Letter to Marlis Sep-Oct 2022

 

PICTURES BELOW. SORRY, COULDN'T BE BOTHERED TO RE-INSERT THEM ALL AGAIN

Springfield Lakes, 13 November 2022

Hi Marlis,

I hope this letter finds you well and looking forward to Summer and warmer days. I am sorry this one is a bit later than usual, I finally got Covid and have been coughing away while not getting much done. I am fine now, but it was quite unpleasant and I wonder how bad it would have gotten if I didn’t have all my shots. I’ll be sure to get the fourth one in a few months, just so I don’t spread it any further. This letter might be a bit different than normal. I don’t feel like a lot has happened over the past 2 months, other than our whole lives taking place somewhere else and everything being different 😊.

Work at University of Queensland (UQ)

It’s been a very, very good experience over the past 2 months. I’ve done so many different things already, met wonderful people, feel like I am making meaningful contributions and still don’t have to work really hard. My management team colleagues are just as friendly as they were at the start and despite not really understanding what I am doing, they try to help me which is all I can ask for. When I don’t feel like doing work for a bit, I put on my walking shoes and go for a stroll across campus or through the neighbourhood to get some air. Because I spent the first 5 weeks in St Lucia by myself doing most things on foot, I feel like I know the area quite well and so far I have not gotten lost! I believe that’s an achievement worthy of a medal, but apparently there are no medals to be had (yet)! 😊

When I am not cleaning kitchens, having coffee or walking around I am working on a project that aims to get us all working on a new system to better manage risk and other boring but important stuff. I get to play with words and pretty pictures, build some websites, write a few documents and generally enjoy myself however I want. The project team and I get along really well and the wider team (we’re just 25 in Governance and Risk) is also starting to find me more and more. I get to talk about change management and even got invited to speak on change and how to do it a few times already. I just saw the results from the staff survey and let’s say that with a 51/100 score for how we manage change, things could be better. Enough to do I’d say, but I am taking it easy. I get paid well enough, but not so much that I will go 100%. Also, like any university I’ve worked at, right now the organisation can maybe handle 30% of Gilbert, 40% on a good day, but if I really step on the gas I’d just lose them and run too far ahead. See, I do learn, just a bit slower than others! 

I’ve put my hand up to be the treasurer for the social club for my team at work, which is really just a small job looking after the money and in addition I’ve also put my hand up to be on the committee for the UQ Professional Network who create events to connect more people across the very silo-ed organisation. I might end up in charge of events and that could be a lot of fun! Finally, to keep my mind busy and help the university build their change capability I’ve been writing a plan with two colleagues to set up a change management office at UQ. 

Right now, everyone is just doing the best they can or the minimal they can get away with. At the same time everyone is saying that we need to do much better, yet no one seems to have a plan. Well, step aside everyone, I am full of plans. It’s now waiting for one of the co-authors to come back and then we’ll make some final edits and send it to our boss. If he decides not to go for it, I’ll just stay in my lane and do what I can for my team and probably leave UQ somewhere next year because there’s a lot of ‘burning the candle on both ends’ and I don’t want to be part of that. Then again, if he does go for it I might end up in charge of the whole thing and stick around for a bit longer.

Book and Communities of Practice

The Bad Change book is still getting sold more and more and I’ve also handed out some free copies to strategically placed people around the organisation. Peter and I keep getting invited to come and speak to teams and groups of people and it’s all very enjoyable. The other day we got invited to talk about the book and the cause on a Change Management podcast. I am not sure if you are familiar with the concept. A podcast is essentially a recorded conversation that gets shared across the internet and some get millions of listeners all over the world. Not the ones we go on, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. It’s always a bit cringeworthy to hear myself speak but I will say that this time I actually sounded quite sensible for a change. 

One Wednesday a few weeks ago I had the weird experience of being in three communities of practice on Change Management (bunch of people talking about change in practice) in one day! The first one was at the University which was fun because Peter (from the book) was there to do a 45-minute talk on how to use images and visuals to bring your change to life. Then the second one really blew my mind with 250+ people, all from universities and from all over Australia talking about change and what does the presenter put on the screen? The Bad Change Book! She didn’t know I as the author was on the call as well and it was both really cool and a bit weird at the same time to hear her say all these nice things about the book. Then third and finally I was a guest for one of the large consultancy firms and their community of practice where another change friend (Anna) and I talked change again. I left the office that day humming with energy and full of ideas and it took me 2 full days to calm down a bit again. I do love that part of working in change management!

Change Management Institute (CMI) volunteering

I still haven’t heard back from SES and decided not to wait any longer. If it happens, it happens, but in the meantime I’ve returned to CMI once again after leaving twice because the leadership team was so amateurish when it came to how they treat volunteers but I am new in the city and it won’t hurt to make some new change friends. The lady in charge is a friend and she has some fun ideas. It’s an easy commitment with low expectations so even if SES decides to wake up and give me a call I could do both without too much of an issue.

Dash

The doggo is doing really well. We’ve got him on new kibble, he’s got his own pyjamas (loves them) and his own raincoat (not impressed)  and he’s as energetic as always. He’s still very careful when we go outside at night. The other day we were out walking before going to bed and he almost stepped on a frog and leapt off the ground with all fours at least 1 meter, hahaha, he’s such a Muppet! But I’d rather have him be too careful than blundering through the bushes and getting bit by a snake or something else with teeth or stingers, it’s Queensland after all! 

It’s a lot of fun to have him around and see him live his best life. The biggest worry he seems to have is how close he can follow Yumi around and when the next meal will come. The rest of the day he snoozes in his different spots and gets super excited when it’s time to go walkies. Yesterday evening we had a bit of excitement when we found a very old chocolate coloured Labrador wandering the streets, with no lead or tag. We took him in for the night and then basically didn’t sleep because Dash just kept running up and down between the bedroom and the garage, howling and barking because there was another dog in the house. After 2.5 hours of semi-sleep I just gave up and went for a walk with the lost dog. 

We shuffled around the neighbourhood (it gets light here around 4.30, perfect timing for me!) and I could see that he wasn’t in great shape. He had multiple lumps and growths on his body and his hind legs didn’t work too good anymore. All the same his tail kept wagging, even when we carefully introduced him and Dash in the back yard, which went pretty well. We ended up driving to the local vet and they could read his chip. We found out his name is Ollie and they offered to keep him and contact his owner. I really hope they didn’t abandon him because he’s old and not doing well, maybe he just wandered off as old dogs sometimes do. That’s our good deed done for the week!

