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!

 

 

 

Springfield Lakes, 6 May 2023

 

Hi Marlis,

 Another two months gone, I hope you are doing well. The cold has certainly struck Canberra after ANZAC day, as it does! I just checked and there was a sheep grazier warning for the cold weather and a temperature of 1 degree right now. (it’s 8.30am and 17 degrees here already). Make sure to stay warm and get some sunshine when you can.

 t’s been busy but maybe not so eventful, but I say that every time and a few hours later I’ve written pages full of words, so let’s get started and see what makes it into the letter. I’ve included some loose pictures of Dash this time and will try to send some more in the next letter too.

Work

I’ve been with University of Queensland longer now than any employer over the past 7 years or so and I think I will manage to complete the year. The job is not at all what I had imagined and while I am entertained most days, I don’t really get to do what I was hired for. My team find me very useful because I get things done while they are too busy for their own good, but while that’s all good and well, it’s not change management work.

After 7 months of waiting, we finally got that system contract signed for the project I was hired to be involved in and things are starting to move, at last! There’s not that much more for me to do at this stage, aside from building a whole training module for the new system users, but that’s not very high on the list of priorities at the moment. My small division is in a bit of a state with people moving into different roles, new people coming on board and so much work that it’s hard to get anything done. And then there’s me who doesn’t have too much to do and finds time for everything and everyone but still gets to leave on time. Life could be worse 😊.

I’ve met my new director, Joanna, and she seems fine, but will only arrive in July, so we’re on our own for another 8 weeks or so. Not that we had much need for a director so far, we’ve been managing quite well without one, but everyone seems to agree this is not a role we can do without. I also organised another send off for a colleague who was a bit invisible as it turned out, despite being there for nearly 5 years. With the help of some colleagues, we managed to put a nice send-off together and she seemed to appreciate it all. I really hope that I will be the next one to leave and no one else does in the meantime, but let’s wait and see.

It's a time of budget pressures at UQ and many other universities and they keep making the same short-term decision mistakes when it comes to priorities. I am very impressed with the professionalism of my direct colleagues but quite underwhelmed with the lack of strategic vision and courage of my executive leadership team. Then again, I don’t have to do their job so it’s easy for me to say that, haha. They are trying to get back to a pre-COVID world and circumstances that no longer exist and have never had to cut down on cost like this before, so they honestly don’t know what they are doing.

I’ve promised my acting director that I’ll stick around for a bit longer to help with some strategic matters and preparation for the new Director, unless something really good comes up. I’ve not actively started looking yet and think I am happy to stay for a while longer, it’s a great place to work, but there’s no future for me at UQ. I tried to convince the leadership team to set up a central change office and let me lead it. They like the idea, but there’s no money for it and that’s the end of the line for me. I can’t go anywhere else where it’s better and in my team I can’t do what I came to do because there’s no capacity. Oh well, sometimes that’s just how things played out. It looked good when I started, now it’s all slowly falling apart and I have move on to something else.

Nothing to be too sad about though, I’ve made significant change of sorts happen for my team, helped heaps of people, set a new standard for change and how it can be done and probably the coolest thing I will deliver before I leave is a staff training course for change management which will be self-directed, online and so much better than what I made for Deakin a few years ago. I am working on it with some other enthusiasts and when we’re done I think I’ll be proud of the end result. I’ve really enjoyed working on it so far. It’s only 10% of what UQ needs to be better at change management, but it’s 10% more than what they have right now 😊. Maybe in a few years they’ll be ready to set up a change office and we’ll see how things go then.

The staff mentoring program I help out on is going really well and the participants’ comments have been really positive and this week we organised a small networking event and people seemed to enjoy that too. I will probably step down from the organising committee once this is done because it’s all a bit messy and I feel I’ve given a lot and got an equal amount out of it. Okay, that’s enough boring talk about work things, let’s move on to more fun matters!

 

SES

It’s been quite the experience over the past few months going through the probationary period yet again. The training was fun enough and I even learned a some things, but most of it was really a repetition of the things I’d been doing for the past 5 years or so. I finally got my gear, as in everything you could possibly want to wear in the colour orange or blue, and it feels good to wear orange again!

I’ve been travelling to other units (they call them groups here) over the past few weeks to get my required training done and even though it all feels like a huge waste of time, I’ve been with SES long enough to know it’s easier to just go with the flow. Like in Victoria, the people are all very nice and friendly, you always have the one random slightly snarky one but I know that if you ignore them they’ll go away or calm down, either way that’s a win 😊. Last Wednesday we had the monthly maintenance night and I could finally start what I do best: cleaning up. I grabbed the vacuum and got busy with the vehicles and then moved on to the storage area where I really just put things in their place, swept the floor and emptied some bins and it looked so much better for it. I’ll need some serious time in that room to make it really good, but it was the first night out of probation and I didn’t want to overdo it.

This unit/group’s response profile is very different from my previous unit. We used to go out to lots of storm damage and tree jobs, but this unit is more about the forensic land searches (assisting police) and missing persons, who seem to get lost in the nearby mountains a lot. We recently had a crew go out and they were busy for 16 hours hiking through the bush and back with some people who misjudged their fitness. Good times…

Our group leader is a friendly guy and he’s trying to get some of the training I already did recognised, just so I don’t have to sit through training again and again which is nice because I can probably do better things with my time, like writing letters to you, reading a book and playing video games. Basically anything else. It’s also good fun to have my SES mate from Victoria, Michael, there as well. Sometimes we just share a look or story afterwards about how things are similar but also very different and have a good chuckle. Give it a few more months and we’ll fit right in, I hope.

