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 20th
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 13th,
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 8th 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
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