everything out of the ordinary
a lot more.
Next foster dog
Yumi is counting down the days until we’re good to
have our third foster dog, so be prepared for some pictures in the next letter!
It will be another 4 weeks because she’s got a few work things and we’re doing
a bit of travel. Apparently, 10 April is the date she picked for a new
four-legged friend to come and stay with us. So basically, on the way back from
the Grampians! The toys are washed, the bedding repaired and the snacks
prepared, so we’re almost good to go. She showed me the list of the dogs up for
foster right now and it looks like we’ll get a young one this time, maybe only
1 year old. It’ll be fun to have a doggo around the house again, lots of things
to laugh about as greyhounds are quite the cheeky dogs!
Friends and family
There’s only good news on the friends and family
front. All are healthy and most have really long hair! They are soldiering on
through their extended lockdowns, while trying not to be annoyed by all these
Covid-deniers claiming it’s all a big conspiracy from the lizard people who
secretly rule the world through our mobile phones. Sigh.
Our friend Alex is doing something cool as a side job now. He’s always been in logistic and purchasing roles and has a real talent for those things. He decided that he wants some financial independence down the road, so did the work, built his network and got some training and coaching to become a real estate investor. In the Wales market, where there appear to be many opportunities. I’ve known him for 20+ years and he’s never failed at anything, so we offered to set him up with some starting capital. The money is just sitting in the bank for us anyway and with nearly 0% interest, his offer of 6% return seemed pretty good. Turns out that’s what we lose in exchange rates, haha. Oh well, it’s worth it to help a friend! Everyone else seems to be doing well and is keeping busy. Jobs are getting done, birthdays celebrated, all that good stuff. One of our nephews turned 13 yesterday. I clearly remember changing his diapers (not fun) a long time ago and it’s hard to comprehend he is a teenager now. I must be getting old 😊.
Those seem to be the main events of the past two months; I’ll write again early May. By then we’ll be coming up on Winter, had another foster dog, been on lots of trips and I’ve hopefully completed my first year of apprenticeship as well.
Stay warm and be well,
Gilbert