Yumi’s volunteering and work

Yumi’s been keeping busy with work, which is picking up a bit with return clients wanting some work done and new clients getting started on their projects. Her other job as the volunteer coordinator for the greyhound charity is almost like a full-time job right now. She’s moving dogs around, picking up food, running a small warehouse with logistics services for foster carers from our garage and spare room and doing lots of admin too. She seems to be enjoying herself a lot and I enjoy that she’s having fun. This morning we went to a place where a different animal charity hands out surplus food from large pet store chains and food producers. And we’re not talking a few kilos, we got 25x 12kg bags of kibble, which retails for $2,500 or so. We also got 60 boxes with 6 bags each at $30 a pop of very expensive treats that had gone past their expiry (the dog will never know), so yeah, that’s about $11,000 retail value. And they had much, much more where that came from. It’s very heart warming that these big businesses don’t just dump it all at the tip, but give it to charities instead. Food and vet bills are their major costs and it helps them stay in business for sure.

She and I both have learned a lot about how this charity business all works and it’s quite interesting and amazing to see how much people will do for free for their greyhound friends. Yesterday Yumi was out and about picking up and dropping of a dog, then today she’s doing another drop off and then tomorrow she’s at a market and doing a meet and greet later that morning. Well, as long as she’s having fun, I am all for it. She’s got her whole inventory organised in the spare room and with the food in the garage it’s really mostly out of sight and out of the way so I don’t mind and Dash enjoys sniffing her up and down when she’s been around other dogs.

The other people in the foster and volunteer team are becoming her dog walking friends and Dash has been on a few walks in various parts of Brisbane now and really enjoys being with the other dogs. He doesn’t really interact with them that much, but it’s good for his social skills as he’s still a bit awkward around other dogs and people. I am fine with letting him be a dog, but Yumi of course has different ideas and expectations, so I just let her do her thing and only object when she starts to go a bit overboard. Yep, we’re just like real parents, but we get to walk our child on a leash and put him in the trunk of the cat, which apparently is not allowed for children beyond the age of two… 😊

 

Diving day-trip

We got our scuba gear serviced for way too much money again and now we’re committed to go diving at least 1 day every month to make it worth the investment. So off we went to Tweed Heads (near Gold Coast) for an easy dive to get back into things but things went a bit different than expected. We weren’t expecting much because it was a shore dive and it had rained quite a bit the previous day, but hey, we were keen to see if all our gear still worked and if we remembered how to dive after 14 months.

Turns out that we still know what to do  but the visibility was so bad that you could not see more than half a meter in front of you. It was a fairly large group and we kept losing everyone else. Well, not Yumi and me, we learned to dive in these exact circumstances, so we were fine, but it wasn’t great. There was also quite some swell and with the new people kicking up clouds of dust it was a bit of a nightmare. After 45 minutes we called it quits and decided to come back in a few weeks to go again.

It was very convenient that at this site you can just walk in from the shore and that it was in the middle of the day instead of some impossibly early time in the morning, which worked really well for us with Dash and his routine. Next time we’ll know what to expect and after a few more dives we might just go and dive just the two of us along the coast which should be fine. I took the opportunity to buy some new gear, like the snorkel I lost on Christmas Island, a dust cap, a retractor that broke and after 15 years some brand new diving shoes that are ridiculously comfortable. I wore them around the house and your feet get quite warm(it’s neoprene/rubber, it breathes 0%) but it’s like wearing heavy socks! I love them, and so does Dash who thought they smelled a lot like his chewing toys. I had to rescue them when he took off with one for some more chewing fun on his mat, haha.

 

Landcare volunteering

Another thing we got involved with is the Springfield Lakes Nature Society which is a small group of nature enthusiasts who look after the local flora and fauna. We thought it would be fun to learn some new and local things and we were not wrong. We needed to join their monthly meeting to be accepted as members and it was one of the most hilarious meetings we’d ever been in. We all laughed so hard about how things were done and all the banter, but at the end of the day we all had our tasks and things to contribute.

They are the same people who organise the annual ‘Clean-up Australia Day’ that we took part in early March and from what I can tell, they do a pretty good job at getting the public to engage in catching cane toads and removing invasive plat and tree species.

One person is the bird-guy, another is a national authority on frogs and toads and the two people running the volunteer group have a park named after them, so they must have done something right! Yumi and I are really just there to pull weeds and be helpful in any way we can.

On Mother’s Day I will help run a stall where the bug guy, yes, we have one of those too, will do a show and tell for kids and I am supposed to look after the materials and make sure they don’t get taken home by more enterprising youngsters. I can definitely do that, but am not allowed to punch kids or put them in a headlock which takes a little bit of the fun out of it, but no one said anything about tripping them up and name calling so I can let my inner 4-year old run amok if I play my cards right! 😊.

We also took part in a land care/ bush clean up morning and that was good fun. As you probably remember, I know next to nothing about plants of trees and at the end of the event I was not much wiser, but learned the names of 4 new (to me) plants and had pulled a ton of weeds out of the ground. You could really tell that we’d done a lot of work with the 10-15 or so volunteers and it doesn’t get much better than that for my clean up fetish.  

 

Change Management Institute activities

I’m happy to be back at CMI, doing a bit of professional volunteering by creating interesting events for others. We’re setting up a mentoring program that is almost an exact copy of what we did in Victoria in 2018/19 and that was both successful and a lot of fun. I managed to smash out the whole program start to finish in a few hours, but then the team needs to get on board and organised which always takes longer than anyone (but me) seems to think. I’m being very clear about what I will and will not do and everyone seems fine with that. Next week we’re having after work drinks which is always a good time to meet new and known faces and see how they are travelling.

