Remotigue.net

Well, La Jolla mostly. Huong, Sammie, and I were in La Jolla, just north of San Diego, Tuesday night through Saturday morning of last week.

I was there to attend a management training course for work and the other two were tagging along for a mini vacation. The course was called the “Foundations of Leadership” and despite the fluffy-sounding title was extremely interesting, and could be aptly called “Understand your own personality and how you relate to others.” Over the course of two and a half days we were run through both a Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator test (I’m and ENTP) as well as a FIBRO-B personality test, followed by a Conflict Dynamics Profile. This was all topped off by several role playing sessions on conflict resolution, persuasion skills, and delivering feedback. Fun, eh?

It was actually really fascinating. I never put much weight into these sorts of things before, but after seeing my results and reading into the interpretation of the data I was shocked at how accurate a lot of it was. For example, now I have an understanding about why I get so irritated when I find out about something at work through the grapevine — it’s in conflict with my high desire for inclusion . Similarly, I wouldn’t necessarily strike up a conversation with somebody in an elevator but I’d be happy to chat with them if they initiated — that’s a mid-range expressed affection coupled with a high level of wanted affection.Of course these don’t present excuses for behaviors, but they do provide a really interesting perspective with which to view personal habits.

Probably the most useful thing is that I now have a slightly different lens through which to look at myself and try to interpret my own behavior. And hopefully that will mean that I can take advantage of my natural tendency to be [spontaneous/disorganized/easily bored and distracted/conversational/wishy-washy/etc.] instead of fighting it, and be a little more sensitive to other people’s quirks.Far and away the most valuable thing I got out of the experience was that I should spend more time reflecting on what I want to do and how I want to live, and make sure that my career and my personal life both head in that direction. It’s common sense now that I think about it, but we ENTPs apparently don’t spend a whole lot of time reflecting .

So while I was having all that fun, Huong and Sammie hit the town: the San Diego Zoo on Wednesday, which included Huong getting a migraine and Sammie throwing a huge tantrum (and Huong telling an old lady to “go back to the old folks home” after she made a snide remark about Sammie’s screaming), an 8+ hour day at the Wild Animal Park on Thursday, and some kids activities on Friday. I joined them that afternoon, and we were supposed to go to Legoland but there was a torrential downpour all day so we stayed indoors and went to a kid’s playland.

Friday evening we spent out at dinner with my family, my aunt Esper and uncle Emilio plus my 2nd cousin Sonji. We had to trick Sammie into thinking we were going to see Huong’s sister, but once we got to the restaurant she warmed up pretty quickly and in a few minutes she was drawing pictures with my uncle like she’d known him forever. It was great to see them since it’s been several years since I last went down south to visit. They’re a lot fun, so I regret not spending more time down here.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty good trip. Huong…not so much since she had Sammie all to herself. Would have been better if I’d actually been on vacation, but we’ll take what we can get.

We had an earthquake last night — 5.6 on the Richter scale, centered 6 miles away or so. I was upstairs finishing Sammie’s bath and when I noticed the walls shaking (visibly swaying) and I froze for a couple of seconds before I realized what was going on. Sammie looked at me with this wide-eyed stare and she was clearly terrified. Like an idiot I grabbed her out of the tub, by this time things had stopped shaking, and ran downstairs to see Huong standing in the bathroom doorway. It must have been less than 10 seconds, but the first thoughts in my head were “I have to get Sammie out of here” and “where’s Huong and our emergency packs?” It wasn’t instinctive to hunker down under a table or in a door jamb (I grew up in tornado country, where you go into the bathtub or run into the basement), so my thoughts were to get our supplies and get outside.

It was pretty terrifying, the largest earthquake I’ve personally witnessed. The ironic part was that we’d gone to the museum just the other day to see Body Worlds, and they have an earthquake simulator. We got on it and simulated the recent India earthquake (7 point something on the Richter scale) and it was all fun — ha, ha, that was scary, chuckle. It’s a little different when it catches you by surprise. However a 5.6 isn’t so bad – we had some things fall off the shelves, and we had a small piece of plaster fall from one of corners, but nothing serious. If we weren’t on an upper story, probably nothing would have happened.

So this was really more of a wake up call than anything else, and it prompted me to double check what the Red Cross has to say about disaster preparedness. And it set me to thinking about what’s important. I really didn’t give a second thought to our pets. Sorry to say that if the big one hits, they’re on their own. We’ve joked that one of us would take a cat under each arm and the other would get Sammie and the dog, but if last night was an indication, that’ll be an afterthought. And the same goes for our belongings; just family and our emergency backpacks. I can live with those priorities.

We had an incident at The Little Gym last Friday.  Sammie was on the uneven bars and this little boy (actually he was more like twice her size) came and wanted to swing on it too.  Sammie is going full-speed through the possessiveness phase so she immediately turned to him and yelled, “my turn!”  Unfortunately, this wasn’t a mellow kid and so he yelled back, “No!  My turn!”  They yelled back and fourth and then he got bored and took off to the balance beam.  I guess Sammie decided she wasn’t through with him so she ran off after him!  I kid you not!  I gasped with horror as I was watching my ‘lil kid (the smallest in the class…again) pick a fight with this boy.  I know.  I know.  I’m a bad parent for not intervening at this point.  But I did…eventually.  This was just too fun and exciting to watch.  Besides.  I tend to let her sort things out for herself with other kids before I step in.  So once she caught up with him, she climbs up behind him and yells, “No!  Sammie turn!”  They go back and fourth some more until he’s had enough verbal abuse from her and pushes her.  So THAT’S when I intervened.  His mom was there too.  No harm was done so we just distracted our kids with other stuff and that was the end of it.  Sammie’s never been one to back down but I was so surprised to see her this aggressive.  Nutty kid.  Don’t know where she gets it.