Letter to Marlis Apr-May 2024

 Springfield Lakes, 10 June 2024

Hi Marlis,

Can you believe it’s winter again already?! I hope you are staying warm and Canberra is sunny and dry most days. It’s been quite the sudden drop in temperature here, with mornings as cold as 3-4 degrees, but then it still gets up to 20-22 during the day, so I am not complaining 😊.

Another two months gone and this time it really felt like not much out of the ordinary has happened, but let’s see how it went when we get to the end!

Work

I’m coming up to 6 months on the job at Super Retail Group and it’s been an interesting time to say the least. Lots of movement in staff, new people joining, a new manager for my manager, a bit of a scandal in the news that went away pretty quickly and me just jogging along getting things done. I’m getting pretty good at staying out of the drama that other people are creating and just focus on my tasks to get done that week.

The job hasn’t become what it was made out to be, yet, but things are far from terrible for sure. It’s just that all but one of my team mates, who work on other big projects, are not having a good time. And that’s what I have to look forward to, now that my smaller projects are wrapping up by the end of this month. I do feel like I’ve made difference and built some good working relationships. There are a lot of very smart and capable people in the business and my team are very good at what they do, so I learn a few new things every week.

I am also still enjoying the commute by train 3 days a week. I get to read a lot, see some funny characters and on busy days I get some work done even before I get to the office. With technology today you can really work anywhere and have everything you need, so I make the most of it on those days and others I just relax and read while ‘my’ driver gets me to where I have to go. It sure beats standing in traffic and crawling forward!

 

Yumi’s activities

Yumi has been busy working with a client she’s done work with for a long time. She even went to Melbourne twice the past 4 weeks to do a few workshops with them and meet some new people. It might become a much bigger project, but right now they are sitting on their hands trying to figure out what to do next, so she’s not waiting around and looking around to see what else is out there. I am sure she’ll find something worthwhile to do, it’s only a matter of time.

When she travels, I stay at home to look after Dash, who really lets me know that I am his second favourite human or maybe the third if you count the baker where he gets half a bread roll each week.  As soon as Yumi leaves he goes into ‘waiting until my human comes back’ mode. He actually walks up to the window multiple times a day to see if she’s not already coming back and he’ll restlessly walk around looking for her in all places before finally falling asleep. It’s adorable, but I always feel a bit sad for him and want to explain she’s really coming back. Fortunately, she always does, but he keeps forgetting 😊

She’s also started her second year of the Common People Dance Project, the team dancing context she joined last year. It’s good fun to hear how much enjoyment everyone gets out of studying in new routines and putting on a show. It’ll all come together on 14 July when the various teams have their ‘dance-off’ where every team performs in front of a real jury and the winners get the ugliest trophy you’ve ever seen, but that’s all part of the show. And she also started another dance class here in Springfield Lakes (the other is in Ipswich, 25 mins down the road) for a six-week trial with some other people. I hope she likes that one, but it seems slightly more serious than the other ones but six weeks is a good period to get a sense of that, I think.

Dog things

Speaking of dogs, it’s been quite busy with dog-related activities over the past two months. We had a house guest for a week and a half and that was not the experience we hoped it would be. Yumi responded to a call for help from the greyhound walking group she hangs out with every now and then. They had lost their greyhound a while back, put in a very detailed specific request for a new adoption and instead of it taking five months or so, it took two weeks for a new match to be found. But they still needed to get married and go on a honeymoon as already planned, yikes! So, we said we’d take Bella in and I am glad we helped them, but what an ordeal!!

  

She peed in the house at least 6 times, tried to eat off our plates, dug holes in the yard, stole all Dash’s toys, climbed up on the coffee table, pulled on the lead like a maniac for no reason and basically made a nuisance of herself in any way possible. She’s a lovely dog, but absolutely no manners yet and Dash was so unimpressed with us for letting her in the house. We all let out a massive sigh of relief when she got picked up. Next time we’ll really have to think more about Dash as well. He takes it really well but it’s not fair to him to have such a disruption in his otherwise quiet life.

 

 We visited with our friends Helen and Robert a few weeks ago, who have now adopted their foster dog, Roo the greyhound, and good on them! He is such a clever and lovely dog and stole their hearts in no time! All was well for the first 15 minutes of the visit and then Roo got too much into Dash’s space while he was on him matt that we brought and that turned into a bit of growling and Dash grabbing Roo by the neck. Not violently, but more like a warning. Poor Roo was so scared, he hid for the rest of the evening. It was his own ‘fault’ but he doesn’t understand that, poor guy Next time we might leave Dash at home, he’s such a Mr. grumpypants!

 

    

  

We also helped out with a market stall at a very busy Sunday market and got some good donations and sales in a few hours. I was feeling really unwell since I got up that morning, but Yumi needed some help, so I soldiered on and when we got back at 2pm I went straight to bed and didn’t get back out until the next day. I was sick for the rest of the week, probably just a stomach bug, but not pleasant at all. On the upside, I did lose 3 kilos in weight for a few weeks, haha. The weekend after we did a Bunnings BBQ for charity and made a decent amount for the greyhounds again. Fortunately we only had a 4-hour shift. I just cooked the sausages and onions for four hours straight and that’s quite enough, thank you!

 Meanwhile Yumi just keeps finding new homes for dogs, sometimes with a lot of difficulty and some of the stories are heartwarming and some just so infuriating when people do dumb things. I choose to remember the great ones though. There was Lily, who would do better with a dog friend and she found it in Bruce while they were being fostered together. Placing one dog is a challenge, placing two together at the same time is basically a miracle. But sure enough, a lady contacted the charity and now they are moving up together to 

Hervey Bay. I love those stories with a happy ending!

 

Change Management Institute volunteering

I had a busy time with the volunteering I do for CMI. I wanted to try a new event type, called a Deep Dive, which goes for 4 hours instead of the normal 2, giving people a solid introduction into change management with loads of practical tips and tricks. It took a bit of organising and help from my change friends, but 2 weeks ago we got 25 people together in a community hall on a rainy Saturday morning, so I am calling that a win! We had 5 parts to the event, of which I did 2 and it was good fun to present to a group of people who are not my colleagues. The audience hopefully got good value for their time and it would be great if some of them would end up working as change managers too in a few years.

I also have plans for another session just like this one, but for more advanced change practitioners. I have to be careful though, I am already doing a lot of work and I want the other 10(!) committee members to also have an opportunity to get involved. It’s just that everything is easier for me to organise because I’ve done it a few times. The eternal challenge with volunteer groups like this is that people always have the will, but not always the time and then things fall down and I end up doing it myself anyway, but at the last minute and that can be frustrating. So now I try to stick to my rule of: “if it happens it happens, if not, that’s okay too”. I plan to take my foot of the gas for the second half of the year, but not really sure if that’s going to work. I keep saying that and then I end up doing lots of things more than planned. It’s a work in progress!

I have two people I mentor for CMI and then I also write book reports every now and then for their newsletter and then there’s the events and other responsibilities, it almost feels like a part-time job at times. But I love to see how it builds a community. Since I joined the Queensland chapter, membership numbers have gone up by 35% and we’re almost the largest chapter in the world (of CMI), that means we’ve outperformed Victoria and NSW, who are 3x our size by state population. Not that it’s a competition of course, but it is a little bit 😊.

Stradbroke diving

The reason this letter is a bit later than usual is because we were out diving on Stradbroke Island this weekend. Maybe you already know, but Stradbroke is just 20 kilometres or so off the coast from Brisbane, you can get there by ferry in just under 45 minutes and be away from everything for a while. We asked our friends Michael and Kat and their two boys to look after Dash for the weekend, which they were happy to do. They have a 5-months old German Shepperd called Freya and she is quiet a handful. But She stayed outside most of the time and Dash inside, so that worked out alright. Maybe when she’s a bit older they’ll get along better, right now she’s just all over Dash and he’s not having any of it. He’ll keep walking away, but she keeps following him and licking his face, which he really doesn’t like, so at some point she’ll get a ‘corrective’ bite on her ear or neck…

 

Where was I, oh yes, diving! We arrived on Friday evening and I couldn’t figure out the heating so the first night was very chilly but we had heaps of blankets and the shower was very warm. Good thing that Yumi figured out how to get the heater to work, she was also the most motivated to do so of course, haha. The diving was very good on both Saturday and Sunday. We saw lots of turtles, fish doing funny things chasing each other, a few very beautiful eagle rays, bull rays, lots of wobbegong sharks and there was talk of a great white shark being spotted earlier on the Sunday, but when we got that spot, it was nowhere to be seen. That would have been amazing, but better luck next time.

