Mental Blabberings

Reconnecting with people

2021-01-25T08:00:00.001+11:00

2021 started with a a good sense of connection for me, having spent time with friends and family in a simple celebration of the oncoming year. The transition from 2020 to 2021 and being able to look back at a good part of my recent history got me thinking about how life has been for me and the family for the past decade. There’ve been a lot of people that I’ve met and become friends with while there are those that I’ve left behind and lost touch with. There’s a saying about treating old friends different from new ones, which I do appreciate now that I’m a bit older. It also means that my relationships with people that I get to spend a good amount of time with take a different shape. This reflection has given me some time and space to think about what it means to reconnect with people.

Friends are the family we choose ourselves. — Edna Buchman

I have the privilege of having life-long friends that I don’t always stay in regular contact with. From my perspective, if I consider you a friend, I don’t necessary need to always be in contact with you. But there are times that I miss friends I’ve had since primary school who’ve gone on to do different things with their lives. Some have traveled the world and are doing well in different countries. Some have stayed back home and have lived wonderful lives with their families taking on the family businesses. Friends I’ve made in high school have become TV news anchors, family men and women, and have scattered all over the world. Friends I’ve made during my time in university have gone on to do wonderful things — become instructors, gotten masters degrees, working on PhDs, climbing the corporate ladder, and doing all manner of great things.

Reconnecting requires effort though. Trying to synchronise schedules, finding the time to write that email, looking up people in various social networks, deciding whether/how to send that postcard, and hoping that there’s a good way to catch up that’s not intrusive. I try to keep up at least a yearly cadence of sending emails to people I consider my friends, and catching up, hoping that I get a response and can keep that connection going. Sometimes I get a response and it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world. When I don’t get a response I pretend that they’re just busy and did appreciate getting a message from me. Sometimes I get a message out of the blue and I get all warm and fuzzy on the inside that someone remembered me and took the time to send me a note.

Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Under its influence, ordinary songs take on dimensions and powers, like emotional superheroes. — Kate Christensen

My brain almost certainly plays a trick on me when I go reminisce or hear something that causes me to remember the past. There are some songs that I associate with particular people, places, events, smells, conversations, and they’re more vivid than they have any right to be. Sometimes it’s not even a song — sometimes it’s a phrase in a book, a sign on the street, or a particular colour of red which brings back this longing for the past. Those times certainly were simpler in my mind. I may be remembering them not exactly as they were but as I wish to remember them. Some of these memories are probably even imagined but they all feel real to me.

Conversations with people take on this similar quality in my mind. When I remember a particular conversation I had with someone I call a friend I don’t necessarily remember the exact conversation — but how they smiled, how they laughed, the puzzled look, the uncomfortable posture, the pained expression, the tears, the joy, the love I felt, and the love I received. I would never really remember names that much because those felt arbitrary constructs, but I remember the face and the person I was with and what they meant to me at the time and that space. This is how I mostly choose to remember people and places, with a strongly personal perspective, one which stays with me better than whatever I’ve written down or recorded in some media.

Spend time with those you love. One of these days you will say either, 'I wish I had', or 'I'm glad I did.' — Zig Ziglar

I’ve been taking a more conscious effort at reconnecting with people in my life that I love. Family is first, and I’m trying to get more connected with friends. The kind of connection I’m looking for though is not just the “we’re friends on social media” but more the kind that sustains and is deeper than the “how are you doing” conversation. Maybe that happens through social media and these communication tools. Or maybe it happens in “meat space” when we can all start safely traveling again.

It might be as simple as me sending an email reaching out.

The work notebook

2021-01-22T08:00:00.002+11:00

In a previous post I wrote about how I structure my work log notebook. That's my daily driver and it helps me keep on track for the day. I use it to look back on things I've accomplished, tasks that have fallen through the cracks, and whether there are any themes that keep arising. There are other kinds of notebooks that I use for different purposes and here I describe how I use work notebooks or "workbooks".

Project Workbooks

I usually have at least one ongoing project at work at any given time, where there are well-defined goals and tasks. In my software engineering practice, it would include things like diagrams, formulae, calculations, various kinds of set notation, and all sorts of insights and notes. For projects that have enough complexity that it will span multiple days, I'd place those in the same notebook for short projects. If a project will take multiple months/years, then I'd have a dedicated workbook for that. It can sometimes get wasteful if I dedicate one project notebook per short project.

So what do I put in a project notebook? Here's an example outline for the "front matter":

Project [NAME]
Problem Statement
Objectives

Goals
Non-goals

Start date: <DATE>

This gives me a start page which details the important parts of a project, answering the important question "what problem are we trying to solve". It also gives me a beginning and reminder of when the project has started.

What follows this front matter are the interesting bits. I use different "bullets" for different kinds of content I write in free-form on the notebooks. For instance, I'll use square bullets for tasks that need accomplishing, an exclamation mark for important things to remember, a circle for a thought/note, and a dash for questions that need resolving.

I will usually spend some time on a fortnightly or monthly basis to review the project notebook to see whether the progress I and the team are making are being captured in my notes. It's been always helpful for me to revisit the initial state and how the project has evolved -- whether we made decisions to change course, to identify new opportunities, whether we under- or over-estimated the work required, etc. This is also usually where I'll note down insights, surprising findings, and potential ideas for solutions that haven't made it into formal documentation. Some ideas, even though they're mine, are sometimes not good enough to be shared with the team.

This brings me to the point which is that these project workbooks are scratch spaces too. I'll use this to note down my understanding of relationships between things, structures that I'm discovering, and explorations for ways to reorganise things. Sometimes I'll develop a better understanding of the solution space this way and refine my thought process "offline" and be able to critique the work myself first before sharing it with the wider team. At the very least when delegating, I'll have the questions I'm asking be in the notebook.

Material-wise, I use an A4 sized recycled pages notebook for this purpose -- so that by the end of the project I can transfer the important notes into a digital version of a "report", then archive the notebooks in case I ever need to look back at those. My current project workbooks are ruled but the next ones will be dot-grid notebooks with enough pages to support more content.

Team workbooks

I also keep a team workbook where I put thoughts about what my observations are of the team's overall progress, velocity, challenges we're facing, and how we fit in the wider organisation. I use this workbook to inform planning on a quarterly and annual basis which helps me understand how we can serve our customers/users better, understanding what we're capable of delivering, and whether there are projects we should be executing on to achieve our objectives.

This is largely unstructured (it could contain anything) and I treat it like a journal. I'll intersperse notes and observations with essays, tables, graphs (the kind with vertices and edges), charts, and doodles. I use a spiral ruled A4 notebook for these with slightly better quality paper for the fountain pen, but I'm looking to transition to plain or dot-grid notebooks when I've exhausted my current one.

Scratch notebook

The key notebook I have always handy is an A4 sized ruled notebook which I will use to augment the daily work log. This is where thoughts, observations, a scratch space for some idea exploration, a draft of tasks, scribbles of design ideas, interview notes, meeting notes, and all manner of notes will be captured. I go through scratch notebooks very quickly so I also use recycled paper notebooks for this purpose. If it's an idea that's occupying brain cycles when I really should be doing something else, then I spend a few seconds bringing those into the scratch notebook so it doesn't stay in my brain.

I would like to be using a plain notebook or a dot-grid notebook to allow for more freeform note-taking but I've yet to find sustainably sourced or recycled paper notebooks for this purpose. I'll keep looking though because this has been a very useful thing to keep around.

The workflow

Just like with the daily work log, I have a workflow which is integrated with the work week like so:

At the start of the week I plan out the rest of the week on the scratch notebook noting the projects that we need to make progress on.
Everyday I keep the scratch notebook handy to use for any note taking I'm doing.
Every end of the week I look back in the work log notebook and distill the tasks, accomplishments, meetings, and interesting daily pick-ups into the scratch notebook.
I also look back on the scratch notebook to extract project-specific and team-specific thoughts, findings, unfinished work, lessons, feedback, etc. and distill those into the appropriate workbooks.

This regular practice helps me see how things are going not just on the tasks I need to stay on top of but also the projects that I'm involved in. It gives me a good larger-picture view and a way to compartmentalise the notes and a way to look up important information.

I still haven't gone 100% into indexing which should be an interesting approach to enhance the weekly summary, but it's already work-intensive to do the distilling and transfer that I haven't quite integrated it yet. I'm sure to share how I manage to do it (if I do) next time.

End note

Doing this since 2018 has allowed me to keep on track of complex projects that I've been running myself, those that require cross-team coordination, and more recent ones where I'm a technical lead. I'm sure there's other ways to do this but I've found this workflow seems to be the one I've settled into a rhythm with that's comfortable and conforms to my work style.

I'd love to hear what you think and whether you do something similar!

Book reading: Sun Tsu's Art of War

2021-01-21T08:00:00.001+11:00

When I became a technical lead I wanted to feed my brain with as many techniques and principles on how to be an effective leader. I read enough books on this that I think I'm comfortable writing a little bit about the books. What better way to start this than with a classic, which is a translated version of The Art of War by Sun Tsu. Note though that I don't like writing spoilers for a book, so instead I'd write about what I remember and what came to me while reading, immediately after reading the book, and weeks/months later. Let's dive into the book and what it meant to me.

Thinking like a leader

The key takeaway for me reading the passages (which reads like a poem but is really a field manual of sorts) is that, as a leader, you should be the most aware of your surroundings and your role in the situation. Knowing when to act, how to act, what goal to pursue, what winning looks like, which enemy to engage -- almost all of this comes from situational awareness. The more useful information you have about the terrain, your enemies, your allies, your resources, and your mission, you increase the odds of planning better, executing more effectively, and achieving goals more predictably. There's a lot of indirect ways these are being said in the book and there's quite a bit of hidden wisdom I had to tease out -- even though it's a quick read, it's certainly worth reading again regularly.

It's not only showing you what to think about as a leader, but it tries to show you the "meta" approach to thinking. Thinking about the way you think gives an insight into whether you have blind spots, biases, un-sound assumptions, and whether you're thinking through things effectively. Knowing when for example you don't have enough information or when you don't have enough resources and critically judging your decisions after the fact (usually after some failure or unexpected development) how to act and remediate the situation stems from your introspective practice.

That said though, leaders are usually part of a team, and there's good passages about that too.

Building your team

Loyalty and trustworthiness are quite big issues not just in the ancient world but even today. When do you know if the team around you has your back? Are they going to endeavour you to fail in your attempts to lead? Are they unhappy with your leadership style? Do they think you ruthless and are therefore afraid to speak their mind? Are they going to find the first opportunity to "throw you under the bus" or do they feel like you will do that the first time you have a chance to do so?

Building morale and ensuring continuous success is a hard endeavour for any leader. If you're a manager, you have resources at your disposal that someone else has entrusted upon you to deploy to affect the best outcomes. If you're a non-managing leader, then you have the responsibility of defining the plan for a vision that you may or may not have come up with that's aligned with the overall mission.

Getting your team to "buy in" and be part of the whole is probably the single hardest and most important job for the leader. The flip side to that would be when to recognise that the team you have isn't the right team for the job.

The key measurement of a leader's success is how successful the team is. There's a lot of philosophy in the book around what the actual role of the leader -- when/whether to be in front or the rear, how to command/inspire, when to reward good performance, and how to run the team sustainably.

Applications

I found myself reading this book and wanting to write notes, but I felt it would degrade the experience. I instead "inhaled" this book for a couple of nights then reflected on what stuck a few days afterwards.

What came out were some fairly critical questions I've been asking when deciding on what work to do with the team. When I should be decisive and make strong decisions and when to provide some leeway for more exploration. In my particular case it changed the way I saw planning: treating problems as having some specific missions to accomplish and projects being plans flexible enough to achieve victory. I saw projects as more definitive tools that have a start and end and specific goals to meet and tasks to perform.

I even saw myself applying this to my own life. I didn't need a team to manage myself and my resources. If I was commanding an army of 1 (myself) then how would I apply my skills and talents to make the most impact? How do I work towards my mission regularly? Do I have a vision that I'd like to make a reality and do I have the resources and plan to make it happen? Which battles to do I fight and which territory should I occupy?

In the end, there wasn't a lot of questions after reading the book, but there certainly was enough wisdom there wanting to be applied.

Keeping a work log

2021-01-20T08:00:00.001+11:00

I have been keeping a journal for my personal life with some regularity for the good part of 4 years. The difference between my earlier attempts at journaling before four years ago is the regularity and the structure. I started with a very structured and regimented journal (doing it everyday with prompts and blanks to fill), to a ruled journal notebook, then a plain notebook (no rules nor grids in the pages), and then settling on a dot-grid notebook. This allows me to doodle and write free-form to help me commit thoughts and observations of my day but it was mostly for archival and looking back to "feel good" or reminisce (also to sum up a month, a year, etc.) The approach helps a lot with self-improvement in terms of my mental health and my reflection to see where I was a specific amount of time ago and whenever I was reading it again.

In a previous post I wrote about keeping a work log, and I realised I only mentioned that in passing. In this post I detail the structure of the work log pages that I use to achieve the same retrospective goals but with work. Hopefully this will be helpful to some of you out there too!

Notebooks

I use a ruled spiral notebook (A5 size) with a date field at the top of the pages. I prefer the ones that have a top margin but no side margins. This gives me the most writing area for prose. Being able to doodle is less useful for my personal work log so I don't use dot-grid or plain notebooks for that reason. The writing guides are helpful so I don't need to think about aligning the words as I'm hand-writing (and just follow the lines).

Pens

I used to use a ballpoint pen because I tend to write a lot into the notebook but the disposable nature of the cheap pens didn't feel too good for my conscience. So I've switched to using a fountain pen that's still cartridge-loaded, but am working my courage towards getting an ink converter so I can refill with bottled ink instead. This is an ongoing project for me as I'm not confident about my dexterity in managing ink and not spilling all over stuff. 😁

The other approach I've taken in the past is using multiple colours for different kinds of entries. This quickly became unwieldy and broke continuity of writing too much. Now, instead, I use different markings to differentiate items in a list. I haven't gone full bullet journal (yet) mostly because I don't have the indexing step in my workflow, but I have a reason for that.

A template

I structure my workday log like this:

Theme for the day
Date: Agenda

Event @ Time
Event @ Time
...

Goals

Something to accomplish @ Priority #1
Something to accomplish @ Priority #2
Something to accomplish @ Priority #3

Tasks

Specific task to perform
Specific task to perform
...

