Latest / The You Project / #1965 The Hard(est) Day At The Office - Grant Dooley

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#1965 The Hard(est) Day At The Office - Grant Dooley · The You Project

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I'll get a team. It's the bloody you project. It's
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: harp to stiff, it's grant. We've got a newbie. He
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: was having to go with me because it took us
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: eight years to get him on. But I said I
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: needed to train up upskill, get smart enough so I
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: could have a conversation with him before we go to him.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: High tip for you.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: All right, I'm all right, thanks, I'm all right.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: How's all your issues? I mean, I know that you've
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: been very open with the world about your psychological, emotional,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: physiological issues, social issues. You know all that. Are you okay?
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I've grappled him into submission today.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: So today's day.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: It's a good day. Yeah, it's good. A choke hold.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: When do you know if it's going to be a
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: good day? Do you get out of bed going fuck
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: here today I feel good, I'm on point, or do
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh god, this is going to be like
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: waiting through emotional quicksand.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Look, sometimes you just don't know. Sometimes things come from
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: left field.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: No.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: I wake up and you know what, my sleep's been
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: great lately. So so the days are not starting tired
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: and heavy and underslept and from a deficit which is awesome.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Yesterday I woke up and was the first day for
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: a long time I've wanted to go and do intense
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: exercise like boxing, and it felt so good.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: How long since you've punched a real human in the face, though,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Enough about hitting bags and speedballs and shit, since you've
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: hit a person in the face?
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: Whatever?
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Date earlier this year when I did some sparring with
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: my blind friend.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: But you're going to I mean, I'm no boxer, but
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: if you're going to spar with someone, make sure they're blind.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: That is a great strategy. It's not very politically incorrect,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: but fucking he wanted to get in there.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: It works well for me.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: So I reckon, we might chuck you and Grant Duley
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: in the ring and just say I reckon you. Probably
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I reckon you'd hit it nine times. She's an ex
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: professional boxer. She did you about nine times before you
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: pulled on your fucking gloves.
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: Possibly ten times. Actually, are you?
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Firstly, Grant, Hey, nice to meet you, sir, Welcome to
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the You project. Thanks for being a part of it.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, great to be here. And what your tipers are
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: saying then about sleep, that's the key for me too.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: If you have a good night's sleep, you start the
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: day feeling energized and ready to take on the world.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: But when you have a bad night's sleep, and yeah,
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: you start from way back in that quicksand waiting, So
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: that really resonates.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's your quota? Like how many hours do you need? Six,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: you need seventy, you need nine? Does it depend on
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the quality? But let's say it's good sleep. How many
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: hours is enough?
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: Probably six? If I get six good hours sleep, I'm
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: pretty good. I can live on four. But it's the
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: quality of the sleep that matters. Really.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: That's so true to tip. What's your magic number in
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: terms of like if it's good sleep. Oh, by the way,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: you're still obsessed with that fucking thing you wear on
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: your wrist, it up and check it whether or not.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Like as you get up and go I feel good,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: and then you look at your watch and you're like, oh, no,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: I don't.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: That is the quickest way to knock feeling good on
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the head, knock a good night's sleep on the head
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: by just looking at your watch to see if it
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: was real, if it really happened.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I reckon you sholl get rid of the watch
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and listen to your biology. I reckon your biology is
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: smarter than your technology at the moment, just saying true, yea,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I need I need eight. I'm an eight person. Do
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: you reckon grant? There's a real relationship between and I
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: know you didn't think we were going to start here,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: but we never know where we're going to start because
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: we don't plan, which apparently is bad for you. Is
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: there a relationship between how you're feeling, your emotions, your psychology,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: your productivity, your mental acuity, and how well you sleep?
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, totally. You know when when we can touch on
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: it touch miss in the books why I wrote the book,
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: But when I had that very first big panic attack,
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: it really impacted my sleep more than anything else because
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: it unleashed this level of anxiety in my body, heart
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: rate going through the roof, and every night I try
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: to go to sleep, my heart's going to jink a
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: jink a jink a jink a jink So you end
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: walking the streets at three in the morning, you end
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: up getting this very patchy sleep, and very quickly that
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: impacted my not I think my ability to go to
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: work and be productive in the office. But you know,
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: I had two young kids in the house and you know,
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: and they're watching their father become a super cranky old
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: man very quickly.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: So it's not just yourself as those.
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: Around you, particularly a family, that also end up seeing
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: it feeling it. Yeah, So starting a good night's sleep,
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: I firmly believe. And it's the first thing that it's
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: the key. I have a routine I go through every
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: night to make sure that my sleep hygiene gets me
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: to the point where I go to sleep and I
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: sleep well. Yeah.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Your sympathetic nervous system, you know, that fight or flight response.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: It doesn't give a shit about what you want. It
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: doesn't care about what you want. It just does its
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: own thing, you know. And when you're in that even
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: though logically, like you know, well, right now things are good,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: right now, I am safe, right now, there is no threat.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: But despite all of that awareness and knowledge, you can
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: still get held to ransom by your body, right.