It’s migration time for the whales (and sharks) so we saw a lot of humpbacks on the surface, some jumping and flapping their tails and fins, which is always great to see. We also saw some dolphins just hanging around and took the Saturday afternoon to go around the island a bit but the ocean really is the main attraction. We went out for dinner but it was nothing special. Yumi had a decent pizza, but my vegan tacos were cold and really basic. And there was a large group that had 10 kids or so that kept screaming at the top of their lungs and running around so we weren’t having a great time of it and didn’t stay for long.

It was nice to get away for the weekend, swim with the turtles, go really fast in a very small boat and add another few dives to our list. Yumi now has made 160+ and I have 140+ under my belt, so we’re not exactly amateurs anymore 😊. Our diving gear is slowly starting to fall apart, which isn’t that strange after almost 18 years, so now we’ll have to slowly start replacing items or maybe just buy a new kit package. We’ve also considered just hiring gear from now on. Servicing it every year is quiet expensive and if we don’t go diving regularly it’s almost cheaper to hire than own it. Something to think about before we get to summer!

 

Looking for a new home

We just got our new lease in the mail and our rent is going up by $50 a week, which isn’t terrible, but that’s $2,600 per year for the same house and for the monthly rent, we can get a mortgage for a house (if we add part of our savings). Time to get more serious about finding a house to buy. The housing market is crazy in all the capital cities though, so finding something reasonably priced is enough of a challenge, but the longer we wait, the harder it gets. Yumi always keeps half an eye on the market and we don’t ask for the world, but the day I will pay $1.3 million dollar for a 3-bedroom townhouse is probably never going to come around. Who has that kind of money?! Well, we do, sort of, but the value of the materials is in no way connected to the sales price any longer. Still, we’ve singed the lease and will stay here for at least another year, Springfield Lakes is a great place to live, but buying a house here is not in the cards so we’ll have to cast our net a bit wider in the coming months.

Short stuff

Lots of short mentions this time, here they are in quick succession:

I'm still getting students come through the course I teach at Deakin University and it is always good fun to read their final assignment change plans. Most of them aren’t very good, but every now and then there’s a very decent one. I’ve also added another section to the course which deals with Artificial Intelligence (AI) that you’ve probably heard about on the news. It’s becoming more and more widely used in the change profession, so I thought it would be good if my students understood the basics too.

·      I still go to RFS ten though it’s been 8(!) months and I still don’t have my member number. It’s absolutely ridiculous how long this takes but at least I am enjoying the training on how to be a firefighter. Hopefully I’ll have a number by the end of the month and then training starts for real!

·      I am almost done gathering the documents for my citizenship application. It’s quite the process to go through, but in a few weeks I should have everything sorted and ready to send it off. Fingers crossed!

·      As a favour to a friend, I did a presentation to a group of 125 people working in governance and risk on how to respond when change goes wrong. It was good fun and they loved it, but I don’t really enjoy these things anymore, so maybe I need to stop saying yes every time, haha.

·      Friends and family are all doing well, mums and dads are okay, kids are growing and going well in school, lots of things to be grateful for.

·      By the time I write my next letter it will be August and I’ll give you a call to discuss if you’d like me to come over to celebrate your birthday in September. I would love to go and do something you would like to do. Go for lunch, go to the supermarket, just sit and chat, whatever you like!

·      Since we started living here in September 2022 there have been roadworks going on nearby. It now finally looks like it’s drawing to a close. And on time no less! It’ll be good to finally be able tod rive straight down the road instead of a new detour every week. Listen to me complain about my first world problems, I don’t even use that road that often, but it’s been going on forever!

·      I never gave it much thought but lately I’ve been thinking I should decorate my office a bit. I do spend quiet a bit of time in there and there’s nothing on the walls, so I might buy some vintage posters and frame those to liven up the place a bit.

·      A while back I hit the garage door on the way out, it wasn’t very hard, so I managed to push it back into shape. But today it all of a sudden ran out of its tracks and that was a pain to solve. Fortunately our neighbour across the road saw us struggle and he’d just had the same issue himself a few months ago. With his help we had it sorted in no time and we got to learn a bit more about them too, ha!

·      I finally decided to treat myself and order new shoes. Not exactly made to measure, but I go to choose every little detail in the design and now I have to wait 4 months for them to arrive because I wanted a different pattern on the sides…Me and my big ideas! Oh well, it’s not that I need them right away, although some of my shoes are starting to age after…15 years. That’s good mileage, I think.

Okay, that’s most of the updates done. Next letter I might have more to share, it’s been a bit less eventful than usual.

 Stay warm and be well,

 Gilbert

 

Letter to Marlis Dec-Jan 2024

 Hi Marlis,

I hope you are staying cool and that the warm weather isn’t keeping you inside too much. It’s sure been a true Queensland summer for the past few weeks with high 30s temperatures and humidity thick enough to cut.  Well, we wanted to live somewhere warmer and that it certainly is 😊.

Like every time I sit down to write you a letter, I always think that not much has happened, but going by this letter, it’s been another fun-filled, busy two months full of change and developments, so let’s get into it! That being said, I think I missed a month, I am very sorry about that! I really thought that this month was the next time to write but I missed it. Oops!

Christmas trip

After wrapping up the short-term job with Griffith University, which went really well and they even paid me before my last day on the job, we had some time to take a break and go on a trip. In the end it felt more like Dash was on a holiday and we were there with him, but we had a good time all the same. Yumi had found a fun-sized self-contained unit in a tiny town called Bauple, about 200 kilometres north of Brisbane, or 50 kilometres up from Gympie if you are familiar with the area.

On the way up, we stopped by Diane and Peter, two of Yumi’s greyhound friends who now live near Sunshine Coast. They moved house to retire into what I would call a building site, but the inside looks very nice and new, the outside is a right old mess of building materials, flattened structures and unfinished foundations. They seem to be doing just fine and so are their two greyhounds. They are lovely people and after two hours or so we continued on into the regional farm and bushlands.

The accommodation was another good pick by Yumi (she always works hard at finding just the right thing) and we had everything we needed to live comfortably for a week, enough space for Dash and wallabies out in the yard which was of course very, very, very exciting for Dash. At first, he didn’t know what to make of them, but when they started hopping of course he just wanted to chase right after them! The lady who owns the house was very much into self-improvement and new age beliefs, going by the 50 or so ‘art’ works around the house sharing deep and meaningful insights like ‘strangers are just friends you haven’t met’ and ‘the universe will provide’. Not exactly my cup of tea, but live and let live I say!

The town itself is really just 600 or so people, living on a grid of streets with houses of all different kinds and in various states of disrepair or construction. On my morning walks I reckoned that every street with 15-20 properties had at least 4-5 building projects going on at the same time. It was good fun to see what people do with their land and how some make it into a well-kept and organised space and others just let the bush take over. The only thing outnumbering the building sites were the wallabies that were literally everywhere you looked.

We made a lot of daytrips to the Fraser Island area, national forests and beaches, including to Rainbow Beach, so named for rock formations that kind of look like a rainbow if you have a few beers and squint your eyes, I guess. The fun part for us was looking at the 200 or so cars parked on the beach and people living their best lives, ranging from a guy on a towel with his dog to a family with a kitted-out ute that had a fridge, 4-burner barbecue and extensive sound system. Same beach, different level of luxury. We liked the towel approach better. Dash had a great time, even though he’s not so much a beach dog, but there lots of smells and the waves were far enough away. Another trip was to a town I forget the name of, but that’s where Dash was very brave and walked into the water up to his chest and seemed to enjoy it, but then he got so excited about it that he broke free off the leash and ran around the small beach trailing his lead and a long streamer of plastic poop bags. Everybody just stopped to watch him run like the wind and he had a good time before he came back totally poofed after a minute or two of running all out, haha.  

We had some interesting stormy weather passing through, with most of it missing us, but on a tin roof everything sounds that much worse and the thunder was mighty impressive. So much so that I sat up with Dash for part of the night because he couldn’t settle down. We had great internet, so I just watched some videos and read a book until it all passed.

