Letter to Marlis February -March 2026

 

Bellbird Park, 9 April 2026

 

Hi Marlis,

 

I hope you are well and had a good Easter with the family, although not all at once 😊. You are certainly getting the cooler weather of the two of us, which must be nice after such a long and dry summer. I’ve had some pretty big adventures over the past two months, so here we go!

 

I am not including any pictures this time, sorry, my printer isn’t that great and I didn’t take many great pictures. I promise to bring them when I visit later this year.

 

Cambodia

What a cool trip it was! I had never expected that what started as a bit of fun in online teaching in 2019 would give me the opportunity to go to a different country and teach people about change management in 2026. I was there from Friday 13 to Sunday 22 March and ran two 3-day Change Fundamentals workshops for two groups of 30+ government, not for profit, education and industry professionals. I won’t bore you with the detail of what we covered exactly, safe to say it was a lot of smart change stuff and they loved it. And I loved it too!

 

I was there with Deakin University on behalf of the Australian government (DFAT), accompanied by our Lead Academic Dhara and semi-pensioner Michael, both associate professors in their field. Dhara was nice, be it a bit distracted and busy, but Michael and I got along very well and I really enjoyed working with him and learning more about his field of ethics and leadership. The three of us went for dinner nearly every night in different parts of the capital, Phnom Pehn, and over the week and a half I was there, I got to see a lot of the city and all its hustle and bustle.

 

On Tuesday and Wednesday, when we weren’t teaching, I got up early and worked my regular job, had some meetings and then went to see the sights like a real tourist. I went to see the Killing Fields memorial for the victims of the Pol Pot regime, which was very different from what I expected, it looked like a park more than anything else. But there was also S21 Prison, in the middle of the city, where 20,000+ people were tortured and killed by their own countrymen, and that place just felt evil. I wanted to leave as soon as I stepped inside the old school buildings they had converted to prisons. I don’t have to tell you about what people are capable of, but to see it for myself and hear/read the stories of things that happened months before I was born, is chilling.

 

It was important for me to see and witness that part of the country’s history and they’ve done a good job of sharing and coming to terms with what happened, but fortunately I also got to do a lot of fun things!

 

·      I went for walks every morning in this city that never sleeps, I think I walked a total of 75km while I was there. People mind their own business and I never felt unsafe; they appear too busy with their own affairs to pay much attention to others.

·      I visited the national museum, which wasn’t much to look at and kind of stuck in the 1980s, but I at least got an impression of the wonderful art and architecture of Angkor Wat, the famous ancient city 350km away that I will visit and explore with Yumi one day.

·      Also visited the national palace and some temples just because they were there, but they are quite literally everywhere and as I don’t have a lot of use for religion or monarchy, I left most of them for others to see and enjoy.

·      I went for a huge walk along the river, out of the main city, across the river to where most tourists don’t go and saw the city change from very clean, to very dirty, to something in the middle. This city will change so much in the next 10 years and you can feel it everywhere you go and everywhere you look. Good for them!

·      I went on a riverboat cruise, which wasn’t much of a cruise, more like a big circle on the river, but it was nice all the same to see the city from the water when all the lights come on. I had walked about 12km in 30+ degree temperatures, so it was good to sit down and let the breeze come in over the water.

·      I went to the Central Market, where I posted a card to you ( I hope it arrived by now), bought some crappy souvenirs and was amazed by how much stuff they can cram in a very small space. Imagine the Canberra Centre, but with 10x as many stores and 100x as many people, I don’t think you’d enjoy it. I ran into Louisa from Italy who I never met before. She needed some help finding a bookstore but couldn’t figure out how to get her phone GPS to work. She made me think of you, so I helped her navigate to the store as it was only 10 minutes out of my way and helped her a lot, so that was my good deed for the day done!

 

My hotel was very good, I had a very large room on the 8^th floor and could see most of the city from there, with construction going on everywhere and a whole Buddhist temple complex with 50 or so buildings and shrines outside my window. The weather was great (hot, but dry), the people very polite and friendly and everything so cheap that I simply couldn’t spend more that $30 per day even if I tried.

 

Traffic was also very interesting. There are so many tuktuk taxis and cars all jostling for position that you’d think there’d be accidents all the time, but everyone seems to know what to do. I guess it only looks like chaos to outsiders, haha. I figured out quickly that you should ignore the lights and just step into traffic. People will slow down or go around you, but if you don’t, you’ll be standing there for a long time because they don’t stop until they reach their destination.