Task Log

Log entry
...

I place the "Theme for the day" at the top margin which roughly describes what my theme is for the day. Sometimes it'll be "Project X: Coding" or "1:1s and Mentoring". The date field at the top of the page will typically be only filled in for the first page for a day. This way I can skim through the pages and find the start-of-day pages quickly by looking at the top corner of a page.

I usually have at most three goals for a day, and on some days I only have one to help focus. Sometimes there's a deadline or a project that's higher priority than other goals, so I'll mark it clearly ahead of time.

Tasks differ from goals in that Goals are "end states" while tasks are "actions to perform". So while a goal might be "Complete design document" there might be specific tasks like "Fill in references" or "Embed system diagram". Depending on the day and how much available time I have (the agenda view helps me decide that) I'll vary the amount of tasks I'll put down for me to accomplish in the day.

Workflow

I populate the workday template the day before, looking ahead into my calendar for things that I've already committed to. This is helpful because it allows me to plan ahead and set expectations on what I'd like to accomplish the following day. In the end this allows me to commit it to paper and forget it until I look at it at the start of the workday. This pre-population doesn't include the task log section, because those will include the running log of things I've been doing in the workday.

The log will vary in the level of detail, but I generally align this with the breaks I take in between chunks of focused time. When I take a breather, I'll write down the thing I was working on, which tasks were accomplished, whether I responded to emails, or whether I got an idea that I'd like to revisit later. For project-specific ideas I'll typically put something short in the work log notebook and write something more substantial in a project-specific work notebook. I'll write about that some other time.

As soon as I have tasks "done" then I'll mark those off from the list of tasks. I use square bullets for tasks that can be accomplished, so I tick the box when they're done usually with an accompanying log entry to try and quantify how much time that took, what the outcomes were, whether I learned something new, or how it made me feel while doing it. I make the task log useful for retrospective purposes so when I'm writing them I write as much of what I feel and/or observe as I can.

At the end of the day I do two main things: I look back at the day and see whether my estimates were good or whether I over-committed and I plan the upcoming work day. This daily reflection allows me to craft the theme of the following day and perform appropriate actions like delegating, reducing scope, escalating to folks who can help, etc.

End note

I've started this practice around 2018 and 2020 made this a good way for me to collect notes on things I've been working on and the challenges/successes I've had along the way. It helps me keep perspective on where I am now compared to where I was a couple years ago. It's also very helpful when working on my self evaluation and peer evaluations, so I have notes that were relevant to my experience along with the evidence that's associated with them. It's been helpful to me in being able to stay on task as well as disconnect at the end of a work day.

Do you have a workflow that enables you to stay on task and reflect later on?

Writing quick and actionable emails

2021-01-19T08:00:00.004+11:00

One of the things I do a lot on a daily basis is write emails. I suspect it's the nature of the job that communication would be a primary function that I should be able to perform well. There's certainly an art to this form of writing which is very different from other kinds of messaging. If you've ever wondered why you'd want to learn to write emails well, consider the following computations:

If you spend 2 minutes writing an email and you need to send 10 of them, that's already 20 minutes. This doesn't count the time reading the email, formulating a response, and figuring out what else you need to do after responding to the email.
If you write 10 minutes crafting an email and send 10 of them then that's a 100 minutes (1 2/3 hours). This doesn't include editing the email, so it's a lower-bound.
If you receive 100 emails and read each one for 2 minutes and reply to 10%, then you're spending 200 minutes on 100 emails reading and anywhere between 20 minutes to 100 minutes responding. That's a lower bound of 220 minutes (3 2/3 hours) just on email.

That's a lot of time!

No wonder folks who live in their inboxes feel like they're productive because a good part of their day ends up managing email. I used to be one of these folks that kept "inbox zero" but upon reflection I thought there ought to be a better way -- and it turns out it's possible to do email differently. Here's some that I've learned in the past 10 years of working with email.

Use templates

A dirty secret I have is that I use templates when I'm drafting emails. It ranges from a document from which I can copy-paste from to a Gmail feature that allows me to create email templates. Sometimes it's an outline that I work from so that I don't need to think about the structure on the spot, and I pay for the cost of drafting the template once up-front and gain the benefits in the future. This is great if you find yourself sending emails that have a pattern to them. In my case I find that I send emails that are:

Follow-ups to tasks. I have a two templates for these, one's a reply to an existing conversation and to start a new conversation. I vary it from time to time depending on whether there's context I need to provide or whether it's a status check.
Accomplishment updates. When the team hits a milestone, I usually send out an email calling it out to the team and to our users/customers and stakeholders. I send these often enough that I do use a template that helps me remember the details.
Introductions. Thinking about what to include in an introduction has to be done ahead of time so I usually have introduction blurbs for folks on my team that I'm introducing to other folks. If it's a self-introduction then I write those on the spot, but usually the act of connecting people together across organisations happens often enough that I use a template for it.

My templates are usually outlines and questions that need answering, so that I can think about what's important to include in the email ahead of time and answer the questions when I'm drafting it. In a way it helps me engage with my email as a reader.

Follow the Ws

At the very least, answer the following questions in order when relevant:

Why should I read this email?
Who is sending this email? Who is this email intended to be read by?
What is this email about? What should the reader do about this email?
When and Where is an event going to happen, or a deadline supposed to be met?
How should the action be performed (through a link, with a reply, etc.)?

These are deliberately asked from the reader's perspective, so that when writing the email you remember the time that the recipient will take to read it. If you estimate it's going to take longer than 2 minutes, then it's probably better as a document that is linked from an email.

Ask nicely

There's a school of thought that proposes that business/professional email be emotionless and dry. It could be that but it doesn't mean the tone you set would be a rude or demanding one (unless those are the kinds of emotions you'd like to convey). When you need someone to perform an action for you, a "please" or "thanks" in the right place shows that you're communicating with the human on the other side of the message, rather than the role the human plays. Remember that until the robots take over, humans are still on the reader end of these messages so please be nice to your fellow humans.

Make it easy to make a decision

There are two decisions that you can help the recipient of the email you're writing:

Should they continue reading?
Should they do what you're asking them to -- whether to respond or perform a different action?

If you can answer these questions for them in the beginning of an email, the better it is for the reader.

For example: if your email will take longer than 2 minutes to read, show that you've taken a reader's time into account by writing your message in a shared document or below a summary.

Another way to answer question 2 is to make the choices really simple. If you have multiple options, present two or three and keep it open for discussion. It's better if you have a way of collecting responses through a form that feeds a spreadsheet. Ultimately make sure that whatever decisions are going to be made through email that it's clearly defined and that it's unambiguous.

10 years of email

Recently I came back from 3 weeks of vacation and found myself in the midst of hard-to-read emails and a trick I picked up was declaring email bankruptcy. I filtered it by subject (only those that were descriptive and actionable were the ones I read) then by sender (who are the important people I need to read messages and respond to) then by recency (more recent emails first). I gave myself 4 hours to go through the emails and by the end I called it quits and archived all the emails I had missed and were unread.

If anything, I learned that it's OK not to read all the emails if you only have so much time for it. If you absolutely have to write email, then hopefully the tips above would be helpful to you too.

Do you have other tips on how you manage your email?

Six-hour workdays for focus and productivity

2021-01-18T08:00:00.002+11:00

Sometime in 2018 I experimented with a strict 6-hour workday. I negotiated this with my manager who at the time said it was worth the experiment. The idea would be for me to be at the office by 10am and be out by 4pm. This didn't preclude me from continuing to work while I was in the train, or at home. It was an experiment where I can remember some good and bad parts and this is a post looking back at that time.

Ruthless prioritisation

The first thing I needed to do as an individual contributor was to ruthlessly prioritise all the tasks I have to accomplish. This meant I had to put a budget on the amount of time I'm spending doing certain things. Additionally this meant I needed to remove all unnecessary meetings from my calendar. This was defined as whether it was something I was needed to make a decision on anything. Being an individual contributor at the time the answer it turns out for most meetings in my calendar was "no". Some examples of things I've stopped doing at the time are:

Participating in large "team meetings" where the goal was to have everyone say what they were working on. I instead sent status emails and maintained a status doc which I updated as soon as I was done working on tasks.
Attending optional "tech talks" that were recorded anyway. An hour a week is very valuable time when I am forcing myself to only have 30 hours available to do work.
Taking long lunches and frequent breaks. When I only had 6 hours in a day to work, 15 minutes becomes really valuable. So I'd have lunch with the team quickly then head back to whatever I needed to do. I'd also have coffee right after lunch. At Google cold drinks were almost always nearby so whenever I got thirsty I'd grab fizzy water and be back at the desk in under 2 minutes (no making coffee or hot drinks required).
Accepting "interrupts" as they come. I've learned to ignore IM for a time and handle interrupts in batches, between tasks. I also invested in noise-cancelling headphones to ensure random outside noise didn't distract me too much.

What I also learned to do really well were:

Stopping when my time budget for a task was up. This was a little harder but I learned to work in quick spurts, and I'd gotten better at estimating how long certain kinds of tasks would take if I were doing them.
Having more meaningful one-on-one meetings. I came prepared with things I want to talk about, and made sure the time I spent with whoever I was meeting with was uninterrupted and focused. Even if it means I listen most of the time.
Writing documents with enough context for the reader. I learned that if I spend the extra time early in the process of writing a document (meeting agenda, project proposal, design document, etc.) and anticipate the questions people will have about the contents, the less requests for more information was required. Readers of my documents appreciate the time I took and the time they don't spend asking questions. Some of them complain that they're a bit long though so I'm still working on that. 🙂
Writing better actionable email. This one was important early on because my time was valuable so I needed to be able to write them quickly but I recognise that the reader's time is as valuable if not more so than mine. So I've developed some habits and checklists for how to draft quick and actionable messages.

In this experiment I felt really productive (more so than if I stayed longer in the office and got in more meetings) and the outcomes were speaking for itself. My projects would finish on time and the output would be useful to users and readers. I may have gotten a promotion out of it too. 😄

Techniques and tools

It's not all will-power though. I did have a few tools that were helpful in my journey to make the most of my time.

A timer. I used the timer app that came with the iPhone. I'd set a timer for 50 minutes and when it goes off I'll step away and take a 10 minute break. Nowadays I use the Focus App to get on top of tasks and track time.
A journal/logbook. I had a dedicated work notebook for logging the things I'm supposed to do in a day followed by what I actually did get done. This evolved into a self-made checklist that I printed out and would fill out when I was at my desk. This template helped me plan my day and see what I needed to accomplish.
A project notebook. This physical notebook contained free-form notes, anything I think about that is occupying my mind that I can act on later. I'd usually use the 10 minute breaks to write down incomplete thoughts or ideas to "get it out of my head" before I get to the next task. Sometimes this would include illustrations, questions, problems, epiphanies, and meeting notes. This was purely for me and for when I'm drafting documents to refer to.
Sticky "Post-it" notes. This one might be just a personal preference but it turns out I like ripping paper up -- so that becomes a reward of sorts for completing tasks that are written down in those notes. This also lets me focus on one note at a time by allowing me to write those tasks in notes, then only putting the task I'm working on front-and-centre.
A good pen. For I while I used a gel pen with a fine tip because it didn't have as much friction and it lets me write more freely (ball-point pens seem to get in my way when writing). This evolved into buying my first fountain pen and haven't gone back since.

By the end of the experiment which lasted a quarter (12 weeks) I had a workflow down that works for me. This workflow has been the same workflow I follow up to now (3 years on) and it's been working wonders for me. It turns out this workflow is portable (I can bring the notebooks, pen, my phone, and sticky notes along with a laptop) which means I can work with the same structure whether I'm at home or at the office. I've also started doing the same even for non-work projects!

End note

After the experimental period and my role has changed from individual contributor to technical leader, I still follow the same workflow albeit with very different tasks. My notes include strategic thoughts and bigger picture ideas. The problems I'm solving with the team are larger and my responsibilities now include ensuring that the team is being productive as well. I realise that everyone operates at a different pace and that's fine, not everyone works well with structure and rigour -- some are more like artists doing free-form creative efforts, some like scholars that want to dive deep into a subject, some like scientists running experiments and recording observations, some like engineers will understand what's good enough and optimise later. What I shouldn't be doing though as a lead is slowing everyone else down which is why I stick to my routine because it lets me be productive.

Do you have a workflow that you've settled on and have found to work for you?

Picking up a hobby: Fishing

2021-01-15T08:00:00.014+11:00

Fishing has been one of those quintessentially human activities that our ancestors have been doing since... well, for a long time. We all know that we need water to live but after discovering how good the creatures that come from the water taste when cooked (or raw) it turns out we figured out that it's worth trying to catch these creatures for sustenance. It's interesting to note though that it's called "fishing" not "catching" as someone said sometime ago because catching the fish is not guaranteed -- otherwise it'd be farming, harvesting, or akin to raising cattle. There's a number of surprising things that came to me once I started doing this activity and I thought I'd write out a few of those in case you were looking for one too.

NOTE: Before going out on your first fishing trip, be sure to read local laws and regulations. In NSW where I'm at, you need a valid fishing license and must be familiar with the restrictions on where fishing is allowed, quantity/size/kinds of fish you're allowed to keep. Remember that safety must be your priority so avoid going out there alone especially if you're new to this.

Gear

It turns out you can get buried in the technicalities involved with buying the gear to get started. You can start with as little as $60 for a starter pack (includes a rod, reel, and "rigs") and can easily spend your way to thousands of dollars' worth of gear for "precision" gear for different conditions. When I got started recently I opted for the minimal costs, then decided I'll invest more as I gain more experience. A search for "Fishing Rod Kit" on Amazon for example yields one priced around AUD $61 (by ShinePick) which includes a bag, lures, line, hooks, and ways to organise the gear. If you're looking to get started there's nothing wrong with starting cheap and building up. I personally started with just a Jarvis Walker telescopic rod and a 300-piece tackle box kit.

Knots

Tying knots turns out to be one of the the most interesting technical bits of this endeavour. I've spent hours and hours preparing specialised "rigs" so that I can swap those in/out while I'm out in the field. Learning and internalising how certain knots are done also helps when repairing line when you get inevitably snagged onto something at the bottom of the ocean or the river. If you'd like a start, try three:

Improved clinch knot: great for securing hooks at the end of leader line.
Albright knot: great for tying braid line onto fluorocarbon leader line.
Non-slip loop knot (AKA Kreh loop): great for tying jig heads or lures at the end of leader line.