We visited another pair of friends, Wendy and Steve in their new wonderful home with 450 lime trees, which technically makes them farmers. They bought 10 acres for the price of what would buy you a shed in Melbourne and have wonderful views in what feels like the middle of nowhere, but is only 15 minutes away from Gympie, the regional hub. I used to work with Wendy at Deakin University and she’s a wonderful and smart human and when she contacted me to ask if we could meet up now that she lived in Queensland, I realised we’d be very close by, so we offered to stop by their house. Sadly, they lost their great Dane on the way up (old age), so they were very happy to have Dash trotting around the house and he got lots of pats! They also showed us their impressive sword collection (I know, right?! I had no idea!) and we had a nice meal. We thought to stay for a few hours but ended up staying nearly four hours.

We enjoyed being away, but it also felt good coming back and overall, I think Dash would have preferred to just stay at home with his favourite toys, beds and smells, but at least now we know we can holiday with him if we want.

 

The New Job 

On Wednesday 3 January I started my new role with Super Retail Group, the people behind Rebel, BCF, Super Cheap Auto and Macpac clothing and I am really enjoying myself. The whole process of interviewing and induction was a very good experience from start to finish. I am part of a real team of change managers, my manager knows what he’s doing, the organisation is very energetic, and I work on things that really matter! And the pay is very good too, nothing to complain about! Because it’s retail, we have a lot of stores (750) and logistics to look after, but that’s what my colleagues are doing, so I am assigned to the back office, what we call ‘corporate’. My main focus is Human Resources and Safety (the people who look after people and their wellbeing), who are going through a huge amount of change, and I have about 6-8 projects to look after, not all equally big thankfully.

The first 5 weeks have been very good, with me just running around trying to figure out how all the parts come together, but I’ve managed to help some people and projects already and they seem to enjoy having me around so we’re off to a good start. The variety of the different projects will keep me entertained for a good while and it’s great to be part of an actual team of people with experience in change that I can learn from too. I hadn’t realised how much I missed that until it was available again, yay!

The first two weeks, when it was still school holidays, I travelled to work by car, but the past 3 weeks I chose to go by train (writing this letter on the train right now) because the commune is about as long by car as by train, but on the train I have my hands free to read, write letters to you, do some work or let my mind wander, which are all bad ideas and really hard if you’re driving 😊. The train station is only a 10-minute walk from the office, which is really nice too, and by the time I get home I am done with work and can enjoy my evening. By the next time I write I’ll probably have figured out what I am supposed to do, and we’ll have welcomed a new person I recommended so I will no longer be ‘the new guy’.

Artificial Intelligence

You probably heard or read something in the news about OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a software program that you can use for all kinds of things. Think of it as a very, very smart friend who knows a lot about virtually anything you can think of. I’ve been playing around with it for a good year now and it’s helped me with so many things that I can’t imagine not using it. It still makes mistakes, and its creativity has limits, but it does amazing things in seconds that would take me hours or even days to figure out. 

I know technology is not your friend on most days, but I think you’d enjoy having it around. You can ask it all sorts of questions, learn things check facts, create unique images, ask it to write things for you (I wrote this one myself, I promise!), create recipes and 1 million other things that we can’t even imagine right now. It’s amazing in what it can already do, the problems it solves and support it offers. Of course, there are always sceptics, who fear it will become sentient and immediately destroy the world, but that is impossible, it’s not nearly smart enough for that. They don’t seem to understand (or don’t want to, more likely) that it only LOOKS smart, it’s still just a very smartly written software program that does simple things (for a computer) extremely fast. I think eventually we will see AI become sentient, but that’s perhaps still 10-15 years away, so I’ll report back to you on how that’s going then. 😊 

Weather and floods

We’ve had some pretty wild weather in Springfield Lakes with 3 separate storms passing through causing quite a bit of damage. I finally got to go out with SES for some actual jobs and help the community get going again. The week before and during Christmas we had the biggest one and that threw trees and all kinds of loose items around, even injured and killed a few unfortunate people. Some really made poor choices like going into storm drains or driving through flood waters but you never hope they meet their end that way of course. 

We were lucky not to get it as bad as up North in Cairns and Townsville where things got really exciting, after a few days all the water was gone and aside from massive heaps of wood chips from all the mulched-up trees and branches, things were back to their sunny usual self until the next storm hit. Gotta love Queensland! We also got to support SES in Mt. Tambourine, which got hit by a severe storm and it reminded me of the storm that raged through the Dandenongs in Victoria in 2021. The devastation wasn’t quite the same, but it was serious stuff and then those poor people got hit by floods not a few days later. We did what we could, but by the time we got there most of the work had already been done. We helped re-tarp two homes and did a good job there at least. 

 

Springfield Lakes has the best water management infrastructure that I’ve ever seen, so I am not worried about us getting flooded, at worst we’ll be cut off from town and we have food and water for at least 10 days so that should be fine. It was very impressive to see the water come up from the 2-3 meters below the footpath and rush by in a raging torrent for a few days. A few days later Yumi found a fish in an isolated puddle and mounted an expedition to save it with a bucket and bottles of water, which she promptly did! We tell ourselves that it’s still happily swimming around Springfield somewhere to this day!

SES/RFS

After 12 months of not feeling like I would fit in and mostly being frustrated with how little I could actually do, I bit the bullet and handed in my SES gear last week, calling it quits on a 7-year career as an SES volunteer. It felt really weird and in my head, I still am that person who springs into action when the pager goes off, but in reality I won’t be going on any SES call-outs again. Maybe I will re-join at some point in life, but for now it’s okay that we’ve gone our separate ways. I received a very nice token of appreciation from my old Altona unit, a key ring with the SES logo on it and every time I see it, I am reminded of the wonderful time I had with them, and that is how I prefer to remember SES.

But no need to be too sad, I’ve already joined the Rural Fire Service and it’s such a different experience! From the very first day I felt welcome and that these people know what they are doing and talking about. It’s mostly blokes and some are a bit rough around the edges, but they are a good bunch, and I am excited to learn a lot of new things and become an actual firefighter, that’s pretty cool if you ask me. The extra cool part is that my mate Michael (from Altona SES) is also leaving SES and joined RFS, so we can still share in the experience and have each other’s back when thing get ’heated’, sorry, that is a terrible pun 😊. 

Yumi’s Work and volunteering

Yumi’s been busier than ever with the greyhound volunteering. She’s now looking after 8 dogs, helping others out with theirs and also co-organising two events in the next 6 weeks. She’s really enjoying it though and while she complains about how much work it is, she’s quick to jump in when there’s a crisis and gets things sorted soon as. The charity had some setbacks working with the Queensland Racing organisation who weren’t very good about delivering on promises and suffered spontaneous memory loss when things didn’t go their way. In my opinion they are a bunch of amateurs trying their best but failing to effectively support the smaller charities they are supposed to help. Yumi take sit all in stride and makes new friends and connections as she goes. I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up working in this space and I’d 100% support her. She’d be able to do so much good and would probably get a lot out of it for herself too. 

Speaking of getting things, she’ll be loading up the car with 25-30 bag of free dog food again today, so I get to stack that in the garage when I get home, haha. It’s a food supply program for charities run by Petbarn, who have to get rid of stock they can’t sell, but instead of throwing it out, they give it to charities. This really is very generous of them because it runs in the thousands of dollars what they give away for free and it really helps charities financially. 

Workwise not much is happening for her at the moment. She has a small project about to start if that all goes through and she applied for a role with the Queensland Mental Health Commission that I think she’ll be really good at, but it’s one of those wait and sees with many hurdles and tollgates before you get anywhere, but that’s government for you. Well, I’d rather she goes for roles that make her happy than ‘just a job’. In the meantime, she’s doing some studying, the same course I did three years ago for Company Directors, so she can join a board for a charity or not-for-profit. I think she’ll ace it. I did really well on my exams, and she generally does better at anything I do, so they’ll probably give her an award, name a building after her and erect a statue in town somewhere when she’s done… 

10 years in Oz 

Yesterday (6 February) marked 10 years in Australia for us, quite the milestone. It’s funny how I remember us arriving in Sydney like it was yesterday and it doesn’t seem that long ago, but it’s really been 10 years. I’ve started pulling all the blog posts and letters to you in one big document and it’s already grown to 375 pages and close to 100,000 words. I might just print it all out, just to see what it looks like!

I can honestly say I’ve never regretted coming here and starting life anew, not a single day. We’ve had so many opportunities come our way, lived in wonderful places (okay, maybe not Brunswick) and met wonderful people like yourself who became new friends. We travelled the country from top to bottom and left to right and there’s still so much to see and experience that there’s really no other option than to stay for ten more years!