 

The government team we worked with already told us they want us to come back and if I am available, I’d love to do this again, maybe in a different country. What an adventure!

 

Yumi’s job and activities

Yumi is busy as always. She went on a trip with her team to Roma and Charleville (500km west of Brisbane) to meet with community groups, service providers and even the mayor of Charleville for their Workforce project and had a very productive time of it. She gets along very well with her team and since the last letter I wrote, she hired two additional team members and collected even more projects that they are starting on.

 

So much has happened and has been built since she started in 2024, that I wouldn’t be surprised if the next two years are even bigger and better than the first two. She’s still got three more years in the contract, so let’s see how far she can run. She seems to be enjoying herself and I couldn’t be prouder of how much good she does for the mental health sector. My jobs are generally for businesses who just work for money (they say they don’t, but we all know that’s the #1 priority) while she and her team actually make the world a better place.

 

She’s still enjoying the dance groups she’s part of and with the third year of the Common People Dance Project starting in a few weeks, she’ll be dancing even more. I enjoy the Common People performances a lot more than the Choo La La performances, but I’ll be there anyway, it’s great to see how much fun she’s having!

 

Things are going well on the greyhound front too. Two weeks ago, we had 9 dogs come down from Rockhampton on a Saturday, that’s 9 dogs out of racing, so always a good day! Fun fact, the ACT has banned dog racing, yay! I hope other states will follow soon, but given it’s a billion dollar industry, it will be a while I think.

 

Fortunately, Yumi now has a coordinator-colleague in the North, Dee, who took care of the distribution of six of the doggos, so we only had to organise for three of them. One got picked up immediately when the trailer arrived, and the other two stayed with us overnight. The boy was fine, a gentle giant who was just out of racing and excited about everything. The girl was a bit more work and a very rare barking greyhound, which she demonstrated a few times throughout the night, haha. We know to ignore it, but let’s just say we both needed a nap later the next day. Dash also thought it was all a bit much, but he’s always very friendly and a good host. By the end of the morning, both dogs had gone on to their foster families and we could finally take a break too.

 

We spend last Saturday at a dog market (where you can learn more about the breeds and buy all sorts of stuff for your dogs) near the coast, which is always great. I stupidly got a bit sunburnt, but we all had a great time with the visiting greyhounds and all the other pooches walking by. This coming weekend we’re doing a Bunnings BBQ to raise funds for the charity, it’s a complete mess with getting things organised, so I am helping out where I can, but even I am getting confused with where all the materials are. Then again, we always seem to make it work, so why would this time be any different!?

 

Work update

In other news, for the first time in 28 years working, I was made redundant last week! It was the strangest thing really, but not a surprise. Before going to Cambodia, I had already discussed with my manager that I felt the organisation needed something else, more project than change based support, that I was there too early and they needed to do some other things first for me to do my best work. I am sure you’ve heard me say this before, it appears to be a theme in my career… I spoke to a few other people in the business and they all agreed with my assessment of the organisation, so I put together a plan that didn’t include me moving forward. I was planning to leave by end of May at the latest, but they didn’t wait that long.

 

We had just gone live that day with a project that had been six months in the works and a smaller project as well. One moment I am preparing a strategic plan for my manager, the next I am talking to the head of HR about how the business is letting my manager Chris, my last team member Marty and myself go effective immediately. Righto!

 

Fine by me, because this wasn’t going to end well anyway and I got paid until end of May, so I feel like it’s a fair deal, but handled a bit clumsily and with a weird sense of urgency. Well, that’s in the past now and one week later, I think this is the best possible outcome. I am proud of what I achieved and enjoyed working with the people, learned a lot and got to do most of the things I said I would do. These things happen, no big deal, I’ll take a break and get some other things done before moving on to the next thing, whatever that may be 😊.

 

The yard project - part 4

Speaking of getting things done, I’ve started on removing the strip of grass that simply wouldn’t grow because it sits under the roof overhang. We decided to fill the space with river pebbles, 5 tonnes of them apparently! The past few days I’ve been stripping back about 50m2 of grass around the house, which was hard but good work and I think for someone who isn’t a professional gardener, I did a pretty good job. I even put up some string to help me keep a straight line, immediately bagged all the dirt and sods and also fixed a patch that I hope will take well. I still hate gardening, but I think the end-result will look better and…less grass to mow, haha!