 

Yumi’s work

Yumi’s had it quiet in the sense of paid work, but she’s been networking and building new relations like a boss. But then she also got Covid and those plans got side-tracked a bit. After this weekend we should be good to go again, I’ve been testing negative for the past 3 days so I think it’s all behind me now and she’ll be three days behind me again. We knew business would be slower if we moved over here, now it’s just a matter of getting things back up and running which will take a few months. Of course it doesn’t help that the Summer holidays are in there too, but I hope she’ll take the time to enjoy herself a bit and relax. The end of November sees her flying all over the place again, so the respite might be short-lived anyway😊. She’s organising an event for February 2023 with a Dutch guy who they’ve been working with and whose work I translated. It looks like a very colourful group of people will be joining them so that’s something to look forward to as well. 

New table

After weeks of thinking (mostly by Yumi) I believe we’ve finally landed on a decision about what dining room table to by. We want something custom made that will last us a long time and we’ve found just the person to do it. We visited his workshop a few weeks ago and liked the quality of his work and with my short career as an apprentice furniture maker as a reference I think I know quality when I see it. 

The picture below shows you the idea, just the legs will be upside down to this image. We’ve looked at so many options, visited quite a few stores and we just didn’t like what we saw. You can buy a decent table for $1,500 or so, but if you pay more you get something that just feels and looks like it was made by someone who loves what they are doing. I am placing the order this weekend, so it’ll be here somewhere mid-January we hope. That should give us time to find some chairs, because that’s even harder. I am still looking for chairs we had in the Netherlands and they were just the best, but very heavy and the fabric was ripped to shreds by our cats back then. Haven’t found that model since and we could have them made, but that’d be crazy money per chair and I don’t think I care that much. Maybe in the next letter I’ll be able to tell you that we’ve found them.

Living in Springfield Lakes

Life is pretty good, living in Springfield Lakes. Our street is quiet, except for when the kids come home from school for 30 minutes every day, ha-ha. Our street is a dead-end street so we don’t get much traffic and even at the busiest times, the highway that sits about 100 meters away isn’t all that noisy. We’ve got the local wildlife, mostly lizards, frogs and brush turkeys (big black chicken-like birds) to keep Dash entertained and lots of parks and, you guessed it, lakes! 

On the weekend and on days when I work from home I go for walks and take my trusty litter gripper. It’s fairly clean already, with container recycling in place which makes a big difference! I’d say that at least 75% of what I pick up is McDonalds cups and packaging. Well, you can’t expect people who willingly put that ‘food’ in their bodies to care too much about the environment I guess… I ride my bike to the station and am now more used to the hills and slopes and it really is an easy 7-minute ride. I’ve replaced all the brake blocks on our bikes so things stay safe when going downhill at 40km+ an hour. 

There are a lot of different routes I can walk and because it turns light really early in the morning I can get a walk in before the day has well and truly started. Like in Altona, there are always a few people around, but it’s mostly me, some random people kayaking on one of the lakes and the 1 million spiderwebs I walk in every few meters! It’s all very green and organised around here. I learned that Springfield Lakes is the largest completely designed and planned city in Australia. I am not surprised, everything about the town just makes sense. Aside from the main road that runs outside our neighbourhood, the Arterial. They are now in the process of doubling it, as if they couldn’t predict how busy traffic would get. Well, we don’t go out by car much, so let them have at it I say 😊.

Here are some pictures of the lakes and our house/street. That house on the right is ours, but the black car out front isn’t, our car now gets to live inside the very spacious garage. I hope the picture gives you a bit of an idea of our street on the hill. People have now moved into the house across from us and the neighbours to our right are installing a swimming pool so it’s all nice suburbia! 

This lake is just a 10-minute walk from our home and one of Dash’s favourite sniffing spots

This in the sister lake from the picture above, to its left. There’s a road between them and a small area where people can get into the water with their canoes for some peddling adventures.

 

This is another area not more than 15 minutes away full of birds and wildlife and the occasional human too 😊.

Small things

A lot of small things happened that still deserve a mention

• Keeping busy on public transport is going well. Sometimes I work, other times I read, listen to podcasts, play a game on my phone or come up with new ideas. The 45-minute commute is over before I know it!

• Teaching with Deakin is still ongoing but the numbers are low and things are slow. I am playing with the idea to create a new training package with Peter in line with the book, but that’s going to be a lot of work, so maybe 2023, or 2024, ha-ha.

• We went to have dinner with friends that we already knew from Melbourne and they moved to Queensland six months before us. It was a lovely evening and good to hear their experiences moving to a new part of the country.

• I’ve found out that Yumi is really good at mowing the lawn! As you know I really hate gardening so when she offered to help keep the front and back yard neat, I didn’t think twice! Now she uses the manual mover (save energy, no nasty fuel and a good workout) while I cut the sides and pull weeds. After 2 tries we’ve now got it down to less than an hour for both yards, so after a few more months we’ll be done in 40 minutes, ha!

• We’ve got no real plans for the Christmas Break, but we might go to the coast for a few days or laze around the house and relax a bit. It would be nice to not do anything for a bit.

• I’ve picked up doing some exercises at home three times a week and am enjoying it again. I have all the weights and gear, but the motivation comes and goes. This time around I decided to just let it be what it is and not stress too much about progress and going fast. So far so good!

• I had to get my teeth fixed at the dentist, again, and I think this time I’ll just have to be an adult and stop drinking soda. I don’t need crowns or veneers which would just crack with the teeth grinding I do but it gets a bit old and silly to hear the same thing from 3 dentists over time.

• I’ve now got my prescription glasses and they do make a difference compared to the $12 cheap ones at Big W, but I am not quite convinced that they are $220 times better. Oh well, let’s see how I go after a few months.

Okay, that’s all the big and small stuff going on in our lives. We’ll slowly coast towards Christmas and then you’ll read about the new adventures we had in January.