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly right. And you know that fight and flight
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: response is the thing that once I had that panic attack,
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: which was the genesis for the book, I have to
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: start dealing with the heart rate. And yeah, medications is
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: a very much a band aid response for me. It
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: was it was actually about you know, letting some very
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: good habits, for instance, meditating, and meditating really was about
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: breathing for me to slow my body down. Breathing is
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: the best way to do it. And then the actually
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: is who actually write the book and getting some of
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: the stuff out of my head which I couldn't talk
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: about but I could write about it. And that those
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: two together over a period of time put me well,
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: put me in a really good place, which is largely
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: what I mean. Now. I still I'm quite di sciplined
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: about my sleep and my sleep hygen, but I've been
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: able to uncover a system that works for me. And really,
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: but if I don't meditate for my half an hour
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: to forty five minutes a day, if I don't find
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: a way to unwind that mind at night, then yeah,
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: my heart will start going and I'll start fretting about it.
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: Once I start fretting about it, then the heart goes
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: faster and you just goes into spiral.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, My PhD is essentially in the mind that
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: I'm always saying, if you can't manage your mind, you
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: really can't manage your life, you know, because it's such
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: it's like your operational headquarters. You know it's it's UHQ.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: You said you couldn't talk about it, but you can
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: write about it. So I'm curious, once you could write
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: about it, once you've got it out of your heading
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: onto a page, so to speak, did that liberate the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: vocalizing of it.
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: To a degree. I mean, the book talks about a
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: particular period in Jakata when I was in the embassy.
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: We had a bombings, we had riots, we had plane crashes,
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: and the plane crash was probably the most personal because
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: friends were on that plane that died, and I was
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: supposed to be on the plane and at the last
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: minute changed my mind and a friend took my seat.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: I think he took my seat. To this day, I
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: don't one hundred percent certain whether he was actually in
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: my seat, but a friend who then got on the
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: plane did die. And that was the stuff in your head,
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: the guilt complex and all those type of things what
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: is and things, So it's better process. I had the
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: book launched last night, actually, and that was the first
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: time I've been able to talk about very publicly talk
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: about these events, and that was a big step because
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: once I could start talking about it was more just
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: talking about my family, friends, but the talk about it
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: publicly in an open environment front of one hundred old people.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: That was pretty emotional.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Well well done, you mate, It's amazing, and nothing but
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: love and empathy from here and so everyone. The book
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: is called Bomb Season in Jakarta Diary of a diplomatic Nightmare.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Did I get that correct?
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's Bomb Season in Jakarta exactly, a diary of
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: a nightmare. I think as something, yeah, a personal account
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: of turbulent period. You know, there's lots of taglines, but
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: generally speaking as a first person memoir of my time
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: in the embassy in Jakata from two thousand and four
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: to two thousand and seven, during a period of when
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: I mean the reason it's called bomb Season in Jakarta,
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: we had the Balley bombing in the September of two
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: thousand and two, we had the Marriott bombing in the August,
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: we had the Embassy bombing in the September, and by
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: the time the next year came around, we're saying, oh,
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: what are you going to be doing for bomb season
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: because obviously this three month period is when the bombs
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: are going off, and as the black humor, Yeah, what
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: are you doing for bomb season? I think when I
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: got back to Australia, I think it became this lexicon
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: of your day to day life and blowing down what happens.
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: Another bombing happens in October that year, so it became
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: real that this bomb season existed, you know. So it
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: was a fairly stressful as you could imagine my wife
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: and young family, there was a pretty stressful time.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: And I think from the outside looking in, for anyone commentating,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: any external person who wasn't in the middle of it,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: commentating on that and calling it bomb season would be
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: so you know, inappropriate and politically incorrect. But if you're
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: in the middle of it and you're an Aussie, it's
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: probably just a way of kind of turning down the
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: intensity and the anxiety a little bit and while not
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: making lights of it, just trying to find a way
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: to navigate it with some remote sense of humor or.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know, just trying to turn down the volume
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: on the intensity of those emotions must be a challenge.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you had. I mean, it was just it was
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: just we didn't even think about it. The words has
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: kind of came up and then we all started I
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: don't know who first came up with the bomb season,
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: but it was just so obviously correct. This is when
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: the bombs went off, you know. And you know, with
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: another really interesting piece of black humor in the book
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: as well, which goes to this point, is they they
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: found a website from Jamara's Leamir who had perpetrated the bombings,
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: this terrorist group, and they found a website the Australian
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: Fidal Police and the Indonesian authorities that identified the best
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: places to assassinate Australian diplomats. So you come to work
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: one day and a Monday, you'll get called into the
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: boardroom and you get told by the way, guys, this
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: is this website out there. They've been following you around
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: that have identified the best place to assassinate you. And
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: shock horror, one of them was the bridge that would
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: connect the embassy to our favorite cafe where we've got
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: our lunches from every day. You don't stand between, you know,
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: a diplomat in these lunch So they put a couple
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: of a couple of plain clothes offices, the Indonesian policed
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: it on the bridge so that we could go across
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: every day and get get our sandwiches. And we then
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: made up a roster in the office called the Bridge
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: of Death. Roster who's rostered on today? To get the
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: sandwiches on to cross the bridge of death? You know,
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: these these type of you know, you think about now
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: and even when I was writing about and I think,
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: did we really do that? But but again, the black
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: humor we just just became. The bridge of death was
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: the name for this particular bridge. And when you're rosted on,
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: you know, if you did a little shuffle over the
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: bridge to get the sangars and come back, and everyone
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: would be watching out the windows, and soid you coming
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: back across the other side as a big cheer went up.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Dude, that that is fucking ridiculous. That is so heavy.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: But you know what, I think it also speaks to
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: the fact, grant that like we deal with trauma and
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: drama and risk and threats and fear and anxiety an
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: uncertainty in our own ways. Right, It's like, who's to
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: say that's appropriate or inappropriate? Well, if the people in
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: the middle of it are using that language, it's okay,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: you know, if it.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: Helps you get through. I mean, we were literally frogs
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: in boiling water. To use that old German fable, we
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: didn't really probably understand our own clarity what was going
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: on around us, but we had to cope, and the
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: coping mechanism black humor is a very very very good
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: resilience as one. Obviously you've got to be resilient, but
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: black humour somehow humanizes in a way that it becomes
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: a shared experience that we can all share because through
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: that black humor, we're all in the same community, we're
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: all in the same we're all supporting each other, and
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: I think as a part of the coping mechanism when
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: you're in that type of environment. One.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: So, without me reading out some I was going to
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: say boring bio. It's definitely not a boring bier. But
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: without me reading something or could you give our audience
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: a snapshot to a normal podcast would start with this,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: but fuck it, we're not normal. A bit of a
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: snapshot of who you are and your role and your background,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: just to give us context and kind of a bit
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: of an insight and understanding into who Grant Duly is
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: and you know why you ended up over there.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So I grew up in Melbourne Williamstown, working class family,
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: joined the Navy at sixteen, so I didn't finish high
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: school in the Navy. I then became a Chinese linguist.