We went out to dinner to celebrate and while the Indian food was good and the company pleasant, it didn’t really feel all that festive somehow. We both felt it the same way and decided that it’s probably because this is now our regular life and 10 years plus 1 day is just as special. We have started the citizenship process in earnest now, which is really just requesting 2 documents from the Dutch government for me and then putting it all together in one big file. Shouldn’t be too hard, so maybe by the end of the year we can call ourselves true Australians, whatever that means 😊.

 

Small things

• Dash’ birthday

Dash turned six on 26 January so instead of getting involved in Australia/Occupation Day, we went for a nice walk in the woods near where I used to work on Mt. Gravatt, and it was great. Very nice walking paths, very well-maintained bushland and some new flowers and trees I hadn’t seen before. Dash was having the best of times, despite it already being 28 degrees at 7 in the morning and many trees, rocks, shrubs and poles were sniffed and watered. He got even more snacks than usual. 

• The Fine

I got a really, really big infringement notice for…hold on…$1,106 and 4 demerit points and it’s the silliest story ever. I got the fine for having my phone on my leg in the car. I don’t recall why I did that or how it happened, but the law is clear on that being illegal, so the government took that opportunity to remind me of my responsibilities. Ouch. Fortunately, I had just sent an invoice to Deakin for my teaching activities for $1,150 so it won’t hurt too much, but what a colossal waste of money for a few seconds of inattention!!

 

• Freya

Our friends the Shimmins family have gotten themselves a German Shepherd named Freya and she’s just the cutes little ball of fur. She’s only 9 weeks old and mostly just paws and teeth but hopefully when she grows up a bit her and Dash can be playmates every now and then. I was hoping they’d adopt a greyhound, but they can look after Dash every now and then. This is her being super cute:

• Puzzles

Yumi and I went to the Brisbane Bookfair to get…you guessed it, puzzles! And not just a few, 25! And we got a great deal of 2 for $10. Yay! We also handed in about 30 of them to be resold for charity, it’s not very likely we’ll redo any of them and it’s for a good cause so everybody wins. That’ll keep us entertained for a while, I think.

• New PlayStation 5

Early December I finally bought myself a PlayStation 5 gaming console after waiting for 2 years since it came to market. They aren’t cheap but I use it so often that over it’s 5-6 year lifespan I’ll get my money’s worth and then some. To really benefit from the new technology we should also buy a new tv but it still works and I don’t think it will make such a big difference so we’ll hold off on that. I bought my first PlayStation in 1997 and just typing that makes me feel really old, haha!

• Change Management Institute

Things are underway again after almost 2 months of not much activity and we’re coming out swinging with lots of new activities and ideas. I was named the CMI 2023 Australian Volunteer of the Year and even got a fancy certificate! It was very unexpected, but much appreciated. I did apply for a national volunteer role to coordinate things in different ways but after the interview I decided that I am good where I am as ‘just’ a general member, I can do a lot of good that way and don’t have to think too much about what I can and cannot say, just the way I like it! They’ve also asked me to write regular book reviews and be part of an informal thinktank, so I’ll have plenty of things to keep me entertained for a while.

 

• Wealth Management

We’ve had some additional money come our way and now that we’re getting more serious about buying a home, we decided to talk to someone about what we should do with our savings in a few weeks from now. It’s so weird to think of ourselves as people who might need a wealth manager, but maybe they have good tips on how we can make our money work for us a bit more, so we can get our very own home organised sooner.

I think that’s all the important bits for now, I’ll write again in 2 months’ time and will make sure not to be late this time!

Be well and stay cool,

Gilbert

Letter to Marlis Sep-Oct 2023

Springfield Lakes, 10 November

Hi Marlis,

Another two months have flown by with lots of interesting things that happened. They never seem like major things until I start writing them down. When I then read back these letters I always think that we’ve got a lot going on after all! Anyway, I hope you are doing well as always and that you got yourself a cup of tea and a warm spot to sit, because here we go! 

I apologise for there not being any photos in this letter, my printer is not that good for printing photos, but I promise to make it up next time!

Visiting Sydney

For my birthday I got gifted an all-expenses-paid 2-day trip to Sydney from Yumi’s business, Purpose at Work, to attend a 1-day conference about Governance in Aged Care on my birthday. Some might think that’s boring, but it keeps my knowledge current for the work that I sometimes do, helping Purpose at Work deliver a workshop to business leaders and Board Members about human rights, quality and safeguarding. The conference was good, I learned some new things, heard some familiar things and got to support Yumi’s business partner Alan who also spoke there, 3 days before getting his second hip-replacement! And then you called me to wish me a happy birthday, so that made the day that much better still.

The Sunday before the conference I got to spend time with my change management friend Myah, who has a wonderful mind and an unusual way of thinking about the world that I really like. We had lunch talked for about 3 hours about the world, the change management community and a book that we plan to write about the ethics of change management in this modern age. I would write a book about pet rocks and how they collect dust if it means working with her, I think I’ll learn a lot from writing a more ‘serious’ book than Bad Change, although that was serious in its own way too. After meeting with Myah I met with two other change friends for drinks, also in Darling Harbour and then I went back to my hotel to work on a brochure about the impact of the Disability Royal Commission for Purpose at Work and that was the Sunday done.

After the conference on Monday, I had planned to have some time for sightseeing, before going to the airport. It was a glorious sunny day with perfect weather, so I walked from Darling Harbour to Circular Quay to look at the Bridge and Opera House and I am happy to report they are both still there! 😊 Even though I get lost all the time and I am so bad at navigating, I know that part of Sydney pretty well by now so I had no issue finding my way, look at all the tourist and laugh at their weird antics. The area really has changed over time with more building shooting up and complete blocks being demolished, but I mostly just looked at the people and the bay. I also treated myself to a plant-based burger from Hungry Jacks and it was pretty good. So good in fact that I got flocked by a swarm of seagulls trying to steal it! I didn’t exactly run for it, but had to walk about 100m before I could eat in peace, which must have looked hilarious to everyone else. After that it was time to go home to Yumi and Dash to celebrate the last part of my birthday and our 26-years together anniversary. I call that a pretty good day!

Diving

We were fortunate to go diving again mid-September, once again at the Gold Coast, but more out to sea this time. The first was a spot called ”The Miracles”, which is an artificial reef just 15 minutes off the coast, built to attract underwater life. They are essentially two steel pyramids connected at their base held to the seafloor by big chains and anchors. They are full of holes so the fish can go inside and do whatever it is that fish do in their spare time😊. By the looks of it, it’s working as planned, there was a lot of coral growth and marine life around. Visibility wasn’t very good, but we still had a good time for most of it. 

The next one was a timber frame wreck from 1884 which was really just a set of beams and planks, but still fun to look at. There were a few very big eagle rays and cow-tailed rays hanging about, and it’s always nice to hang out with them a bit. This was a new dive operator for us and they were as friendly as ever. They are in a good spot for us to drive to and despite me accidentally stealing the dive guide’s dive boots (they were nearly identical to mine!!) they were happy to have us back for more dives. I always want to go for more dives, but Yumi sometimes gets headaches and our weekends are quite busy with normal life stuff and the greyhounds so diving doesn’t happen as often as I’d like.

My friend Peter and I are nearly done with the follow up to the Bad Change Book, called Bad Sponsor. In business-land a sponsor is an executive leader who takes responsibility for change happening as planned. Fortunately for us, there are lots of situations where that doesn’t quite happen as hoped and some sponsors are really bad at their jobs! We get to make fun of them in the comic on one page and then offer 5 tips  on the other page for each of the 15 scenarios so they can do better. It will be much shorter and thinner than Bad Change, but hopefully it will give change professionals some useful tools and tips to work with their sponsors in more meaningful ways. We’re also creating a 3-minute cartoon video and a poster for the fun of it.

Peter and I have plans for a training course and even more tools, but those would be paid for, while everything we’ve been doing so far has always been for charity. Building training materials is very time intensive and might also cost quite a bit of money to do it right, but it will be a fun project for 2024 to work on and it might even generate some passive income. Once we’ve set it all up, it should really take care of itself for most of it. Maybe one day we’ll really have our own business called Bad Change Company but for now it’s just fun to create things people love to use at work.

Work work work!

My free time after resigning from UQ did not last very long. After less than 2 weeks I picked up some contractwork to review training course materials and write a business case at a very attractive day rate. It was for our friend Helen, who I’ve known for something like 7 years now and who moved to Queensland just a bit before Yumi and I did. She’s doing this big project for the UN World Food Program and needed some help getting the materials up to her very high standards. I really enjoyed the work and working with one of the people I have a lot of professional and personal respect for is a very nice bonus!