 

Next week will be the hard part where the pebbles arrive on Monday and I get to walk them into the yard. I could go with a wheelbarrow, but I don’t want to ruin the grass, so I am planning on using two buckets instead and do about 250 trips up and down the path and driveway until it’s all done. My poor legs are already quite sore from all the bending and squatting, only fair that my shoulders should get a bit sore as well. For once, I was smart in my planning and didn’t start the work before I had the Bunnings BBQ, because having sore muscles while standing for 8 hours selling sausages is not a happy day.

 

Lots of Small Things

It’s been s strange couple of weeks and I am still puzzling some of it together, so instead of writing a rambling account of everything I’ve been up to, here are some short notes to keep you up to date on what happened in our lives.

 

·      I’ve been getting so much done around the house in the first few days being unemployed! Fixed the fence in a few places, cleaned and meshed the gutters, cleaned my office, put new strips on our doors to keep the mice and snakes out and re-organised my tools, always so therapeutic!

·      Yumi had a 30cm Easter Brown in the house while I was away and they are seriously deadly. Even the young ones come out of the egg with enough venom to kill an adult. Fortunately one of my fire mates is a snake catcher, so it was caught and taken off within the hour and Dash got a trip to the vet only to find that he probably hadn’t even noticed and definitely wasn’t bitten. So glad we have insurance, because that test was $650, but after insurance only $130…)

·      The new car is doing great and with the whole fuel situation we’re having right now, it feels pretty good to drive electric. I checked and our fuel cost has gone down by 80%, yay!

·      Our June Japan trip is coming up and planning it has been a lot of fun, we have the tickets and accommodation sorted, by the time the next letter comes around I’ll tell you more about what we have planned.

·      I passed my second exam for Karate and am now the proud owner of the orange belt. Something has shifted for me for the better. I get less frustrated and enjoy it more. It’s almost been a year since I started and I only considered quitting 57 times so far, but I am still there twice a week and get a bit less bad at it every time.

·      All our family and friends are doing well, getting life done, finishing school for some of the kids, finding new jobs for the adults and my parents have multiple trips with the caravan planned, over the next few months, good for them, I am so glad they get to travel when they want now!

·      Its’ been quiet with the fires fortunately, giving us more time to train and practice. I’ve made a few proposals for how we can do things differently and introduced a phone group where we can share information and updates which seems to work very well. It can be a bit frustrating at times how slow things move, but the I remind myself it’s only volunteering and all is good with the world again.

·      I’ve been assigned a new mentee in the Mentoring program for the Change Management Institute and we’ll start running a few events soon, so that’s all kicking off too. I didn’t go to networking drinks at the end of March. I was just back from Cambodia and wanted to go to Karate and be at home with Yumi more than hang out with my Change friends, but there will be enough opportunities in the months to come, I am sure.

·      I’ve also signed up to help organise the seventh edition of the Australasian Change Days or ACDC as we jokingly call it. It’s become a fun group of friends who like to do good things for the community and I consider it a privilege to be part of it. It’s shaping up to be another good one and a good way to spend my time.

·      Over Easter Yumi and I started playing a video game together again, which has been years and I always enjoy it, even though she takes for-ev-er to make any decision, it’s a great way to spend time together. I had bought the game to play by myself, but realised a few hours in I would enjoy it more playing with her and fortunately she agreed to join in on the fun. As usual she’s the smart wizard and I am the dumb but mighty warrior, so we’re essentially playing out our real life, haha!

·      Our house apparently has gone up in value by 25%, which is always good news, but of course now we also get to pay 25% higher council rates... Oh well, it’s all fun and games on paper, we’ll see what happens when/if we sell in a few years from now. We’d still have to buy in the market then, so we’ll just keep saving and paying of the mortgage as fast as we can.

 

Okay, I think that’s most of what’s been going on for us. Be well, stay warm and safe, I’ll write again early June.

 

Gilbert

Letter to Marlis December- January 2026

 

Bellbird Park, 10 February 2026

 

Hi Marlis,

The new year sure is off to a flying start with heatwaves, bushfires, the US invading other countries (again), it’s enough to turn off the news and just listen to music on the radio! I hope you got to spend a lot of time in the garden, away from all the excitement, just getting along with the plants and the birds😊. I have lots of adventures to share from the past two months, so I’ll dive straight in.