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: This is a bit of a journey here, and so
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: I speak Floyd Mandarin Chinese. It was that period of
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: the eighties when China was becoming more important. I was
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: pretty good linguist. So I sent to Hong Kong and
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: worked for the British in the lead up to the
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: handover in ninety ninety seven. Then I went to UNI,
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: the Navy payment the Gate UNI. He got a degree
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: in Asian Studies. And then one day an old friend
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: who I'd met in Hong Kong was in Foreign Affairs,
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: ran me up and said, we're desperate for the Chinese
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: speakers and China specialists. So I left the Navy and
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: became a diplomat and joined the Foreign Service in ninety eight.
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: So the obvious question is how as a manner in
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: speaking diplomat end up in Jakata. Well, my wife, who
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: I'd met in the Navy, she was my last boss
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: and is still the boss to this day. We just
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: made it permanent now she joined We actually met in
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: the Navy, but we got together when she joined Foreign
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: Affairs and she got a posting to Jakarta.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: So the book starts of us arriving.
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: It was her posting I didn't have a job, and
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: then I got a job in the embassy as well,
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: and it was through getting that job that I was
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: on language training the day that the embassy was bombed,
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: so I was Navy diplomat. To finish the biography, I
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: then left the Foreign Service and became a funds manager
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: and I've been working in finance for the last decade
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: in a bit. So not your normal career projection.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Wow, I mean, among many other things that I want
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: to lean into, but a Mandarin, Dude, that is so hard.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: That is like one of the hardest languages to learn.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: How Like, I know a lot of people have tried
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: to learn that and they none of them ever really
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: get fluent, not fluent fluent. How long did that take?
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: Well, the great thing about the military the great language school,
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: and there was that point cook in those days here
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: in Melbourne, and the course is just full on Chinese.
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: So after the twelfth week, you're no longer speaking English.
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: You're trying to speak Chinese every day you're in a
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: Chinese environment. It's a forty two weeks long course. A
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: couple of weeks off tering it, so it's full of
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: full immersion. And then I had another year in Hong
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: Kong where I did learning Chinese. So shinse want to
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: put on clear went here so I can still actually
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: exactly yeah, I was going to say, yeah, so yeah,
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: and still to this day, I'm a China expert. Had
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: just written his first book on Indonesia. Yeah, so go
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: figure Tiff.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Do you know what he said? He just said, look
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: at these two dumb asses on the show with me.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: That's what you just said I.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: Want.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: I've already got shipped self esteem. I don't need you
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: fucking jumping on kicking me. See all right? So so
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: what what precipitated the book? I've written a few books.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I'm like, and it's it's no mean. Is this your
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: first book?
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: Or is this one of my first book? How?
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: What?
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: So?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: One? What did you learn about writing and publishing and
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: distribution and like the practical side of books? You know where? Okay,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: I've written it, now, how how the fuck do we
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: sell it? How did we distribute it? How do we
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: make people? I've got to go on a fucking you
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: project and talk to these two dummies to try and
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: get a few all that stuff, right, what did what
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: have you learned about the the science and business of books?
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: And two what did you learn about you writing the book?
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Let's start with number one.
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: So I'll start, Yeah, I think I'll start with how
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: did I write the book? And then I'll touch on
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: the shot process, how I got published. So the genesis
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: for the book actually is another book called The Resilience Project,
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: which is it might be aware of and it talks
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: about gem's gratitude, empathy, mindfulness and basically, my son Callum
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: gave me that book for Christmas in twenty nineteen after
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: I had this big panic attack and he was there
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: present when I had the panic attack. My family were worried.