And then when I thought I was done for the year and could just read and play video games, along came a contact of mine from Griffith University asking if I’d be interested to come over for 8 weeks to help them out with creating a Change Management Framework for the whole university. These jobs don’t come along often and I immediately jumped at it. I started two weeks ago and have it ready in draft, but there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done. I have so many ideas and see all the potential, but I have to stick to my brief so that they get at least the Framework and supporting materials out of it, but I plan to slide in some extra value where I can. 

I want them to really like my work and I want to prove to myself that I can do this too. I know I can, but doing it and getting paid for it, shows everyone else that I can do it too. It’s really cool that everyone I talk to wants this to happen, they are sick and tired of dealing with different tools, approaches and templates and I think I’ve got the solution for them. I will probably not be around to see it all settle into place, but the managers I work for know what they are doing, they just don’t have the time to do it themselves.  

And while all this is happening, I’ve been talking on and off for two months with a big national retailer called Super Retail Group. They are the business behind Rebel, Supercheap Auto, BCF and MacPac and very big in Australia. They will make me an offer next week and I hope it’s in the neighbourhood of what I asked for ($200,000). This is of course a whole lot of money, but looking at what my fellow change people are making, not so outrageous as it sounds. It would also mean I become an employee again, but I look forward to working as part of a team of change managers and not always being the one expert to help everyone else. If it all goes as planned, I’ll have a lot more to say about that next time.

However it turns out, I really feel proud of backing myself to go for more meaningful and rewarding jobs and so far it has paid off! 

Yumi’s busy schedule

Yumi’s been considering going back into the workforce but she was quite relived that none of her applications led to a job, so I think she’s not quite ready to stop being a consultant and I think that’s fine. She needs to do what’s right for her and she’s just finished a short but very creative job which involved her going to Adelaide for almost a week while I looked after the dogs (yes, plural, more on that shortly). She was the roving reporter for the three days and on the final day she presented her view of the future workforce for Aged Care for an audience of nearly 2,000 people. She really enjoyed herself and got a lot of ideas for the business from it, so let’s see what happens next.

The greyhound volunteering has also been very busy with lots of dogs moving, adoptions and rehomes, market events, community walks and more and more people wanting to volunteer for the charity, which is great. Our friend Kath (Michael’s wife) who lives only 5 minutes away was here this morning at Greyhound Central (also known as our home) when we had four dogs come in and took one home to pass on to someone who can only pick her (Summer) up later tonight. That really helps because four dogs in the backyard is a bit too much for Dash (and us!) to handle. 

Jessie the returning guest Greyhound

Last time I wrote we had Jessie as a guest dog coming back from an unsuccessful adoption, so we fostered her and then she got adopted again, yay! O so we thought, because this one didn’t work out for a different reason. Despite all the preparation the adopting family’s 3 year old could not yet understand that Jessie sometimes needs her space and kept touching her and hugging her. Jessie tried to get away, but the girl kept chasing her and eventually she started growling and barking. The adopters were really heartbroken because they understand it’s not Jessie’s fault, but they can’t make their child grow up any faster, so we took her back for another 3 weeks. 

In the process we found out that one dog is really enough for us. It’s like parents who already have two kids and then have a third, everything just becomes that much harder. She is a lovely dog and really funny and cheeky, but she’s such a handful when going on walks, especially if you have to walk them alone. Fortunately for her (and us) she got adopted again last Friday and we hope this time she found her forever home. The family seems well prepared and will love her to pieces. If it doesn’t work out, we’ve already resolved to take her back again, and again, and again until she finds the right place. We haven’t told Dash yet, who seems happy to be a single child again…😊

Dash’s plastic adventure

Two weeks ago on a Sunday night Yumi was preparing the dogs’ dinner and part of that is a slice of meat from a big, smelly and disgusting looking plastic wrapped sausage that apparently has salmon and duck in it. I am not so sure, but they love it, so we throw it in their kibble every now and then. They inhale the stuff like it’s a gourmet meal, so good for them. A bit less good was that while Yumi reached for the bin to dispose of the 30 cm long plastic wrap sliver, dash grabbed that and swallowed it in a milli-second. We tried to open his mouth and pull it out but we were just in time to see it disappear in the back of his throat. I wasn’t too worried, but Yumi was, of course, and she was right! Every website that we immediately checked said to go to the vet right away and get it out. If it’s only a small piece it will work its way out eventually, but long slivers can get balled up and tangled, causing severe constipation and even death. 

So off to the emergency vet we went. Dash was happy as a clam, not at all aware that he would get a nice treat to make him really nauseous to get him to spew. We sat in the waiting room for an hour and out he comes, happy as a clam again, like nothing happened! After he throws up they give him another shot to make him feel better, so for him it was just “I am happy, ow that stings, I don’t feel so good in my tummy, blegh, sorry, oooh, I feel good again” all in the space of 45 minutes. The bill was a lovely $425 dollars, but fortunately we have insurance, so we ended up $100 out of pocket, which is still a LOT of dog snacks.  

SES activities 

I am not sure how much longer I will stay with SES, I just can’t seem to find my spot. It’s nothing to do with the people or anything they are friendly enough. I think it’s just the lack of activity and involvement. I was so used to being involved and busy all the time and here it’s really just a bit of training and every now and then we get to do something small that they think is a really big deal. It doesn’t feel like the SES that I loved so much in Victoria and I am getting a bit tired of pretending that it is. 

Coming Thursday my friend Michael and I will visit the Ripley RFS Station, to perhaps join the volunteer firefighters. That’s always been an ambition of mine, even when still in Victoria. It might be good to wear a different uniform, do completely different things and still be able to help to keep the community safe. I hope they like us for it, we have a few things going for us, like already being part of Queensland Fire and Emergency Services, having all our checks and cards, years of experience with an emergency service and operational disaster experience. Next time I write I might have switched my orange outfit for a yellow one!

I did go on a search for a missing person with SES about a month ago. The person was found by a member of the public, unfortunately no longer alive, but we searched for 3 days (I only did one of those) in 30-38 degree heat with about 20 people each time, but it was a big area. At some point I became team leader of those 20 people and I really didn’t enjoy that at all. Half of the team had never been on a search; the other half was not planning on following instructions and the guy who was team leader first wasn’t very good at it too. I was happy when the day was over. It turned out the next area we would have searched was where the person was found the same day. I am really glad we missed it, no one needs to see that, especially newer members.

By now I’ve also completed most of the training that I already had in Victoria, so I can go out on most jobs again, even if it’s only for a few more weeks (I hope). It all feels like such a waste of time, but then again, you can never train enough! We did a fun event with 4 of us last Sunday where we were out at the Springfield Lakes Sunday Market and I got to talk to lots of people about preparing for emergencies. But we were really there to pat everyone’s dog and hand out stickers to kids, haha. I realised a few weeks back that I should get organised around having our own emergency kit. I am happy to report that we now have almost everything we need to stay safe for at least 5 days. 50 litres of water, food, first aid and tools, all packed and ready to go or help us survive when cut off. It’s actually a bit silly that I didn’t do this sooner, it really only took 2 hours to get it organised. 

CMI volunteering

My volunteering with the Change Management Institute is going well. We just had another really good morning event in the city that is my favourite. It’s basically a bunch of change people like me standing around. Talking for 5 minutes about a topic we all voted on and then moving on to the next one. We cover a lot of ground and it’s a fun way to stay up to date with what others are thinking. And then when it’s 9am you have the whole day ahead and I feel energised and then some!

We’re also about to have an end-of-year event with some fun prizes and a big celebration of the year that was. I like organising these things for the community, to create a sense of togetherness. I wanted it to be much grander, but the team didn’t spring into action until a few weeks ago and all the preparation went out the window. I knew this might happen so I wasn’t too annoyed, but it’s still a bit frustrating that it could have been much more than what it is now, but it’s good as it is. There’s always next year! I had a meeting with the CEO for CMI to discuss the volunteer experience and she seems very switched on. We chatted about all sorts of things that would make it more fun for volunteers to join and stay involved, so let’s see what she does with my plans and ideas. It always takes a long time for things to happen within CMI, but eventually they do happen. 

I was strongly encouraged by the current country co-lead, the volunteer person looking after the six state committees, (it’s really only 50 people at most) to put my hand up for a co-lead position coming up, but I don’t think I will right now. I am happy where I am, doing what I do, nice and simple. Normally I’d always go for the lead role, but I’ve seen what that’s like in CMI and really don’t need that in my life. There are other ways to influence and be of service 😊.