We’re also planning to do another round of Change Awards, which is mostly about showing appreciation for people contributing to the community. I offered to write the plan to get it done and had 10 pages before I knew it. It sounds easy but there is a lot to think of before we get to hand over the trophy. Like with the mentoring program, it’ll take a while to get organised, but at least we have a plan now. It was great fun to do it in Melbourne, but I always felt like we could have done more and better, so this will be an opportunity to do exactly that if it happens at all.

 

Small stuff

• ·    Dash is living his best life as he does. Lots of excitement, snoozies, snacks and walks and not a care in the world. I am really enjoying having a dog, even if it was unplanned and a bit impractical at times. We’ve started introducing him to our friends Kath and Michael who have agreed to look after him when we’re travelling to the Netherlands and this Friday we went for a walk and all went well. They used to have a dog for years and their kids will love him too.
• ·    On the way back from the dive trip I broke my tooth (again) on a popcorn kernel this time, but fortunately I could get the emergency slot at the dentist on Tuesday and I was back to new in no time. She was very impressed that I had stopped drinking soda altogether and I think she made an extra effort to make my tooth look good. 😊
• ·    Friends and family are all doing well, apparently my dad’s youngest brother had some serious heart surgery be he’s recovering well so that’s good for his wife and four children. And himself of course!
• ·    The preparations for our Netherlands trip in July/August are going well. The van is booked, we know where we’re sleeping and we’ve even made a list (they asked for it!) of all the things we eat and drink as a vegetarian and vegan so our mums don’t stress out over what to cook. It's all very lovely and we’re looking forward to seeing everyone again.

Okay that’s me done for the past two months, I’ll write again when it’s the middle of Winter or whatever passes for that here in Brisbane.

Be well, stay warm, enjoy Mother’s Day and feel free to call me if you need to.

Gilbert

Letter to Marlis Jan-Feb 2023

 

Springfield Lakes, 10 March 2023

Hi Marlis,

We’re already in the 3rd month of the year, where did the time go?!   I hope you are doing well and have been keeping out of trouble 😊. It’s been another two eventful months, so let’s get right into it!

Yumi’s new volunteering, sports and work

Yumi’s taken up a coordinator role for a greyhound organisation called: Love A Greyhound, or LAG for short. All of a sudden, it’s a flurry of activity around the house with dogs coming to visit, dogs needing transport, fosters, adopters and delivery people picking up and dropping off dogs, people to talk to and problems to solve. I think she’s enjoying it, but it’s pretty full-on for these first couple of weeks. The lady she’s taking over from is moving out of the area and the other lady is on holidays so instead of 2-3 dogs to look after, she’s organising 5-6! 

Her role is to organise a network of foster carers on the southside of Brisbane, get the dogs to them and then try to get them adopted. The people are all equally lovely, just not quite as organised as Yumi, but they are all volunteers and are doing the best they can. It’s interesting for me to see how this must have been Yumi’s experience of my SES volunteering in Melbourne. She’s gone parts of the weekend, lots of ‘emergencies’ and so many text messages and email and phone calls you’d be thinking they are planning the invasion of a small country! 

It’s good fun to have the dogs come and visit. Well, most of the times, the last one had fleas! She got a good wash and treatment with drops and then stayed outside for the next 6-8 hours with Dash, who looked very unimpressed that he also had to stay outside while he did nothing wrong! It was all sorted in a few hours, and they got along well enough, we washed all the blankets and pillows and that was it for the fleas 😊. 

She’s also taken up sports again, but this time in a group setting. She’s pretty fit already from all the walks with Dash, but is of course using different muscles jumping and dancing around to music so there might have been some (a lot…) of complaints about muscle aches and sore legs… Just wait until she starts her new thing in April where she’ll be joining a dance group who plan to do a performance at the end of the year. Apparently, it’s a very big do of a competition for amateur dancers who put on a whole show and compete for best performance. I am sure she’ll have fun, I am also very glad she’s getting out and about a bit more.

Work has been quieter than she likes, but it does allow her to spend more time on volunteering and sports and the work she is doing, she really enjoys. With our combined income we’re doing just fine, so let her have some fun for a change because she’s always working, working, working. In the meantime, she’s building her network from the ground again, that takes time. She wrote a submission for a government consultation on things I won’t bore you with, but the cool part was that her work got quoted four times, which means it made good sense and helped the discussion along a fair bit. Go Yumi!

Clean up Australia Day

We took part in the Clean up Australia Day activities in the area last weekend and that was good fun. I go around the neighbourhood most mornings during the week with my trusty litter gripper and plastic bag and sometimes I find things that are too big or dirty to carry. On the day, they set up a collection point and stand in various places, so Yumi and I drove around the place picking up the big items first (wooden pallet, small tent, office chair, big plastic tub and various car parts) to drop those off and then went to a more remote area where things just end up but don’t really get cleaned up by council. I think 50% of all the rubbish collected that day came from us, ha-ha, they looked very impressed. We were just happy it was no longer polluting the environment. It’s pretty cool to see people in kayaks out on the lakes pulling up rubbish and so many kids having fun scavenging too, that’s how it gets done! I also signed up for a casual volunteer role to go help clean up areas, plant trees and do other nature-related stuff, sounds like fun. It’s likely nothing comes from it, because these volunteer groups are not very organised most of the time, but I’d be happy to spend the time if they need some help.