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: I kind of kind of pushed to the side when
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: I'm okay, but I wasn't. So one of the things
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: in the book talks about journalizing. So I started just
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: writing down every day, you know what I'm what, what
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: I've got, gratitude for my family and the positives in
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: my life. And then I just found I really liked
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: the writing bit, doing this diary on a daily basis,
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: and then so I thought, okay, So I started writing
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: about some of the things that occurred in Jakarta, and
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: I started with the bombing and and I very quickly
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: realized that I enjoyed that process. Where it was really
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: interesting is that things I lost my memory for about
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: half an hour and the day of the bombing, from
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: when I went out the front of the embassy and
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: I saw all this trauma and chaos and I couldn't
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: actually remember that, and I didn't know.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: How long it was.
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: But through the process of writing, my memory came back,
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: which is really fascinating itself. So I found the writing
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: experience really allowed me to get things out of my head.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: The best thing about it was I didn't write the
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: book to be published, so I'm just writing it, so
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: I'm just getting it out. I'm just writing. Sometimes I'm crying,
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: sometimes I'm laughing. Then I started writing about the funny
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: stories and the weird idiosyncrasies of the people I worked
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: with in the embassy, the crazy ministers that would come through,
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: and the weird demands. And so the book just evolved
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: through this process of writing and getting stuff out and
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: the way when I kind of had all these different
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: small stories and I shared with my wife and she said, look,
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: you should try and put that into a book. You know,
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: try and actually stitch it together, which I did over
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: a number of years in the edge. Took me about
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: three to be years to write the book and then
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: I finished it, and I finished it here in Melbourne
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: by the stage we were in Singapoore when I started
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: writing it. By the time I finished it with back
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: in Melbourne and my staff where I was working a
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: CEO of investment company, they would watch me because i'd
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: write every night after work. I go to the park
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: and I get a pint of beer and some chips
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: and I'd write for an hour. That was my writing routine.
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: So the people at the the Charles Dickens haven't actually
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: in Melbourne and Colin Street. They'd seen them, Yeah, they'd
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: see me in the back office there in the back
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: on the table, tapping away. And then so my staff
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: either thought he's either an alcoholic or he's doing something else.
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: Had they come clean that I was writing a book.
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: And one of them and this is how I got published.
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: One of them has written the god called Stuart Cow's
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: has written about six books. And he just kept saying
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: I want to read it. I wanted, I said, And
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: I said, look Stuart, I've written this purely for my
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: own benefit. It's been a part of this for me.
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: A therapy has been very cathartic. I think I'm in
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: a place to share it just yet. And really over
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: about a year of impestering me, I wanted a couple
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: of years. In a Christmas luncheon at the end of
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: twenty twenty two and he finally got okay, I'll give
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: you a copy, which I did, and he read it
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: and he just came in the office one day and said, look, mate,
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: you've got to get this published. I cried three times.
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: This is a really good book. And I said I've
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: got no idea how to get published, and he said,
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: lead that with me. He had a good friend who
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: was the ex CEO of Melbourne University Press, Nathan Hollyer,
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: and a big shout out to him because he when
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: he got the book, that was a real for me.
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: You know, when you write a book, you're kind of
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: worrying about how people are going to read it. You're
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: putting yourself out there. And he just came back and said, look,
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: this is great, but it's not for the university the print.
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: This is a commercial. This is a great story that
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: needs a wider audience, and he then rang Martin Hughes,
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: who was the then CEO of for Firm Press, and
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: the Firm Press people have been absolutely amazing, and it
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: was Martin who then met me. He loved the story
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: about in Indonesia. He quite rightly identified that there's not
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: a lot of literature about Australia and Indonesia. We tend
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: to just see the same things about Chappelle Corby and
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: the Bali nine and things like that. And in the book,
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: I tried very carefully to portray my love for Indonesia,
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: notwithstanding what happened. The amazing place is the amazing people,
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: the culture. And he said for that particular reason he
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: wants to get published. And the other reason he wanted
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: to get published was the mental health aspects of it
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: and my journey through that. So a Firm Press, other publishers,
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: they've supported me from day one. He was very like
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: every editor. He did a good structural edit. He chopped
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: out a whole bunch of stuff which was probably superplous.
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: He narrowed in on what we're probably the key the
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: key issues, and one hundred and ten thousand word manuscript
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: got shruntle about eight thousand words that was a pretty
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: brutal process. And then yeah, then we got public, got
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: released on the twenty ninth of July, and I've had
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: a huge amount of really overwhelmingly positive feedback from a
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: lot of old friends. The best thing about writing the
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: book is I've reconnected with so many people that were
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: there on the day of the bombing, the plane crash.
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: I've worked a b Indonesia, and they're all carrying their
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: own shit. They are all carrying this trauma, and very quickly,
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: if I wrote about someone, I shared it with them,
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: I brought them on the journey, and very quickly I
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: realized why it might be my book, it's our collective story.
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: And that really really gave me a lot of strength
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: because it was quite difficult times. But writing on behalf
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: of them, and really the embassy bombing and these things
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: have largely been forgotten I think, in a wider public memory.
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: So that, yeah, that was in the end, that was
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: super super gave me the strength to actually get the
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: thing published and to go out there and talk about it.