Be well and stay cool,

Gilbert

Letter to Marlis Jul-Aug 2022

 

Brisbane, 3 September 2022

Hi Marlis,

Happy Springtime, I hope winter is already on its way out in Canberra and that the flowers are making a come-back! It’s already 20+ degrees during the day in Brisbane but it can still get to 6-7 in the morning. Good thing I walk uphill to work so I am staying warm all the same. A lot has happened and will happen in the next few months, so make yourself some tea and have a seat because this might take a while, haha. I’ve written parts of this letter in the city while waiting for fireworks, parts on campus over the weekend and most of it while lounging at home, so if it’s a bit disjointed, it’s just because I have so much to say in different places. 😊

Finishing up at Swinburne

I had my last workday at Swinburne University on 5 August, which sounds like a lifetime ago already. I got so many lovely thank you messages from people and even had an opportunity to meet my successor who is doing really well in the role, as expected. I had written her a 20+ page manual on anything she could possibly need to know to get the job done, but she seemed very smart and ‘switched on’ so I am sure she’ll do fine. The last few days I had literally nothing more to do so I spent most of the time just reading, playing video games and doing some move preparations. It was a strange end to a strange project, but I feel I did good work and fortunately everyone else thought so too. I got a message a few days ago from someone that I had a long conversation with after our project meeting had ended and I advised her to start looking for jobs outside Swinburne. She just wanted to let me know that she felt very inspired by what I had said and took my advice. She will soon start with SES Victoria and enjoy life once again. It always makes me very happy when people back themselves like that!

 

Leaving Melbourne

It was a very surreal experience in the last few days before I got on the plane on 19 August. On Monday I said goodbye to my SES buddies and that was very hard. They had prepared a whole ceremony and even created a special award to celebrate my trampoline demolition skills. I got my 5-year pin (It’s SES tradition to do that almost a year late, don’t ask), lots of certificates of appreciation and a very heartfelt letter of recommendation. It could not have been better. The das after I would still see the messages of incidents happening but to then not respond was very strange. Then again, I had handed in all my gear so it wasn’t like I could do much, haha. I do miss it, but at the same time I put so much in it and got so much back that I have no regrets or loose ends, it’s okay like it is. I’ve already started looking at the volunteering possibilities with SES QLD and with the Fire Service, but I want to wait until we’re actually in the new place.

I went to walk the streets of Melbourne one more time, just to visit some of my familiar places where I used to work or hang out, shop or eat and had lunch with my friend Peter one more time. Rode the train and trams once more, did NOT visit Brunswick 😊 and buy the time I got back to Altona I was ready to say goodbye to Melbourne. I had one more coffee date with my friend Fiona and walked the streets of Altona one more time with my trusty litter gripper and then it was time to pack my suitcase and leave on Thursday Morning to live separate from Yumi for 5-6 weeks.  

I got to enjoy Melbourne a little longer still because my flight was 3 hours delayed so by the time I arrived In Brisbane after an uneventful flight and waiting there another 90 minutes for my contact at the B&B to get home I was well and truly cooked. I finally got there by 4.30pm, after leaving home 6.30am. That was long enough for a 2.5-hour flight.

Temporary accommodation in St Lucia

My room in the share house is okay, considering I pay $500+ a week for 12m2 and a shared bathroom. My housemates are very friendly and super, super clean, which is great. We’re all very considerate and polite and I spend most of my time either at work or out and about. It’s safe, dry and my bed is not too bed. It IS a big adjustment after living with only Yumi in one space for 25 years to now share a house with random strangers. After two weeks Rodrigo (Chilean, 29) and Rita (Vietnamese, 29) feel like friendly neighbours, which is more than I was expecting so it’s all good!

St Lucia is very beautiful, and I can walk to work in under 10 minutes or take longer because there are so many ways to get there, all of them uphill, downhill for 50+ meter height differences but with some gorgeous homes and trees to look at on the way. There is also the most wonderous supermarket across the road. It has literally everything you can think off and I am sure if you ask for something ‘off the menu’ they’ll have it the next day, ranging from illegal firearms to protected species of animal or classified technology from Taiwan. Everyone who is from the neighbourhood and who I talk to about this store (and I tell everyone I meet) all say the same thing, it’s amazing and makes you never want to go back to Coles, Aldi or Woolies, haha.

Just a few more weeks and then Yumi and I will live together again (more on that later) but after two and a half weeks I have my routine of get up, go to work at around 7pm, come home at about 5.30-6pm, chat to Yumi, eat something, watch a movie, sleep, repeat. On the weekends I keep myself entertained and at work there’s so much to do that I will not be bored soon.

 

New job adventures

Okay, on to the new job. I am now the Senior Manager Change and Communications for the Governance and Risk Division. Sounds a lot fancier than it is, but they have to call me something, I guess! The first two weeks are done, and I am feeling very good about this one. I’ve already met so many people, had so many lovely chats about everything we can do and even met ‘my people’ in the Change Community of Practice, which is basically a group of colleagues with the same interest chatting for an hour about things we can do better. Can you imagine being paid for that?! 😊. I’ve met nearly everyone on the team, which is a total of 25 people, so we’re not the biggest outfit, but because my area looks after all the policies, procedures, insurance, risk and project management, we have a lot of influence.

My boss is very relaxed, all my colleagues are nice or even super nice and I have my very own office. That is actually a bit strange because I have not had my own office in a very loooooong time. Not even sure that I like it, but most people do, and it comes with the role, so I plan to just visit with other teams in their area every now and then. I do my best work around other people, so I will naturally gravitate to where they are.

I won a lot of points with colleagues in my first weeks by completely cleaning the kitchen, fridges, cupboards and microwaves. It’s an experiment I do everywhere I work, just to see if I can influence people’s behaviours and so far, it seems to work very well. Also, if I am going to put my food in anything, it better be clean! I got rid of the biscuits from 2015 (not kidding) and the various food and drink items from 2019-2021 too for good measure. It only took about 3 hours over ten days, but of course the trick is keeping it clean. I’ll have to see how I go after Yumi joins me, maybe I will not be in the office every day all week, but so far, I really enjoy being on campus because it is amazingly beautiful and enormous. The pictures below don’t do it justice, but it gives you a sense of the sandstone buildings and open space I hope 😊.

 

I am not exaggerating when I say it’s a town of its own. It has multiple bus stops, a few banks, a few libraries, a hairdresser, 50,000 students, 8,000 staff, many restaurants and coffee places, museums, a doctor, all the sports facilities you could possibly want and a cinema. I am probably forgetting half. And that’s not even counting the 200+ buildings and the great court which is a sandstone square archwayed lawn that is at least 2 football fields wide and long. Did I mention it was a wonderful place to work?

 

With all that space there is also an app for my phone, so I don’t get lost but so far, I have been pretty good at finding my way. Normally I rely on Yumi for that, but I know how to do it if I have to! Another great thing is that my boss was very good about letting me just take off for however long if I needed to get something organised for our new house and the rental cars are literally right outside my window. I can just get up from my desk, get in, take care of business and come back, doesn’t get much more convenient than that!