Since moving to Springfield Lakes I’ve picked up and handed in 1,215 plastic bottles and packages that raised $121,50 for another Greyhound charity. That’s money that would have gone in the bin otherwise. It’s a very neat system where you can drop off your collected bottles and containers at collection points, they get scanned by a machine and in the end you can decide if you’d like to keep the money or give it to a charity. I have a huge bag that I keep the bottles in outside (they stink quite a bit sometimes) and every 4 weeks or so I hand in about 200+. It keeps the plastic out of the environment and puts money in the charity’s pockets, what’s not to love, right?

Marine Science 

You might remember from last time that I am looking at starting a new degree, in Marine Science, with the idea to one day become involved in conservation of our coast and waters. There’s quite a lot to figure out and I am glad that I didn’t sign up to start in February. Now I have the time to find out how it will work, studying full-time next to work, it’s been 10 years since my last degree, a lot has probably changed. I don’t think it will be an issue doing the two things at the same time, it’s more that I want to be sure that I am making the right choice. What university is the best option? Is this a new career or just an interest? How much will it all cost? What should I do to prepare? What jobs are out there? Will I need this to work in the field or is it better to spend the money on getting experience? So many questions. The way I see it, if you want to be a Marine Scientist, Queensland is one of the best places in the world to do it, so let’s see how far I go!

 I’ve started reading up on the different aspects of Marine Science and have been listening to a podcast (recorded radio episodes) titled: “So, you want to be a Marine Biologist”. The lady who started it wanted to share what it’s really like to work in Marine Science. I’ve listened to about 50 episodes on my morning walks so far and I have learned an enormous amount already and there’s another 50 episodes to go 😊. The main take-away so far is that there is no ‘one path’, you’ll have to work at it, have a bit of luck, get to know people and it helps if you know how to scuba dive. As it happens, those are all things I have or know how to do! I’ve got until May to decide and enrol. Normally I never take that long to decide anything, by then I will surely have figured it out.

Work

It’s been interesting times at work, with lots happening in different places. My director and another manager colleague left 2 days apart in mid-February. Just this week we heard that our new director is about to sign on but will only start in June because she has a 3-month notice period. We seem to be doing fine since January when our previous director sort of checked out, so we should be alright for the next 3 months too. 

It doesn’t impact on my role too much, other than that the team are very busy and hardly have time to think for 5 minutes, let alone think about change management. I had a good chat with my colleague Daphne, who is also Dutch and now acting as our director and we agreed that I am not really doing the work I was hired for, but operate more as an executive officer, running small projects and looking after things no one wants to do or has time for.

I am not sure how long that remains fun, but we’ll see where it goes.

I finally got a chance to speak to my boss’ boss (Chief Operations Officer) about the plan to set up a change management office, but the way things are going with budgets and the fact that it’s been 3 weeks since and I haven’t heard back yet tells me this will not happen. I thought I’d be more upset about it, but I get it, everyone is under a lot of pressure to not spend money and I am asking for a lot of money and people. It’s a good idea to set up a special office for change, but that doesn’t mean it will happen. Let’s wait and see, I expect to hear from him somewhere this month and get asked to implement some watered-down version of the plan. Maybe he’ll surprise me, but I’ll be surprised if it’s something else than the ‘light version’ of the original😊.

The project I am supposed to be working on for the past 6 months, still hasn’t quite started. As in, the contract with the supplier is still not signed, but we’re doing what we can as a project team to prepare for what’s about to come at us. Craig, the new project manager has started and he’s a bit of a special case, but will get the job done and that’s all I really care about. I am not too busy most days and get to do what I want, with no one getting in my way, let’s not complain about that too much, shall we? 

Meanwhile the start of the academic year has come and gone and it’s just the best time to be at campus. The sense of excitement, all the new students who have no idea where they are going or what they are doing, new friendships being made, everything hustling and bustling, it’s a lot of fun.

The mentoring program I am helping with is running well and in a few weeks it’s already wrap-up time for the pilot program that helps us decide if the program is worth repeating. I am pretty sure we’ll do it again, but much better and with less stress the second time around. 

It was International Women’s Day this week and the volunteer group I am part of organised an event with a very engaging speaker who shared stories about her career path and some tips and inspiration for other women in the workplace. Universities are already pretty good when it comes to equal rights and opportunities, but there is still a lot of improvement. The invite clearly said that everyone, women and men, were welcome and there I was, the only man amongst 50 or so women. 

I felt so awkward and out of place, but more than a few women thanked me for coming and being an ally. I used to be very vocal about women’s rights but got a lot quieter when I figured out that right now, as a white, middle-aged, wealthy man you can’t win or even play for a draw. Speak up and you’re told to sit down and be quiet. Sit down and be quiet and you’re told you are part of the problem because you’re not speaking up. Go figure. I don’t mind it too much though, it’s true, men have been at the front long enough and what’s a few decades of reversed roles after a few millennia of male-organised repression, right?

Yumi’s birthday

It was Yumi’s birthday two weeks ago and now we’re both 44 again until I turn 45 in October. I had organised some greyhound-themed gifts from an artist called Richard Skipworth. His drawings are often cartoons and so hilarious to greyhound owners (and probably other people too). I got her two t-shirts, two mugs, a few writing pads for her Greyhound volunteering tasks and a glossary of cartoons that make both of us laugh out loud every time we read through it.

We went to the city and visited the Queensland Museum where they had a large display on about Australian wildlife. It was beautiful and sad at the same time. Great to see the diversity and learn about the animals I had never seen before, but sad because a lot of them would have been killed just to be put on display. Well, at least the museum was free, haha. 