Small things

• New plates and bowls

I fi-nal-ly decided to buy some new plates and bowls. I know it’s stupid but I hemmed and hummed way too much over this. We’ve been using the super cheap plates from Target and Big W, basically since we came to Australia, but I felt it was time for ‘grown-up’ dinner ware. They are still not very expensive or fancy (plain white, 8 big ones, 8 small ones and 8 bowls for $160), but they feel like a luxury to me! Fortunately, I chose well, 100% by the pictures and reviews on the internet and even found vegan bone china-like plates and bowls. That just means there’s no ground up animal bones in them, so that’s a win. No more sharp, chipped edges and ugly cracks and scratches. They are so smoooooothhhhh, I love them!

• Robert and Helen coming over

Next week our friends from ‘Up North’ (It’s really only 50km…) Helen and Robert will come over for lunch and to hang out for a bit, which should be good fun. We always try to wow each other with some new and exciting vegan food options (or as exciting as vegan food ever gets) and just sit and chat, you know, like middle-aged people do. They are thinking of adopting a greyhound at some point, so Dash will do his best to be a good ambassador for his breed and who knows, they might start the new year with a new furry companion!

• UQ team Christmas Lunch

My former University of Queensland colleagues asked me to join them for the end-of-year lunch on 1 December and it will be nice to see them again. A lot of people have left since I left, but it’ll be nice to hear how everyone is doing and have a good meal. They even want to present me with a gift for my work with the Social Club, so I asked them to make a donation to charity because I really have everything I need.

• Holiday plans

We’re thinking of going to the Sunshine Coast after I finish up at Griffith and possibly begin a new job at Super Retail Group. We’ll have to find an accommodation where we can bring Dash because we’re taking him with us and he needs a place to stay while we go diving for a few of those days. By the time the next letter comes around you’ll hear more about how that went.

• Lawnmower

At the start of October I finally gave in and bought an electric lawn mower and boy should I have done that much earlier! The original hand mower somehow got its blades misaligned and I couldn’t get it the work properly anymore. As you know, I hate gardening with a passion and using a malfunctioning tool does not make it easier or me any happier. So off to Bunning I went after doing some online research and an hour later I was mowing the lawn like a pro! I also bought one of those whipper snippers and I couldn’t be happier. It’s not all perfectly straight and evenly mowed, but give it a few more months and I’ll be the pride of the neighbourhood, haha!

• 1-year anniversary of Living in Brisbane

On 27 September we completed a full year in Brisbane and we’ve agreed that this was another good decision. The weather is as amazing as we hoped with 300+ days of sunshine, there’s new things to see and do and we got to reinvent a few things about ourselves. Springfield Lakes is a very good place to live, with everything we need close enough to live comfortably. We do wish we’d be closer to the ocean but it’s so very expensive to do so that it’s a bit silly, so we drive up to the coast every now and then to get our ‘salty sea-air fix’.

Okay, I think that’s most of it for now. I’ll be sure to get in touch around Christmas time, but you can expect another letter early January for sure.

Stay cool and be well,

Gilbert 

Letter to Marlis Jul-Aug 2023

 

Springfield Lakes, 11 September 2023

Hi Marlis,

Happy Birthday! I’ll give you a call and hope this letter finds you exactly on Tuesday the 12th, but make it a good day and treat yourself to something nice! I hope you are keeping well and are looking forward to being outside a bit more once again. It’s been a very full-on two months, so let’s get straight into it.

Trip to the Netherlands

From 26 July to 7 August we were back in the Netherlands and it was good to see family, friends and Rotterdam once again. Everyone really went all out to make us feel welcome and I couldn’t stop marvelling at how many vegan food options there were to choose from. Australia is not bad at all, but wow, the Netherlands really takes it to the next level. Yummm! 

It’s quite bizarre to see how much all the kids have grown, with most of them now already or soon becoming teenagers! When did that happen?! Other than that we realised that it’s us who have changed the most really. We look at how people behave in traffic, the crowds everywhere, the weather and the price-levels and we’re like “yeah, nah”, rather live in Brisbane. There’s so much to tell about all we did in those two weeks, that I’ve sectioned it up for easier reading and tried to keep it in order. 😊

Staying at my parents

The flight in was uneventful and long, as expected. We left on Wednesday 3am here and arrived on Wednesday at 9pm there, but of course with the time difference, more than 26 hours had passed. My mum and dad picked us up at the airport and drove us back to their place, where we also stayed the last time in 2019. It really is like a hotel, nothing to worry about, everything is there when you need it, your food is ready when you get back and you can come and go whenever you like. They did everything they possibly could to make our stay as comfortable as possible and it was! 

The next-morning jetlag wasn’t so bad and we immediately got started on the program after breakfast to go up north and visit a contact of Yumi’s. It’s called the “dementia-village” and they have a unique approach to assisted living for people with Alzheimer. The idea is to let them all live together in a village like setting with support 24/7 when they need it instead of institutionalising and hiding them away them in rooms until they die. 

Yumi visited for 2 hours and I went exploring a nearby castle (“The Muiderslot”) that I grew up with hearing about and seeing in tv series, but never actually visited. It would have been nice if not for the weather which was just pouring down with bucketloads of rain. Little did we know that would be the theme for every.single.day! So much rain. 

We worked around it and it didn’t make too much of a difference to our plans, although we got rained out more often in 2 weeks than in the past 3 years or so.  Ah well, we got some good use out of the umbrellas we bought and got lucky a few times during the day, but it was horrendous for most of our stay. I’d go out for early morning walks to have a look around and see the old neighbourhood (we used to live about 3km away) but always had to bring an umbrella for those surprise rain showers, haha!

It was nice to have the evenings together with my parents to just sit and chat, until the jetlag caught up on the first few days. We also spent the Saturday together going to a museum (photography), having a fancy lunch and going to the cinema to see the latest Indiana Jones movie. Totally forgettable movie, but it was great to do things together. My dad had not been in a cinema for 17 years, so that was quite the experience for him too!

Road trip down memory lane

I always like to visit the places that used to be significant, like where the family business used to be, the street I grew up in, the first house I remember living in, my old school, that sort of thing. Some places are filled with sadness, others with great joy, most a bit of both. It’s amazing the things you remember when you are in the actual location, although it gets a bit busy with all the memories trying to push to the front at the same time. 

Because I get up at stupid o’ clock wherever I am and it was summer with long days over there, I had the opportunity to spend some time in solitude in these places and just be there in the moment with no other people, no traffic or other noises. The connection to these places is slowly growing distant and fading away as buildings, people and places disappear and new elements get added. It’s not always a bad thing, but I notice it a bit more every time we visit, which is normal I guess. 

The most fun I had when I went to the campus of the Erasmus University where I met Yumi all the way back in 1997. I was literally the only person there, which isn’t strange if you consider it was Sunday morning 6am-ish. So many new buildings, some old remaining ones, places where we used to hang out, paths we used to walk together with our study mates. They’ve really spruced up the place over the years and now that I’ve worked at various universities, I see them in a very different way as to when I was a student there. 

A day out in Rotterdam

Yumi and I had a great day in Rotterdam just going around, looking at how everything had changed and doing some shopping and eating. We took the train into town from where my parents live and stopped at a shopping centre we used to live next to just to see how everything had changed.

 

It was remarkably similar still, but a bit more modern. We continued our trip into the city, checked out the (still quite) new Central Station which looks very sci-fi and spacious and then walked our way towards what is still the best apple pie in the city, they even had a vegan option, yay! Then we did some more walking and Yumi spent about an hour buying clothes (that she needed) while I just went for a few loops around the city by myself. Again, so many memories, but it’s still the same beautiful, loud, ugly, everchanging and rough city that will always stay in my blood. 

We had a nice lunch, walked around some more, bought cool socks for me and rode the train back just looking out the window to see how much the city has changed and continues to do so. 

Visiting friends

On Sunday we visited my friend of nearly 25 years Alex, Suzan and their three girls in their new (to us) home and it was just the best to see them do so well, the girls getting all grown up and hearing about their lives. They’d just come back from a three week holiday and about to go back to work, so we just sat around and chatted about life, work and plans for the future, as you do. My only regret was that we couldn’t stay longer, they are such lovely people!