My boss has only been in the role for 6 months and totally understands change, so as soon as I find my feet and adjust to the (very slow) pace of the university, we’ll be on our way, which I think will take a few more weeks. That’s good, because I can’t think very well beyond the point where we move house and I live in my own place again.

Exploring Brisbane

Because I’ve only ever seen parts of Brisbane on our few visits to the area and because I have nothing but time on the weekends, I got to explore a lot of the city and surrounds in the past 3 weekends. I’ve been up north to the beaches, walking 20-25km each day and just looking at houses, people and the landscape and I’ve been down southwest where we will end up living in a few weeks. That walk was actually really cool because I got to do it with one of my SES buddies, Michael, who is thinking of joining the Queensland police force and we might even end up living in the same neighbourhood. His wife and 2 kids would join him over summer, and we can become even better friends than we already were at SES, which is unbelievably cool.

I’ve also explored the city on foot from top to bottom and left to right, but I am sure it’ll be a bit like Melbourne, where new and strange things will keep appearing unexpectedly. My very first meeting was already at 9am on the Friday morning after I arrived. It was a lady I met online (wait, this is not what it sounds like….) who is opening a community space with very cool ideas and concepts, and she got donated a bunch of books for her lending library. I offered to donate a copy of Bad Change and when she asked if I would post it, I said I could do her one better and drop it off in person when I arrived, which I promptly did. We got along really well and ended up chatting forever. Just this Thursday I went to the official opening, and it was lovely to see all her friends and supporters there. She even got the local Member of Parliament to come and say a few words, that’s pretty cool.

So far, I really like Brisbane. Even when it rains it’s not cold and people are just as friendly as everywhere else. It’s big enough to feel like a real city, but not so big that it takes 90 minutes to get from one end to the other. There are some different trees, different birds (so many kookaburras!), lots of new areas to explore and strange one-way traffic situations that will take some getting used to, but it feels like we made the right choice.

Our new home

This is our new home, with 4 bedrooms, lots of space, a very nice kitchen, a huge master bedroom and a yard for the dog to play in. Yumi and I did the acceptance inspection together this morning and it just felt right immediately when I walked in. That was 1 minute before I smashed my head full force into the laundry rack that was just low enough for me to hit it. Ouch. We have solar panels, lots of light, those sliding doors that open up the whole house to the outside and it’s on a crescent in a quiet neighbourhood so not too much traffic.

The image on the next page shows where are (the big red dot below) and where Brisbane is, that’s about 30 km away.

It’s 30 minutes by car from work and about an hour door-to-door by public transport which is probably what I will do most days. We’re just a 5–10-minute bike-ride from the station and there’s a huge shopping centre a few minutes away by car, all very convenient!

It’s the fourth time now that people told us it would be very hard to get a home and we’ve got it all sorted within 2 weeks (again). I just applied on Tuesday thinking we’d not get it but what’s the harm? 24 hours later we’re signing a lease and making it all happen. What I forget to mention is that we’ve been looking at homes for months (Yumi really, I just nod and say yes…) already, so we knew the areas we’d be interested in. After talking to some of my colleagues we ended up here: 11 Gelu Court, Springfield Lakes, 4300 QLD. Technically, we’re not even in Brisbane anymore, it’s Ipswich, but whatever, same difference! 

Moving to Brisbane-The plan

Now that we’ve got a new home, we’re hoping to move 1 week earlier than planned, but let’s see how we go. I am attending an award ceremony on behalf of Yumi’s business (they sponsor the award) on September 21^st and could fly back that Thursday morning, do some work and then pack the whole truck later in the day. We’d then load up the final things on Friday Morning and make our way to Canberra, sleep there and hopefully make a quick stop with you before we drive on to NSW on Saturday, sleep again and then drive on to Springfield Lakes. I’ll call you a bit closer to the date once I know for sure what days we’ll be travelling, and I hope we can stop by because it would be good to see you again 😊. Once in Springfield Lakes, we’ll unload the truck and make sure we have a place to sleep set up and then I’ll be back at work on Monday while Yumi sorts out the final parts of the unpacking. It’s all a bit up in the air still, but shouldn’t be too hard, after all, we’ve done it a few times by now and know what to look for and think off. Also, Yumi will have a spreadsheet I am sure 😊. 

Lots of dog news

It has been a bit of a roller coaster in the dog department since I last wrote. We had dog #9 Danger, who was not dangerous at all stay with us and he was lovely, but a bit of a free spirit and we thought (correctly) that he’d fail his final test. In the end it didn’t matter because the owner who put him up for adoption was happy to take him back. That’s a bit strange but according to the adoption team this happens quite regularly. All the same, he’s going out of the kennel and back to a good place, so yay!

Then there was #8, Paddy, the tank-like dog who bashed his head into the wall so hard he made a whole. Yes, that one. He had been in the kennel for quite a while, waiting for a new family, but there was an adoption day on Saturday that Yumi volunteered at, and Paddy now has a home waiting, which is super good news. He’s such a lovely boy and will make good friends with the other dog his new family already have for sure.

Next up was Suzy, doggo #10. A very shy 8.5-year-old lady who was just adorable and quite cheeky near the end of the three and a half weeks we had her. She was gone to a family even before she was up for adoption, and she’ll be so very loved in her retirement!

 

And then we’re back to #7 Francis! Francis failed his small dog test completely and they were so concerned that they were considering putting him down. We were not too pleased with that and immediately offered that we would adopt him ourselves if that was the only way to keep him alive. He got some more training, and they retested him, but he failed again, only less severely this time. They agreed that we could take him in and now we have a dog since this Saturday. It’s all a bit surreal and we didn’t even really want a dog, but to put a 4-year-old healthy dog down because he was too good at what he’d been taught was just not something Yumi and I could stomach. So, now we’re the proud owner of Dash! He’s just not a Francis and his name doesn’t matter to him anyway, so Dash it is.

He clearly remembers the house and neighbourhood and is happy to be back with Yumi, who is also very much in love. I look forward to seeing him again too when I get back to Melbourne for the final move. Let’s see if he remembers me too 😊.