We also stopped by the Museum of Modern Art and that was very…modern? A lot of the stuff goes right over my head but there’s always something new to see and I don’t have to “get it” to enjoy it. Kind of excited about the dinosaur exhibition that the Queensland Museum will put on from next week because in my heart I am still 4 years old and loving dinosaurs 😊. 

After that we had lunch with a Change Management contact of mine from Canada who happened to be in town for work. We had great vegan burgers at a very tiny burger place and then had to do one more greyhound task for Yumi’s volunteering. Then it was back home, watched a movie and that was the birthday done. Oh and of course there were heaps of cards and messages and all that good stuff, a good day indeed!

Dash

Dash has truly been living his best life. He’s now been with us for 6 months and that’s 6 more months of life than he would have got if we hadn’t taken him. Everyone is feeling pretty good about that outcome! Every day is the best day of his life, always excited to go out, to eat snacks, to sniff trees, snooze for hours, hang around Yumi all day and meet other dogs. And then the next day we do it all again. He likes almost all dogs, aside from Labradors and Golden Retrievers somehow. No idea why, he might just have had a bad experience at some point but as soon as he sees one, he’s not happy. He’s stopped chasing most other things, including brush turkey and water birds, so that’s real progress. 

We went for a walk in the city with a whole group of about 12 other greyhounds and he was really enjoying himself. We were quite surprised to see him develop an interest in water recently because only a while ago he was afraid of even a shallow puddle but nowadays he’s knee-deep or more into the lake and trying to drink it all while standing in it. Here are some pictures of Mister Dash snoozing on his sofa (with his eyes open), cuddling with Yumi, on the big sofa with his favourite toy, Mrs. Prawn (not to be confused with his second-favourite toy, Mr. Lobster) in a staring contest with a turkey on the fence outside the window (behind the plant) and up to his belly in the lake nearby. 

Change Management Institute (CMI)

I dove headfirst back into a role at the Change Management Institute that I was part of two times before already. Each time I left because leadership was getting a bit strange and crazy, but three times might be the charm, haha. The lady in charge is very good to work with and I get to run events and do what I want, which always works very well for me. We just did a round of networking drinks and I am always amazed at how many people I actually know and who know me. 

Then in two weeks we’re hosting a breakfast event called a Lean Coffee, which is just a fancy excuse to talk about change management and drink overpriced coffee (or tea in my case). And then right on the end of the month I am helping a set of friends launch their book about change management to a global audience. I read it and it’s really good, so I was happy to jump in! This is the sort of thing I enjoy doing and as long as the politics stay out of my way, happy to get involved!

SES

After nearly five months I’ve finally started with my new SES unit. It’s all a bit strange and unfamiliar and very familiar at the same time. The coolest part is that my SES mate Michael from Victoria now also lives in Springfield Lakes and we’re SES buddies here as well. It’s good fun to go to training nights, but a bit annoying that everything they are telling us I already know and have taught to others. I am happy to wait and see what happens after the initial training that they have to do. If it turns out that I have to retrain everything, I might apply to the fire service or do something else altogether. I think it’ll be fine, this is just something to get through. 

All the same, I’ll be back in orange soon and then we’ll see how busy things get. They have a very different profile than my previous unit, which means they respond to different requests for assistance and different things happen in the area. There is still a lot to learn for me and I consider everything else just a good refresher and an opportunity to work on my knot tying skills.

Small stuff

1. The Netherlands trip in July is slowly taking shape, but Yumi’s dad is not exactly in a hurry to book accommodation, but hopefully by the end of the month things will start moving.

2. After 6 months in Queensland, it’s safe to say we think we made the right decision to move, especially now that we’re getting more involved in the community, it’s a good place to live.

3. We’re planning to get more serious about scuba diving because we miss it and I also plan to buy a second-hand kayak, more on that in the next letter, I hope.

4. I’ve also started looking at who might be the best plastic surgeon to do an operation on my upper chest to remove the excess skin from when I was much heavier. It’s not cheap, but I think I will feel much better when it’s gone. If it’s anything like the operation on my belly region I will never have regrets!

5. My Father second-oldest brother, Henk, passed away at 81 from cancer last week. It was a long time coming and he held out for a long bit, but in the end the sickness won and he could fight it no more. They made him comfortable in his last hours, which is probably the best any of us could hope for when it’s our time to go, I guess.

6. I was so excited last week, when I cycled home there was an echidna just minding its own business and digging in the earth looking for snacks right next to the bike path. It looked really unimpressed by me just looking at it and just waddled along. It’s the first time I’ve seen one in a built-up area, very cool. We also saw our first red-belly snake, so we stayed well away from that one and Dash is not keen on them too, which is exactly how we like it!

7. I’ve had my bike repaired a few times now because I didn’t want to buy a new one, but by now everything but the frame is new, and I might have been better off buying a new one. Oh well, it’s good as new for real now 😊.

Okay, that’s most of it I think, I’ll be back early May again to tell you about our adventures of the past two months. 

Be well and stay warm now that Autumn is coming!

Gilbert

Letter to Marlis Nov-Dec 2022

 

Springfield Lakes, 8 January 2023

 

Hi Marlis,

Happy New Year! I know we only spoke on the phone this week, but there’s no harm in repeating new year wishes I reckon. I hope that 2023 will see you healthy and comfortable with lots of time in the garden and sunshine and not too many kids visiting haha.

It’s always so typical that you often call me when I literally just mentioned you the same day or the day before to someone! It’s always good to hear you, so feel free to call me when you want, or when you feel a bit down or out of it.