 

Car troubles

We were almost ready to go on holiday up North with our trusty Ford Escape (who we call Eski) and then she developed issues with the engine. It was all downhill from there. First, we brought her to a service garage, but they couldn’t find anything, then we brought her to a ‘real’ repair shop and they found it was a leaking head gasket.

 

This is bad news on the best days, because the whole engine head needs to come off to fix it and then you still have to figure out what was actually broken to make it leak. All in all, it was going to cost $6-8,000, possibly more. She was only 8 years old and we bought her practically new, so we were not expecting this at all. A mechanic friend of ours said it would be smarter to write her off, so instead of the $12,000 that she would be worth if her engine was fine, we got $1,250 for the recycling parts. Ouch. And then we forgot to ask for the plates, so the wrecker got the money for the rego that we’d already paid, boo! Oh well, lesson learned, but I hope we never have to go through this again.

 

It was quite emotional for us as we’ve had a lot of adventures with Eski and she’s always served us well. I’ve spent so much time in her driving to and from work, on holidays, volunteer events, day trips and driving around greyhounds to their new homes. I did get to drive her onto the tow truck myself, but it was a sad Friday, and I was sad for the whole following week too.

At the same time, we had to find a replacement vehicle and my heart was not in it at all. Fortunately, Yumi had her mind set on an Electric Vehicle (EV) for a while and had looked around for what was available. I wasn’t very excited about the whole process and the amount of money they cost because everyone wants one now. An average model easily goes for 40, 50 or even $60,000 new. No thanks! We landed on a Build Your Dreams, the Atto 3 model for a much friendlier price of $33,000 for the 2023 model. It’s only 2.5 years old and has 16,000km on the odometer, so we feel it’s a pretty good deal.

 

Like most EVs, it’s from China and gets the best reviews from all the car review magazines. We’ve called it Zappy and it is a very fun car to drive, be it a bit smaller than Eski and almost completely quiet, because there is no engine, just a big battery! It has incredible acceleration, so now we’re constantly watching our speed, but all the funky new technology helps. It also comes with a full sunroof, many safety features (so many!) and the best part is that ‘fuelling up’ with electricity costs a few dollars, instead of the $70-80 every week, nice!

 

 

 

 

Then we brought our other car in for a service and found out it needed new brakes, new tyres, new sparkplugs and a few other things to the tune of $2,400. Sigh… we thought it would be just an oil change and a few other bits! We want to keep Polly (It’s a small Volkswagen Polo) in good repair, as he will not be making as many kilometres as before, now that we’ve swapped cars again. Yumi drives Zappy to work, but because we had one car for a month or so, I have started cycling to the train station again and found it’s actually just as fast as driving and I can be there in 11 minutes and get a bit of a workout. Not too big of a workout though, it’s an e-bike, so the electromotor does most of the work, haha.

 

Solar Batteries

Since last year we’ve been looking to get a solar battery installed, because we have so many solar panels that generate a lot of electricity. When the unexpected cost of the new car came around, we weren’t sure we’d go ahead, but I ran the numbers and our plans should all still work out, so we’re getting them in May-ish of this year.

 

We’ve experienced a few power outages over the past year, three or four I think, with one lasting nearly 20 hours and those batteries will be able to power our whole house for 3-4 days or even up to 6 if we only use what we really have to. There are some government grants available too and with the additional charger for the car, it’s not cheap at just under $20,000 but it will increase the value of the house and also give us the reassurance that everything will keep running, no matter what happens.

 

Thanks to smart technology that comes with it, you can even make money selling back electricity to the grid. My friend Michael has had them for about a year now and uses 10 times more energy than us (they have a pool, 2 kids, 2 EVs) but still only pays $3/month. That’s right, three whole dollars per month. He calculated they’d recover the investment in 4-5 years, which will be longer for us, but it’s nice knowing we’re getting all this clean energy from the sun, without burning fossil fuels.

 

Painting the fence

Oh my goodness, what a project it was to paint the fence. All 85 meters of it, some parts even 3 times! I did it in the week of Christmas, because I worked until the 20^th and the weather was going to be bad from the Wednesday, so I started on Saturday and spent 3 days and twice the amount of paint I thought I would. I used a battery powered spray gun and it worked very well, aside from having to change the battery every 15 minutes or so. Good thing I have 7 from all the different appliances!