You can easily spend hours reading up and learning the various kinds of knots out there and if you're into that kind of mastery, then you'd love field-tying these knots on fishing trips. Another option is to get a handy guide with you. Here's one that's waterproof so you can bring it out in the field when you need to look up how to tie a knot when out fishing.

Technique

Perhaps this is where a lot of the mastery and fun comes in for me. Learning to cast, to put action on the line and hook or lures, or even just how to operate the reel. I can link to a few YouTube channels which provide a lot of the content that I've learned from and that have been helpful to my improvement over time:

Of course there's no substitute for repetitions and experimentation so when you do decide to get into this hobby, be prepared to try new things and change things up while you're out there. Treat it like a game, a sport, or a past-time activity rather than putting the pressure on yourself to catch something.

Catch and release

If you can at all help it, consider releasing the fish you catch unless you absolutely want or need to consume it. That legal-sized fish you caught could be caught by someone else again later and enjoy the same experience as you did. Use your judgment on how much you'll need and when to call it quits.

Note that there are areas in Sydney in particular where fish caught must be released and not consumed for health and safety reasons. For example, fish caught in the Parramatta River (west of the Harbour Bridge) should not be consumed due to high levels of dioxins in the fish. Check your local government resources for more accurate and up-to-date information.

Have fun and if you do get started, I'd love to hear how you go!

Mental health

2021-01-14T08:00:00.002+11:00

2020 was a somber year for me and I'm sure it's the same for a lot of people. As if the global pandemic wasn't enough bringing in the isolation, restriction of travel, and a general sense of change to everyone's way of life -- it was made harder by wanting to keep a semblance of a regular life. I still worked, albeit from home, trying to maintain the same level of productivity as I did before all the change was imposed upon everyone. I still tried to keep up my hobbies like playing video games and supporting some streamers I follow -- what I lack in time to play it seems other people appreciate the financial support I can offer to do the gaming instead, so I and others can live vicariously through them. It wasn't easy and it didn't help that I seem to be really hard on myself.

Personally, there were some daemons that I've had to tackle on my own and some that I've had to ask for others' help. It's been a struggle to keep an even keel while everything else is in a constant state of flux more so than usual. It's also not just the pandemic either -- it's the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent attempted takeover of the US Capitol. While I personally am not affected by these important historical events in Australia and by virtue of my ancestral heritage, I do have family and friends there that could be. The thought of having one of my extended family being adversely affected both physically and mentally by all that's been happening weighs heavily whenever I hear of news about what's going on in the USA.

What I'm taking away from 2020 is a realisation that I need to be listening to my body and my mind more and taking more care of myself. Remembering the little things like smiling and checking in on people to genuinely listen and be available goes a long way -- I know because I appreciate those little things a lot more now than I used to.

The grind will always be there waiting but life is here and now. So in 2021 I've been choosing life before the grind of making a difference out there.

Thank you for reading. May you have peace and good fortunes this year.

Encrypted messaging

2021-01-13T08:00:00.001+11:00

One of the things I miss about social media (after not having been on Facebook for a good number of years now) is the convenient mechanism for communicating with friends, family, and acquaintances. The trade though isn't worth it for me -- my attention being used to fuel algorithms for targeting advertising with the side effect of amplifying messaging that I rather not have occupying my psyche. I haven't completely distanced myself from social media though -- I still use Twitter mostly to follow folks that challenge my perspective and augment my frame of mind.

For a while I used Keybase but phones and a laptop later I've kept forgetting to actually use it for messaging. Unfortunately I've been locked out of my account and I'm waiting for a reset to happen. I used to have a WhatsApp account but I didn't find much traction with that in my family nor acquaintances. Not having Facebook (as I've deleted my account) made it extra hard to be involved in group messaging in the past year. There's other solutions like Slack for the communities I belong to and Discord for the folks I play D&D regularly with, but that's different from a secure way of reaching folks with verified identities. There's Signal which is an interesting way of doing it which may be my preferred approach.

This is becoming important because I'd like to be able to solicit feedback from some early writing I'm doing, and would like to keep it secure in transit and with groups of folks. I'm big into using public key cryptography (my public key fingerprint is "FA91 CAC8 8A7F 7785 205A 5B31 0463 F512 E8EF 2E5B") and if you wanted to reach me securely, encrypted email works great. The initial investment of being familiar with and creating your public and private PGP keys will allow for more trust-worthy communication that's end-to-end encrypted. Using this system of encryption and signing becomes a useful trust enabling mechanism without having to trust a third-party to "see" your messages before they reach the recipients.

Do you use any specific solutions that have fit your need? So far I've found that Signal fits my requirements most for encrypted group messaging and PGP encryption/signatures for email communication. You can reach me at dean.berris@deanberris.com and encrypt your emails if you'd like. 😄

Help wanted: writing resources

2021-01-12T00:51:00.001+11:00

I'm currently fleshing out a fantasy setting for a series of short stories rattling in my head that I'd like to get out into the world. However, it's the first time I'm even trying to do this, so I need your help: are there any good resources for world-building and writing guides that have been helpful in your projects?

So far I've been really enamoured by Brandon Sanderson's world building and Patrick Rothfuss' storytelling. I suspect those two are at the pinnacle of the trade and I'm probably not going to do myself any favours by trying to live up to what they're doing, but I'd still like to give it the good college try. Are there any resources (forums, books, guides, blogs, or courses) that I should be taking if I want to do a decent first take at this?

This is probably better as an email to friends and maybe some random folks (or maybe even a tweet) but why not a blog as well?

Its been a while

2021-01-11T08:00:00.001+11:00

It's 2021 and it's been a while since I wrote here.

2020 has been a challenging year for me and the family and if you're still subscribed and still reading, then thank you for sticking by me. We're doing well and we're doing the best we could given the situation in the world even today. I still believe that things will get better and while we're in the down part of the cycle of life, I'd like to think that the rise is coming soon. Of course nothing will ever really be the same though I'm holding out hope that it will only get better.

The past year has given me an opportunity to think about the projects I've been holding off on and after much reflection and disconnecting with my most recent vacation, I've found that there's one project that I'm very excited to start working on and share with you: I'm going to be writing more.

Not only writing on this blog, but I'm also dabbling on writing other things too. As soon as I have some of these projects taking more shape, I'm likely going to share more of the progress as they come.

For now, from my family to you and yours, a happy start to 2021!

From FOMO to JOMO

2019-03-05T00:05:00.000+11:00

Until very recently I believed that I needed to be on top of the latest news and happenings not only in my field (computer science and software engineering) but also in as many things as I can be on top of. This meant subscribing to all sorts of magazines, newsletters, YouTube channels, Twitch streamers, watching TV and live sport events, etc. — I was on top of a lot of the latest happenings, trends, news, interesting developments. I was having fun and I felt busy. What I did not feel was particularly effective nor productive. I felt like I was consuming so much information with the thought that it might be useful someday. When I was younger this wouldn’t have been an issue but I realised that ever since I’ve started taking stock of what I’ve been spending my time on, that a lot of it I’ve been spending just staying on top of things that I really didn’t need to be on top of. This article is about some of the realisations I’ve made in the course of exploring this issue of “FOMO” or the Fear of Missing Out and how I’ve changed my perspective over time to now having “JOMO” or the Joy of Missing Out.

Opportunistic photo of a rainbow at Coogee Beach, NSW.

One thing that I’ve realised and that a lot of literature about FOMO points out is that it usually stems from uncertainty — about whether the information or events going on will be relevant or important. This uncertainty causes a lot of insecurity for a lot of people (including me for the most part) and causes an irrational need to be in-the-know for things that might not necessarily be relevant information. It feeds a lot of the habits around news consumption and a lot of entertainment — craving the drama, the intrigue, the suspense, and sometimes the resolution of some of these cultural touch points. Lots of people have a fear of missing out on social interactions that would have happened if they were not out with their social group (or even alone) experiencing some popular event. I didn’t particularly feel the need to meet celebrities nor be in the crowd for a lot of concerts even while I was much younger, but I felt this for live sporting events.

I learned that for me, it was mostly self-imposed expectations. I don’t really have friends nor colleagues who shame me for not partaking in certain cultural events (I never got into Star Wars and I don’t ever see myself wanting to get into it) and those that do quickly find out that the ribbing and shaming don’t really work on me. However I will feel really bad if there was an olympic games or world swimming championships going on and I didn’t at least watch a live telecast (or highlights right after from some on-demand video service). I experienced this most recently with some of the professional DOTA 2 events which were live-streamed at times that were not convenient for viewing when based in Sydney (if you value sleep during those times). I see that I suffer a lot if I don’t prioritise the right things and in my journals I find that my lowest-performing days followed me binge-watching something on Netflix until too late at night (or the morning the following day) or I was watching some live-streamed DOTA 2 tournament.

I also found that following trends is a real time sink especially on social media. I’ve reduced my social media presence considerably over the past couple of years now (I’m now just on Twitter and LinkedIn) and even then I find myself getting sucked into the trending themes in my online social circles. I could easily spend minutes reading through flame threads and dumpster fire posts instead of doing something else I should have been doing. The tools on the iPhone have helped me realise how much time I’ve been spending on my phone (which is usually where I consume a lot of Twitter) and pointing out that I’ve been spending majority of my time on screen with the Twitter app.

Armed with this information from recent retrospectives for 2018 and just more recently with the past couple of months, I found that I needed to do something about the mindset and my perspective if I was going to have any chance at optimising the use of my time. Here’s how I did it for me:

Recognise that time is limited. This is Habit 2 in Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” which I still re-read regularly when I get the chance. It says to “begin with the end in mind” which puts things in perspective — we will all die at some point, and that I better decide whether I want to look back and feel like I wasted my life being on top of things that weren’t really important, or whether I will be proud that I did something useful with my time alive. This perspective of looking from the final destination back to the current time allows me to put things in perspective to ask myself and be honest about whether what I’m currently doing is really something I ought to be doing. This simple question of whether I’m doing something that’s working toward a goal that is important to my life’s mission is enough to break me out of a procrastination or FOMO trap.

Apply skills and efforts on more joyful activities. I found that it was not enough to stop doing things that aren’t contributing to your core missions in life, it meant also finding something to do where my skills and efforts will yield joy. Recently the “Kon Mari” method of tidying up became popular due to the Netflix hit about the ways of cleaning life up by only holding on to things that spark joy — this is not exactly the same, but it’s close enough to the thought process I went through. In my mind, time was worth the same and it wasn’t something that we will ever regain. When a moment passes, it’s gone and if I didn’t put it towards doing something that “sparked joy” I’d essentially been wasting time. This means for the minutes I’m walking, on the train, at the office, at home, with my kids, with my wife, on the plane, in bed, on the toilet seat, in the shower — I ask myself whether I’m working on generating as much joy as I can from the situation. If I’m just there getting sucked into someone else’s mission, then I’m not really using my time effectively especially if I don’t really share the mission. Now instead of having fear that I’m missing out on something, I have joy that I’m doing whatever I’m currently doing.

Leverage Ignorance. There’s a very zen-like attitude that some people take with dealing with email, when they declare “email bankruptcy” which I’ve since learned to adopt: if it’s really important, I will hear about it one way or another. There are cases where being ignorant about things that don’t really concern you will be exactly the right state to be in. I’ve found that there are certain happenings in the world which, if they’re really important I will hear about one way or another when I need to hear about it (and no earlier). I think about it with probabilities in mind — the probability that something happening and me having to know about it as soon as possible is vanishingly small given the amount of things that are constantly happening in the universe. If there was something that was really important that I need to know about is happening, chances are that this information will get to me eventually without me actively seeking this information. There’s a whole lot of information out there that’s not really relevant to what I’m trying to accomplish in life. Given my limited minutes, I’m better served not knowing about the vast majority of things, but instead only spending as much of my minutes doing things which allow me to accomplish my mission (including using some minutes to search the information that may be necessary).

Accept that we craft our experiences with our choices. I strongly believe that the way we experience life depends entirely on whether we choose to take our destiny in our own hands or whether we experience it as a bystander where things are happening to us. This shift from passive observer to active participant is important if you (like me) want to stop living in the constant fear of missing out. When we choose to do things instead of viewing things as happening to us, it changes the relationship we have with the world from someone that’s just there to someone making a difference. This usually does not come naturally, although this could be a personality trait which some people are more predisposed to (the jury is still out on whether nature prevails over nurture) but it’s certainly an attitude that can be consciously adopted. When “things that are happening” stop becoming things that happen to us, and start becoming things we choose to NOT experience, then the fear goes away and yields to reason. It is this framing that’s changed my way of looking at events that I chose to ignore or not be part of from being things that I miss.

Seize the day! If you optimistically think that you’re going to live until you’re 90, in my case that’s approximately 60+ years from now. That’s not a lot of time considering that there’s so many things I’d still like to be able to do. If you’re a pessimist and think that you’ll live only for another 20 years, then it’s imperative that you spend more time on things that matter to you rather than things that just happen to be happening. There’s always 24 hours in a day (give or take an hour because of Daylight Savings) and there’s only part of this that ought to really be “productive” (though sleep is arguably the most productive time for the brain for recovery). If you accept that 8 hours will be dedicated to sleep, and that the rest of the 16 hours is all you’re able to actually dedicate to the effort, what are you doing in those 16 hours? How much time are you spending with family? How much time are you dedicating to accomplishing your mission? How much time is dedicated to improvement? How about impacting your community? How about your legacy? Suddenly all those minutes watching a silly video or reading a random news story starts becoming a really expensive use of your time. Is it worth it?

Recently after implementing a few changes, I’ve noticed a number of quality of life improvements for me:

I stopped reading/listening to daily local news and do more long-form reading (in-depth reports, non-fiction books) and listening (audiobooks, deep intellectual discussions in podcasts).
I’ve reduced social media time from multiple hours a day, to several minutes a day. This is mostly on Twitter catching up while I’m otherwise unproductive anyway (say, while sitting “on the throne”).
I no longer get envious of people who have time to play the latest video games and instead use video games as a conscious mental reprieve, and limit my gaming specifically to decompress.
I watch much less TV now and when I do its usually with family. We’re discovering the joys of just watching movies together at home.
I play D&D more with real-life interactions! I’ve found that these regular interactions with my gaming group refuels my soul and provides a very refreshing escape for the mind.
I now swim more sparingly, stressing less and going more by feel. Being able to spend more time with the kids instead of being obsessed by hitting weekly mileage on the swims is making my quality of life much better. I also now get to enjoy swimming more for the experience rather than as a training exercise which completely changes the way I experience it now.