The past 2 months have been a lot more relaxing than the ones before, but like always, a lot has happened still. Every time I write I think that the next two months will be less busy, but they hardly ever are! Okay, let’s dive into what has happened over the past two months.

 

SES Ipswich

Technically we don’t live in the Brisbane area, Springfield Lakes belongs to Ipswich City, so I’ll be joining SES Goodna on 7 February. There was an information night on 6 December and it was a good opportunity to see their unit and meet some of the people. It’s very similar in style and approach to SES Victoria, but they respond to more weather and flood related jobs and do less trees and trampolines. Oh well, you can’t have it all! They seem to have comparable equipment and most of my training will still be applicable. I’ll just go through the same training as everyone else as far as I am concerned and that’ll give me a good idea about the differences and I’ll get to learn about my new crew mates as well. I hope to get some training on boats and water stuff because that’s still missing from my skillset but they seemed happy to have a trained up person come join them.

The unit commander seems like a friendly guy and they have 40 members, which is double the amount of what Altona SES used to have, so that’ll be a good experience, not having to be on every job. It’ll also be an adjustment to not be 2 minutes away from the unit, more like 15 minutes, 13 if traffic lights are friendly. Another really cool thing is that my SES buddy Michael from Victoria will move to Springfield Lakes in just 2 week and live just 2.5km away. He’ll also join the SES Goodna unit so we can go out on jobs together again!

 It feels like I’ve waited forever to get started and it HAS been six months since I left the Altona unit, so I am very much looking forward to getting back into orange! The first 3 months of training should be fun. We’ll train on Tuesdays first, away from the main group to focus on the training bit and then after three months join the rest of the crew to train on Wednesdays, which always seemed like a better day to train for me anyway.

In some final SES news, I am getting an official medal! The National Emergency Medal, for the work I did early 2020 with the fires and stuff. Typical SES that it takes nearly 3 years to get there and It feels a bit like getting all the credit for doing very little, but it’s a nice recognition of everything else I did for SES. I’ll put it in the box with the rest of the certificates and accolades. Not that I am not proud of my work, but I just don’t have a lot of events and opportunities where I would wear a medal!

The new table

After being a furniture maker’s apprentice for a bit I vowed never to buy mass produced furniture again if we could afford it and fortunately we can! Early September we designed our very own dining table, found somebody to make it for us and we even got it earlier than expected. We did a lot of furniture shopping for chairs and a new sofa too and despite the horror stories of delivery times taking up to 6 months, we had everything in house within weeks.

The furniture maker enjoyed working out our table design and told us that he hadn’t made anything like it in eight years, so it’s truly one of a kind! It’s really not that special if you ask me, it’s still a square slab with two loops for legs, but the legs stand at an 82 degree angle and it’s completely made of blackbutt timber instead of getting the standard metal black legs and now it just looks more natural I think. I like the look and feel of it, even though the finish is a bit rougher than I would have made it when I worked at Bombora as an apprentice, it’s a very nice table that can stay with us for the rest of our lives if we want.

It was a bit of an adventure to get the van organised and it really only just fit into it. Nowadays you can organise it all on your phone and 15 minutes from our house is the pick up and drop off. So we go there and the van isn’t there, the previous person was late, but when I called the company they said it was parked near a servo nearby. So we drive there, no van again. I call them again and they tell me, no, it’s at the original spot now. We go back and there it is, turns out they were fuelling up, haha. We arrived a bit later than planned but Ben the furniture maker had a nifty lifting gadget that made loading the 50 kg table into the van super easy. When we got home the unloading and manoeuvring to get it into the house went a lot better than expected and the chairs matched really well too! Have a look at the pictures and see for yourself.

Garden set restoration

A few weeks earlier we picked up a garden set for just $90, six chairs, cushions and a table. But because we couldn’t take it apart we ended up hiring a van and all in all the full set ended up costing $300, with the staining and sandpaper included. Still, you can’t get a new set like it for that money and we’re trying to be conscious about not just buying new things, but reusing existing things that are still fine. Over the course of a few weeks, listening to the radio and working early in the morning when it’s not 600 degrees outside, we sanded back the table and four of the chairs (two were not in great shape and we put them in our shed as backups) and stained them in a light colour so they can live on for a few more years. It was nice to work with timber and restore it to its former better self, even it’s pretty low quality wood and not in the best condition anymore. We sanded it all by hand and now it truly feels like OUR garden set.

New licenses and registration

A few weeks ago we finally got our new licenses and car registration sorted. You’re supposed to do it in the first three months you move and technically we were in the clear but I was expecting it to take forever and having to wait for hours. I don’t know why I thought that because I’ve never spent more than 45 minutes at the place where you sort these things, but we were in and out under 30 minutes with our new license plates that took all of 5 minutes to swap out. It’s always so weird to see your own car with new plates after having the old ones for nearly five years. It did feel like we finally truly arrived in Queensland now and that we’re more or less official Queenslanders now, for better or worse, haha. It felt a bit strange to not have a driver’s license for a few weeks, just a piece of paper but of course we never get asked for it in general and we weren’t stopped in the three weeks it took to get to us. Turns out we DID need it for renting the rental van for the table, but I sort of lied and used images of my no longer valid Victorian license, not great, but it all worked out  and no cars were harmed in the process!

 

Dash’s adventures

Dash has been living his best life as usual, snoozing the day away without a care in the world, following Yumi around wherever she goes and being a lovely friendly dog every day. It’s just the best to see how excited he is to get started every day, knowing he’s going outside and on the best days he even gets to go by car. He’s just a ball of energy from the moment Yumi’s alarm goes off and doesn’t stop until we get into the car 30 minutes later.