  

Yumi’s work

Yumi’s been keeping busy too at work. Finally being able to get back out to clients and deliver some of the things she’s been waiting and working on for quite a while now. Some of her clients are still impacted by Covid and that’s understandable, but sometimes it gets a bit frustrating to have everything postponed again at the very last minute. Ah well, the life of a consultant, haha. She’s got some cool things in the pipeline and I am curious to see what she’ll do once she’s landed In Brisbane as most of her network is in the ACT and Victoria. Whatever it is, I am sure she’ll do it very well, as usual. One of her two business partners, Caroline, is going to Germany with her partner an academic specialising in Syrian history and diaspora who was offered a position at the Max Planck Institute at Max Planck institute in Munich. It will be interesting to see what her absence will do to the business and how they make that work.

 

Small things

As always there were also lots of small things happening, here’s a quick overview of the most outstanding ones:

1.    The Amsterdam family (Yumi’s brother) went to New York for a week and had the best time ever. We also went there a few years ago and it was great to see their pictures and relive our own trip again as well

2.    Yumi’s mum is doing a bit better, but still coughs a lot and isn’t eating much. We were very supportive of her going to Japan for a few months to just eat, be with family and regain her strength, but she doesn’t want to travel so long, so, that’s no longer happening. Unfortunately, that means they will also not be visiting us, which is a real shame, we were really looking forward to that ☹.

3.    My good friend Just is starting a new job after another 5 years with a consultancy firm. He’ll do well for sure and one day I hope he just makes the leap and becomes self-employed. Or even better, make the jump to Australia and be self-employed here!

4.    My mum and dad are going away for a short holiday (in the Netherlands, nothing fancy) and are thinking of buying a caravan somewhere next year. That was always the retirement plan and now, after a few years more than expected it looks like they will still make that dream come true, very cool indeed!

5.    It was very sad news a few weeks back when the lady who runs the homelessness charity very unexpected lost first her 28-year-old son (Covid) and then one of her staff. It’s been a really tough year for her and now this. No one deserves such things happening to them, but she really doesn’t!

6.    Yumi’s finally getting her headaches looked into and is visiting a neurologist and other specialists. We don’t think it’s a tumour or anything else nasty, but it’s also not a good sign when you have headaches half the time you are awake. Hopefully they’ll come up with a treatment plan quickly.

7.    I had to get my tooth fixed again because it chipped and just a few days later it chipped again. I should probably just get a veneer done, but it seems so invasive. I’ll wait until we’re settled into the new home and then get it sorted. I think. Probably. Maybe 😊

8.    When I was at that opening earlier this week, I ran into someone who runs a community group for Change management for Change Management Institute, CMI. You’ll have heard me talk about them before in the letters from 2017/2018 and I probably did not have much good to say. She leads the Queensland chapter and tells me that CMI is now a much more relaxed and fun organisation so I might consider volunteering for it once again. I’ll have a good think about it because I already left twice, but maybe three times is the charm, haha.

9.    The coming weekend will be very full of all the regular things I need to do and then there’s the Australasian Change Days Conference (ACDC) that runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so that’s my weekend sorted. We’ve all been working towards it for 6-8 months and I’m proud of what we’ll be delivering, but also happy that it’s done. What a big job!

I think that’s it for now, we hope to see you soon on our way through. I’ll call you as soon as I know what the final plan is so you can decide if it works for you.

Be well and enjoy the warmth that Spring will bring,

Gilbert

 

Altona 9 July 2022,

Hi Marlis,

I hope you are doing well and that you are staying warm. It’s been getting a bit nippy here in Victoria so I can only imagine what the mornings in Higgins are like, brrrrr. We even had one morning of frost! Hadn’t seen that for a long time and I hope not to see it again for a while.

The last couple of months have been strange in the way that lots happened, but none of it very exciting by my standards. Then again, often when I read back these letters I find that a lot DID happen, I just didn’t stop to think how busy things have been.

Work

I’m now nearly 4 months into the job and still kind of bored. The project is not moving as fast as it needs to (everybody agrees on that) but making that happen is a whole other thing. I just mind my own business, which is 6 projects that are well on track, or at least as well as can be expected. I get along really well with my colleague Anne-Marie, who is very smart in the way of how teaching and learning works and she’s also a big fan of dogs! What’s not to like, right?! She’s one of those people who always finds a solution for any problem, but good solutions that actually work. We make lots of good things happen together and our boss thinks we’re the best too. Everybody’s winning, yay!

I had a bit of drama with the Program Lead, Vicki, who looks after the whole project, but mostly concerns herself with paperwork and schedules and sending emails. She’s good fun but gets really stressed about reporting and spends heaps of time on things that are just not that hard or important. We got along very well and at some point I shared with her my plan to find another job because I am so bored. Bad move on my part because she almost immediately told my boss. My boss was super cool about it and asked if there was anything she could do to help while I was still around. She found me some extra work at the university, which is still not enough to fill my days, but she’s very happy with the work I do and let’s Anne-Marie and I run the show, so I won’t complain. 

Vicki and I are no longer speaking in person, everything is just emails now and that’s the best I can do. I know it’s not very big of me, but I am just so disappointed that she broke my trust that I really don’t want to be near her. I also felt a bit embarrassed that I had been so naïve, but then again, Anne-Marie also knew and just kept her mouth shut. Vicki did apologise and explain that she just panicked and thought all the work would end up with her (it won’t), so it was all about her really. Nice one Vicki! I wrote a plan and schedule for my boss immediately, so she knows what needs to happen in the next 6 months and how much time it will cost. If it comes down to it, Anne-Marie can do it by herself, because she’s awesome, but it’d be hard work.

I am also involved in another project which is quite interesting and all about how different parts of the University have to share available spaces for teaching and working and how that decision making works. Oh my goodness, the egos and little kingdoms I encounter! In the end they are all lovely people individually, it’s just that as a group they’ve been used to fighting so long, that to them everything becomes a battle or competition, so the dynamics are a bit challenging, but so far so good and I’m getting some input while I read massive reports that don’t say much but have very nice pictures and ideas, haha. The goal of the project is to come up with a decision making and priority process, which someone else has already done. The real challenge is that they don’t know how to share and access information and then communicate it to people who need to know. People make up their own rules, occupy spaces for a few years and then don’t want to leave. Yes, that’s exactly like bad renters, but what do you do, you can’t exactly fire them for wanting a good place to work and teach. We’ll get there and the solution will make no one happy, but they’ll accept it and if they are smart they’ll take up my recommendations because at the moment I am the only neutral person in the whole group with nothing to gain either way.

