Springfield Lakes, 9 July

 

Hi Marlis,

 

I hope you are staying warm and comfortable during the cold Canberra winters, we’ve had a few chilly mornings here two! I wasn’t expecting to see ambient temperatures of -2, but that’ only early in the morning, most days it still gets up to 22-25 degrees.

 As usual, it feels like not much has happened, but I am sure when I start writing it’ll turn out to have been quite busy for the past two months. Here we go!

 

Scuba diving

Our first trip in April wasn’t much of a success, but we were determined to come again and see what the diving at Tweed Heads near Gold Coast was like. We had to wait for the weather a bit but a few weeks ago we got some good weather, packed up the gear and off we went. We were smart enough to bring our thicker wetsuits because 22-degree water sounds kind of nice, but it gets quite crisp after 45 minutes floating around in it. The first dive we wore our 3mm light suits, but the second we upgraded to 7mm, and my goodness was it hard to get them on when we were wet but the suits dry as a bone after not being used for a few years. We’d completely forgotten about how hard this could be. Yumi broke 2 nails and I think I pulled a few things in my back! Well, at least we were warmed up when we finally got into them😊.

The diving was okay for things we could see this time. The last time visibility was non-existent, but now it was 5-10 meters, which is not bad. We saw lots of small fish, a resting Wobbegong (leopard print) shark and enjoyed just going over the rocks to explore and see what was there. We had a lot of new people on the group who were having the usual issues getting and staying down, but Yumi and I just stuck together and had a good time. I got to wear my new boots, use my new white snorkel and saw a whole school of catfish that moves like one big organism. Pretty neat.

 A bit less neat was that both our dive computers (just serviced) malfunctioned and would only tell us how much air we had left, but our depth gauges got stuck on 0.5 meters for Yumi and 999 for me. As it was only a shallow dive, where we couldn’t go beyond 8-9 meters, we didn’t worry about it and just enjoyed the experience. We sent them for repairs, but the guy who checked them out not 4 weeks back said they were a write-off and after 15 years of problem-free service, we get that, but we were still quite sour about it because they are not cheap. So, we went online and did some research. Which is to say, I looked around for 20 minutes and found what I needed and Yumi did 20 hours of research and made a complete spreadsheet. We ended up going to a store much closer by this time and both bought watches instead of consoles, some new gauges and $1,700 lighter left the store feeling pretty good about the whole deal as we expected it would be $3,000, which is just crazy money. But if they last us 10 years or more, it’s a pretty good deal for things that keep you alive under water. Yumi’s watch is one of those fancy smart watches that tell you 100 things about your body, breathing, the weather and you name it. Mine is much less fancy and just tells the time, temperature and dive time, which is exactly how I like it because I will only wear the thing when diving anyway.

We were hoping to go diving this weekend, but winter weather can be tricky and despite the possibility of seeing humpback whales, they decided to play it safe and not go, so we’re not diving this month and will see if we can go out in August once we’re back from the Netherlands!   

 

SES

I am still getting used to the new way of doing things at SES. My group of new members is still on probationary paperwork after 6 months, which means we can’t do most things and everyone seems to be okay with that, so I just go along and try to enjoy myself as much as I can. Training nights are on Wednesdays and that works most weeks, have a bit of fun from 19.00 to 22.00 doing maintenance or some practice scenarios. I am getting to know the people a bit more and like always they are good fun to be around. It’s just that there’s absolutely nothing happening and after the busyness of Victorian SES that just feels weird. I know it’s odd to want bad things to happen and I don’t, but what’s the point in training if you never use it?

