Bellbird Park, 6 April 2025
Hi Marlis,
It was very good to see you just a few weeks ago, I
hope you are doing well and get to enjoy the yard a bit more now that the
weather is heading towards the “Canberra Cold Snap” 😊.
As usual, I always think not a lot has happened, but
looking back over the past few months, it’s been busy enough to have some good
stories to share, so here we go!
Trip to Canberra
It was really good to come and see you on 2 March,
with Yumi there as well no less! Not to worry, we ended up eating the pastries
ourselves during the rest of the trip, haha. Yumi realised it had been 2,5
years since she was last there, when we moved up to Brisbane from Melbourne.
Before we stopped at your place, we drove around the ACT a bit to see the places we just to go.
The ACT is continuously changing, but also very much
the same, but the trees are bigger and the old neighbourhood where we used to
live is much more established now. Like me, she had to do a double take driving
into Westerman Street, it all looks so different and more closed in now the
trees and shrubs have grown.
It was great to celebrate the wrapping up of their business Purpose at Work with the same people who started it. A lot of these small businesses just fall apart or turn sour after a few years, but not these three! They’ve done really good and important work and had the opportunity to work with wonderful people, making their lives just that bit better.
Officially the wrapping up of the business only happened last week, but there is some symmetry that I like in that Yumi started her own business on 4 March 2019 and six year later they brought it to a close together on the bets of terms. I am very proud of her achievements and how much she’s grown professionally and everything she’s accomplished on a personal level too.
We had a nice dinner just chatting about life in general and what comes next for everyone before heading off to the hotel and our flight back to Dash and work the next day. What a great trip!
Cyclone Alfred
It was such a non-event for us, fortunately. We had
one day of heavy rain and wind and then it was just gone. Aside from a week of
rain that followed, there was no damage, no flooding of note, just a lot of
leaves and branches on the ground which was easily cleaned up. We were really
hoping for the fence to fall over, but no, it held on and stayed upright, grrrr.
😊
I did go out with my RFS friends for a few nights to do some doorknocking and sand bagging. It was good fun to be amongst the community, but there wasn’t too much to be done, and overall people had prepared really well. It was so weird for everyone to just wait and wait and then wait some more to the point where you just want it to land and get it over with, but we were very lucky to have so little impact.
I am sure you’ve seen the news on tv, it wasn’t good at all for the people in Northern NSW and South Queensland, those poor people also got hit very hard in 2022. At least this time we knew it was coming, and people were much more prepared. There’s talk of another weather system heading our way in 6-8 weeks’ time and as they predicted Alfred very accurately, I’ll keep my eyes and ears open at the end of May!
We’re still dealing with the aftermath of the car that smashed through our back fence into the neighbour’s yard in February. The insurance is very slow to act, but fortunately our neighbours are getting a good payout as they suffered most of the damage. On the upside, we’ve now got a good relation going with them from the shared experience, haha.
It’s been beyond busy at work, but somehow, I always
still manage to go home on time. I have about 8 different projects I am
involved in, but they are all moving at different speeds and with varying
levels of complexity, which is exactly how I like it, never a dull moment!
One day I am designing learning materials, the next it’s words for staff communications, then it’s doing some data crunching to figure out trends in hours worked and the next I am writing policies for organisational change management. And that’s a regular week.
The project I am enjoying a lot is our office move. I am not that heavily involved, but I get to create a welcome booklet, some safety training and other things that let me be creative, even if it takes so much time. Fortunately, the team started on time, and I should be able to get it all done by the end of the month. We all must stop coming to the office this Friday and work from home for 3-4 weeks while they prepare the new office. I am enjoying the walks from the station to the office while they last, although the new office is just 7 minutes from the old one, it’s a different way to walk, but I’ve already figured out the new route for when it’s time to get back.
I’ve started to ride the train in into work again. Public transport costs 50 cents one-way and that’s hard to beat. Not that I needed much convincing, it’s just so frustrating to drive 25 kilometres to work and take 45-60 minutes just sitting there in traffic. It takes 15 minutes longer by train and the parking at the station is a mess, but it’s only 3 days per week. I get to read much more, do some work, write some things, catch up on emails and volunteering and feel like my day is off to a good start when I walk into work.
I’ve got 4 months left in this contract and for once I can actually see the path to the end instead of what usually happens, that I start looking for the exit by now. It’s a crazy business with very little structure and process, but my team works hard, and we get things done, and they let me be the change expert, which certainly isn’t the norm in my line of work.
Yumi’s job and volunteering
Yumi is super busy and there’s a lot happening at the
office with a new CEO and some people not liking the direction things are going
or them. She’s just focusing on moving her project forward and hiring another
person on her team. It’s taken some time to come together, but I think they start
in a few weeks from now. In the meantime, she’s also working to get three training
courses built and there’s a trip around Queensland planned in May, so Dash and
I are planning the 3-day party already. And when I say party, I mean he’ll be
sleeping, and I’ll be working for most of the time.