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: And a lot of them they were last night at
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: my book laun one hundred and fifty people, lots of tears,
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: lots of hugs, has been so uplifting and so cathartic,
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: not just for me but also for them.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: And I mean in a real sense, like writing the
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: book and everything that comes from writing the book, irrespective
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: of whether or not it's a commercial success, which we
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: hope it is. But apart from that, you know, it's
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: got to be therapeutic for you. You know, it's cathartic.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: It's like it's you sharing stuff in a way that
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: you were comfortable to do, and then that opens other
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: doors for conversations and it's good for you. But I
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: would imagine it's therapeutic and valuable to others from a
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: mental and emotional health point of view as well.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: And what's been really touching is a lovely lady who's
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: features in the books. She's my boss at the time,
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: Michelle Chan who's now a very single person still in
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: the Department of Foreign Afairs and Trade. She's reached out
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: and said, I want you to come and talk to
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: our staff. I want you to come and speak to
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: people in defat. Yeah, we have people that have worked
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: in and this is the thing. If one thing I
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: hope to get out of this book as well, is
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: if I can recalibrate the way they're the Australian public
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: views it's foreign service. Every day we have people in Lagos, Jakarta,
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: Baghdad doing very difficult work, very trying circumstances. Sure there
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: are cannipas and champagne in different parts of the world.
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: I do say in Paris it's a very different vibe.
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: But the public needs to understand that there's really people.
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: Really We've got people in Tel Aviv right now mentioned
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: what they're so every day, you've got diplomats around the
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: world in very trying circumstances, and we've done a very
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: bad job for Foreign Affairs has anyway in publicizing just
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: how important this work is and the bravery of these people.
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: And if I can through the book just recalibrate that
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: amongst the public, that would be a great outcome. But
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: more importantly, the department itself realizes that this is a
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: you use the word I like, that's conversation. There has
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: to be a conversation when you come back from overseas
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: you've been traumatized. You can't bury it. You have to
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: talk about it, and has to be a place with
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: which you can do that, which is welcoming, not just
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: safe but open. So I'm really pleased that I'm going
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: to have a chance to talk to staff in Canberra
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: next week about the book.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Good for you man, that's amazing. It's it interests me
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: like when you're talking about like the probably the typical Ossie.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: I could be wrong there, but I would think most
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Ozzies don't really fully understand what's involved in terms of
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: working in the foreign service and doing the things that
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: you do in the places and the tasks and the
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: roles and the risks. What's one or two things that
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: people that the average punt are like me who's getting
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: an education right now, might not understand or might not
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: think about in terms of the kind of work that
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: you did, and these people do.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: I think it's the breadth of the work. And I
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: make a really important point here in the embassy in
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: Chakata we have at the time, I think it still
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: is our largest embassy, four hundred and seventy odd people,
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: one hundred and eighty of those are Australia and one
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: hundred and whatever's left to whatever locally employed staff. And
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: there's two points here. One is it's not just defat
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: foreign affairs. There's diplomats, from Immigration Department, from the Australian
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: Federal Police, from the representatives across various different different agencies,
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: all working very hardly together as one team in these
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: various places to do the job, supported by a very
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: strong and very supportive and very capable locally employed staff.
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: We forget this that in all our embassies and consulates
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: around the world, there's locally employed staff from the local
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: community working for Australia and helping to forward Australia's best interests.
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: And I try to make that point in the book.
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: Our locally employed staff are probably even less recognized than
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: the Australian diplomats. So and while I say all that
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: is that it's the breadth of what we do overseas,
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: and an embassy are constantly not just doing trade negotiations
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: or helping a minister when it comes to town. In
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: any given day, your breadth to your work will be
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: meeting is different structure. I was head of the Economic Area,
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: so I businessmen that were coming to Indonesia, You're briefing
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: them on what's happening. You're trying to introduce them into
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: the right contacts into the Indonesian bureocracy. Then all of
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: a sudden, you have a trade dispute where someone's company
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: has been ripped off by another companies.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: You're trying to mediate that.
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: Oh and by the way, the Australia just got arrested
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: for punching someone there who's now in jail. Can you
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: help go? And so every day you're getting pulled in
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: fifteen different directions. And I think the contril of work
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: is where people see most of the most of the
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: interactions with the embassy because they're traveling overseas, they've had
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: someone get sick, or someone get arrested, or in a
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: lot of cases, people die. Australians die every probably every
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: day every week in some part of the world, and
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: we're trying to facilitate the protection of that particular persons,
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: whether their body or whatever, and facilitate the family to
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: come over. And we have to be there and support
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: the families as they go through their bereavement. And so
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: it's a very much the breath of what you do
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: is so wide it's just crazy actually. And then you
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: get the as I write in a book and my
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: wife was a contral officer, you know, it's a great
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: story of these three young lads who are surfing in
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: Nias in northwestern Sumatra, and they're on a rookie boat
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: coming back ashore. The boat sinks, they lose everything, they're surfboards,
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: they're closed. The money, all the money I got, the
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: clothes in their back and they find the way back
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: to Jakata and we give them a small loan so
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: they can while we're getting a new passports organized. And
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: what do they do. They go out and blow it
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: on booze and they come back the next day and say, oh,
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: where's my next lot? You go, guys, I both a
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: largely for three days, you know, but you're trying to
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: you know this, this is the reality of being a diplomat.
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: You're managing all these different people and all their various
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: different needs and wants well at the same time trying
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: to prosecute austray as interests, whether it be trayed, whether
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: it be political, whether it be military, whether it be police.