We did do a community event which was good fun, with lots of people dancing and singing, a massive cockatoo statue on a trailer and so many SES stickers kids could have on their t-shirts. I think one had 15 or so all over him. He seemed to be enjoying himself, so why not! We also did a unit exercise at night with about 30 people, pretending like we were extracting a hiker casualty off the mountain with all our equipment and teamwork. The first part was good fun, going uphill, looking for clues and the ‘victim’, working as a small team, I think we did really well. The way down was more chaotic, and we had about 7 captains who all felt they should steer the ship and then there was me trying to get them to slow down while everyone else was just trying to get down as fast as possible. Many lessons were learned that night, but most of all we had a good laugh, found out what didn’t work, and all went home safely.

My buddy Michael and I have a pact that we’ll stick around until the end of the year, do some more training and see if it gets a bit more active before we decide if this is the SES, we want to be a part of. I’m planning to do training in storm damage operations, land search and safe working at heights. I’ve done all of that before, but the way training is (dis) organised here, I am probably better off just doing it all again and be done with it. In the meantime, I clean up a bit every time I go, and the place has really started to look more organised already, which I really enjoy, so at least I get something out of it!

 

Work

Work has been slow for the past 4 weeks, but that was expected, so I was prepared and had many ways to keep myself entertained. Our new Director, Joanna, started this week and my first impression is that she doesn’t miss much and will be able to do good things for the team. The project I am supposed to spend half my time on, maybe takes 4-5 hours per week and I don’t see that increase anytime soon. Things are moving very slow because everyone is pulled in all directions and then there’s me, just minding my own business, keeping things on track and that works for me.

I organised four send-offs and 2 welcomes for colleagues in the past two months and have told the team that whoever goes or comes next, I am not doing it! One person left because she was never a really good fit, all big ideas, but not much practical things got done. Another was so frustrated with all the changes she just up and left and didn’t come back. The other two were much more graceful and just did the job until the last day, so I got all of them some nice gifts and a card, as you do, and they were happy to know we will miss them. For my new director I prepared the mother of all welcome packs, and she could not stop talking about how good it was, so I consider that a job well done. If it helps her get up to speed faster, than it helps us too, so everybody wins.

Last week I got to play tour guide around campus for a Change Management friend visiting from New Zealand with his wife and daughter and that was good fun. The weather was quite bad the day before and after, but the Monday itself was good for walking around, so I showed them around the grounds and some of the more interesting buildings and they loved it. His 6-year-old daughter got to see the birds and long-neck turtles and climb some trees, which I really wanted to join in on, but I kept it professional, and we had a good time. He had many questions about living in Australia and with us coming up on 10 years in the country I couldn’t recommend it enough.

Other than that, we as a team got into trouble (not really, it’s with Marketing, nobody cares what they think…) for creating some posters and hanging them up around our office. They demanded we take them down because they weren’t exactly perfect to their standards (they were) and they even reported me personally for being suspected of having gained financially from the design work. In reality I asked a friend who did it for free while on holiday using their specifications. But never let the facts get in the way of stabbing a well-intentioned colleague in the back! That’s the Marketing leader for you, all words, no clue…

The change management course for university staff I’ve been working on is coming together very nicely too. It should all be done by end of August, a bit later than we’d like, but that’s true for almost everything at the university so why should we be any different, haha!

New volunteer position with SARA

I’ve finally managed to land a volunteer position with Sharks and Rays Australia (SARA) as their Board Secretary. Not only will I get to build my skills and experience working as part of a board, it’s in the field of marine biology and conservation so I feel like it’s a pretty good deal! Their primary goal is to work on conservation of sawfish, who are critically endangered and need a lot of help. I’ll be working to keep everyone organised around meetings and regulations and put my hand up to help them write their Activity Report for 2021-2022. It turned out to be a lot more work than I thought, finding words and sifting through hundreds of pictures, but I did my best and will have to see what the feedback is. It’s a very small charity, but the people involved are all experts in their fields and the woman who runs it has been at it for years now. I hope she’s not like some founder/owners I’ve met who want everything exactly as they want it and micromanage things but so far so good! 😊 I expect to learn a lot from just being part of their meetings and will hopefully gain a few new contacts as well.