I did another side-project to help a team that had been operating for 18 months without any meaningful project management and made some recommendations that I doubt the leader of that team will take up. After talking to the team for 30 minutes I knew exactly what was going on and after reading all their (half-finished) documents I had a pretty good idea of how to fix it. The team were very appreciative, the leader felt a bit attacked I think. Which was weird because I absolutely praised them for doing so much with so little and then provided a detailed plan that costs no extra money and will make everyone’s life much easier. I think she just felt because I did it in 3 days it can’t be good because the solution needs to be harder to find. My boss read the 4-page report I handed in and she thought it was spot on, so I am pretty happy to leave it there.

Job search

Due to the drama with Vicki I felt that my hand was forced and told my boss I’d start applying for jobs. She’s telling me she’s firmly in denial and hopes I will change my mind, so then I had to tell her about Queensland in November and she understood better why I accepted the job and wanted to stay busy until the end of the year. I’ve put out heaps of applications, a few rejections so far and yesterday I heard that I didn’t get the job that I interviewed really well for. They were right though, I was overqualified, but I was willing to make it work and have a go! It was for the Queensland Fire and Emergency Service and it would have been so cool to just be there, given it’s something I always wanted to do since I joined SES. During the interview they already thought that I might be too ‘heavy’ for the job and they did end up hiring someone who was less skilled, but more suited to the level. Good for them, I’ll just keep my eye on them, in case something else comes up again.

Next week I’ll interview with the Queensland State Government and with University of Queensland for more senior roles and they both seem like things I will enjoy; I’ve got 6 more jobs lined up to apply for this weekend, the one I like most is for CSIRO, an innovation program manager role that just has everything I like. By the time the next letter comes around you’ll probably read the outcome of all of this and I’ll be writing from Queensland perhaps!

The Queensland move

We’ve been steadily making decisions and preparing for the idea that in 4 months from now we’ll be on our way. I look forward to stopping over in the ACT and dropping by your place for a short visit before we travel on to wherever it is we end up. It’ll be a strange couple of months if I go first for work and then return to help Yumi with the move instead of the other way around as we originally planned. I’ve been packing up some things that we didn’t use for ages and of course that’s exactly when you all of a sudden need everything you just packed away, haha. Story of my life!

We also tried to sell some of our furniture and it was such a hassle. People trying to scam me over the internet (didn’t work), people saying they’ll drop by and then stand you up, twice and so many random people just asking weird questions. After one week I was totally over it and just this week we decided we’ll just bring most of it and leave the rest along the side of the street. Sounds weird, but it’s a real thing here and generally things get picked up by some in a few hours. I build a bench out of pallet wood and leftovers and that didn’t last for more than 2 hours before it was gone. A weird vase with fake flowers I never really liked but moved from the ACT to Brunswick to Altona anyway, didn’t even make the 30 minute mark. Good riddance! We’ll see how it goes, I am not sure it will all fit in the truck, but perhaps my packing skills are as good as Yumi thinks .

Fraser and Danger

We’ve had one more Foster Doggo since my last letter, named Fraser. He was a lovely dog whose coat was what they call brindle (bit like brown marble) but we thought he had more of a hyena kind of colouring. He was a very cheeky 5 year old and so much fun to be around, super affectionate and 100% certain the smartest of the 9 we’ve had so far. He figured out stairs in a matter of minutes, got that sounds came out of the tv and not the room, knew how to open doors, recognised his own reflection (I think) and understood that if he jumped into the car he’d get chicken, so he’d jump out again once he had and then look at you like “Where’s the chicken?!” The 3.5 weeks we had him flew by and it was hard to drop him off, but he’ll have no issue getting adopted as he’s just a lovely and friendly fellow.

It's funny how I would never consider myself a person who would let a dog on the sofa (when clean) or let him sleep next to the bed. Yet there we are, with him lying in the middle of the sofa, snoozing happily with his humans and just following us around and then contentedly sleeping next to the bed. Not a peep all night and even when I got up at stupid o’clock, he’d just lie there and wait for Yumi because he knew that was the actual start of his day. It also helps that he was super lazy, haha.

And now we have a 7-year old 40-kg giant called Danger who is anything but dangerous. Who names these dogs anyway?! He’s very affectionate, a bit shy and a total tank like Paddy. He just boulders into everything and wants to be petted all day if you let him. He got handed back by his previous foster after one week for being very strong on the lead, which was a bit sad for him. Yumi trained that behaviour out of him in less than 4 days with lots of snack and clear instruction. Now he (mostly) walks calmly on the lead and knows what to do when he’s out with the humans. He picks things up really quickly, doesn’t whine or bark and generally snoozes through the day. He does have this thing where he’s so curious that if he sees a bird or movement in the trees or on the fence that he’ll jump 2 meters straight into the air, so it’s probably good that our fence is 2.20 meters high!

This morning we took him to the beach and he really didn’t know what to make of the water. There were very small waves coming in and he just couldn’t figure out how it worked, so he looked at the bird and sniffed the sand instead. Try to imagine never having seen so much water in one place! I can imagine it can be overwhelming. That’s the added bonus to being a dog foster, you get to see the world in a different way through their eyes and reactions and it reminds us that there’s lots of magic in the world still, as long as you remember to look for it. 

I’ll send some photo’s next time, but will get them properly printed so they are not as vague as when I print them on my home printer.

Yumi’s job

Yumi has been keeping busy as she always does and managed to land some new work that’ll keep her occupied well into October with different clients and things she enjoys doing. I am very proud of her selling a workshop-like product with some advisory connected to it that we created last year but never really promoted. This third year of her running her own business has been quieter than the first two but she’s still bringing in a healthy income and gets to be her own boss, which is just the best. It also allows her to do some more volunteering and spend time with the doggos while we’re still in Victoria. She’s slowly warming up to the idea that we might be leaving earlier than planned, which won’t impact too much on her work, or so we think.

SES

It’s been quiet when it comes to request for help with SES for the past month at least. No big weather events and no major things in our area fortunately. There was the possibility that I’d go to NSW once again, but as it often does that got downgraded pretty quickly the same day and no help was required. There were also requests for more crews next week but I’ve already got too many commitments to go and help out. Doesn’t matter that much, there are always more than enough people who can go.

