Hi Marlis,

Even though we only saw each other 6 weeks ago, I didn’t want to wait until next month to send you a letter. It just seemed to long. I hope you’ve been well and looking forward to the cooler days of Autumn. I am writing the start of this letter from NSW near the QLD border before traveling home today and after being out in the flood areas near Lismore, but more about that later.

Studies and exams

For my Company Director Course (to be a volunteer Board member) I had some good results come back. The exam is in three parts. The first is a quiz where you have to answer 20 questions in 60 minutes. I had done all the test quizzes and always scored 6-8 mistakes. You’re allowed 7, so sometimes I passed and sometimes I failed. But when I did the quiz for real I passed with an “Order of Merit” which sounds loftier than it is. It just means I made 4 or less mistakes, but I’ll take it!

The assessment was the second part and that was much more work than I anticipated. I thought it would take me no more than 4 hours at most to write the 3,000 words, but 24 hours (across a few days) I was still not completely happy, but couldn’t think of anything else to add or change. Good thing I didn’t because I passed this one with “Order of Merit” as well! No one was more surprised than me, but again, I’ll happily take that result and not complain.

The third and final part was the written exam and that was pretty tough. You get 4 questions in the form of little stories/case studies and you have to write a response that addresses the issues involved in 90 minutes. Seems like a lot of time but by the end I had 2m23s left! I didn’t even have time to go back and check my answers. Oh well, I’ll get the result somewhere this coming week and will have plenty of time for a resit if it turns out I did it all wrong. I hope I was unknowingly inspired because I am not sure I could do any better.

Teaching

I’ve been enjoying the online teaching for Deakin university a lot. It’s really rewarding to see my students start out with little to no knowledge of Change management and by the end of the course they know so much more and feel confident to start applying what they’ve learned. I keep track of their progress on the internet and it’s good fun to send each other messages and to answer their questions if I can. I had my first paper to grade but that was a real disappointment. The student had only completed 35% of the course work and never engaged with other students or myself. We also do a few sessions every week where I tell them a bit more about the latest things in Change and also explain how they should write their final assignment and they never attended that as well. Their paper was very underwhelming and full of type mistakes and logic errors. They’ll have to do that again and hopefully do a better job. Near the end I was a bit cross and might have judged them a bit harder than I would, but it was just such a poor job that it felt like a waste of my time.

New job hunt

I’ve been applying for a range of jobs and was surprised to get invited for an interview by half of them. It’s probably a bit of luck and a bit of thinking more about where I’d like to work and what would be a good fit. One job was with WorkSafe Victoria who look after safety regulations in workplaces and they were about to make an offer. Then it went quiet and I got a call that the organisation had changed its mind about the whole project and decided to cancel the role. The second role is with Swinburne University for a project role that looks and smells exactly like the role I had in my very first time with Deakin and should be easy. I can expect an offer soon and while it pays a bit less than the others it’s still quite good and it’s an environment I expect to do well in. The third and final is with Parks Victoria, the people who looks after the national parks, lots of public spaces and wildlife. I’ve done a good interview and have a meeting planned for Tuesday to speak to one more person before they make a decision. I would have met them earlier, but was in NSW this week, so that would have been difficult.

Yumi’s work

Yumi has landed a few new clients after a very welcome quiet couple of months. She’s very much enjoying working with the new client Plan, which used to be Foster Parents Plan, just not for greyhounds, but for children, haha. There are some smaller engagements that might grow into something bigger over time and they collectively as Purpose at Work (her business) also landed a very big project that will see her through the rest of the year if only half the work that is planned gets done.

Fraser the foster doggo

For most of February we had greyhound #6 to foster, a wonderful 3-year old man by the name of Fraser. He was the best match we’ve had so far and we were THIS close to adopting him! But then remembered that we would not be able to help any more doggos because we would not have the space for another dog if he came to live with us. He was super food motivated and hungry all the time but also the loveliest of dogs, always wanting to cuddle and get pets. He didn’t quite understand stairs or jumping into the car but he felt right at home with us and we loved him to bits. It really hurt when we dropped him off at the adoption centre, but like always, he got in the van like that’s all he ever did and off he went. We’re certain he will find a lovely home and go on to be the pet of their dreams. If for some unimaginable reason he doesn’t find a home, we’re taking him back and vowed to make that work if it happens. He was much younger than Maple (#5) so we walked a lot further and faster and really got some good exercise.

The Bad Change book and Chameleon Cards

The Bad Change book has been successful beyond belief and sold out just at the end of February. 300 copies sold and $7,000 for charity, which is amazing any which way you look at it. At the same time we’ve gotten a lot of interest in the Chameleon Cards, the ones we did in 2019, so we’re printing 100 boxes and have already sold 55. We’ll just wait and see what happens to the other 45, but we always felt that we should have had more and now we do! The money raised will also go to charity, another $1,500 if all goes well!