It's amazing to think that she’s been in the new role for 9 months already! It’s pretty clear that she’s made a big impact, and she gets along with everyone, as she always does. She’s even made a friend (Claire) who loves plants and gardens and has offered to help out with the garden plans we have.
Her volunteering with the greyhounds has been very successful and busy as usual too. We’re doing a barbecue next week and I think there’s more dogs coming soon to be fostered or adopted. Here’s Dash helping count the various types of food we got donated recently😊.
The garden project
We’ve been working with the landscape designer and
landscapers since November 2024 to figure out what to do with the 700m2 plot
that we have. It was very cool to see the whole plan come together and learn
about plants, soil, fencing options and whatnot. Then it was time to get quotes
from three landscapers and they were very happy to come in and have a look at
what such a big project would entail.
The plan was to create a native garden. Which means we’d have to replace all the timber fences (they were in bad shape anyway), install a black aluminium fence at the front, plant about 450-500 plants and 6 trees and scrape off and replace the topsoil and cover it with mulch. We’d also extend the patio and get some other small things done.
We were kind of worried about what it would cost altogether, so went online and tried to figure out pricing for various things. We started with a budget of $60,000, which quickly went up to $80,000, then $90,000 and ended up on $125,000. Oh dear. That was much more than I’d ever want to spend on plants and dirt, but it would look so much better and probably do some good for the value of the house as well. It’s such an enormous amount of money that I can’t really wrap my head around it, but we didn’t get the quotes yet, so we didn’t stress too much. After all, the landscape designer had said that if we counted on $100,000, it would be a nice surprise if it turned out lower.
And then the quotes came in. The first one was $205,000, the second $220,000!! We’re waiting on the third one but expect it to be in the same range. That’s not a typing error, those were the actual numbers, I checked them. Twice. We were so disappointed and disillusioned. We had discussed our ballpark budget with the designer and this is what happens…? We paid their final invoice and told them their services are no longer required, thanks very much.
There is simply no way that we’d be putting so much money in our yard. We’ve now scaled back the plans to do the timber fencing and soil first and then see what else we might do. The planting we could probably do ourselves, with some help from friends and whatever comes after that, we’ll see how we go. We’re now hoping to get some new quote son just the fencing and soil and start work late this month, once we get over our disappointment. Also, there’s still that hole in the fence where the car went through…
Citizenship and passport
On 20 February I lost my Dutch nationality and gained
Australian citizenship! A fair trade, after 11 years and 14 days in the country
as Permanent Resident it was time to make it official, I am not leaving or
going back. Rotterdam will always be in my blood, but Australia has felt like
home for a good eight years now.
Now I finally get to vote, work for and complain about
the Federal Government, defend the country against Emu uprisings and grow a
mullet, wear singlets and buy crocs without going to fashion jail. The list of
benefits seems endless,
If you ever wondered what goes on during a Citizenship ceremony, mine was an upbeat, well-orchestrated, 75-minute procession of 295 people from 58 countries whose names are read out by the most excited and bravest public servant I have ever heard. Some names had at least 22 syllables in no pronounceable order, and he smashed it! My surname? Not so much, but the other 294, he totally aced those!
A Member of Parliament reads out a very warmly worded speech by the immigration minister (if you can believe that), the mayor did her best work as the Master of Ceremony and 2 adorable youngsters sang “I still call Australia home” and “Advance Australia Fair” better than I ever will. Then you do the pledge thing as two groups and it's all done. My kind of process, I got so into it I might have sung along with the anthem…there is no proof so we will never know, haha.
I’ve never had the privilege of being gifted a different nationality before and because the process takes about 10 months of a few forms and a lot of waiting, I got to think about why and what of it all. On the one hand it’s just a piece of paper, but to me it’s about a sense of belonging and a commitment to help make the most of this wonderful, beautiful country that also has its share of problems and injustice to work on. I guess that’s my job now too.
Straight after I started the passport application process and that was smooth enough, aside from the passport photos. I had gone to the post office previous to get them taken, no worries. I get to another post office, and they go: “No, these are all wrong, where did you get these taken?!” Well, with your colleagues in the next town... Anyway, I had not shaved and wasn’t quite ready for the photo, so now I will look like an Eastern-European mobster for the next 10-years, lovely!
It turns out it’s the most expensive passport in the world at $450 (for 10 years), but at least it is exceptionally beautiful. Each page has a coloured image of a part of Australia, like the main cities, the great barrier Reef and Uluru to name a few, almost too pretty to get some border check stamps on. Apparently that not what they do anymore, so I get to look at the pretty pictures some more!