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: So look, I love the job. And one thing I
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: don't want is people to read this and go I
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: don't want to be a diplomat. I think it's one
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: of the greatest things you could ever do, is representing
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: country overseas in this amazing environment.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: It's funny you say that because somebody wrote I ripped
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: this up. Some of this is not me. This is
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: some something I read about you, says Defat is unlikely
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: to ever use Grant dual his diplomatic experiences in a
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: recruitment campaign to lure Australia's rider. So, in other words,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: don't fucking listen to his story. You'll never come and
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: work for us. So I don't think he's got to
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: get a tap on the shoulder for any marketing campaign
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: anytime soon.
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: Jam. Well, this is funny because that was the Mandarin
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: article Peter Gearen, who wrote.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very good article, by the way.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, no, But it's funny because we joked about
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: this and I enjoyed the Navy in nineteen eighty two
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: and the recruitment ad was I'm trying ah year. The
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: recruitment ad ad was that you know, you'll be wet,
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: you'll be homesick and frightened, but the pride of the
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: fleet will be you. And I saw, yeah, So.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: It's a different, different generation, is it.
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: You'll be homesick and frightens, but the pride of the
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: fleet will be you. Yeah, I mean, where do I sign?
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: They know what they're doing though, that's that's a little
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: bit of a reverse psychology. But so I want to
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to give people before we kind of head
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: down the home straight, an insight into as much or
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: as little as you want, but an insight into what
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: you personally found yourself in the middle of. And you've
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: kind of given us some insight. But I've got in
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: front of me that you were an active participant in
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: the emergency response to the terrorist attack on the two
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: thousand and four Strain Embassy compound which killed seven people.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Like I'm trying to for those people who are going,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: you know, who's in the middle of some rough stuff,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: can you, to the extent that you're comfortable with, expand
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: on like what did you see? What were you in
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: the middle of? Where did this?
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: I mean, we know where the.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Trauma came from, but can you kind of open the
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: door a bit why for us?
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think if you don't mind me, I'm just
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: going to read the very beginning of it because this
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: will give This is the best way I can describe it. Okay,
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: this is the moment the bombs.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: If we don't often get the author, we don't often
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: get the author reading his own book to us. So
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: I feel privileged lively.
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: So when I wrote this, I had to try and
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: try and convey how I felt. Okay, so I've just
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: been literally I'm just about to say goodbye to someone
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: and a bomb goes off and I end up on
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: my back. And this is how I kind of describe it.
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: Deafness is a curious thing. It can be quite disconcerting.
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: Those of us who can here largely take the ability
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: the ability for granted. It's only when you lose your
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: hearing that you truly understand the dark reality that silence
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: itself can be deafening. And it's this unaccustomed silence that
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: first occupies my mind. As I lie prostrate on the floor,
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: I'm confused as to how I got here. One second,
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: I'm turning to say goodbye to Serena. The next there's
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: a loud bang, and I'm lying on the ground, gasping
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: for air, as if someone has just given me a
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: sharp jab to the soul of plexus. But as I
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: lie here, looking at the ceiling, trying to catch my breath,
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: it's the silence that's most perplexing. My world is definitely silent,
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: like I'm suspended in time and space, and I sleep
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: and I dreaming, and then I'm jolded back into the
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: real world by a sharp, acrid, pungent smell, not strong
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: enough to burn my nostrils, but unpleasant enough to make
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: my eyes smart. I slowly struggle to my feet and
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: am confronted with a scene of utter bedlam. The air
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: is full of thick smoke, and I can see flames
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: in the distance through a shattered window. But as the
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: people rushing silently past me and all around me in
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: and out of the smoke that I find truly surreal.
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: I feel like an extra in some nineteen twenty silent film.
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: What the fuck is going on? Finally, the fog of
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: shot clouding my brain starts to clear, and I begin
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: to piece together the sites and the smells sailing my senses. Shit,
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: we've been bombed. Now, that was wow, that was the moment,
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: And I sell it. Gooseblaps, that's reading it.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, thank you, that's heavy. That's And also tif,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: I liked that we opened the swearing door, and now
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: he's just come jogging through with shits and fucks. So
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: I couldn't be proud of you, Grant, you know, in
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: part in part for what you've been through, but also
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: that welcome to the Swearing Podcast. Couldn't be proud use
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: this in your primo.
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: Well well he what flows from that to give the
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: listeners a sense is because because that was just a moment, okay,
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: And then my wife is on the same floor, so
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: I went and found her.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: And then it's weird.
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: When I saw my wife, my head didn't kind of
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: even though I couldn't still hear very much, I've got
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: a bit of a clarity of thinking. And her boss
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: yelled in my ear to go downstairs and tell the
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: Peter in the security guard to make an evacuation announcement
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: over the PA. So I go downstairs and Pizza in
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: shock that he's swashed the whole front of the mscy
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: get crushed in front of his eyes, and he got
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: him off the floor. He then went to find his wife,
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: and while I'm waiting, I didn't know how to help
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: at the machine. The PA system some kind of actually
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: people talked about last night. There's a jar of Monte
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: Carlo sitting next to the PA system and the first
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: thing that I see is the Monte Carlos, and you
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: can't get them in your carda. So I'm like, oh, okay,
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: it's opened the jar, and I take out of Monte
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: Carlo and I'm munching on this biscuit, looking at this
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: PA system that you want to And then Pete rushes
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: back in and I tell him you can you make
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: the evacuation. And as he's doing that, you can hear
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: screaming out the front. And I saw too first aid
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: bags on the ground in the office, and having heard
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: the noise of people screaming and you know, whaling, I
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: grabbed those bags and went out in the front of
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: the embassy through the carnage.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: And it was, yeah, it was It was hard that
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: It was just body parts and shit everywhere, and my
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: little bag of bandages was hugely insufficient to try and
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: help in any way, shape or form, to be honest,
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: And that's the bit that scarred.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: You're trying to you know, there's two things. I felt
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: super helpless.