We did go and attend a job that involved a ‘person versus train’ and I think you can imagine who won that confrontation. We never really know if it was a suicide, confused or drunk person or a tragic accident. All the same we screened of the scene and helped get people of the train (it was almost in the station anyway) and then helped with making the scene accessible again by carrying the body out. Sounds more exciting than it seems. There was almost no blood and we didn’t really see that much, thank goodness. The coroner moved the body into those big black recovery bags, strap it down on a stretcher and that’s when we pick up the load and carry it to their vehicle. It’s all very respectful and quiet work, but at least that person gets some dignity in their final moments. We always get offered counselling and do multiple debriefs, but these ones don’t affect me too much. I didn’t do anything wrong and consider it a privilege to do my bit in putting this person to rest, that helps me to deal with any of the more unpleasant things anyway.

I also ran a training last week that everyone there seemed to enjoy a lot. We got to play with sand and water and build some fancy constructions, which is what we love doing most anyway . I also made a new training schedule until end of 2023 that I will probably never get to experience myself, but that’s fine. I will probably also not see all those new recruits we interviewed in April come in because it just takes forever to get that done in SES. Ah well, not much I can do about it, I hope the schedule keeps everyone trained up, but of course they have to show up, which has been an issue for some the past few months. I don’t always feel like going too, but afterwards I am almost always happy that I went .

Bad Change Book, Chameleon Cards and Purpose in Practice

The book is still going really well and we’re up to 155+ sold via the internet so far. That brings the total to 450+ and I think it’s just really weird when I realise I wrote that and then people bought it and talk about it on social media. The Chameleon Cards are also still selling, but we’ve only got about 25 boxes left and then they’ll be out of stock for a while again. That workshop I mentioned earlier, the one Yumi started selling now is also becoming a bit of a thing this year. We’re organising an event in October, where we get the Dutch guy who wrote the original book and then have some fun with the book, cards, videos and all the other things we’ve built around the concept of working in more purposeful ways. It’s just the best to see something I’ve created get used in real life by the people I imagined would get a lot out of it! Next week I’ll be talking to a group of people at Telstar about the book and maybe also to a big consulting firm in Melbourne to inspire their thinking about Change. Happy to do it, as long as they buy the book and support the cause!

Small things

• My parents bought a new car because my dad’s back isn’t great and the old one was a bit lower. It looks pretty cool and I think he got a very good deal out of.

• Only 9 more weeks for the Change conference I’ve been helping out with to start, getting a bit excited, but a lot of work to do still.

• I finally bit the bullet and got reading glasses and I really wish I had done it sooner. It’s so strange to now know how bad my eyes got when I take them off! We shopped around a bit and what I thought I wanted was like $500. Turns out that $12 reading glasses from Big W work just as well. Ha!

• Yumi had an adventure a few weeks back when she was on her way to dog training with Fraser and got a flat tire. She got it changed with the help of a 70-year old Polish named Roman. Whoever said chivalry was dead? 

• We’re getting a bit more deliberate in meeting up with Yumi’s parents every month now. They are not quite at your level of 85+, but they are in their 70’s and not always making the best health choices when it comes to nutrition and general wellbeing. So now we tell them to eat more and go to the doctor on a regular basis and they mostly ignore us, which is fine, they managed to get this far after all!

• Just did my taxes this morning and am happy to report that I will make a sizable contribution to the wellbeing of this country, which means that I also made good money this year 

• Yumi’s going to see a neurologist and physio for her headaches. There’s no real concern for a brain tumour or anything else nasty, but having headaches all the time is no way to live, so we’ll keep looking until we know more.

• We’re on our way to the National Homeless Collective in a few minutes. They are doing a donation day for the period project I have been involved in since 2019. They get all the proceeds from the books and cards we sell and that’s become more than $13,500 by now. Will be nice to see the team again before we leave for Queensland. 

I think that’s most of it for the past 2 months. See, lots to share still. I’ll be writing again in 2 months’ time and hope that there’s lots of news to share again.

Be well and stay warm,

Gilbert

Letter to Marlis March-April

 

Altona 7 May 2022

Hi Marlis,

I hope you are keeping nice and warm now that the cold snap has arrived. I saw the weather for Canberra and those temperatures are getting way too close to zero degrees.

The past 2 months, where did they go?! I honestly don’t know, but here we are, 2 months since the last letter! At first I didn’t think that much had happened, but when I started listing everything, the list became longer and longer, so without further ado, here we go.

New job and other work things

Last time I was still in the interview phase but soon after I said yes to a short term contract with Swinburn University and I just finished week 7 of being a project manager for a total of six projects. It’s actually not at all like the roles I had at Deakin university, but the language, topics and processes are very much the same, so it feels very comfortable and familiar. I get to work from home 4 days out of 5 and so far I’ve not had an ounce of stress. I could work from home all week, but I find I enjoy being on campus just as well, even though the office is really boring and quiet, I make my own fun, go for walks and leave on time. I am not at all challenged but I think it’s good for me to just have a job for a while and I do learn new and useful things in the process, so good enough is just good enough for now.

It's my job to look after a number of projects all aimed at giving students and teachers a better university experience. In normal people speak that means that I: 

1. organise for 20 classrooms to be fitted out with new technology

2. arrange for 150 teachers to get training in a new way of teaching

3. help install new software that will help students write better quality papers

4. create a series of 100% online workplace simulations so students can practice without the stress of doing it for the first time in front of a live person

5. make money and support available for 10 grants to be awarded to staff for new teaching ideas

6. oversee the delivery of 750 classes to international students outside Australia

I have a colleague who is an academic developer and she looks after all the smart stuff while I do the doing. After working together for 2 weeks, I think we make a pretty good team!

My dream job would have been to work at CSIRO and they DID call me back for an interview, but by then I was already 4 weeks into my contract with Swinburne, so I had to tell them no. Next time perhaps.

Teaching at Deakin still continues and this week I am also doing a 1-day strategy session for a client I worked with for Purpose at Work, should be fun and the pay is good, so it’s a nice bonus.

Yumi’s work

Yumi’s been preparing a number of work things to land pretty soon. It’s been a quiet two months which I think was a welcome break from being busy-busy. Now there are three things coming her way which will keep her very occupied until well after winter. Together with her colleague Caroline they landed a big piece of work with the largest disability service provider in Australia and if that works out, it’ll be an even bigger follow up. Then there’s a smaller job and a very cool job with a client she always wanted to work with, so as usual, Yumi’s doing great.

Paddy the bulldozer greyhound

We said goodbye to Paddy two weeks ago and the dust has finally settled, haha. He was a lovely young man, just turned 3 and probably the most fun we’ve had with a foster since the start. He was also the heaviest at 41kg and he looked like he went to the gym 7 days a week for 3 hours a day. Seriously, his muscles had muscles. But not an ounce of sense in him. He just ran into us, walls, trees, doors, furniture, people, cars and everything else in his way out of sheer enthusiasm. Hilarious, but at times painful and even a bit costly as he managed to punch a hole in one of the walls. With his head… Didn’t seem to bother him at all, he just kept on playing with his chew toy. 