 

 

 

 

I could work from 6 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon and then it would be so hot (37 degrees) that the paint would instantly dry in the spray gun nozzle, so that made it easier to just stop and cool down inside. I could have continued with a brush, but the spray gun is so much faster and 7 hours of non-stop painting is a lot! I think I drank 5-6 litres of water every day, next time I’ll do this in any other season but Summer!

 

The last day, the temperature had dropped considerably and the rain didn’t come, so all of a sudden it went twice as fast, which was exactly the boost I needed, because I was pretty much over everything to do with paint by then. The end result is pretty good, if I say so myself. There are a few spots that will need a touch up, but for a first time, I think I did a good job.

  

Yeppoon Holiday

Our holiday to Rockhampton and Yeppoon was a good time away. We had to get a rental car that would fit everything, so we hired a Nissan Xtrail and drove in comfort for the two weeks we were there, with enough space for Dash to move around in the back seat.

 

We stayed at a horse farm, that’s somehow only had 2 horses and 1 pony, and enjoyed the peace and quiet in our very comfortable shed-house or shouse as they called it. It had everything we needed; a decent bed and good water pressure and the internet speed was better than what we get at home, haha.

 

 

We didn’t get up to much, although I drove to the beach every morning to walk and practice my karate moves. The beach was long enough to walk for an hour  one-way, but I only walked half of that every day, going back in time to pick up Yumi and Dash for the morning walk. The sunrises were worth the early start and it didn’t surprise me to see 20-30 people there with me, all with their own thoughts, their dog and the waves.

 

Nothing really happens in Yeppoon, which suited us just fine and the weather was good, so we hung out around the house, read a lot, slept some more, went on a few daytrips to local landmarks and not much else. We did visit the Love A Greyhound facility in Rockhampton where Yumi’s ‘boss’ Jo lives. It was great to see the whole setup with the kennels and the doggos looking very well taken care of.

 

We decided to come home a few days earlier to relax some more at home, which suited Dash just fine too. We took our time on the way back, stopping every few hours to give Dash a walk, get some food and just enjoy the day, which was really nice. Yumi organised trivia for the last 3 hours and those flew by! We’ve now come to realise that Dash would much rather just be at home, surrounded by his own things and familiar smells, so for our next trip, we’ll find a good dog/house sitter and leave him at home while we travel, a better experience for everyone!

 

 

New lawnmower and snipper

I finally buckled and bought a fuel-powered lawn mower and a much more powerful whipper snipper. With the grass the way it is, the electric one just didn’t cut it (pun intended) and the lighter whipper snipper was also struggling. The new tools rip straight through and what used to be a 2+ hour job, I can now get done in just under an hour. I still hate mowing the lawn, but there’s much less time spent grumbling about it for sure 😊.

 

When we got back early from holidays the grass has grown quite a bit, so I got into it with the old Ozito electro lawnmower and just like with the previous one, one of the wheels broke at the axle, but this one also decided to completely fall apart on the side where you adjust the height. Ozito is notorious for not having spare parts, so I just cracked it and brought them straight to the recycling centre and bought the new gear. I thought it was going to be a hassle with the fuel and oil, but it’s not any harder than maintaining chainsaws and I know how to do that!

 

The whipper snipper is a serious piece of powerful equipment that gets quite heavy after a while but man does it get the job done. Yumi has started helping out with yard work, which is great, but we might have to switch roles because this one is quite the workout on your arms and back, but so is the mower which ways 4x as much as the old one, but I am hoping that means it will not break so easily.

 

New garden stairs

In yet other garden news, we also had the garden stairs replaced. The previous ones were really on their last legs and very wobbly already, so we got Dave the Carpenter to come in across 7 days and build us a new one out of the same timber the front fence is made of. It will probably outlast the house and us, but no one will fall off it and it will not wobble with even the heaviest load. Another plus is that now they are finally angled straight towards the hous instead of the previous ones, which were oddly angled off to the left, but now that they are gone, it’s hard to imagine what was there before.

 

The grass is doing quite well, with very few weeds and as long as I mow it every week in summer, it’s not to bad. With the fence painted and the stairs done, it’s starting to look nice. We still have the plants to do and will probably have to cut out some of the dead grass and replace it with pebbles under the roof overhang because nothing wants to grow there, not even weeds!