Lego Serious Play facilitator training
You’ll probably find this hilarious but there is a
method you can train in that lets you organise workshops where people play with
Lego and solve problems. Just like your flowers, but in a business setting and
without a plan to build to. I had a great time in the training, also because it
was delivered by my good friend Rich(ard) Batchelor from Canada. We spent two
days with a small group of people learning about the method, playing with Lego
and generally just having a good time. And now I am an accredited Leo Serious
Play Facilitator!
It was about time I did something for my personal development and there isn’t that much left to learn in the field of Change, or the timing doesn’t work out, but this time it did and learn I did! It seems very simple, and it is, but the whole concept of “Challenge -Build-Story” just works very well for me. A lot of misunderstanding in my line of work come from people having a picture in their head of what good, or the future state, looks like and they think everyone else can see it too. By having them build something to the challenge of “what does good look like for you?” and then have them tell the story works really well to bring it out in the open. And even if you learned nothing or achieved little, you’d still have the benefit of having got to play with Lego for a while, which is just the best. They’ve also asked at work if I can run a session with them, so I might get more practice in sooner rather than later. 😊
CMI activities
My activities with the Change Management Institute
have started to ramp up again. We’re running events, like networking drinks and
Lean Change Coffees, which are fun facilitated conversations about change
topics (my favourite) with 20 or so people before work. We’re also doing the
mentoring program again for the third year now. And I’ve made plan for a 1-day Queensland
Change conference next year and to top it off, we’ve finally started following
up with new and departing members after talking about it for nearly a year. And
then there’s of course the book reviews and Deep Dive events. I am not exactly
living up to my promise of taking more of a back seat and let others run the
show, but it’s really hard as things just don’t see to move forward without me
getting involved in some way or form at the last minute.
Not to say it’s all me, but what others take weeks to do, I just mash out in a few hours while watching TV. I guess it does help that I have done all of it a few times.😊 We have some new committee members, which is very exciting, because it means we get some fresh insights and new ideas and also more bandwidth to do even more cool things. I will just keep focusing on the things I said yes to and let others run their won race, that way it will stay fun for me too!
RFS
It’s been a quite time with the fir brigade, but I go
to training and even got to lead some training last Wednesday on teamwork. The
team had fun, but I never really enjoy it that much myself, so I probably won’t
do it again any time soon. I don’t want to train on the ‘soft skills’ I want to
train people on the fire fighting things, but the reality is that I don’t have
enough experience, so I do what I know how to do and the brigade appreciates
that just as much.
We did a human knot exercise, which was funny to see
everyone all entangled and then figure out together how to get out. Then we did
a race with two teams to set up pumps and hoses to ‘shoot’ a few water bottles
and pack everything away. They did really well, but it got a bit too
competitive for my taste, but at least we worked safely, haha. The third and
final one was…Lego Serious Play, which they absolutely loved, so a good night
for all.
We’ve got come community events, driver training and the 30-year anniversary coming up, so I don’t think I’ll be bored any time soon.
Small things
· Greyhound walks: we went on a few greyhound walks with
Dash, who always enjoys himself with his greyhound friends or with us in the
bush. Unfortunately, my favourite, a big guy named Blue passed away quite
suddenly. That made me sad for a few days, but sometimes that just happens, I
guess, even though he was only 7 years old ☹. Here’s Dash out in the rain like a champ in his very
fetching red raincoat!
· I reviewed my Change Tools course materials for Deakin
which was good to do after 5 years. A lot of it was unchanged as change itself
doesn’t change so much apparently, but I found a few small typos and could
update some sections. It also inspired me to create some new tools and
templates, which is always fun to do, if you’re weird like me, haha!
· I have to get ready for my big performance at the
Australian Institute for Health and Safety Conference on 2 June in Gold Coast
where I’ll be working with up to 500 (!) people to talk about bad change and
good practices. Good fun, but also quite a challenge. Not to worry, I have a
plan, so I’ll tell you all about it in the next letter!
· I was out walking one afternoon and came across a very
angry snake. We agreed I could cross the street, and it disappeared into the
bush (right next to a school pick up line). I check with one of my RFS buddies
who is a snake catcher, and it turns out it’s completely harmless and not even
venomous. It made a good show though, swaying like a cobra and everything.
· I’m also getting involved with the team of
Australasian Change Days and it’s just the best to work with my Change friends
from Western Australia again. The event is all the way in August so we have
heaps of time and by then I’ll probably be done and gone from Lactalis (where I
work now), so I should have enough time to enjoy it myself too!
· Yesterday was my 50th blood donation, so
they gave me a nice pin and some chocolate that Yumi can have. Took me nearly
10 years to get to 50, next stop 100 when I turn 55!
Okay, I think that’s most of it. Family is okay,
friends are fine, no health concerns, so you’ll hear from me in 8 weeks once
again with new adventures,
Be well and stay warm,
Gilbert