Everything is just one big adventure for him and we laugh at hm all the time because he startles really easily and is afraid of his on shadow, rocks and branches just lying there, paper rustling, frogs, birds, suspicious piles of leaves and strange sounds. Near one of the lakes there’s a little ramp where he could walk into the water and he did it one time, but most of the time he sees the tiniest little fish in there and he’s backing away like he’s about to be attacked by a killer whale! We always just tell him he’s okay and we don’t mind that he's careful, at least he won’t charge after snakes or toads and get poisoned.

We found a greyhound walking group in the neighbourhood and he really enjoyed meeting some of his long-nosed friends. The other owners are all friendly people as usual and their doggos are just as friendly. Compared to the massive 25-40 dog walking group in Victoria, It’s only a small group of 5-10 dogs, but that’s enough for him to have a good time and learn from them how to dog. He had a great time and even went into the water with the rest of them for a few seconds, our hero!  We took him for a walk on a nearby beach and it’s always so interesting to see that he’s equal parts excited to be there, but also has no real idea what to do, so he just jumps around and wags his tail real hard before quickly retreating and calling it a day, haha, he will never be a sea dog, that’s for sure.

With all the long morning walks and walking up and down the neighbourhood hills his leg muscles are really bulking up and he looks like he’s retired from racing just last week. We’ve been monitoring his weight because he could do with 1-2 kilos more, but so far he’s still around 37kg while he could easily be 38.5 to 39. We give him snacks and treats but he just burns those calories off straight away I guess. We’ll have to look for a different treat solution because the ones we have now (which he loves) cost $800 per year. Per year!! They are supposed to help him clean his teeth, but that’s just crazy if you ask me, Yumi thinks it’s fine but even I don’t have $16 of snacks per week…Turns out that an annual teeth clean at the vet is ‘just’ $300, so maybe that’s a better way to keep his teeth in shape and save $500!

Christmas break and New Year

I had a break from work from 23 December to 3 January and it was nice to just hang around the house a bit and not get up to very much. Well, our version of not doing much at least. We still went on day trips, did some clothes shopping in the city, cleaned up the garage and offices, built a feeding bowl stand for Dash, donated blood, went on lots of walks to pick up litter and did some video gaming and puzzling while reading books (not at the same time 😊).

We also found The Dutch Club, just 15 minutes from our home. It’s a community volunteer initiative for social engagement and they even have a little store with Dutch groceries, candy and other food items. Not that we NEED them, but it’s nice to be able to get those if you want to. We got some specific herbs, condiments, different kinds of Lebkuchen and a small bag of ‘spicenuts’ (English doesn’t really have words for these things).  

I noticed that life really starts earlier here. It’s light at 4.30am, which suits me really well and people are out and about earlier during the day as well. Must be a temperature related thing, I think. We went on a day-trip to Bribie Island, which is an hour and bit north of where we live and you can get there by car so we brought Dash too. It was quite busy already at 7.30 in the morning! We did really enjoy being near the ocean just as much as he did and it’s nice to see different parts of Brisbane too. It’s nice to just walk and chat a bit, but when we bring Dash it’s like having kids, you’re constantly watching him and laughing at his antics.

We were fearing that there would be lots of fireworks and that Dash would freak out, but it really was a non-event. We did stay up until 12 but there were maybe 2-3 pops in the distance and that was about it. There was some organised fireworks earlier at 9pm or so, but that lasted all of five minutes and Mr. Snooze-a-lot didn’t even really wake up for that. It’s not that he’s afraid, but he gets curious and walk around the house looking for where the noise comes from. We were just happy that nothing happened and went to bed at 12.05, haha.

Yumi’s work

Yumi got to travel for work in November and December and did some client work that she really enjoyed. I love how she makes her own way, finds new people to connect with and does work she enjoys. I see so much potential in the things she does or could do, but I’ve learned over time that she’ll does what she wants to do and I don’t need to advise her in any way 😊. All the time building her network since we arrived is now starting to pay off, with the new year come new budgets and strategic plans, so she’ll probably be busy in the months to come. That’s the great thing about being self-employed and making good money when you work, you don’t need a lot to get a good pay check. I am curious to see what she’ll be doing in the next few months with new and existing clients. She tells me she’s working on a new product/service in her head, but isn’t ready to share it yet, I reckon it’ll be good and useful as usual!

Going back to school

I recently realised that it’s been 20 years since I got my bachelor’s degree and this year it will be 10 years since I got my master’s degree as well. Of course I did a few Cert-4’s and other kinds of training but nothing in the traditional sense of ‘study’ with just my brain. I’ve been thinking for a bit about maybe studying emergency management, or environmental protection and I’ve landed on Marine Biology. It’ll be a three year commitment and not exactly cheap ($25-30,000 all-in) but with some tax write-offs and fee-help from work I might be looking at 40-50% off, fingers crossed. It’s a bit too early to get excited as I’d only be starting in July, but it’s something to look forward to. Perhaps there’s a new career for me in it, living near the coast, working with marine life. Some days I feel like I am too old for another career change, but then again, I’ll be working for another 20-25 years, so why not do something that helps save the planet and change things for the better, right? I ask myself what you’d say and you’d probably tell me to go and do it because I have nothing to lose. Worst case scenario I learn a lot about marine biology, that’s not such a bad thing to begin with.

 

Work stuff (University of Queensland -UQ)

Work has been busy in a good way. Nothing that I can’t handle, but lots of things happening as they do at any university.