He still has a lot to learn, but he’s a quick study and once he found out how stairs work he would just be up in Yumi’s office all day and snooze. He was also the first (and last!) dog to sleep in our bedroom next to the bed. Not that I wanted that to happen but locking him in for the night guaranteed a howling concert for 45 minutes. We know sometimes you have to let them be but this was crazy, so we let him in and within 1 minute he was down and out. He’ll probably be placed with a family that can work on his separation anxiety because that’s his only issue (aside from being a bulldozer…). 

We tried to go for walks a few times and turn on a camera to see what he does, only to see he was in a full-blown panic from the moment we left until we returned. Not great, so he’ll need a doggo friend to show him how being at home by your doggy-self works. 

Other than that he was so funny, cuddly and lovely, always up for a walk, super curious to investigate everything around him and he even went for a dunk in the bay nearby, even though he doesn’t know how to swim…Greyhounds aren’t built for swimming, but  fortunately he was still on the lead and I could guide him out, after he almost pulled me in, hahaha. 

SES activities

SES has been quiet aside from a few small jobs. One involved a crime scene with human remains but by the time we got there to provide some lighting in the house everything was gone and we only had to be there for 90 minutes. Short jobs are good jobs and even more so if there’s nothing to see. I have been busy trying to get the Awards Night organised and I can honestly say I will NEVER do that again. It’s been going for 5 months and getting completely ridiculous, but leave it to SES to turn something simple and fun into a hard and unpleasant slog. Anyway, on Saturday 21 May we’ll have a nice dinner and evening with the team and their families, some people will get a shiny pin or medal for 5,10,15,20 or 35 years of service, which is a nice way of recognising their efforts. It doesn’t do anything for me, so it’s not at all a problem that they forgot I am also due for a 5-year pin and I am not planning to bring it up. I always want to kick myself after putting my hand up, telling myself I will never volunteer for this again. Only to then still do it the next time people ask for help. 

I had a lot more fun doing a big clean-up of the SES unit building over the Easter break, when I had a 5-day mini-holiday. In just a few hours across two days I managed to sort, shine and straighten us back into a semblance of cleanness and order, which works better for all of us and is also a lot safer with all the heavy and sharp tools and equipment we have laying around. Our upstairs area is now a clean room, which means no boots and overalls up there and I think it’ll stick because lots of emergency services have that setup and it’s just neater overall. We’ve also done 20 interviews for new members but unfortunately less than 10 have decided to go for it, so we’ll have to keep going to bolster our ranks a bit because we’re supposed to have 30 active members and we’re down to 15 at the moment. Reading all this back I realise it was actually not ‘quiet’ at all!  

Yumi’s trip

Yumi is off on a trip to the Netherlands for a week by herself. I had other work things I needed to do and with the new job it wouldn’t look great if I left for a week already. Also, the main reason she’s going is for her and her older brother to speak to her parents about the next 20 years of their lives and what that might look like. We had a bit of a scare with her mum who got quite ill and hasn’t been eating well. That’s not something to joke about when you’re 73 and in reality she hasn’t been looking after herself for a longer time. Her dad is mostly fine aside from diabetes which he manages really well, but the kids realised they honestly have no idea what sort of care arrangements their parents want in this stage of their lives and the future. Turns out that her parents didn’t know either and now that we can travel again, Yumi and her brother decided that there was no time like the present. It’s a strange experience to enter that stage of our lives, where looking after your parents becomes a thing. Then again, they looked after us for the first 10-20 years so it’s only fair to return the favour, right? I consider it a luxury to have all four parents still in our lives, hardly worth complaining about!

It's not all serious business of course, she’s also getting a new passport, plans to do some serious shopping, will meet as many friends as possible, going out for dinner and stopping by my parents to spend some time with them as well. She’ll be back on Sunday morning 5.30am after I dropped her off last Friday morning at 2am. Even though we’ve been together for nearly 25 years now, I still miss her and count the days until she’s back again. Good thing I’ve got a busy week ahead and the days will fly by .

Chameleon Cards and Bad Change Book

All the way back in 2019 I visited and brought you a box of the Chameleon Cards. Three years later and we’ve just reprinted another batch of 100 cards and sold 60+ already. The proceeds go to charity for this one too. Last week we donated the $6,800 in profits to the National Homeless Collective and you can imagine they were very happy to get those much needed funds. We’ve been supporting them for a few years now and I couldn’t think of a worthier cause. 

The Bad Change Book is almost ready to go online via Amazon, but it’s been taking a long time because my co-author Peter has been stuffing about for a bit. I’m quite annoyed with the unnecessary delays and tell myself it doesn’t matter, but for me punctuality and delivering things when promised matters a lot. He keeps telling me that he’s annoyed with himself too, but not enough to make a change, so I am laying low for a bit until I am less grumpy and then will tell him how his actions make me feel. We’ve been friends for years so it shouldn’t cause an issue and I think I need to get it out of my system before it becomes a problem in our friendship. I now find myself not sharing ideas because I don’t want to work with him on them, which is not a good place to be or stay for too long. 

Small things that also happened

• I got my final grade back from the director’s course and passed, yay! Another shiny certificate to put in a box and never look at again, haha.

• Yesterday I did a big clean-up of the house. Mostly just putting things away, repacking and restacking a few boxes, getting rid of some of things Yumi hoards (empty boxes and chewed on pillows), cleaning the kitchen and Yumi’s home office. I really need to get a career in this because I always feel great after a good clean-up!

• We did a very rare shopping trip to Melbourne City last weekend, shopping for toys and gifts to bring to the Netherlands and it was good fun. I secretly still want to own a toy store, even though I don’t know how people earn a living with everything being online nowadays.

• I’ll be guest speaking online at a conference in Canada in a few weeks to talk about the Bad Change Book and Career Change, at 3am in the morning our time. Ouch.

• I’m also still quite involved in organising a Change conference in September, working with a team of smart and fun change professionals just wanting to do good things for the profession.

Like I said, the past two months have flown by and reading all this back it’s really no wonder.

Well, that’s it for my life, you’re pretty much up to date again. I’ll be in touch early July again with new adventures and stories.

Stay warm and be well,

Gilbert