 

 

 

 

Holiday plans

This year Yumi and I are getting serious about planning our free time. With the busy lives we both have, holidays have been a thing on the to-do list that keeps getting pushed back until another year is gone and we’ve not moved one step beyond Queensland.

 

In early June we plan to go to Japan to visit Osaka and Kyoto, a mix of history and modern culture for 10 days. I’ve wanted to go back to Japan for a long time after visiting Tokyo in 2016. Yumi’s mum is from Osaka, so that’ll be extra special to see where she grew up even though it will be very different from the 1950s and 1960s of course. I get excited just thinking about it, especially because it’s not very far away on the calendar and only a 9-hour flight with a minimal time difference, so we get to enjoy more of our holiday without jet-lag.

 

The plan was then to also go to the Netherlands in September, but it just didn’t work with the schedules. We also thought to switch Japan and the Netherlands, but that didn’t work too. My parents had already booked their holidays for the year and we’ve got work/sport/volunteering/house things going on as well. It doesn’t help that in the holiday periods everything doubles or triples in price on both sides and the weather in October/November in the Netherlands isn’t great either. Next year perhaps!

 

Now we’re looking at Fiji, or New Zealand, or Vanuatu, and I hope we get to do some scuba diving together again, those were always the best trips! By the time I write you again, we’ll have a plan 😊.

 

Cambodia trip

I’ll be going to Cambodia from 13-22 March to deliver two three-day change management workshops with Deakin Business School. We’ll be a team of three lecturers working with two groups of 30 people, all professionals who studied in Australia at some point. I think it will be great fun and such a cool opportunity! As usual, the Australian government is taking forever to get things sorted, but we’ve got a high-level plan of what we want to teach and who does what.

 

McNab (my actual job)  has been very supportive, which is great of them, especially my manager immediately said yes, which he really didn’t have to. I will arrive in Phnom Phen (the capital) on Friday the 13^th, then we work Saturday, Sunday Monday, I’ll work for my real job on Tuesday and Wednesday (only a 3-hour time difference), then the second group on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and on Sunday I’ll fly back to be back in Brisbane from 6.30am on Monday.

 

I think I’ll just stay in the city and see what tourist-like things I can do in the afternoons and evenings. I considered going to see Angkor Wat, a world-famous temple complex, but it’s 350km and a 6-hour car-ride on-way, which I wouldn’t want to do by myself anyway. If I go to see it, it’ll be with Yumi.

 

Work

I’ve been keeping busy at work over the Christmas period and start of the new year. Things are finally starting to pick up some pace and I am keen to get into the details with the business. However, my manager is telling us to go slow and I think he ‘reads the room’ very well, so we’ll do as he asks and go slowly-slowly. I’ve built most things that we need by now and have been involving the team every step of the way, so to me it’s just a matter of pressing play and we’re ready to go.

 

I don’t mind having a team of people to lead, but am also not really enjoying it yet. We’re very much in the stage of everyone finding out how everyone else works and everyone’s busy, so it will take a while for things to come together. I might soon be hiring an additional person on the team, so then we’ll be five and if I get my way, by the end of the year we’llbe seven or maybe even nine, depending on how much change they really want to get done.

 

What I’ve come to see is that everyone loves the concept of change, but the actual work involved in getting to that better outcome, that’s not nearly as exciting. I understand that very well and there’s no point in pushing people beyond their limits, so we’ll manage expectation, as we like to say in the change profession, and see how much we can get done this year.

The past few months a lot of new people (including me) have joined and everyone (but not me) wants to share their ideas and opinions. I quietly got involved in a few projects, started testing some tools and frameworks and kept my head down and busy while everyone else was making noise. Things are much calmer now and in a few weeks the plans for the year will be done, projects will  start to get delivered and then things will slowly fall into place. It really is a marathon and not a sprint!

 

Yumi’s work and volunteering

Yumi got a promotion at work, which is funny because I predicted it during our holiday and the Monday after we started work she came home and shared that she’ll go into a more strategic role immediately. She will still be leading her team (half the small organisation reports to her already) but they’ll hire a new person to take on some of her work, so she has time for the bigger picture items.

 

I worry that she’s already very busy, but this is how she wants to do things and it is her work, so I just try to support her where possible because we’re team 😊. She’s going on a weeklong trip to the Western part of Queensland, near Roma, at the beginning of March, to meet local mental health service providers and meet some of the organisation’s members. Fortunately they are flying, because it’s a 5-hour drive one-way.