·      First of all, my boss is leaving for family reasons after a year in the role. His daughter is starting university in NSW and needs some more support than anticipated and their plans for the family moving over to QLD never happened due to Covid so it makes sense. It just throws a small spanner in the works for our division plans, but let’s wait and see who the next person is and what they intend to do.

·      I’ve temporarily got a person reporting to me, Loretta. She’s a very experienced administrative person and needs no looking after whatsoever, but she just needs to have someone to ask questions off and I happened to be around when they needed a manager. She’s getting things done and then some and I just stay out of her way!

·      The new risk system project is going as planned, slow but steady and a little less frustrating every week. We’re getting I don’t have that much to do other than keeping things organised but that’s not too hard, we make a pretty good team overall and everyone wants the new system to arrive sooner than later so no one is actively working against us. It also looks like we’ll have a new project manager by the end of the months. He will replace the current one who is struggling to get the job done and it’s starting to wear on everyone a bit, so that’s good for all of us.

·      I’ve put my hand up as a volunteer for the UQ Professionals Network (colleagues networking together) to organise a mentoring program and to host some networking events for colleagues to get to know more people outside their immediate team. Should be fun and it’s a good way to get to know more people myself too.

·      I got to deliver a presentation to about 125 colleagues on change management in a very nice venue in Brisbane City Hall early December. I definitely enjoyed it and it looked like they did too. I got a nice box of tea as a gift and met a lady who wanted to practice her Dutch (she’s English, married to a Dutchman) and we had a good time.

·      Still waiting to present my big plan for change management to the big boss, but maybe next week or early February, it’s all getting a bit ridiculous, but that’s just how things go at a university with many priorities

 

 Things to be thankful for

As I said on the phone already, Yumi and I have this tradition at the end of each year to list everything we’re grateful for and as promised, these are the main things in no particular order:

 

1.  Adopting Dash
2.    Getting an article published in an actual business journal
3.    Road tripping to QLD in January
4.    Visiting Marlis in January AND September
5.    Getting a new bed, table and sofa
6.    Moving to QLD by ourselves with no issues
7.    Being voted SES crew member 2022 by my unit mates
8.    Deploying to the floods in March and SES work in general
9.    Doing work with Alan on Right on Board
10.                   Being self-employed and doing work I like
11.                   Visiting the Netherlands in May
12.                   Lots of greyhound walks
13.                   Working on creative projects with Peter
14.                   The first 5 weeks by myself in Brisbane
15.                   So many good books getting read
16.                   Being part of the Change Days conference team
17.                   The Bad Change Book doing really well
18.                   Donating lots of money to charity
19.                   Guest appearances on podcasts and conferences
20.                   Friends and family are doing well
21.                   Regular video chats with our parents and friends
22.                   Doing a good job at Swinburne
23.                   Finding a new job with UQ
24.                   Fostering 4 greyhounds (Fraser, Paddy, Danger, Suzy)
25.                   Completing my AICD Directors course
26.                   Delivering Change tools
27.                   Finally getting glasses and seeing properly again
28.                   Making healthier eating and drinking choices
29.                   Getting my teeth fixed
30.                   All the new friends and connections made over the year

 

Small stuff

·      I’m still not drinking soda, which didn’t prove all that difficult. I’m now drinking water, tea and cordial and that works just fine too, just had to get used to not having so much caffeine in my system. I hope my teeth are happy too 😊.

·      Life in Springfield Lakes is still pretty good, we have the parks and lakes and the stars at night, all the shops we need and keeping the yard tidy isn’t too much of a chore. Overall, life is good. We had some big rains and got to see the water management systems work overtime, which I think is pretty cool and it works so well!

·      I am still working out in the garage 3 days a week in the early morning and I am seeing some progress and I feel much fitter. Not much weight loss just yet, but that’s fine. I hope to drop 6 kg in the next 6 months and once I see what I look like, I might still consider getting some skin removal plastic surgery done on my chest and inner thighs, but that’s a long way away and first I’ll have to get to 82-83 kg, haha.

·      I’ve been reading this massively thick book by a guy called Studs Terkel, titled ‘Working’. It made me think of you a lot. It’s from 1970, when you would be working and building a life in Australia and even though the book is a collection of 100+ American regular people’s jobs and how they experience them, it’s such a good an human read, you feel like you’re right there in the room/office/workshop/truck with them. It just shows that some things got better, but a lot of the things they grappled with then, we still have the same issues in the workplace today.

·      I wrote this article on a website for change professionals and normally when I write that gets about 2,000 views and a few dozen likes (it’s an online platform where people can click a thumbs up button if they like what you write, like Facebook and Tik Tok, but for professional workers). This one on change fatigue got 27,000+ views and 300+ likes, so I clearly hit a nerve somehow. I am just busting some myths and telling people it’s okay to tell leaders no, to change a bit less or not at all to keep people healthy and sane. You’d probably say that’s not rocket science and I agree, but clearly people appreciated the message. It’s nice to feel like I am influencing the public debate a bit in my own little way.

·      The book is still going strong, nearly 600 copies sold and we’re now getting started on a smaller version with only 20 stories, called ‘Bad Sponsor’, with a new comic every two weeks or so. Let’s see how much we’ve learned from the first one 😊.

·      I got my bike (used to be my dad’s) completely serviced and fixed up for just $350. That’s so much cheaper than buying a new one and it’ll last me a good few more years still, yay!

Okay, that’s about it this time around, I’ll write again early March and I am sure there’ll be lots to tell you then.

Be well and stay cool as always,

Gilbert