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: So, as I write in a book, I once I
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: realized I couldn't help, I couldn't do anything, I got
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: quite actually sat with me for a long time, the
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: feeling of helplessness, and it was the same feeling I
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: had when I found myself two years later running down
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: the runway to a plane they're just blowing up, which
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: had my friends on board, and only they get there
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: to work out that I couldn't help them either. So this,
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: you know, both incidences, and I was the first respondent.
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: But you know, there was a couple of other people
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: who joined me out the front of the embassy. A
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: good friend of mine, Ken Brownrigg, who was the head
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: of the defense section, one of the best men I know.
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: He wrote me a lovely letter actually about what I
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: did on that day, and he's still carrying the trauma
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: of that as well. I caught up him last night
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: and then to go through all the Yeah, that was
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: the beginning of the posting. Then we had the tsunami.
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: Then we had plane crash. The plane crash came at
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: the end. We had got caught in a right out
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: the front of the embassy with people trying to drag
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: us get a about car, and we had the day
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: to day you know, the websites that. Yeah, it was
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: just the full on grind of living there. And then
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: the final straw was this plane crash in two thousand
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: and seven where five colleagues from the embassy friends run
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: I grew to flight into jog Jakata. I was both
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: on the plane, but decided to change my flight that
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: for whatever reason I got to I said this, I
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: better go today. The backstory of this is Alexander down
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: I was in coming to it, came to Jakarta, and
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: then he was going to go to jog Jakarta the
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: next day because he was going to open a university
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: that strain and AID money been used to rebuild. I
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: was in charge of the jog Jakarta and the leg
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: got a team on the ground. He's going to meet
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: the Sultan. I was worried for some reason in the
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: afternoon the day before. I thought, well, maybe everything's not right.
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: Maybe I need to go today and not go in
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: the first thing in the morning because he was arriving
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: later in the morning and wouldn't be enough time to
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: fix anything and if there's anything wrong. So I changed
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: my flight and I ran into a good friend, Morgod Malish,
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: who was the fin review reporter at the venue of
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: the conference that we're all attending, and he wanted to
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: get on that flight, and I said, look, might have
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: just canceled my ticket. I get on my flight that
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: afternoon I'm going to the airport, and he texts me
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: and says, mate, I'm I'm on the flight. It must
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: must have been your seat. Let's catch up for beers.
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: My shout blah blah blah blah blah. And then that
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: plane crashes and I'm at the airport and I ran
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: down in the runway. The thing went off the end
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: of the runway, went to a paddy field. The whole
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: front section of the plane got smashed. They all couldn't
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: get out. Cinti Bannon, one journalist, did get out. She's
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: lost the legs in the process, and her bravery to
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: be able to get herself off the plane and then
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: survive is just amazing. But the other five colleagues all perished.
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: And then I stood next that plane for three hours
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: until I could know for certain that they were not
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: in one of the surrounding hospitals. But once it was
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: obvious they were on a plane, I just didn't want
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: to leave those bodies until I knew this strain fiddle,
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: police or someone was there that could actually put them
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: in proper care and custody. So it was just at
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: a long street three hours of my life nearly wow.
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: So that was the beginning and the end. So and
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: then I buried a lot of stuff for he is
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: a surprise. Surprise, I had a panic attack. Yeah, so
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: that's the and the hence the book.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't. I mean, like many psychological and mental
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: and emotional challenges, there's no three step plan, right. It's
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: not like, oh, this is the best way to deal
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: with grief. Here's the three steps. Just follow these or
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: this is how you get or overcome this. You're probably
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: not going to overcome it, so you'll just navigate it.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Or same with food, same with exercise, same with building
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: a business. Like there's no best, like this is a
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: thing that we're always learning. And we talk about this
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: a lot, the idea of an equals one, you know,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: the U experiment or the U experience, you know, the
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: U project, which is you're always trying to figure out
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: what's what's going to work for me, what's going to
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: work for me from my mind, for my body, for
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: my relationships, for my sanity, because you know, we talk about,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: you know, even doing what we're doing now. So sitting
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: on a podcast, you know, I'm in my studio just
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: chatting to.
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: You, and.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: It's it's enjoyable. It's fun, it's interesting. I would guess
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: my heart rates about sixty, my blood pressure is low.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Everything's good. But for someone else sitting in this chair
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: doing this would be fucking terrifying and the worst job
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: of all time, you know what I mean. And so
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: it's I think, it's trying to figure out how do
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: I do this? What works for me? And you know,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: it's funny that you kind of buried that for a
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: while and then one day your body went and UT,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: we're going to deal with it. Doesn't matter if you
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: want to or not.
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think, and this is the thing I want
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: to talk to and I do have that opportunity to
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: talk to the other defat staff. And to be quite frank,
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: it's what I said to my staff. I've been a
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: CEO of to companies since then, and this experience is
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: informed and now the way I'm dealing with my staff
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: for a start, you know, I mean my previous job.
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: And you know, crisis crisis, I said, Has anyone died?
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: No?