I’m sure everyone will have a different set of trade-offs than I’ve made. Maybe you value serendipitous interactions more than structured and planned days. Maybe you enjoy the variety more than working on the next immediate goal. Or maybe you’re less discerning about what you want to accomplish in life and would be fine with going along with the flow. It’s all good and it’s important to remember that there’s no one right way to life your life, but that it is important to remember that we do all just have one life to live.

Do you struggle with FOMO? Have you made the switch to embracing the JOMO too? I’d love to hear your strategies and thoughts too.

A Passion Project

2019-02-09T03:27:00.002+11:00

I was so moved today by the prospect of a passion project that I took some time on a Friday night to get it done. Let me present the #RedJeans project over at redjeans.org. I've found myself wanting to work on a project that came purely from the heart and one that was very dear to me, something that is personal, and connects with a larger community of people in the world.

The idea for redjeans.org came to me as a hint when I was writing up my reflection for 2018. I realised that I didn't spend quite as much time identifying with and working with a community. I did a bit of soul-searching and found that one of the activities I really enjoyed and cherished in years past is donating blood -- and I keep wondering why not more people do it. It was an idle thought but then a conversation with someone where I described why I wrote down "donate blood more often" in 2019 became an idea where instead of just me doing it, how about if I get my friends to do it too?

I left it at that for the rest of the afternoon, but as soon as I started writing my end-of-day reflections it hit me: why am I just thinking about getting my friends to do it, why not get as many people we can reach do it too? That idea hit me while I was on the train heading home after a long day. When I got home and started settling down I realised: there's no reason to delay this project further.

So overnight I got the domain, set up the email addresses, got a blog up and running, and then proceeded to tweak the design and set up an email newsletter.

The rationale for the name and the whole project is described in the initial blog post which I quote here.

"I named the site Red Jeans because my mom’s name is Jean and I owe a great debt of gratitude to the anonymous blood donors, without whom my mother could have perished, that fateful day decades ago. I could have lost my mom then and 30+ years in I’m inspired to do something to encourage more people to donate blood regularly.

"The vision I have in my head when I get the chance to donate blood myself is that someday soon the blood might help another mother giving birth and give them a chance to be around to raise their child. I think about what that mother might still be able to do and the life the child will have with that mother. I wish they have the same chances my mom and I did throughout my wonderful life."

If you feel the same about this, I'd really like to hear your stories too!

The call to action is simple, let's use #RedJeans in social media and describe how you or someone you know have benefitted from a life-saving blood transfusion, and point them to the website (redjeans.org) or the twitter account (twitter.com/redjeansorg). If you're organising a blood donation drive, post pictures of the party/event and use #RedJeans on social media too.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and would appreciate very much your support in this effort.

Get a Life Coach

2019-02-01T00:27:00.000+11:00

Have you ever played a sport whether individual or team sports where your top performance was required for any measure of success? If you have, you may have had the benefit of at least one coach guiding you to point out better form, better strategies, alternative approaches, keeping you accountable, identifying our strengths and weaknesses, and overall telling you to listen to your body and focus on your goals. If you haven't then would you like to have someone on your side, not judging you then generally cheering you on while you attempt to achieve whatever your goals are? For the past year I've been working with a life coach and I can say it's worked so well for me that I cannot help but recommend everyone consider investing in life coaching.

I used to swim back when I was a student in university as part of the varsity team. I had a number of coaches then who taught me not just the technical aspects of swimming, but also the mental fortitude required to train effectively, the discipline required to maintain form, and the mindset required for competition. Our head coach would tailor our training programmes depending on our levels and capacity, our preferred stroke, how we respond to challenges, and kept us accountable for completing the training. Our success was mostly dependent on ourselves -- we determined how hard we push during training, how motivated we are in improving, and whether we're going to show up every training day with a particular attitude. Our coach was the enabler and the guidance we needed to be better at what we do.

It took me a while to realise that a mentor is really important to have -- someone you can look up to, give you advice about what to think about, someone to listen and understand what you're going through and potentially guide you to a specific set of actions and decision points. I'm very blessed and grateful for the mentors I've had throughout the years and those I have now. But a mentor isn't necessarily a coach.

It also took me a while to realise that therapy is really important too. Having a licensed professional who can help you introspect, identify your thought patterns, and help you process your emotions is a service that's definitely worth the investment. Having someone you trust to confide in and let into your thoughts and insecurities with the goal of healing and emotional growth is worth more than most material things you can spend your money on. But a therapist is not a coach.

I found that my coach has helped me in the following areas in an accelerated manner:

Planning. I'm a notoriously bad planner but I am good at analysing options and making decisions. My coach has helped me turn my analysis and decision making skills into components of a planning strategy which works for me. Now I have a better handle of what I want/need to accomplish and how to put forth a plan to execute.
Focus. I used to have trouble focusing on one project/endeavour for a prolonged period which I never understood why -- until my coach helped me realise that I value uncertainty (the feeling of "anything can happen") and do actually crave that feeling of encountering something new. Just knowing this has helped me in identifying when I'm distracted or bored to have strategies for satisfying these cravings -- while staying productive and focused at a macro level. I take more frequent deliberate breaks now and as a result am able to focus on a larger project over time without procrastinating as much.
Higher Level Execution. One of my strengths that I've identified for a while now is my capacity and willingness to execute. This usually came at the expense of efficiency or effectiveness -- because I can execute so much, I usually just dove in and figured things out later. Now I'm combining my strength in execution with effective planning and focus to deliver more effective solutions. It's not so much executing on more things, but instead executing on the right things well.
Accountability. Just having someone who can keep track of the goals I've set myself and how far I've gotten to achieving those goals, then celebrating the successes and analysing the failures -- and helping me talk myself out of a rut by exploring the thought patterns that might be artificially limiting me -- has made the whole journey more enjoyable. While I do have friends that could help me with this, having someone that was a bit detached and can look objectively and provide feedback and prompts to think about is part of the value.

My coach has helped me become a better version of me by being more organised, deliberate, and more self-aware. I've found the coaching sessions help me in thinking clearly about what's happened, what I need to execute on, and identifying the good parts of my plans. Having my coach in my corner helping with the tactical, strategic, and mental aspects of how I execute on "life" in general has been so worth the investment, I would happily keep doing it as long as I can afford to do so!

If you're interested in life coaching too, I can refer you to my coach who can help you connect with one -- just send me a message through https://keybase.io/deanberris or (encrypted) email to dean.berris@deanberris.com (PGP Key 0463 F512 E8EF 2E5B).

In the meantime, here's a picture of a nice sunset at St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria.

Updated 2/1/2019, 12:33AM: Added hyperlinks to email and keybase.io profile page.

Writing Again

2019-01-29T17:10:00.000+11:00

It's 2019 and I just realised that I've not written on this blog for a long while. I feel a little bad about this so I'm picking it back up again. More importantly, I've limited my social media to just Twitter (I've deleted all my Facebook-related accounts) and will be writing more on the blog instead of engaging in other social media sites. If you want to reach me directly, you can also reach me through my keybase.io account for encrypted communication. If you have my phone number, you can also contact me through Signal. Quite a number of things have happened in the past few years and here's a quick update on things that I can share:

I've been working on XRay, a function call tracing system now part of the LLVM project. This took a good two and some years of my time at Google.
Most recently I've moved to the Chrome Operations Team still here in Google Sydney. I can't give specifics yet of what I'll be working on, so stay tuned.
There've been countless vacations and photos I've taken which I'm very eager to share. I found that I like taking pictures of landscapes a lot!
We're re-starting an effort to develop an open source networking library for C++, which we're doing over on GitHub.

In the meantime, please enjoy a picture of a black swan. :)

Futures and Options III: Economics, Journalism, or Computer Science

2015-03-17T22:59:00.000+11:00

I realise it's been a year since my previous post on this blog, and I've found myself having very little time to do another "brain dump" on the subject of my early choices in life. With that in mind (and as I'll be traveling again soon) I get to think a little more and reflect on a few of the things that have happened.

Much like the previous post, this one's set in high school -- where I was part of the swimming team, in a band, had been programming with Turbo Pascal, Java, and then C++ later on, and was about to make a choice that would literally change the course of my life. This one is about the choices I made, and the ones that were made for me.

Note: This is part 3 of a series about my early choices in life which have gotten me to where I am today. I would greatly appreciate your feedback and thoughts, as well as for your reading through this series!

I'm a computer science undergraduate from the University of the Philippines in Los Baños (in the province of Laguna, in the Philippines). This wasn't my only choice of courses to take, but I did only apply for admission into the University of the Philippines. I would have much preferred to have studied in Metro Manila due to my wanderlust as a child (which I still have now, don't get me wrong -- I love traveling!) and when I got a chance to get away, the choice was made for me -- UP would not let me go to Diliman (in Metro Manila), but rather keep me in my home province of Laguna.

So what choices did I have? Let me take you on a detour.

Economics

I had a lot of fun in a few subjects I had taken in my junior and senior years in high school. The grind back then was unreal -- up by 6am, at school by 8am then out at 5pm, then I had to fit in things like band practice, swimming training, catching up with friends, and at one point my girlfriend and studying. I remember wanting to not ever do that back then for a living when I was done with high school and college. Yes, I know, I was young and foolish to think that I can get away from the grind!

Economics was my favourite of all the subjects. I had been fascinated with how money worked (or didn't work), how businesses set prices, the struggle between suppliers, the middlemen, and the consumers, and in general how the whole system hung together (or barely does, knowing what I know now). Supply and demand, market clearing price, opportunity costs, and various factors affecting macro-economics, micro-economics, and even just cash flow in general. I went into it thinking that I could somehow learn how banks made money, how people got rich, and how governments could actually affect the whole system.

Idealistic young man (me) learning about complex systems (economics) that seemed to have some sort of logical and rational explanation. I (and frankly nor did my teachers) didn't know it then but economic activity apparently is driven by irrational behaviour of people. I would have thought, because of the classical economic theories (simplified, to a great degree) I was learning back then, saying that rational actors would behave rationally that it would just be a matter of time until governments and regulators would figure it out and "fix" or "hack" it to their advantage for the good of the people.

There was the naïve thought of the government actually acting for the good of the people. I learned this through social studies and unlearned it as soon as I got into pseudo-politics. Then I remembered that there should be something that people can actually do about this.

Journalism

One of the subjects I had been lucky to take is Advanced English. I remember English being drilled into my brain when I was a child growing up to the point that I actually think in English and have had to translate my thoughts into Filipino. It didn't help that the Filipino subject when I was growing up was concerned about grammar and form rather than the history and the interesting things about my mother tongue. I grew up on Sesame Street, Looney Toons, WWE (called WWF back then), and Doogie Houser MD all on TV. I wasn't allowed to watch Filipino movies growing up and I almost exclusively watched documentaries when we finally got cable TV.

My fascination with journalism grew when I got the chance to start writing for and editing the school paper in high school. I loved the thought of being able to present information as well as craft the sentences that influence people's thoughts. I wasn't much of a fiction writer, but I remember writing opinion pieces that were well received. For a couple of reasons, I had a chance to write a column called "Lolo's Rockin' Chair" -- the name was because "Lolo" is "Grandpa" in Filipino (due to me having white hair early in life), Rockin' because I played the bass in an alternative/pop rock band. Classmates and even those in the higher classes, and even teachers gave me compliments on the content and the form.

These early encouragements and minor successes in writing led me to think about potentially becoming a journalist. I thought back then that being in the media, part of the press, would allow me to affect change and maybe make people's lives easier and the world a little better. This again was the naïve teenage kid thinking that justice could be achieved through the pen as opposed to the sword (or the screen).

Had I taken journalism, I honestly couldn't imagine my life now. I would probably be living hand-to-mouth, nurturing my ideologies, and hoping I win the lottery.

Computer Science

I've written about how I got into computers and programming early in my life and I wouldn't rehash that here. But for a little background into why I ended up in computer science, let me explain how the application form was structured. Keep in mind that my motivations were to 1) get away from home 2) study in the University of the Philippines, and 3) get a degree in something I'd like to actually be an "expert" in.

The UPCAT (University of the Philippines College Admission Test) form has a few fields regarding which campus you'd like to study in, and what courses you'd like to take in these campuses. You had exactly two choices for the campus, out of say 5 (I can't remember how many exactly now). Then there are a hundred or so different courses you could take, from a BA (Bachelor of Arts) to a BS (Bachelor of Science), and even some interesting ones that allowed you to do accelerated medicine studies in 5 years instead of the usual 8 or 9. You had only two choices per campus, ordered by preference. So thats:

2 campus choices x 2 course choices

Here's how I set it up:

Campus Choice 1: UP Diliman
1st Choice Course: BS Computer Science
2nd Choice Course: BA Journalism

Campus Choice 2: UP Los Baños
1st Choice Course: BS Computer Science
2nd Choice Course: BS Economics

Why I structured it this way could be explained by the following issues: 1) BS Computer Science is a "quota course", meaning there was only a number of slots available with a very high grade requirement to get in 2) BA Journalism and BS Economics are non-quota courses, meaning anybody that's above the grade bar had a good chance of getting an offer for admission and 3) I wanted to get into UP Diliman so bad that I would have taken BA Journalism if I was offered a chance to do so.

I hedged my bets, and for some reason I still do not understand (it could be that I didn't actually meet the UP Diliman bar), I landed in BS Computer Science in UPLB.

At first I actually wasn't too keen on taking BS Computer Science. I chose the course because it seemed interesting to me since I already knew how to program and thought I could learn a lot more if I stuck to it. I thought I'd enjoy it enough that if I made it in, that I could excel and maybe have a really bright future ahead of me when I graduate. It seemed like a good idea to me at the time.

Fast forward a few years into BS Computer Science I ended up slightly regretting the choice. I thought I would have enjoyed a lot more had I taken something like Economics (my first love), or maybe even something related to Business (my mistress, so to speak). I stuck through the BS Computer Science course, got a few good grades, and then I burnt out -- I got impatient and started work early. Don't take me wrong, I had a lot of fun while in UPLB -- forged great friendships, learned a lot of life lessons, partied so hard so many times I can't even say I remember some of those parties, and got me so much experience that I'm very grateful for it. But the computer science part didn't quite hold my interest long enough for me to finish it.