CMI events

We did another morning event in June with 20 or so change managers and it was as good as the last time. We break up into two groups, everybody nominates the topics they would like to chat about and then everyone votes on their favourites, so we know where to start (most voted goes first). For 45 minutes we talk about the different aspects of things that are top of mind and it’s good fun while also giving me new insights. I always get a lot of energy from it, despite the 7.30am start!

We’ve also started a mentoring program that gained much more interest than expected. I thought we’d end up with 5 couples, but that turned into 13 very quickly and I think people will get a lot out of it over the next six months. When I was with CMI in Victoria we did a similar thing and it was popular then as well, so I thought why not just do it again!

We’re now working towards an end-of-year event in the form of an awards night with a charity component and some recognition for people helping the change management community be its bets self. There’s a lot of work to be done and the team are not exactly getting started yet, but I’ve written the plan and created some communications (75% of the work), but we’ll see how it all goes. By next time I write you it will either be underway, or we’ve decided to cancel because we left it too long…

Yumi’s work and dog volunteering.

Yumi’s been quite busy over the past two months, both with work and the greyhound volunteering business. She’s working with a number of clients on different projects and seems to be enjoying herself being a bit busier than she was at the start of the year. In 2021 she did a training in a methodology called Semco style, I might have told you about earlier. The short of it is that it’s a practice-based organisational advisory framework that ahs gotten good results world-wide. After the training there were big plans to get some business out of it, but that all fell apart during Covid. Now it's back on the cards and she’s getting involved again. I am very curious to see where this will take her. She is loving the flexibility of working from home and having lots of time for her other job, being the greyhound coordinator for Love a Greyhound.

She’s zooming across Brisbane on a weekly basis now, doing yard checks, going on group dog walks, meeting people to introduce dogs and picking and dropping off food. Sometimes I join her but most of the time she’s out by herself just getting it all sorted. It’s just the best to see how much she’s enjoying it. She’s on the phone all the time, finding new homes, talking to her team and making sure everything is just right. I don’t think she expected to enjoy it this much, but she truly is, and I hope she’ll keep doing this for a long time. In the short period she’s been doing it, she’s already given 12 dogs a new home and put about 20 into foster care. Her ‘boss’ is loving her of course and so do the dogs!

Dash’s adventures

Dash is living his best life as usual, snoozing and munching the days away. But sometimes things get really exciting, and he gets a visitor dog who stays for a night. A few weeks ago, we had Bonnie over for a night before she went to her adopting parents in the morning and as a rule, we don’t let dogs sleep in our bed. It’s the one rule I will not break because it’s just weird. This is never an issue with Dash, who has his own bed and that’s comfier than ours any way. But Bonnie needed to stay the night and just kept getting on the bed. After about 3 hours of interrupted sleep, we just let her and be done with it, haha. Dash didn’t know what to make of her, but he’s really with other dogs and thought it was great fun to have a friend. Unfortunately, she is being treated for heartworm (she’ll be fine) but it’s a long-term treatment and she cannot be allowed to get excited, or her heart might be damaged, so they had to go on separate walks, and he didn’t know what to make of that either. In general, he’s a very good host and playmate but it’s very tiring for him, so when our furry guests leave, he sleeps even more than usual. Like I said, truly living his best life.

This weekend he’s staying with our friends Michael and Cat in preparation for our trip to the Netherlands and it was really weird not having him in the house for a whole evening and night. He’s just always there, excitedly coming to greet you or lazing around on the sofa. I am sure he’ll do fine because their youngest son of 4 is talking to him non-stop and he just lies there and pretends to listen. We’re very fortunate to have such lovely people looking after him and who knows, one day they might have their own greyhound or other doggo for Dash to play with.

He did have a bit of a misadventure where he either got scratched by and animal or just scraped his nose on something while out on a walk, but it looked like a bloody mess when it happened. It was a miniscule scratch but when your nose is as big as his, of course it will bleed a lot. No lessons were learned at all because the next day he was poking his big snoot into the exact same bushes again!