On Monday we visited Yumi’s best friend of nearly 25 years and to get there we took the touristic route past the towns we used to go to for either shopping, entertainment or sports and we also stopped in Oostvoorne (East of Voorne) which is an island and part of the southwest coast of the Netherlands. I spent my teenage years there when my parents moved there because it as safer. It was also incredibly white and not unlike a rural town with the same rural mentality. I never really liked it there, but it was an okay place to live, with the beach and coastal forests nearby. It has changed a lot, but we were mostly there to see the coast and then move on to Hester, Aschwin and their kids. We stayed a bit longer this time around and again just chatted about life and everyday stuff. That’s the great thing about our long-time friends, you don’t need a lot of time to get used to each other again, you just pick up where you left off when you last saw each other😊.

Arnhem

On Tuesday we picked up our rental car in Rotterdam City while the sun was out for a whole 30 minutes before it rained again and travelled 120km to the east of the Netherlands to stay in a place called Arnhem (from the World War II movie The Longest Day) that is very close to Germany and just a 10 minute drive from Yumi’s parents. They are getting on in age being a very respectable 74 and 75 years old (spring chickens compared to your 89, course 😊), so it was all a bit too much for them to have us around for the full five days, that’s why we arranged for accommodation in Arnhem. The place was nice enough and had everything we needed, aside from an elevator. If you look past the massive roadworks going on in the street outside, around town and the 8 flights of stairs we had to go up and don every time we went out, it really had everything we needed and with the city, shops, parks and parking all 5 minutes walking away. My personal favourite was dragging the big 30kg suitcase up and down those stairs, yay…No, just kidding the best parts were the morning walks through the city and parks and going out for dinner to a fully vegan restaurant on our last night in town. Unfortunately, in a very rare occurrence Yumi wasn’t feeling well and we had to leave before dessert. She was fine again later that evening and the food until then had been wonderful!

The 50-year wedding anniversary

One of the main reasons for us to come to the Netherlands was Yumi’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. It was Yumi’s parents, her brother Kenji and sister-in-law Roos (Rose) and their two sons (15 and 13) plus me and we had a wonderful time together. We travelled all the way down to the most southern part of the Netherlands, near Maastricht and stayed in a farmstead-style hotel with a great restaurant and beautiful surroundings. 

Yumi’s dad, my 13-year old nephew and I went for a walk when we arrived and passed a hill that had some pretty impressive stairs. Of course we needed to go up those! That was probably the dumbest thing I did in a while. Not for my nephew and me, but Yumi’s dad (remember how I said he’s now 74) still has the spirit, but not the body for those sorts of shenanigans and at some point on the way back I was really worried that he was going to have a medical emergency due this blood sugar. He walks 3 hours multiple times a week, but going up hat turned out to be THE LONGEST STAIRS in the Netherlands was not a smart move. Fortunately we made it safely back down, after, of course, getting rained on and back to the hotel but I was really shaken to see how he’d become frailer since the last time we met. Food is a big thing in the Stamet family so we had a 6 course dinner and just enjoyed each other’s company a lot. 

The next morning we got up on time, well, everybody else slept in to about 7am, while I got an early morning walk in and came up with the idea to go to the three-country point. It was really close by and the fun factor there is that you can be in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands all at the same time. It was another one of those cheesy things that you never quite get to do, but since we were so close, we diverted from the plan a bit and made a quick stop to get the photo opportunity for posterity. It was just as cheesy as you’d imagine, but fun all the same. From there we continued on to an American War Memorial (the place is full of them!) which had a similar atmosphere to the bigger ones in Normandy, France. They always make me sad about the needless waste of lives and all the sorrow war brings, but it was good to see the interest the boys had and Yumi’s dad was completely in his element explaining how the liberation and D-Day all happened. From there we continued on to something that doesn’t quite translate, but let’s call it a pie-baking workshop, again, completely vegan, especially for me. I wish we hadn’t because the workshop was great fun and the pie we ate while waiting for ours to finish was also very good, but none of our eight pies turned out to be very tasteful. They were well-baked and looked great, but taste-wise, a bit meh. Ah well, the process itself was fun, the end-result didn’t matter too much 😊.

Visiting more friends

The day after we came back from the family get-together we went and visited my other best friend, Just, who I’ve known for 26 years and change now. Him, his wife Marit and their son Jurre moved up north about 3 years ago and they live in the Green Heart of the Netherlands. It is truly beautiful there! We went for a big walk through the old growth woods and had a lovely lunch without their very energetic 10-year old boy (he stayed with grandma and grandpa so we could have a conversation longer than 3 minutes and then hung out at their house before making a taco dinner and going for ice-cream later that evening. It was good for the soul to see them again!

Wrapping up and going home

The last day of our stay we went for a long hike with Yumi’s dad, or that was the plan!  But it started pouring down with rain (again) after 45 minutes, of course, just when we’d reached the point of no return, so we put up our umbrellas and soldiered on. It was a good, shared experience, but was it fun? No, not quite but we had a good laugh about it when we got back!  We warmed up and dried our clothes over lunch and miraculously, no one got sick, ha!

The next day was one of those long travel days where we left Arnhem, swung by Yumi’s parents to say our goodbyes, drive back to Rotterdam to drop off the rental car, stopped by at my mom’s work (she works in a clothes store) to say goodbye, hang out with my dad for a few hours and then got dropped off at the airport to go home.  The trip back was uneventful and we arrived without issues on Wednesday morning at 7am. We thought of taking the train, but ended up splurging on a taxi as we were ready to go back home.  It was good to be back with Dash later that morning and it didn’t look like had missed us all that much, haha.

Finishing up at UQ

We came back on Wednesday and on Friday I resigned from work at the University of Queensland. Before we went on holidays I already felt like my best work was done and I needed to go somewhere else. The time away made it clear this was the best path forward so into my new manager’s office I went and set the date for Friday 8 September. I really wanted this to be the job that I stayed in, but it wasn’t to be. I said I’d stay at least 12 months and I achieved that. I also wanted to feel like I explored all possibilities and I also feel I did that. There were many things I am proud of having made them happen, but there’s just not enough to work with to make change happen. Which is ironic if you think of it, as the university slogan is: “Create change”. 

When I started, there were 25+ change managers. A year later it’s closer to 10, that should tell you enough about how the role is valued. Perhaps in a few years from now they’ll rethink their approach, but for now our ways will part. I’ve left them with a complete training module for staff in 20 parts that we created as a team, let’s see if that helps! I made some very good friends, built my network, had many opportunities to speak about change and help others, so on balance I feel like I did good work. Over the past three months and with new leadership I could just see where my role and the main project were going, so I stopped on a high note and got out of the way of the new direction. I’m sure they will do fine without me, as they’ve done for a long time, but they’ll know I was there and made things better too.

My team had organised a very nice send-off and a card with lovely words. Instead of a gift that is nice but not all that useful, they did a collection and donated $150 to the National Homeless Collective, which is the best gift I can think of. I had the opportunity to finish it all off with a team lunch that was already planned, hand in all my equipment and badge and was out the door at 1pm on 1 September with a week of paid leave to give myself a bit of a break.

Things I do when not working

Of course I have to go and find a new job to keep me entertained and there’s been some interest but it’s all for the jobs that I always do and I’d like something a bit more senior, to really build a new practice, help lead a significant project or do something extraordinary and that’s a bit harder to find. It’s strange to hear so many people (really, at least 2 dozen or so) say that I’ll have a job in no time and I guess it depends on what they mean by “no time”, but I don’t see it happening any time soon. I do the work, I am active in the online change community, volunteer for CMI, speak at conferences every now and then and have quite a few followers on professional platforms but somehow people who hire change managers don’t see me as the logical choice. I’ll have to work on that somehow but it’s not clear to me what ‘that’ is exactly. Oh well, I have nothing but time to figure it out.

Over the past few weeks I made a list of the things I will do when I am not working, so I don’t end up wasting time and it’s been going well so far. I’ve updated my online profiles, wrote a bit about change management, washed the car, mowed the lawn, found a new energy supplier (more solar!), bought new shoes, recycled 277 bottles collected on my daily litter picking trips, updated our administration, cleaned up my digital files and did a ton of other chores so they are out of the way. I also cleaned up the garage and that was fun to do. Yumi was away for the day doing dog things so I went through most of our stuff and finally got rid of a lot of books and other heavy things that just stood there gathering dust. Went from 7 random boxes down to 3, so when the next move (let’s hope that doesn’t happen for a while) comes around, we’ll have less to carry. We’ll drop off some books at a charity book fair, but all the Dutch books I just threw out, we hadn’t looked at them for 10 years and most were 25 years old. Time to go!