To this day I still have 6 units to go -- 3 units on my thesis manuscript, which I never published, and 3 units on a subject regarding numerical analysis and methods that I've flunked 3 times already due to not really being interested in it.

There were other distractions too, not related to the course choice -- my epic love story that never was and never became, happened in my second and third year. I'll probably write about it at some point too.

Conclusion

Having said all these, I found that I've learned enough and found my passion in problem solving soon after I entered the work-force that I can say all those hard years I've put in have paid off. Now I'm working in Sydney, Australia with Google, Inc. and I'm much happier about my life. I can actually say I wouldn't be here had I chosen any other course in those formative high school years.

I realise that my passion for understanding systems and my wanting to affect change in people's lives or make the world a slightly better place could be achieved through computer science. Working on systems that allow others to build amazing applications, storing vast amounts of data and accessing it really quickly, and building tools to make other engineers more productive allows me to stay hungry and passionate about the work I do.

As for understanding how money works, and crafting the sentences that shape people's thoughts -- I think I've gotten a handle on both of those too. :)

Thanks for reading. Next time, I'll probably write about the mushier side of things. The next one's going to be about the heart.

Futures and Options II: Exchange Student

2014-02-23T23:28:00.002+11:00

Flash back to 1998, I was a junior in high school in the Philippines. I would have been at the equivalent of 9th grade in the US educational system at age 15. At this point in my life I had been given one of the best opportunities to experience a whole new culture and lifestyle. I had a chance to be an exchange student in middle America for one full year. This post is about how passing up this opportunity changed my life more than I would have ever known at the time.

Note: This is Part 2 of a series about my early choices in life which have gotten me to where I am today. If you're interested, please stay tuned to the next parts as I go through them. Thanks for reading!

The Rotary Club

Back during those days my parents had been invited to be part of the Rotary Club in the small town we lived in. There were various kinds of people who were in the club -- writers, businessmen, professionals (lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc.). My parents are businessmen who had very little in the way of a social life. Membership in the Rotary Club meant having a more active social life not only for them, but also for my sister and I.

If you haven't experienced being part of the Rotary Club, I would like to give a perspective that's a little different from an actual member -- as a child of parents who were active in the club.

I only actually have good things to say about the club. It's a great way of getting people who have the means of making a difference in society to get together and actually as a group make a difference. Socially the gatherings are always fun and having people of the same civic minded duty to give back to the community brings a certain kind of purpose to people's lives and spirits. Accomplishing things as a group is always a very visceral and primal satisfaction that I would highly recommend being part of a civic social group like the Rotary Club.

The opportunities afforded to the children of families that are part of the club are bordering on obscene. I've found that being a son of Rotarians (what the members are called and call themselves) gave me access to great role models of sufficiently accomplished people and gave me access to early leadership opportunities that I wouldn't otherwise have gotten going it alone (or just being a teacher's pet in school). The opportunities for building character early in life is so valuable especially to children growing up in a small town, in a third world country, with a simple dream of living a better life and making a difference.

It's through the Rotary Club where I got an opportunity to spend some time at a youth camp that doubled as a leadership training seminar. It was held at a remote camp where kids the same age as me (around 15-16 years old) who apparently qualified for a foreign exchange student program were being groomed and assessed for actual eligibility. I forget the exact number but I remember being amidst around 70 kids of the same age when the camp was opened and an "orientation" session happened.

At the time I had not known what the whole purpose of the event was. I was told it was a leadership training camp but that was it. I had some idea what that meant, but as a 15 year old I had no idea what I was going to learn at that camp were going to be important for the rest of my adult life. I still have lessons learned then that stay with me now and have shaped how I view leadership and character in general. Before I go there, let me back up a bit and say how I qualified for this leadership camp.

Born or Made?

Before getting to the leadership camp I had been lucky to have gone to Australia (Adelaide, South Australia) when I was 14 years old. It was an event for the preservation of the environment. I had no interest in the politics of all that, but I did have a certain appetite for travel and adventure. Being a young man (a kid really) the opportunity to experience a different culture even just for two weeks was oddly appealing to me. Now that I'm a parent myself I have this horrible sinking feeling in my stomach at the thought of sending my daughter off to a place that's ~9 hours away by plane to foster parents whom I've not met before and hoping she would come back safe after 14 days.

This experience gave me a certain level of self confidence that not a lot of 14 year olds were allowed to experience (or even had the opportunity to experience). That two week experience in semi self-reliance does things to a young person's mind. Knowing that you can survive and be self-reliant at an early age gives you a certain drive to "go get 'em" attitude towards achieving your goals (and setting audacious ones that will constantly keep you challenging yourself). Up to this day I have a very vivid recollection of how amazing I thought Australia (even just Adelaide) was as a country and how I could totally live here someday (which, after 16 years, has come true -- albeit in Sydney instead of Adelaide).

Experiencing a genuinely different culture gave me a better look at what characteristics actually mattered in a person of the world. To illustrate what I mean by this, early on I had a realization that traits like race, gender, income level, religion, nationality, and personal preferences/believes actually do NOT matter in the grand scheme of things. What actually matters is your attitude, your contribution to society (no matter how small or large), and how you affect other people's lives. Some people give back with service, some affect other people just by being there, some as inspirations or role models, and some as actual support people hands-on helping people around them. Leaders I saw not for who they are, but what they do and what they enable other people to accomplish.

I think certain kinds of people are born who are attuned to this training and molding. I don't claim to be born to be a leader, but I do think I was malleable to a point for leadership training. I've displayed drive and a capacity to be self-directed in my learning, my work, and generally with carrying myself. It also helped that I had a sense of humor about trying something and failing, that I felt like I literally could do anything I wanted and have a laugh afterwards -- whatever it was.

Coming back from that trip gave me some insight into what I actually could do and the places I could reach if I worked hard, set my mind to it, and kept an open mind about what's out there. It gave me an appreciation of both the diversity of the people in the world as well as how we're all really just the same -- it just happened that we were born in different countries, have different religions, have different races, and have different hair/eye/skin color. Deep down we're all just citizens of this world whether we believe this or not.

Oh the Politics

Once back from the Australia trip, I happened to sign up for a local government initiative to expose kids in high school to how local government actually works in the Philippines. Just to be clear, I was asked if I wanted to go, and I thought "sure, more traveling and meeting more people, and learning things -- what could possibly go wrong?" (not in exactly those words). Boy was I wrong about that.

First of all, politics in the Philippines is a very messy thing. In first world countries, politics is actually something that accomplishes things -- you have parliaments, congresses/senates, and actual democratic process. In the Philippines it's a mix of show business, fraternity, and business -- and it's not even the good parts. You get celebrity through notoriety, gang mentality, and mob-like techniques to gain, apply, and keep authority and thus power. There is no political platform, no ideology, and no direction whatsoever. Then you get a peek into the system and it's literally a peek into how the sausage is made -- and it's not pretty by any stretch of the imagination.

This other "camp" happens to bring students from around the province I'm from who apparently are the top students of the top schools. I felt so out of place because I wasn't a top student at all in high school and had no interest whatsoever in politics compared to these other kids. We were a sufficiently diverse group with young ladies and young men getting together, all idealistic, and all optimistic to understand this beast that is local government.

Sometime during the camp we were told that at the end, there would be some sort of election. We were broken up into parties, and given the task of coming up with speeches and a political platform to simulate the garnering of votes and convincing people. The awkward thing with this process is that it required those who wanted to be governor, vice governor, board members, and heads of departments to register their intent. There would be a campaign period and there would be public speaking involved to let others know your intentions. It quickly went downhill from there.

After much cajoling and me being the joker in most of the groups I'm part of, I say sure, I'll register to be a board member. Through some stroke of luck, I made quite a few people laugh with my speech and that's how I got to be a junior board member. At that point I thought it was a good experience to take in anyway, so I went along with it and it became one of the most important experiences I've had in my life.

After this part of the camp, there was a weekend of all the junior officials where we got one of the most important lessons in leadership: knowing yourself. For a young man just trying to grasp what's going on around me and trying to figure out what to do for the rest of my life, finding out who I am inside was a very powerful experience. It wasn't a cliche of "getting in touch with your emotions" but rather a disrobing of the emperor and finally acknowledging that I am human, I have fears, I have doubts, I have desires, and I have purpose. That one powerful session where a theater director was guiding everyone through the emotions we experience after being walked through (verbally) certain situations -- placing ourselves in the shoes (so to speak) of the characters in the story, identifying the emotions, and our thoughts -- as well as having us talk to ourselves that we're seeing through a mirror (in our heads), and addressing our fears, visualizing our insecurities, and verbalizing our thoughts.

It was a kind of "coming of age" for me -- which may have come a little early. It's like after this experience, I felt that I knew who I was and finally I could be at peace with myself. Being a young man, clueless, and confused (and to be honest a little lost) being able to look inwardly and learn about yourself in a way that's unique and self-directed was very important for me. To this day I have vivid memories of this experience and I am so thankful to my elders running the workshop that day.

Debating Team Leadership

So after these two leadership experiences, I thought to myself maybe I could do this leadership thing. I remember being really interested in logic and intellectual discourse even at this early stage in my life. I was fascinated by the earlier philosophers -- and that people back in the day actually had spent time and effort thinking about how people think. This "meta" exercise of inspecting the thought process was a very intriguing proposition for me. I knew I had very little experience with it, but I knew it was something I liked doing.

We didn't have a formal logic class in high school (much to my dismay, after talking with people who did have formal training in logic in their early years). I didn't know all the fallacies, nor did I know any of the strategies. What I did have was courage to dare to argue, comfort in public speaking, and again that sense of humor about things. When some of our teachers asked for people interested to join the debating team to compete with other high schools in the country, I gamely signed up for it. Soon after the team was formed I don't remember if I was chosen to be captain or I volunteered, but I certainly didn't mind and thought it was a good opportunity for me to learn more about both logic and indeed leadership.

The team didn't get past the second round at no fault of the team but all fault to mine. In the closing arguments for that round I had made a fatal logical error -- in my attempt at humor, it backfired and sounds like I was doing an ad hominem argument. I found that leadership meant responsibility and that day I let my team down. We had done so well in arguing our position and in the end it was my mistake that cost us the win. This experience taught me that the position of leadership carries with it both a privilege and a responsibility -- this which I carry to this day.

It's true I think what people say about experience being the best teacher -- until you dare to be wrong, you won't really learn what is right.

So, Ohio

Enough backing up -- by this point of my young life I had been afforded many opportunities for learning about leadership. I mentioned that this post is about how I turned down the opportunity to spend a year studying in Ohio and how it was a good thing.

In the leadership camp run by the Rotary Club in 1998, I met a group of young men and women who were both eager and driven to qualify for the exchange student program. There were something like 50 (I forget how many we actually were) kids in the three-day camp that involved putting us all in groups, working together in different situations, learning about teamwork and leadership in the many different ways, as well as being observed to determine leadership potential and actual leaders in the group. It was a fun event, I met a great bunch of kids, but it was meant to be a leadership exposure event and that it actually did pretty well.

There was one day where we hiked to the peak of a local hill -- it wasn't technically a mountain, but it took a good two hours to get up there. It wasn't a particularly dangerous hike but us being kids meant we weren't exactly the fittest and most prepared group of people to be doing a hike up a small mountain. It was both a bonding experience but apparently it was also the final "test" in determining the leadership awardee at the end of the camp.

So yes, apparently there were going to be awards given to people who displayed different kinds of leadership. There was a particular award -- the leadership award -- that was given to the person who displayed the most qualities deemed to be positive to have for leaders. I among with the other kids in camp were totally unaware that there was going to be this awarding ceremony at the end of the day when everyone came back to camp after this hike.

Apparently that hike was supposed to be the culmination of all the workshops and leadership training sessions in the past couple of days. I remember hanging back during the hike to help out kids that were having trouble walking up the hill, giving encouragement to those having a hard time, and being the clown that I was (and am admittedly still to this day) kept spirits high under the crazy heat and humidity. I was giving people water, asking the people up front to take a breather for a bit given some of us were having trouble with the pace, and in general being a good member of the team. I wasn't told to do this, but I just felt like it was the right thing to do.

That wasn't all. Coming back down the hill was something else entirely. After enjoying the view at the top and having a half-hour or so break, everyone wasn't in the highest of spirits. Some people really had trouble with the hike (kids being out of shape, some of whom were really unprepared for this physical event, including myself). I could have easily raced down the trail to get to the base of the mountain as fast as I could (which some kids actually did) but I felt like it would be a little unfair to my peers who were really having a hard time as well. I felt like someone had to hang back still to help out with guiding the tail of the pack down the trail. I wasn't told to do this, but I just felt like it was the right thing to do.

We get back to camp and low and behold my parents are there! I was so happy to see my mom and dad there, but wondered why there were staying on instead of whisking me out of there back home. Then the awarding ceremony started, and they told us that we were all qualified for the exchange student program, and that they were going to give some leadership awards -- there were three. The first one they gave is to the most promising leader (who wasn't me). The second one was to the life of the party (who wasn't me). The third one they gave out was the leadership award which, to my surprise, was given to me. Yes, I was awarded a leadership award when I wasn't trying to win one.

