California Dreaming in Trichotomy

I am in California now, at New Hip Company’s headquarters, pretending to work.

As soon as I returned from France, my manager gave me the news that my promotion was approved as a ‘strong promote’, but I was not supposed to tell anyone (until everybody’s promotion decisions are finalized). He had nominated me to go to a training camp run by New Hip Company people, for developing leadership skills, and it’s in California, so I went on it last Monday and Tuesday.

It was useful and somewhat preachy in the first day, but by the second day I learned a lot. And more importantly, I got to practice interaction skills that I normally wouldn’t get to practice. The best part was peer-consultation session, wherein basically you in a small group of people you don’t know, don’t directly work with, and you can vent your problems or questions or worries to them and get their feedback. That is unique because you can’t talk about work-specific complaints to your friends because they won’t understand the company’s m.o., but you can’t talk about it with your co-workers either because you have to work with them afterwards. So getting stranger-co-workers to vent and receive feedback from is very helpful. And now we have their contact information, and we can follow up with them for follow-up consultations. My manager is still in contact with his peer from 3 years ago.

I am staying here till Sunday; I’ll technically be working tomorrow and Friday, and use that time to meet with people who are based here. Though, I think I may be more busy seeing friends. Spencer and his wife are coming out to visit tonight; I am meeting New Father classmate (who is also at New Hip Company) for lunch tomorrow; I am meeting with Cheesedog’s boyfriend tomorrow night; Lovely Girl Friday night; Piano Student Ex-Classmate Saturday afternoon, and my piano teacher Saturday night. So it will be a full visit.

The New Hip Company campus here is very dispersed, and very much like a college campus, complete with bicycles and ‘school buses’ crowding the streets. It looked very dangerous on the way it - I expected to run over cyclists and be run over by buses.

But so far it’s a nice visit.

We had more music gatherings… I think the ENT pianist and Dramatic Soprano’s were the latest. Even till now I don’t get tired of it. Every one of these have a core group of people from the amateur musicians group.

Speaking of which, I really need to practice Erlkonig… but being away in France, Henrietta getting sick, and now away in California made it difficult. Apparently, there are many pianos (half a dozen acoustic ones) in New Hip Company headquarters offices, which I will try to look up, but my understanding is that they tend to get booked a lot, so I will see.

I miss La Professeure, who is at home. And funnily enough, she is going on leadership training on Friday as well. It’s like we are becoming the power couple.