I’ve added some photo’s on the next pages for your entertainment, he’s mostly sleeping, but he does it very well. 😊

 Looking for a new job

I’ve started looking for a new job as I’ve quite literally done everything I can do at University of Queensland. I will complete the year as I set out to do and it flew by with all the new and wonderful experiences, but I’ve now reached the limits of what my team can handle. The project I am supposed to help on takes maybe a day of my time and everything else maybe another day, so in the meantime I keep myself entertained with all sorts of side-projects but as you know, that generally doesn’t last very long for me. I’m backing myself this time and am applying for more senior and director roles or roles that pay a lot of money for a short period of time. I’ll cash in for a bit and get our plans going again and then we’re back to doing meaningful and rewarding things. I keep reminding myself that we’ve only been her less than a year (5 more weeks and it’s a year) and we’re building a network still. I’ll try to be as useful as possible while I am looking for something else and my team knows, so there will be no drama and excitement, exactly how I like it. I hope that in my next letter I can tell you what the new job is, but it might be a while.

 

Short stuff

·      Our 16^th wedding anniversary was last week, so we went out for dinner and had a good time. After 16 years married and 26 years together, we still agree we make a pretty good team, so we’ve decided to extend the contract with at least another 16 and see what happens in 2039.

·      My parents bought a caravan! It’s a long-held dream of my dad to have their own mobile holiday home and I am just so proud that he/they actually did it at the age of 70. But I guess with you in your 80s you’d probably say they will get at least 15+ years out of it still, which I really hope to be true.

·      We had a nice dinner with our “friends up north” Helen and Robert who used to also live in Victoria and moved here about 6 months before we did. I was supposed to bring about 10 puzzles, had them sitting there for 2 days and still forgot them. Ah well, good reason for them to come over to our place soon!

·      I’ve been on a winning streak with my diet lately. I’m not really sure how it works this time, but I lost 7 kilos, and it wasn’t all that hard. The hardest part is remaining patient and not to expect results to soon. I’m at 86.6 now and the goal is 82.someting before I decide on plastic surgery, but I might try to make it all the way to 78 and see what that feels like. If I reach 82 by the end of the year, that’d be great!

·      The trip to the Netherlands will feature prominently in the next letter. We’re all set up and ready to go and will have a busy schedule for sure. I’m not sure it still feels like a holiday, but it’ll be fun and that’s what matters most anyway.

·      I’ve been going on walks with my SES buddy Michael most Fridays during lunch and we have the best time. He really could be my slightly younger and smarter brother and we just chat and complain about SES most days. It’s nice to have a friend here outside of work!

·      I’ve finished creating a change course for my university colleagues. It’s quite big, but built up of 20 modules, so they can pick and choose. Then I thought I might use those materials to update the Change Tools I run together with Deakin university and upgrade the materials a bit. They agreed to even pay me for it, so that’s my project for next week! I'm also getting a few new very active students, so that’s pretty cool too, to see it continue to grow.

·      Next weekend is Yumi’s common people dance project grand finale. She’s joined this dance group a few months ago and they’ve been practicing a routine that will see them compete with all sorts of other dance groups across Queensland. I think it will be hilarious with all the different skill levels, but at least everyone is having fun and that’s the whole reason she started, so I’ll clap extra loud and cheer her own. 😊

That’s it for this time, you’re all caught up. Stay warm for the remainder of winter and try to get some sunshine when it’s out and about.

Be well, speak soon,

Gilbert

 Dash supervising cake making at Michael’s house. Total focus!

 

Dash helping Yumi organise the greyhounds.

 

Totally exhausted from all the sleeping

 

So tired, need to sleep

Going for a walk in his rainbows and donuts jacket, looking great!

 

 

No one is more excited and ready to go on a walk than Dash!

 

I wasn’t exagerrating when I said it was a really big cockattoo!