Conclusion

So what does this leadership award have to do with my not choosing to go spend a year in Ohio? It's a really simple decision for me if you've noticed with all this leadership talk following this conclusion. Let me break it down in simple bullet points (to make it more apparent it was the right thing to do for me):

I had opportunities to travel and the means to make it happen -- I didn't need to get a free ride to do this. There were a lot more kids who would benefit more from this opportunity to go to Ohio and study amidst a completely different culture. I gave up my slot to someone else who really wanted it and otherwise couldn't afford to go there. Someone else would have appreciated this opportunity much more than I would have at the time. I'm sure it did actually give someone an epic experience and I'm happy I was able to say no.
I was going to miss a year of school, and I had friends who were going to graduate ahead of me -- it wasn't a good value proposition for me from a logical point of view. Sure I missed out on a year experience in Ohio, but I would have also missed an epic senior year of High School where I experienced love, life, and formed bonds that would last the rest of my life. I didn't want to give that up for the chance to study in the US for one year. I formed really good friendships during that time of my life, those I cherish up to this day, and I couldn't have had that opportunity had I given a year to study in Ohio.
If I learned anything about leadership, it's about doing the right thing when nobody else is looking. Even though I earned it, I felt like the right thing to do was to give it to someone else who would benefit more from it. It's not out of modesty or some other twisted sense of humility, but the opportunity was a form of scholarship -- one I did not need as my parents were completely capable of letting me go to Australia, provide me with a lot of opportunities to do self-directed learning, and provide an eduction for me out of their own pockets. This should have gone to a kid who was doing great in school, has a lot of potential for leadership, and didn't have the means to go experience school in the US.
I knew myself, my fears, my doubts, and my short-comings. I wasn't afraid to go to the US and study there for one year -- I was afraid that if I did so, I would rather stay there and have had a completely different life. Some might think that may have been a good thing, but judging from what I would have missed out on in the years following this one in particular (and the education I got in the reality of life) it may have been a bad deal.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had gone. I may have met people I wouldn't otherwise meet. I could have formed friendships that I would also cherish for the rest of my life. Maybe I would have moved to the US instead early in my life and would be living a different life now.

Then again I look at my life now and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I met my wife in the Philippines and we had our daughter there. I got to spend a lot of time with my family, learned to live on my own, experience some sort of poverty, and clawed my way out and made me a hungrier and more driven person. Now I'm in Sydney, here in Australia and there's nowhere else in the world I would want to be. I've made friendships in the Philippines that even though I am not in their midst I still hold them dearly in my hearts.

I believe that in life the choices we make to do certain things are as important as the ones we make to not do certain things. Not all opportunities are made the same. Not all risks are worth taking. Not all rewards are weighed the same.

Thankfully, I'm living the life I myself want to live and leading the life I want to lead.

Futures and Options I: My Introduction to Computing

2013-09-08T01:33:00.001+10:00

I've recently been thinking about how my decisions early in life have done me good to put me where I'm at right now. I've certainly lived a very fortunate life -- been blessed with so many good things and been down-right lucky being at the right place at the right time. My 30 year journey to where I am now has been very interesting. I can pretty much say that the experiences I've had up to this point have very much contributed to making me who I am -- and that I regret nothing. Still though I keep thinking about what my life would be like if I hadn't made certain choices I did make throughout the years. There are a few choices I've made that I've stuck to and I keep thinking about wondering "what if I made a different choice instead" -- and the more I think about it, the more I'm happy about the decisions I've made.

Note: This is Part 1 of a series about my early choices in life which have gotten me to where I am today. If you're interested, please stay tuned for the next parts as I go through them. Thanks for reading!

BASIC or Turbo Pascal

Early in my life I had a very early encounter with the personal computer. It was between 6 and 8 that I had seen a handful of very distinct pieces of computer technologies that I had no idea would literally change my life. I remember (and this was ~1989 -- I didn't know that at the time of course) seeing my uncle and grand-uncle playing around with various pieces of technology, with the very simple end result: games. These were the Commodore 64 plugged into a color CRT TV, an Atari 800 plugged into a black-and-white TV. As a little 6 or 8 year old, I had absolutely no idea how these things worked, but I knew that it was cool. I saw the magic and I could not take my eyes off it. I wanted not so much to learn how it worked but learn what I can do with them.

Right around 8 years old I also saw my uncle (who is approximately 8 years older than me) programming the Commodore 64 before playing games. He would type up the page-long instructions for a few minutes (I was patiently waiting to see some game turn up) while he was reading them from a little blue book. I thought it was just something to set up the system, but I didn't know that what he was doing was actually programming. Once he's typed up the instructions the game would start and I got to see his friends taking turns playing some games. It was the most interesting thing I've seen so far in my life.

One day my grand-uncle let me have one of the books and told me that the instructions in the book are actually called code and that these were basically telling the computer what to do. At a very early stage in my life I had somewhat an understanding of games because I later got to play with the Atari 800 which had pre-loaded cartridges for games -- I distinctly remember playing Missile Command with my cousins on many lazy Sunday afternoons. The book though contained code that I learned was in the BASIC programming language. This was, to a 9 year old, like being told you can control what a very powerful machine did just by knowing how to tell it how to do so.

At around 10, my mom and dad had the awesome foresight that I really did like this computer thing and that I had a very deep fascination with it. At this time my grandpa had bought a Nintendo Family Computer and a whole host of game cartridges. I still have fond memories of him and I taking turns playing PacMan and Digger. Grandpa also introduced me to chess and we sometimes played one-on-one him teaching me the rules of the game as we went along -- I wasn't bad at chess, but I also wasn't good at it. He also had this cool electronic chess board with magnetic pieces where you could play against the computer. I wasn't so fond of the actual electronics but rather the conceptual side of things -- how did it know which piece to move and what the state of the board was?

Early recognition by my parents led them to buy a mid-range 386DX-based PC-clone mostly for my and my sister's education. They saw that this computer thing might actually be the future and that it might be an essential skill to have when we grew up -- and boy were they right! I was so lucky that the private school I went to started offering computer classes to everyone in the school as an actual subject. Of course, being a Montessori school it was all about play and became the highlight of the week for me. I picked up how to use the keyboard very quickly with the help of a mock keyboard made of Styrofoam that mom had helped me build. It also helped that I've seen this keyboard before on the Commodore 64 and was excited at the idea of being able to actually learn to use it -- and finally write my own programs.

Right around the same time all this was happening I happened to be able to watch re-runs of the US TV series called "Doogie Howser MD" -- about a 14 year old doctor who at the end of every episode actually wrote to an electronic journal. I was 10 at that time and I had absolutely 0 wanting to be a doctor, but I knew that I wanted to have that program he was using to write down his thoughts. Not that I particularly liked writing at that time, but I was excited by the idea that I might be able to write a program that allowed me to do the same thing one day. That became (and still is) my motivator program that I use when learning a new programming language -- I imagine how to write that word processor (which much later I learned was Word Perfect).

So armed with my actual keyboard that I can use pretty much at my whim at home and a few boxes of floppy disks containing the essentials (DOS, Wordstar, Prince of Persia, and other gwbasic-based games) I had literally the computer at my fingertips. There was a problem though: I had no idea where to begin. I've learned about the command-prompt in school and I've seen mom and dad struggle just like me to just begin understanding (let alone teaching me) about these things so I did what any self-driven enterprising and impatient 10 year old would do: try everything.

One of my uncles (my dad's eldest brother) does have an actual IBM PC and the manuals that came with the disks -- there were two volumes, the first were the basic commands for doing things like listing contents of a disk, running executable files, and brief descriptions of what some of the available executable files were for. I learned about formatting disks, copying disks, copying files, renaming files, etc. -- operation stuff, not really the kinds of things that I really wanted to learn. My mom and dad really wanted to help me so the first thing they did was find more reading materials for me.

My parents were just so happy that I was actually reading on my own volition that they didn't mind much that every time we went to Manila (which became somewhat a weekly pilgrimage of sorts for our family) to the malls, I went straight to National Bookstore to find anything remotely related to computers. At that time we didn't find much except for the ever reliable PC Magazine. Those were expensive though and there was no way mom or dad would get an actual subscription for it. So we only got those when we found a new issue or when I found an issue that seemed interesting from the cover -- by this time I knew the difference between a double density and high density disk that I can somewhat discern what was actually in the articles from the blurbs.

Then I found an article one day which had funny looking code that I've never seen before. I've been so used to reading code from that Commodore 64 manual seeing numbers to start instructions, but this code listing didn't have those. It had weird lower-case words strung together ending with semicolons instead of UPPERCASE directives separated by newlines. And there was no "goto"! I was thrilled -- I recognized that if only I found someone who actually understood how this thing worked that I could maybe learn to write my own programs using this language!

So what will any self-driven enterprising and impatient 10 year old would do: try everything. You have to remember though that the year was 1993-1994 and we didn't have landline service nor access to the Internet (I don't think the Internet has reached the Philippines yet at this time!) but what I did have was good relationships with my teachers at school. Armed with the enthusiasm of a 10 year-old who was convinced that he's struck gold, I bring the magazine to school and show it to my computer teacher. As luck would have it, my computer teacher at the time actually had a Computer Science degree and actually knew what it was -- that it was written in Pascal, and that he needed to have the magazine overnight so he can bring a copy of Turbo Pascal to the school and show me how it actually worked.

I was delighted! It was one of those moments in my life where I realized my obsession with wanting to actually learn to program computers got solidified. I had hope that I was a few steps away from being able to build that thing Doogie Howser was typing into to pour his thoughts out. This was the beginning of something amazing.

Sure enough the next day I saw the blue background of the Turbo Pascal 5.5 IDE right in front of my eyes, with colorful words of the code listing in front of me. My teacher was gently explaining to me that the code was there in the editor, that hitting F3 saved the file, and hitting Ctrl+F9 would compile it, and hitting Alt-F9 would compile and run it (or some such combination). So he did these and showed me the program running, the screen flipping from blue into black and the running program's prompt to choose commands to 1) enter words into the in-memory dictionary 2) enter another word to be checked against the words in the dictionary to find the closest one. Later in life I learned this was an implementation using the Levenshtein distance of the just-entered word and the words already in the dictionary.

The actual thing it did wasn't important. What was important here was that I could actually get a copy of the disk containing the Turbo Pascal 5.5 IDE, bring it home, and start playing around with it. This was the beginning of the journey. I had found a copy of a Turbo Pascal 7.0 book in the school library (yes, what?! Nevermind, I just did...) and asked to be able to take it home. I went through as much of it as I could and it was as foreign to me as the blue book of BASIC, but there was a difference: I could start playing around with it at home. I spent many nights and weekends trying to understand and make little successes with the I/O functions and my primitive knowledge of mathematics, memory, and things like these.

However, I was conflicted and had a choice to make at this point: did I want to learn this new programming language that seemed really complex for a 10 year old, compared to the structure that I've already deduced from BASIC? Was it worth the complication of having to learn Pascal on my own, possibly get some private tutoring from very few people who actually understood it in our area? Better yet, what are the actual odds that if I learned Pascal instead of finding a way to program in BASIC that I would actually be able to use it (Pascal) in a productive manner?

To put this in context, I was 10 turning 11. Summer was coming up and I really wanted to spend it learning more about programming. Whether it was going to be after "advanced" swimming lessons or reading books while in transit I was determined to actually learn programming.

So this early in my life I made a decision: I was going to pester my mom to enroll me, an 11 year-old to the local college for a summer course on programming with Turbo Pascal. It didn't matter what the actual subject matter was, as long as I would learn to use Turbo Pascal at that time. She only had to ask me once while we were at the local IT college's admissions office, after she had talked the administrators into letting an 11 year-old sign up for one of the special courses for graphics programming in Turbo Pascal. Her question went something like this: "Dean, are you sure you want to spend the whole summer doing this?" and my answer was as clear as day... yes!

Of course it wasn't that easy -- I had to show to the teacher who was going to sit down and teach me programming with the graphics unit in Turbo Pascal that I actually already knew some Turbo Pascal. So they took me to one of the computers, handed me the disks (one for DOS 5.0 and another for Turbo Pascal 5.5) and asked me to show them what I already knew how to do. That's when I did something that seemed really amazing to them: I programmed a simple adder, which took two input numbers, and printed out the sum, in something like 10 minutes from cold boot to working program. That sealed the deal, and in "famous last words" fashion, the rest is history.

My progression from 11 year-old wannabe programmer to novice programmer happened in the Philippine summer of 1995. The following year was my 6th grade and by that time computers became an actual tool available at my disposal. In the 2nd year of high school (8th grade equivalent) I actually have another computer programming subject and this time I breezed through the exercises and was helping my classmates understand the intricacies and subtleties of programming. I grew an appreciation of programming as a craft and a respect for computers as a tool very early on in my life that I still hold dearly today.

From that early start my appetite for programming grew, so by the time I was in 2nd year high school I've learned Java (1.1, also based on how elder computer people said that it was going to be the future of the web) through books and self study. The break between my last year of high school and my first year of college I learned C++ from a book (I was 14 then). My second year of college I learn C, third year learned Common Lisp, and by my fourth year I was doing PHP, JavaScript, C++, Java, some Perl, playing with Linux, and was ready for the workforce.

Fast forward through my career of interesting challenges and opportunities I'm now in Australia working at Google using C++, Java, and Python among other things. I'm so thankful that I chose the route of challenging myself with Turbo Pascal instead of sitting on my familiarity of BASIC that it's prepared me very well in understanding how the craft of programming is a matter of expressing your solution well using the power of the tools available at your disposal. Learning this at an early age fuels me daily to keep learning, keep solving problems, and keep trying to write that damned word processor in another programming language.

And guess what: I've managed to do what Doogie Howser MD does at the end of episodes -- by pouring my thoughts out into a computer for the world to see.

Rant: Despair and Hopelessness

2013-04-29T21:03:00.001+10:00

This weekend I had the chance to do a Google+ hangout with my father in the Philippines. He and I don't talk often but we do have a very good relationship. My dad is cool like that. In this hangout we talked about a few things happening in the Philippines and I've gotten the feeling that my homeland is getting ever deeper into economic disrepair, and that the politics to which I've come to be hopeless on is beyond repair. I've wanted to get something off my chest that's been bothering me for a while now, so if you would indulge me please read on.

Background

I grew up in a part of the Philippines where the land is fertile, there are thriving industries, and there's a certain sense of abundance and stability. This part of the Philippines has good schools, good employment opportunities (mostly industrial and service industries), good investment opportunities (real-estate and agricultural), and good potential for growth. This was true when I was young and this is true even now. My family is pretty well off and could afford to get me quality education -- for which I was thankful for.

My father is a businessman who runs a retail rice dealership even before I was born (more than 30 years). It's one of the few businesses our family runs. That business has provided for my education and eventual emancipation as I pursued a career in computer science. I forever will be indebted to rice retail as it holds a significant part of my heart.

Past Experience

While I was still in the Philippines and just starting in my career -- around 2005 -- there was a sense of economic fluency in the IT industry. People were setting up outsourcing companies to service offshore clientele and I was very fortunate to meet and be friends with awesome tech startup founders (Orange and Bronze Software Labs and more recently Codeflux, Inc.). It was boomtown if you were in the IT or outsource industry and getting in on the ground floor (so to speak). It wasn't the same with other industries around the Philippines.