 

It’s been blessedly calm(er) with the greyhound fosters and adoptions now that a new coordinator has joined the team and that lady is just as action-oriented as Yumi, so things get done quickly. We also spent about 6 hours on Dash’s birthday (Australia Day) doing an inventory of all the dog-related items we have at home for the charity, which fills a complete room by now. Last week we went on a greyhound walk and there were a record 17 dogs. That’s a lot of tails and snoots! I think there’s an event at a pet store next weekend and a charity BBQ soon as well, but I’ll wait to see if I need to help out with any of that, always on standby.

 

 

Rural Fire Service

A small team of my firefighting mates and me are planning to organise a renovation in our fire station to create dressing rooms so we don’t have to take our fire gear home to store it. I’ve made an inventory and did some measurements and once management has had a look at the plan, I hope we can get started. Even if we end up not going ahead, it will give us a chance to do a very thorough clean of a lot of the spaces. I counted how many bottles of (donated) water we have and it’s over 3,000. Enough to give every active firefighter 10 bottles every month for at least 18 months. It takes up so much space we can’t put anything else there. I have a plan to get rid of it, or at least store it all in one place.

 

We (surprisingly) also were allowed to start a group chat on our phones where we can share pictures, tips and stories about fires and other activities. It took forever, but finally I just said I would do it and it was done in 24 hours and now we’re having a lot of fun with it during and after training nights.

 

It’s been quiet with the fires, only a few small ones that were quickly under control and I hope it stays that way in the next few months. I am also hoping to progress in my training this year, but like everything in the fire service, it takes forever to get organised, so I am keeping my expectations low 😊.

 

Small things

·      6 February marked 12 years in Australia for us, wow time has flown by, but I think I say that every year. We went out for diner to celebrate and the Japanese food wasn’t very special, but we had fun reliving some of the memories and listing all the adventures we’d been on and plan to go on in the years to come.

·      Karate practice continues as well, I don’t always feel like going, but if I can get out of my own way, I actually enjoy the training. It’s been 9 months now and become part of my life, just a thing I do (badly) on Monday and Wednesday. In a few weeks I might grade for my second belt, the orange one this time, but there is some more work to do.

·      Works is ramping up for the Australasian Change Days, or ACDC 2026 as we call it. We’re a team of 5 this time, with one previous team member from Melbourne joining again ad it will be great fun to get things organised before we deliver a three-day spectacular in August!

·      Book sales for my new book have been okay so far, with 57 copies sold, but 43 to go until I hit the 100 mark. After that I consider it a success and will move on to other projects. I still want to do a card game and the idea of offering an online course will not leave me alone!

·      Dash gave me a good scare a few days ago. We were on an early morning walk (5.15am) and he had just done a bit of running around in an open field. I was about to connect his lead and collar when he spotted a hare taking off and that’s when I saw him run faster than ever before. He didn’t get it, but he was gone and out of sight within 20 seconds. I ran after him, but despite him being 8 years old now, I think he easily went 65-70km an hour. Good thing there were no roads or cars nearby! When we got home, he was sore for the next two days and couldn’t even jump into the car, but I am sure he’s had many dreams since then of the hare he almost caught.

·      Our neighbours who were planning to move to America have now moved to the Sunshine Coast instead (he will continue the business by flying up and down). Seeing how much junk came out of that house I was amazed they could even fit in there, haha. The house and yard look the best I’ve seen since we moved here, let’s hope our new neighbours are just as quiet and friendly.

·      The volunteering with the Change Management Institute is about to kick-off with a very busy year. We had a team lunch on Sunday the 8^th and plans were made, so let’s see what we can organise for the community this year. 11 February is Global Change Management Day, no idea who decided that, but I’ll be sure to wear extra festive socks that day!

·      I got another certificate done to stay up to date, this time it was my Change Management Master accreditation which proves that I actually know what I am talking about. It’s part of my experiment where I now have one from the Change Management Institute and will get another from the Association of Change Management Professionals and then compare the differences. I have lots of opinions on accreditation and certificates, but thought that if I have opinions, I should at least have done it for myself 😊

 

Okay, that’s it for now I think, I’ll write again once I am back from Cambodia and back at work in early April, be well and stay cool until the Cold Snap shows up!

 

Gilbert