This week I’ll start some online learning about Digital Transformation, which is fancy speak for change management in technological spaces, I won’t bore you with the detail. It’s about 40 hours of learning, so that’ll keep me entertained for a week or 2 and fill a gap I feel I have in my professional profile. I’ll probably find there’s a lot that I already know, but I hope to learn some new things too!

Yumi’s work and volunteering

Yumi’s been keeping busy, but perhaps not as busy as she likes. She’s going through the process of finding new clients, doing interesting work for existing ones and coming up with new ideas for the business. I think she’ll come up with something new that works for her, she always does and there’s no hurry. I’ve learned that it’s something she has to do for herself, so I try to be supportive and leave it to her 😊. 

Her other job, coordinating the grey hounds across Southern Brisbane is keeping her busy too. There are always new dogs to get to a new home, markets and walks to go to, yards to check and administration to keep organised. There are some changes to Queensland legislation about putting dogs down, making it much harder to just euthanise ex-greyhounds, so they expect to get even busier. I just drive around, help with the logistics and go for the occasional walk, but she’s full-on invested and I think that’s great. I always knew she’d do well and she’s 100% acing it!

Jessie the visiting greyhound

We’ve got a house guest for the next couple of weeks as she recovers from a urinary tract infection. Jessie is a three year old ball of lovely energy who came into the world a hermaphrodite, so she had girl and boy parts. When she got desexed they removed most of the boy parts and now she’s a girl for most of it. She’ll never have puppies and is a bit bigger than most girl dogs but she’s just as lovely as the rest of them. She and Dash get along very well, a bit too well sometimes because this week their play got a bit rough (she always starts and Dash bit her too hard on the neck. A big yelp and a small puncture later they were both in their own corner, very confused about what had just happened. She’s fine, it’s what happens with dogs! 

The first few days she was in pain and she would pee all over the house, but the next day we got her on medication and she immediately improved. She as supposed to go to a foster carer, but they said they couldn’t handle a sick dog, so now we have her until the end of the month and then she has a family waiting to adopt her that Yumi found at a market event last week. She was planning to bring Dash, but decided to bring jessie for some extra marketing and good thing she did because this family fell in love with her. Good times!

We’re experiencing what it’s like to have 2 dogs and we’re not really enjoying it, but it’s okay for now. It’s just so much more hassle going for walks, getting in the car, sharing the sofa, the house smells of dog all the time and there’s beds everywhere. It’ll be fine for the next few weeks but one dog is more than enough, thank you. I marvel at how people with three kids have 2 dogs, 2 cats and more! Yikes! 😊

SES training

I am still not completely at ease in my new SES unit but am slowly finding my way. It all just feels like a huge waste of my time to have to redo all the training, or at least all the ones that matter. Then again, people are slowly coming around to the fact that I am not completely new and have done more jobs than probably 30 members combined. I know it’s not just me being precious because my friend Michael, who is quite different from me, feels the same way, but we can’t quite put our finger on what the issue really is. We’ve made a pact to stay at least one year, so a few more months to go and then we’ll revisit the whole thing. Maybe this is just what SES volunteering in Queensland is about and this is as good as it gets. I heard that Melbourne got slammed with 500+ jobs and that always makes me want to go and help!

We did a useful training course last weekend, to enable us to go on searches for missing people and to assist police with forensic searches and I thought it was okay. Didn’t learn anything new, but at least it wasn’t boring. I’ve also put my hand up to use my trainer qualifications for the sake of the unit and get involved in the train-the-trainer course. Let’s see how that turns out and what they are after. I’d prefer not to be in a leading role, but I do believe in education and building capability, so if that’s a way for me to use my experience and help out, that works for me. Michael said the other day that we have to find something that connects us to it all and I think he’s right because in VICSES it used to be the jobs we go on together, but here we go without jobs for weeks if not months on end, so it’ll have to be something else.

Lots of small things

You’ve been reading for a while now, so I’ll keep the next section a bit shorter and make a lot of short mentions of other things that have happened over the past few weeks.

 Yumi’s dance performance late July was good fun. They really did a good job at entertaining the audience and put in a lot of hours of practice. I thought it was going to be so-so, but it was pretty good, considering that none of these people are professional dancers and I would not go on stage in a leotard to save my life! Her next big performance is next week at Brisfest and of course I’ll be there to take pictures for future generations, haha!

 Next week I’ll help my SES buddy Michael and his family move house. They arrived a few months later than we did but have already bought a property in the neighbourhood because they like it so much here that they intend to stay, yay! It’ll be a fun day of moving stuff down the street with a truck because they are quite literally moving 500 meters or so. 

 I am still enjoying the online teaching I do for Deakin, although it was a bit disappointing to agree to stop doing the masterclasses. Not just because they make me really good money, but it’s the different type of interaction that I enjoyed. However, the self-paced course we built and recently updated is outcompeting the Masterclass offering, so one has to go and that’s that. Oh well, the other is fun too. I had two papers to grade last week and one was very good and the other okay, which is a big improvement over other months where the quality is just not there and it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

 I’ve been keen to go diving again, but things (dog things) keep getting in the way. The downside to where we live is that all the diving happens on the other end of town. We’ll have to consider that when we move house again, but right now it just means we have to get organised around Dash and Yumi’s many other obligations. It’ll happen, hopefully in two weeks!

 This week we did another event with the Change Management Institute where 20 or so change managers all meet up at 7.30am to talk about topics that are on our mind. It’s always such an energy boost and I get a lot of ideas for new events there too. This week we’ll organise networking drinks which are always entertaining and a good excuse to get into the city. We’re thinking of also organising an end-of-year event but I’ve been trying to get everyone organised and they just keep putting it off and delaying so I am fine if it doesn’t happen. I’ve been doing this long enough to know when it gets frustrating and I’ll just step back a bit for now 😊. 

 Speaking of stepping back, I’ve stopped volunteering for the shark and rays people. I would have loved to stay on but the way it was run was not going to work for me. We’ve also stepped back from the landcare volunteering as the timing generally didn’t work for both Yumi and me. Oh well, we tried it and there will always be some other thing to do. 

 Last month and this month we celebrate(d) living in Brisbane for a year already! Where did all that time go?! I can easily say it’s been another good decision for team Stamet/Kruidenier. It’s a great place to live and work! The next year will be equally interesting to see what comes our way and what will happen next. We always say that we hope this year will be a bit more relaxed and calmer, but that’s not been true for, well, forever, so perhaps we should just stop saying it altogether, haha!

 I’ve been enjoying the extra time I had to read, write and do lots of gaming. I am almost done with a game called Dark Souls 3 which is one of the hardest games to play. You play as a knight, defeating big bosses and they are like puzzles that you have to solve. They can be beaten, but some take as many as 60-70 tries and I always feel a strange sense of pride when I get it done. I only have the final boss to defeat and I know I can do it, it’s just a matter of sitting down for 2-3 hours to get it done and I’ll use my time for other things first, I think. In the meantime I am replaying a game from 25 years ago and it’s just the best fun. I don’t remember much of it but because they added some features it moves a lot faster and you get to enjoy the story more, which is just what I wanted when I played it in 1999. Geez, I am getting old!

 There are plans for me to write another book about change management with another change manager from Sydney. Her and I get along very well and both have ideas about the ethics of change management. Right now it’s only the germ of an idea, but these things have a tendency to happen, so let’s see where it goes. I’ve started compiling lots of reading material so we can build the framework, then add the cartoons and colours and see what we can create. That’ll be a 2024 project.

 My friend Peter and I ran an online ‘Murder Mystery’ two weeks ago for a change management conference that one of friends organised for the 4th time around. It’s a bit like Clue, with funny weapons, suspects, locations and a complicated schedule of who did what when and how. It was hilarious and we enjoyed creating it nearly as much as the people playing it. At some point we might have to get serious about the Bad Change Company because we have a lot of content and could probably set up a real business around it. That’ll also be a 2024 project!

 Losing weight has been going well too, just the other week I saw 85kg and my goal for this month is to hold onto that on my way to 82.5 by the end of the year. I’ve dropped close to 8 kilos so far and it didn’t really feel all that hard. Now that I am not working for a bit I’ll have to take extra care, but so far, so good!

Okay, that’s it for now, I hope you have a very good day on your birthday and will write to you again in two months from now.

Be well,

Gilbert