It was around this time that inflation started coming up and when 2007 came around the global financial crisis hit. At this time I was fortunate to be working at Friendster building a team in the Philippines. The fast dropping value of the peso and the slow dropping value of the US dollar meant that Friendster and other companies can afford to ride the turndown and still ramp up their teams in the Philippines. Call centers were booming as US-based operations started closing down and capacity from India wasn't able to fill the demand. It wasn't all rosy though, commodities markets were being cornered by China's manufacturing, their surplus exports were flooding the market with cheap goods both perishable and non-perishable. Local production in the Philippines was being devastated by lack of actual growth in the local economy and the rising cost of living.

Current State

Fast forward 5 years or so and every major south east asian economy is on the upswing following the exit from the global financial crisis. What's changed in the five years is that the local IT industry in the Philippines has somewhat grown up and entrepreneurs have realised that they can start competing with every other startup in the world. Globalisation has arrived to the local economy in the Philippines in terms of media (the entertainment industry is now reaching more places than ever before) and ICT (telecom giants are now part of multi-national conglomerates, startups punching above their weight being set up in the Philippines).

The biggest missing piece is original innovation. Every other country in south east Asia is a major force to be reckoned with -- Malaysia has a booming oil industry, unstoppable growth, seemingly never-ending infrastructure development, and a strong local economy; Indonesia's retail industry is amazing; Singapore has become another major international trade hub; Australia (if you count it as part of South East Asia) is just beginning to become a major player in global trade in terms of ICT among other things (the mining industry and close ties with China are helping a lot for international and local trade). The Philippines? Let me think.

We don't have a local vehicle manufacturer -- all vehicles on the road in the Philippines was produced somewhere else (jeepneys have engines imported from japanese manufacturers, metals are not locally sourced). We don't have our own locally developed and competitive industrial-scale agricultural produce that's not owned by a multinational company. Virtually no technology is practically invented in the Philippines. Our biggest local industry is retail (malls are very lucrative) and even if it expands to other countries only the 1% of Filipinos get to benefit.

Virtually 90% of the population do not invest in the local economy. The underground economy eludes taxation and typically generates majority of internal trade. Any investment you make is at risk of being defaulted on (if you buy private bonds) or failing (if you buy equity) and the risks are most of the time not worth the returns. Political instability and protectionist policies scare foreign investment. Even I, a citizen living in another country, feel like any investment I make now is no worse than me gambling on the results of a footy game or a horse race here in Australia (sometimes I even feel more secure in doing that compared to investing in the Philippines).

The Future

Given all this, I have a very grim outlook at the chances of the Philippines of turning it around. I know this is hard to say as a proud Filipino but I feel I have to say it.

I've been thinking about this a lot because in the next 10 years I want to be able to assess really how I can help the Philippines in my own way. I've always held the belief that the Philippines is well positioned to be able to compete in the global arena and that the way to do it is by levelling up the industries in the Philippines. A 100 million strong population (and something like 110 million in 10 years) should be an asset to be developed. There are industries that can be built in the Philippines that can leverage these massive numbers and they don't all have to be in Manila. There are local problems that need local solutions that also translate to global settings and I'm positive it's just a matter of the right investments and building the right structures to support them.

It's hard to see how the current political climate will be conducive to actual serious nation building though. I don't even want to say anything about the people in government because I don't have a horse in that race. I believe that it doesn't matter who you put in government but that if you have the right systems in place then you have a better chance of making a real difference. I don't believe in the "hope" strategy where you educate children and hope they grow up to become better people. Putting hope in the government and its policies though is also the wrong way to go about it.

The solutions will be multi-party and should be synergistic. I understand that government intervention and regulation is necessary to some degree but that cooperation between the government and the private sector should yield benefits for all. There's a lot of things to be said about politics when it doesn't work but when it does work quarrels over the details would be for mere entertainment.

My Hope

There's very little I can do now but hope that in 10 years time helping out in the development of the Philippines should be possible. I'm aware that my investments today will be helpful to some degree but I'd rather do my homework in these coming years. I'm learning a lot now and I intend to keep learning and observing so that maybe someday I can help in a meaningful way.

At my current state, whatever investment and risks I can take will be mere nickel-and-dime endeavours. Maybe that will help but I'm not sure pennies can be grown to bills enough to make a significant impact. There's 100 million people in the Philippines today and building up industries for the benefit of even just 10% (that's 10 million people) would be a huge benefit.

My other hope is that the entrepreneurs who are starting the businesses in the Philippines think about what opportunities there are that will leverage the population, solve local problems, and in day 1 compete in the global arena. Sure it will require investments and it will take on a lot of risk. If you set your sights high enough and commit enough to making your endeavour a success, then taking on investment should not be harder than it normally is. Think about growing the whole market instead of just growing your own business. If your intentions are pure, your vision is clear, your commitment is evident, and you are worthy of trust -- good people will help you achieve your goals.

I look forward to that day 10 years from now when I can say "yes, I will invest in you because your vision will affect potentially 10 million Filipino lives". Until that day, I lay in wait ever so helpless and desperate.

Mental Models of Programmers for Non-Programmers

2013-04-26T17:11:00.000+10:00

Programmers are a tricky lot. We have a certain mental model of how things should work and we "hack" systems in order to make sure they fit our mental model instead of changing ourselves and our mental model to fit with existing systems. Programmers are the bureaucrat's worst nightmare -- our brains are wired to look at the rules and go "why?" and our immediate reaction to anything that's not at least optimal is "well, that's stupid".

If you have a programmer in your life -- a parent, sibling, cousin, partner, or friend -- it would help if you understood how most of programmers brains work. I would even say as far as certain kinds of people -- not necessarily programmers -- gravitate towards becoming programmers (or engineers, or any profession/occupation where it involves building systems or just rigorous analysis and design) so you may recognise these people. I know these things work really well for me so if you know someone like me it might help you a lot with your interactions with them.

Logic

First off, we have a twisted sense of logic. Anything illogical or something approaching even asymptotically the thought of being illogical cause two things to fire in our brains (or at least my brain):

Quick! Someone's wrong! At least that's the immediate reaction. Being illogical is something we equate to being wrong. What's right is when something is logical. Religion is hard to understand for most of the people who have this way of thinking about the world. Logic is the measuring stick by which everything is evaluated. If you must, see Spock.
Bullsh*t. Usually we stop listening to the person or to the source of the logical fallacy or just whatever is being said. The masters even just acknowledge the illogical statements and leave it at that. The newbies will call it out, usually followed by some snarky remark about the person or the statement being stupid. Again if you must, see Spock.

We have a myriad of actual outward actions ranging from the incredulous shouting and being "rude" interrupting the logically inaccurate person, to just outright ignoring the other party. We are straight-forward like this and it's only logical for us to stay this way.

I realize that I'm painting of a very dim picture of programmers and our ilk. What matters to us in these situations is restoring (or affecting) the situation such that all is right and logical in the world. You can help us by saying something to the effect of the following:

"In reality..." -- this qualifies that you're stating an observation, not an assertion or an argument. You can use this when you get into one of the logical flame traps that we inadvertently place when we hear illogical or potentially illogical (or logically interesting) statements.
"I understand that you think it's illogical. However ..." -- this is almost like the above, except you are now acknowledging our thinking, which is important in programmer-speak (or protocol if you must) because we tend to repeat what we say until we are acknowledged.
"Yes, it is illogical. Let me re-state that as ..." you can agree it's illogical which dowses water on the spark initially raised in our brains when we hear something potentially or really illogical. We usually don't mind it when people are wrong, as we all make mistakes ourselves. Dwelling on mistakes is not something we do a lot -- but when we see others dwelling on it is when we think it's wrong or illogical. In which case read back up to the top.

Now we also tend to get illogical when we feel attacked and that's the next point.

In general, when having a conversation with a programmer, please try to be logical. We appreciate it.

Feelings

We are a sensitive bunch. We don't like acknowledging it but we are humans too. We are tied to the result of our labours and we treat them as children. Our projects become our lives typically and we have this somewhat illogical search for perfection -- I know, the irony is not lost on me. When you're going to say something about the following, please be mindful:

A gift. See the point on being logical above. Then consider that we are really sensitive. If you think you don't like the gift we've given you break it to us gently.
Our project. If you have not heard the programmer talk about the project they're working on in disgust, do not ever do it first. Even in cases where the project we're working on is not our choice, do not ever feel obliged to tell us our babies are ugly.
Our accomplishments. It is taboo to downplay accomplishments -- so if you're going to ever say anything about accomplishments, you better be saying something good. Otherwise, say nothing at all.

Programmers also typically do not show feelings outwardly very well. From an outsider perspective we may be in only three states: asleep, indifferent, or thoroughly incensed. See the point about Logic again -- you will notice that programmers get angry a lot because in the rare cases we do show emotion, we show the strongest and most effective one. How do you know a programmer is happy? When they're asleep or indifferent. If you notice they are incensed a lot of the time, something is definitely wrong -- probably something that's illogical.

If you want us to convey our emotion, you have to pull it out from us -- we optimise our emotion showing to the bare minimum required (unless there's something wrong or illogical). If you want, see the conundrum on Shrödinger's cat -- our emotions are in a box, and the only way to find out whether we're happy or unhappy is to open the box; that way you cannot tell whether you made us happy or unhappy by opening it.

There are ways to ask us if we're happy or unhappy and here's a few that are really effective for me:

Logic dictates predicates. That's the long way of saying "I observe you are unhappy. Is this accurate?"Okay, just ask us, but only if we see there's a reason for the question. Context is important, and if we're at work and intently doing something, do not ever think that your knowing whether we're happy is more important than what we're currently doing. Ask us when we're idling. More on when to find out whether we're idling later.
Smalltalk is irrelevant. Get to the point. If you want us to do something, ask us directly -- we prefer questions that can be answered immediately with "yes" or "no". Again we optimise for the minimal interaction and emotion showing required.
We usually don't play politics (unless we have to) so we usually don't care what other people think. If you want to know what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, or our opinion do not predicate it with some notion of being politically correct -- just ask me. Preferably by email. If it's important, maybe via IM. If it's something politically motivated, we're probably only going to engage you if it's a logical dispute in some social realm (like family, friendships, community groups, etc.).

Another thing that's important to note is that when it comes to us volunteering our emotions, do not interrupt us because it is a high-bandwidth exercise for us. If we're telling you we're happy, unhappy, angry, sad, or <insert emotion here> please acknowledge that you received the message at least.

This then leads me to the final point about communication.

Communication

If you for some reason have a programmer in your life that works on network systems (websites, distributed systems, or something else involving communicating systems) you may find that they are sometimes really engaging when communicating. You find people who work on these systems really fascinated by three things: latency, throughput, and protocol. Let me explain a little of why these are and why I think it translates to the wetware systems of human society:

Latency is the amount of time between message transmission and reception It is something measurable and usually detectable (and hence, manageable and can be optimised). We care about getting our messages across as fast as we can so that we see the effect as soon as possible. If we ask you a question we typically expect latency to be low -- otherwise we view it as illogical and proceed to diagnosis and troubleshooting mode; see the point on logic above.
Throughput is the amount of information you can transfer in a given period of time. This is important to us because the more time we spend sending the message across (at acceptable latency) that means the less time we're working on our project or we're somehow becoming "sub-optimal". We tend to cram in as much information as we can in the smallest amount of time we can so that we don't have to do it for longer than we have to -- because doing that would just be illogical. See point about logic above again.
Protocol is a systematic approach to sending, receiving, and coordinating the exchange of information through a medium. We like minimalist and flexible protocols, especially if that helps the latency and throughput. The less time we spend worrying about protocol, the more information we can transmit and hopefully the less latency between message sending and receiving. We view heavy protocols as being something "illogical" and hence "wrong". This is the reason why we like email, sending long messages in a single go, and worry very little about the sugarcoating of the message.

There are exceptions to optimising out these things -- usually when we are idling (more on this later) we prefer to waste as much time as possible doing as little as we can. This is the complete opposite of worrying about latency, throughput, and protocol. Another exception is when we realize we are in a setting that is not optimal for any sort of hacking -- like in the presence of a huge crowd, crammed in a social setting that's unescapable (a train, bus), or when we're in non-programmable situations (like when on a date).

The thing to remember is, when you're communicating with a programmer is: content trumps delivery. This is why we prefer email and avoid the awkward emotion conveyance involved with face to face communication. We typically do not optimise for sending the correct emotion, we rather send the correct content. We tend to be blunt and direct but this is optimal in our brains -- or at least we logically concluded somehow that emotions are a waste of bandwidth (the practical limits of the amount of information we can convey in a period of time).

So when you think we're being rude or direct, chances are we're in programmer mode. There are two things you can do to manage this situation:

Acknowledge the content, then engage us by asking more questions if you need more information. We are being direct because we usually think much of the information we're not sharing is not worth sharing, or that we assume you already know most of it. We are optimising for transmission and if what you seek is engagement you should engage us further -- and no, we will not pick subtle hints and our default position usually is brevity.
Convey that you want to be informed more and that if this is not a good time that some other time should be scheduled for actual interaction. We usually make a decision of whether this is a good idea, whether there's no other information needed to be conveyed, or we take this as a signal that we're being too terse and would probably need to elaborate.

This communication thing usually reverts to "normal person mode" in the weekends or during non-project working hours. With that point, I lead to the last thing to recognise: we like our breaks and we like idling.

Idling

This is usually (maybe correctly) perceived as procrastination. This is however an important part of programmer routine. You will usually find us idling when:

We seem to be "reading". It usually involves a device or some physical artefact -- book, magazine, etc. You know we don't want to be disturbed when we are in a secluded location but otherwise (unless we're doing actual deep thinking, which should be obvious (logically)) this is a good time to engage us in conversation.
TV time. If we're flipping through channels, that's a good time to interrupt. If we're watching our favourite show, we're decidedly not idling. If you are a child or significant other, sitting beside us and watching with us is enough to count as bonding time (at least for us). If you show genuine interest in what we're watching, we will definitely engage you on the same subject. It's only logical that we do.
Recreation time. Some people like playing pool, card games, board games, going out for a swim, or in general just playing. This time is perfect for conversation because it's the few times we're almost completely switched off from whatever project we were involved in. If you can schedule meaningful non-emotional conversation during these times, you're golden.