We’re arranging for the book to become published via the internet, so people can get it from Amazon, the big online retailer. They also print and ship books and even though it will not look exactly the same, it will be much more affordable for people outside of Australia to buy it. 

The next idea we have is to develop a professional development ‘game’, which will be a combination of “snakes and ladders” and ‘choose your own adventure”. Not sure how that will work out yet, it’s early days, but we’ll take our time and plan to have it done by late 2023. That sounds far off and it is, but it will be a massive amount of work too to get it just right.

Flood deployment NSW

Last week I had an opportunity to go and help out in NSW in the flood affected areas, including Lismore with SES. We teamed up with the volunteer fire brigade and all 40 of us travelled by plane to get to Kingscliff where we stayed in a very fancy resort. That was the only place that had the space to accommodate more than 150 emergency service personnel. Those people staying there must have felt very safe, haha. 

We worked from Wednesday to Friday and flew back on Saturday after a very impactful set of days. Every day we’d be set up in different teams, get our task for the day and then we’d be bussed into the area to knock on doors and check in on people. The devastation in some areas was unlike anything I’d ever seen, but the people were friendly, optimistic and already talking about their future plans. As a group we managed to visit about 2,000 home, ranging from completely unaffected to completely destroyed. It was very surreal at times to walk through streets where it seemed that a tornado had ripped through all the houses and taken everything that was inside and dumped it outside. It’s hard to imagine the water coming that far and high, but you could see the high water marks on so many buildings. When we arrived it was already 2 weeks ago that it had happened, so recovery was in full swing, but we still found a lot of people that had no clue what to do next. There’s mud everywhere still, lots of rubbish lying everywhere. It will take months to clean it all up, but there are now more than 10,000 people helping with the clean-up so it’ll get done!

I’ve not put any pictures of what I saw in here because that’s just really depressing and I’m sure you’ve seen enough on the news to get an idea. Some of the positive highlights for me were:

1. Meeting a dog named Gilbert! How random is that?!

2. Getting money from Lenny the homeless guy who felt others needed it more. He was going to be picked up by the alien mother ship any way so he’d be alright. I asked if I could come, but it was invitation only, haha.

3. One of my colleagues saving someone’s life after they suffered a heart attack, don’t get more ‘rescue’ than that.

4. Working with all the different emergency services without any issue, true teamwork all around.

5. Seeing the unbroken resilience of the people who lost everything, which was very humbling and inspiring.

I hope to never have to do this again, but with climate change and everything going on, I am afraid it won’t be the last time.

SES activities 

Fortunately not everything SES-related was this impactful. We’ve fi-nal-ly started recruiting a new group of volunteers to grow our ranks after 2 years. Covid has made some people leave and then there’s the regular life events of people moving and having too many other commitments. I am doing the interviews with one of my buddies this week and next and hope to find many good new ones, especially new women because we are down to just 1, which is just not good enough.

As far as jobs go we’ve had a quiet few weeks, couple of tree jobs, a few building damages, nothing to exciting, which is always good for the community and lets us get on with our days as well. We’re allowed to get back to training in person and I really don’t care what we do at those nights, it’s just fun to be out and about again.

Three weeks ago it was time for the refresher of my Land Based Swift Water Rescue certification at Lake Eildon and that was indeed very fresh. The river is always 12 degrees, but fortunately it was 30 degrees outside, instead of the 16 degrees from last year. We had good fun, threw some ropes at each other swam in the river, performed a few rescue scenarios and had a good time amongst ourselves.

Small things

• I’ve got a new phone and instead of spending a fortune of $1,200+ for an iPhone, I got a budget brand for ‘just’ $440 and it’s doing as good a job as any, now that I figured out where everything is. I’ve had an iPhone for nearly 17 years, so it’s a bit like moving house. You know it’s all in there, but you can’t find anything in the first few weeks.

• We’ve had an upriver toxic spill last week which killed off a lot of fish in Cherry Lake, one of our favourite places to walk. It’s just so sad to see all the fish floating belly up, but the clean-up is underway and I hope whoever did it gets a massive fine

• I’ve been eagerly anticipating a new video game called Horizon Forbidden West for months and got to start playing it last week. It’s about a young woman who has to save the world by restoring balance to nature and the ecosystems after humanity wiped itself out. It’s the second part in a series and probably the most beautiful game I’ve ever seen. You get to run around the world and explore all sorts of areas, while hunting, climbing and running around chasing machine-like animals. I am not doing a great job at describing it but I am having a great time with it until I start the new job.

• Family and friends are doing well, no major things going on. Our nephew just turned 14 and I can’t believe he’s that old! My parents are going on a short holiday, which is good because my mom has been hard at work and my dad has picked up some truck driving work which he really enjoys, but they’re getting on in age a bit so it’s good that they take a break every now and then.

That’s about it for this time around, I’ll be writing again early May when winter is creeping up already.

Stay safe and warm and be well,

Gilbert