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: Well, okay, let's get perspective. It's not a crisis. Okay.
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: So it's given me tools to be able to manage
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: other people. And I think the most important tool and
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: I'm working with a mate from my navy days. He's
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: got a company called Ordinary Courage, and his training manages
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: how to identify trauma before even before that person, that
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: staff member maybe even know they've got the trauma or
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: the mental health that you can see generally beak and
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: you can see if you watch your team around you,
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: if you know them well enough, you can see where
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: they're on a certain trajectory. They get cranky, they kind
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: of work late, certain things change, And how do we
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: train managers to step in inappropriate time, in the appropriate
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: way to start the conversation. And I go back to
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: that word conversation. It's not about you know, I can
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: fix you touched on it. Everyone will have their own
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: measure and way they'll fix or deal with You might
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: not even be able to fix it or manage it.
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: But how do you start a conversation with someone so
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: they can start thinking about it and start exploring and
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: start talking and then through that journey hopefully identify what
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: they need to do to try and and manage whatever
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: the issue is that they're dealing with. That's that's impacting
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: the mental health. That for me, it was my son
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: giving me a book I've never been one to read,
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: you know, I didn't think I needed to read a
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: book about mental health.
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: The best thing that's ever done was he gave me
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: that book.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Well, good on him for doing that. I think also too,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: like when you've been through what you've been through, which
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: is at the at the far end of the hard experience, trauma, drama,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: you know, like it's right up the end of the scale,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: and then sometimes you're in another so then fast forward
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: and now you've gotten through that, still working on it,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: but you've gotten through it. Now you're in a different situation,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: different environment. It must be hard, I guess sometimes when
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: people are running around going, oh my god, oh it's
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: such a massive problem, and in context of what you've
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: been through, you must feel like, go and shut the
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: fuck up. That's not even that's not even a bit
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: of a problem. You know, that's just fucking Tuesday before ten. Shush.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: But you can't do that because if it's a big
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: deal to them, it's a big deal, right.
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's even hit the nailrod on their head.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: I have to admit that there were periods there, you know,
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: I kind of had that. Yeah, you kind of think,
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: can we put context around this police people.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: What I found and my staff who worked me, particularly.
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: My last role as the breakthrough storry, what particularly my
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: executive seeing what they all said was great is that
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: because I shared with them my story and while I
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: was writing the book and things like that, it gave
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: them a position to actually put them perspective something they're doing.
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: And everyone is carrying shit at any given point in time.
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: It's just different shit, you know. And really the opportunity
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: and they would say to me, Grant, I know, you
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: get this, I need to take some time off for blah. Mate,
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: I'd rather be at work for productivity, had they having
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: had a good night's sleep with your mind rested, and
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: rather than coming in you know, twenty thirty percent every
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: day because you're managing this stuff at home that you
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: haven't got enough time to deal with because you're coming
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: into work. You know, this whole idea that I remember
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: during COVID. Look like I can't come in today because
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: you know, my son's got COVID, so I'll work online. No, mate,
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: if your son's got COVID, you don't work online. You're
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: looking after your son. So so that these are these
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: are where managers have a role to play, I think,
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: particularly you know, senior managers have a role to play.
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: They set the example and to try and identify and
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: work with staff. Because the reason I didn't talk about
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: it for so long in Foreign Affairs was because I
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: was worried that if I was seen as a victim,
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't get my next posting Grant Duley, he's been traumatized,
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: you know, we probably can't set him away again because
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: who knows what will happen. And that was the fear
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: of being a victim, is why I buried it. And
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: I just wish now I'd had the strength to actually
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: challenge that because I can still work. I've got on
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: a successful career in finance, so I've done all these
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: various things just because I've learned how to manage it
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: and learned how to deal with it well.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: In many ways, obviously we wish you didn't go through it,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: but in many ways you probably a better more evolved
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: person of you, the version of you, than you would
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: have been had you not been through it, in terms
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: of your ability to empathize and understand and your insight
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: into the human experience and pain and emotions and mental
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: health and all of that. Hey, mate, it's been great.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: We've got to wind up. But the book everyone has
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: called bomb Season in Jakarta. Grant Durley, son of Hooley,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: it's out. That's for utif, that's for youtif, and I'm.
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: Sure I get that a bit if. Don't worry about it.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Fucking eighty thousand million times a day. The books. The
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: book's been out for a couple of weeks ago, by
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: nineteen copies for Christmas. Is it coming out in audio
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: at any stage?
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: Or is that out?
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah? In about I think in early September it comes
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: out as an audiobook.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Perfect, mate, Well say goodbye a fair but well done you.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Congrats on your first book. It sounds amazing. Appreciate your
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: service for all the things that you've done, and congrats
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: on coming through what you've come through and being a
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: fucking inspiring human. I love it. I think you're great,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much for being on you project.
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: And thank you Craig for having me and providing a platform.
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: And actually, I'll have to listen to those other thousands
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: you've done now because I think they must be pretty
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: damn interesting. I love it, and I really appreciate the
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: opportunity to be a part of it and to meet
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: you too, Tiff, and yeah, good luck and continue doing
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: the good work. I think people this is another platform,
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: but this helps me. This is therapy, you know, and
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: if you're providing that platform, then they all strength to you.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Thanks, mate, will say goodbye Fair but for the moment, grant,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: thank you, tips, thank you, thanks lads.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: Okay, cheers