In general when programmers take a break (or wait for their code to compile) is a good time to have conversations with us. You might find that we have a routine -- I for one like watching the news until late into the night to "switch off", and I definitely appreciate having conversation at those times instead. Another thing I do is lie in bed reading some book I've thought interesting through a device (usually my mobile phone or a tablet).

It is best if you can synchronise and recognise the idling times and make the most out of it with the programmer in your life.

Conclusion

This is a piece I've wanted to write for a long time now and I thought I might as well write it down while I was "idling". I also thought it might help some friends I know who are programmers realize how sometimes we are a little too Spock and a little less Kirk (and I submit we should be a good mix of both for good balance in our lives). Some of us are lucky that we have people who understand while I'm positive there may be a few programmers out there (and friends or family of programmers) who have very little idea in how to interact with us.

I do not claim for this to be a definitive guide, I'm just sharing my thoughts and throwing it up to the void. As with anything you read on the internet, take with a grain of salt and your mileage may vary.

Do you have any other tips for non-programmers on how to synchronise their mental models with ours? I'd love to know your thoughts on this.

Summer is Over

2013-04-20T00:03:00.000+10:00

It's now the fall here down under and the weather has started to turn to the cooler side. Every day since the start of April the temperature has been dropping steadily during the day, the nights are getting longer, the clocks have adjusted, and now we're heading into a new season. Coming from the Philippines where there's no real season to speak of, I think having actual seasons is a welcome change. Having distinct transitions help with reflecting, remembering what has happened in the past few months, and looking forward to the future.

Much has happened since I last wrote my thoughts down. Here's a list of things I can remember distinctly that I'd like to share:

We've moved house. This is the third unit we've moved into and we're now back to getting ample space to move around and grow into. I liked the cozy feel of the last unit we've lived in but I definitely welcome space.
Our church has celebrated its 8th year anniversary. The celebration service went well and was a very memorable one.
I celebrated my second year as a Googler. It has been a good two years and I look forward to more years to come in great company.

I can probably write more about these things but I'd rather write more about things I've learned in this past season. There were a few firsts for me that I took a lot out of. There's a number of general areas that I'd like to write about: Health, Community, and Career.

Health

I stuck with a gym and training plan with a personal trainer for the good part of two months. It was great fun and I've learned a lot. I've also gotten great results. My waist has shrunk and my clothes are looser which I'm taking as a win. I feel stronger and fitter -- definitely been more active and more energetic.

Another thing that has been going good for me is getting regular sleep. Being able to get at least 7 hours of sleep has been doing me good. I also get better productivity at work because of this -- but more on that later on.

One thing I did learn the hard way is that detox is a very powerful weapon. It has helped me reset my system a number of times and allowed me to enjoy food in times when I'm not on detox. Cutting down on calories in general and improved hydration gets my system to a better place to be able to start getting back on a healthy track, or to achieve a specific goal. I'm on my carbo loading cycle and just about ready to get back into my long distance running routines. Nothing is better than getting my metabolism up and going after a carbo loading cycle, because this is when I can push harder and get more mileage.

Community

There's a number of lessons here for me. The first and biggest lesson for me is in the very real costs of building and maintaining relationships. In a very busy lifestyle, one that involves focusing on productivity and results, investing in building long term relationships should be done consciously. Nothing comes free and being consistent and regular about building lasting relationships means real hard work.

Regular service in church and fellowship with like minded people helps. What helps more is actually working on friendships and sharing experiences together. Bowling, footy games, dinner dates, and sleepovers all become much more enjoyable with friends.

I've also picked a new hobby which is also good for casual interaction with more people at work: pool. Not the kind that you swim in, the game involving a table, balls, stick, and some chalk. I'm catching up on my 8-ball playing skills (I remember being better when I was younger) but it's allowed me to get to know more people at the office. It helps that a lot of people at Google Sydney actually like playing pool too and have the patience to play with a relative newbie like me.

Career

Two years in absolute terms is not a long time. In relative terms, it is -- in an industry where quarters are the unit of measure, eight consecutive quarters is two full cycles. Interest rates calculated per-annum means I've already had compounded returns had I put money in at the start. It also means that I'm no longer new. It may also suggest that I'm relatively an old-timer in the company.

The more I think about it the more I'm convinced that I'm blessed to be working at Google. I'm also convinced how much I love working at Google and that I'm hoping more people can get the same chances I've been given.

I'm excited about the possibilities of years ahead in Google and in Australia. Being able to make a tangible impact in millions of people's lives through the work you do is very rewarding. I'm definitely looking forward to the many things I'd like to be able to do to continue making a difference personally and as part of an amazing company.

Onwards

So the next three months will be focused on getting settled, executing on plans, and settings sights on the next level. Season transitions are always a good time to reassess where you are and where you're going. I look forward to this season being as amazing -- and potentially be more amazing -- than the last one.

Thanks for reading.

Organising Chaos

2013-03-04T21:08:00.002+11:00

Just when I thought I've gotten to a state of routine suddenly I find myself having to abruptly change. I've gotten good at doing this change management on a personal level but I hate to have to change for my family's sake. I've come to understand that my family's security is really important -- especially for the simple things like what day I get paid, what time of the month the bills arrive, how much the rent is, etc. Now that I've found some semblance of flow and routine though something comes up that tests this routine.

So now we're going to have to find a place to move into fast. It's a long story why we're going to need to move (there's a lot of factors involved) so I won't go there. The logistics of this is the easy part (believe me). It's the non-logistic things that come with moving that's really hard -- which is why families don't usually plan on or optimise for moving houses every year. Off the top of my head, these are the things that I have to think about before, during, and right after the move happens:

Get my essential services moved. Electricity, gas, phone/internet, and the address the Government knows where I live.
Have my mailing address on subscriptions and essential accounts changed. Things like banking accounts, magazine memberships, Internet domain registry account address, and other things like where my Greenpeace and Mission Australia correspondence (yes I want to get the dead tree version of the mail) get sent to.
Change my daily commute patterns. Not only mine but also my wife and daughter's commute patterns going to/from the mall, daycare, church, etc. It's one of those things to learn and get used to again.
Get movers. So far I've had experience with one removalist company which is pretty positive. I'm going to call them up and schedule the moves as well.
Clean up. It's a good thing that we've invested in an amazing multi-purpose cleaning machine -- it's already paid itself in virtually dust-free and hassle-free cleanups of carpets, walls, screens, and even the mattress.
House warming. We're going to have to cozy up to a new place, get used to the quirks, and establish new usage patterns of the new space. Also we're going to have to host our friends and family at the new place to make it feel more like home.

This is a minor hassle though, but the thought of having to do this again when we buy our own place is a little stress-inducing. I'm looking at this from a "practice" perspective -- hopefully we'll get this moving house bit down to a science so that we we move into our own house then we'll be a little more adept at it.

Still it's not a skill I want to hone too much lest it become a habit.

Anything you think I should put on the list up there?

The Decade Ahead

2013-01-28T01:09:00.001+11:00

I took my time in writing a new entry into this blog and I wanted to give an update on what's been going on. 2012 has been a good year for me and I hadn't been writing a lot since the start of that year. I'm not suddenly going to change this as I've found different outlets for expressing myself -- there's the exercise, my open source work, being effective at the work I do, and service in church. In this post I look back at 2012 not in a comprehensive manner but in a high level. I also set up the coming decade with a theme and direction that more suits my passions and strengths.

There are a few things in 2012 that stuck out in my head. There were a lot of firsts for me that have to do with health and fitness. I ran City2Surf and did it under my target time which was my first ever running event. I lifted weights that I never thought I could do. There's a lot of things I did at work that I cannot share but were very significant for me. I bought my first electric guitar which I've been using to play on a regular basis as part of my church's worship team.

2012 was also a year which gave me and my family a chance to get together and try new things. It's the first year where we didn't celebrate Christmas and New Year's eve in the Philippines. In fact we spent these days with our church family. We were slowly expanding our comfort zone and are getting more and more accustomed to life here down under.

Julia turned 3 and I've started to be more and more present in her life. I'm now learning better to appreciate the time we have together and start building a solid relationship while she's still young and I'm still capable. Jeni's recent birthday has given me perspective on how I should be focusing on the long game instead of the immediate concerns and challenges. I've realised that I should shift my focus now from the short and mid-term (now that we've achieved the debt-free status and are well on the way to being able to start investing again) to the long term. I should stop looking to the year ahead but rather come up with a plan and strategy for the next 10 years.

This year I will be turning 30. That's a big deal. This is usually the time when they say I'm ripe for a quarter life crisis. I'm realising that the past 7 years I've been doing a juggling act and was not really thinking much about the future. I've always been thinking about how to earn more, how to achieve more, and how to be more. I had been taking on too many things and too many efforts not being as effective as I should be in any of them.

At this stage in my life I'm shifting my focus from being able to do a lot of things to focusing on things that I can already do. Practically speaking and more specifically, I've chosen and resolved to focus on the following areas in my life in the next 10 years:

Financially: I am confident when my financial state is stable. I'll be focusing on building a solid foundation of investments with an eye on stability rather than large returns. I'm playing the long game here with the goal of providing the most solid foundation I can for my family financially. This means I'll minimize my risks and focus more on steady returns. I dream that someday I'm not going to worry about my financial situation and enjoy the fruits of my labor without hesitation.
Career: I am at my best when I play to my strengths. I know I am not a good people manager. I however know I am a reasonably good teacher and mentor. I understand that I have unrealised potential for leadership. In this coming decade I plan to develop my leadership skills and work my way to a position of leadership. It's not going to be easy to do in a company that's filled with lots of great leaders. I dream that someday I'll be in a similar position to be able to effectively achieve results as part of a team sharing the same vision and passion.
Family: Fatherhood gives me joy and being a husband gives me purpose. Just as I use my family as my inspiration I shall aim to inspire my family to become the best they can be. In 10 years Julia will be 13 years old while Jeni and I will be in our 40's. I will make changes in my life to spend more of my time with my family and making our time together thoroughly enjoyable for everyone. I dream that someday my family will be filled with joy and harmony, where each one has a healthy relationship with each other.
Health: I am happy when I'm healthy. I've already started to get my weight under control and I will continue to optimise my bodily functions to give myself a better chance at living at my full potential. In the next 10 years I will achieve my goals of finishing a full ironman triathlon event, getting to and maintaining my weight targets, and maintaining a healthy diet for optimal bodily performance. I dream that someday all my bodily functions (liver function, heart function, and kidney function) will be at an optimal level to sustain me for another 30 years.
Spiritually: My soul rejoices when I touch people's lives. In the next 10 years I hope to inspire more people through my personal testimony and through sharing my blessings. I find that being part of the music ministry at my church brings my heart joy and lets me serve God and my fellow man through the gift of music. I dream that I shall be able to inspire my other musically inclined brothers and sisters to serve God and fellow men through music.
Intellectually: I am fulfilled when I learn new things. In the next 10 years I shall strive to broaden my horizon and learn as much as possible about a specific area of study. I've long loved the study of computer science and software engineering. It is then my goal to gain a deeper understanding of the field though conscientious study and continuous learning. I dream that I may be able to inspire the next generation of would-be computer scientists and software engineers to push the boundaries and continue the search for deeper understanding.

I am optimistic that the next 10 years of my life will be one filled with excitement and purpose. I've learned a lot and achieved a lot to get to where I am now. I've been blessed immensely with opportunities and skills to be able to get to where I've gotten so far. I look forward to being able to use my skills and passions to greater effect in affecting more people's lives for the positive.

I only hope and dream that I may be able to make a significant impact in the lives of many people in the years to come. I hope you will join me in my journey to becoming a better me and making the most out of the next decade.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I'd love to share more of my life and what I do on a more personal level. If you think I can help you with anything also please don't hesitate to reach out.

In the meantime I hope you will also look to the future with great optimism and hope that individually you can make a difference to your life, your family's life, and other people's lives.

Thank you for reading and I certainly hope you'll walk with me in the next 10 years.

Writing a Book

2012-10-08T14:01:00.003+11:00

The past couple of months I've been asked at least twice now whether I was willing to write a book. It's no secret that I love to write -- after all they got to me through my blogs. I don't think of myself as a great writer, I just happen to write a lot I guess (and edit myself out of oblivion). I've been trained (kinda) to write essays and do creative writing when I was in high school. This is the kind of thing I enjoyed doing throughout my high school years. I'm definitely thankful to all my teachers who've encouraged me to keep improving and just keep writing. I personally hold books to very high regard and this is why I've turned down all the offers to write a book. I don't see myself as someone who has a lot of original things to say or as an expert on anything. However, I then find this video which is totally changing my mind.

This isn't something I've endeavored to do in my life. However what I have endeavored to do is to make a difference in a lot of people's lives. I intend to leave a positive mark in the world by solving problems that I feel really passionate about. It just happens that I love computers and programming computers -- and I would love to share what I know to a lot more people than just those reading my blogs.

I'm inspired by the possibilities now available to everyone who wants to pursue their dreams and make things happen in this world. I especially love that there are tools now that enable people to do what they love and reach as many people as possible through the Internet. Now everyone who has a dream can reach for the stars, dream big, and make a difference in the world no matter how little.

I think I'm going to start slowly with this endeavor. I think having something else to do for the rest of the year would be interesting. I'm probably going to write about stuff I already know about (C++ network programming). It won't probably be a full blown reference book, and it may probably be something really simple and short. There's something about a small book that really appeals to me partly because I'm not really interested in reading long books either. Probably something in under 100 pages would be nice.

There are a few options now for self-publishing which is nice (as I won't even try going for the big publishing houses) and I'm hoping it may be more efficient for me to do it this way. I need to do a little more research though on whether the shipping costs would be prohibitive if I'm going to be sending copies to parts of the world where I don't reside in (postage from Australia for example is not cheap).

The question becomes "why" am I really thinking of doing this and I've had an epiphany watching the video above. Even though I won't be writing a children's book, I'm thinking about my daughter and what kind of world she's going to grow up in. I, a father, want to be able to share what I know with more C++ programmers doing network programming (or people who might do network programming with C++) so that my daughter may have a better world to grow up into. I see the potential of getting better applications that know how to deal with the internet from a C++ perspective.

This has been why I love working at Google and this is now also why I'm actually thinking of doing this. I don't know whether I'm going to succeed in reaching a lot of people through a book, I don't know if I'm going to be able to influence how people think or write code, but I'm willing to try to find out if I can. Hopefully if it happens that I can, then I'd be thankful to be able to share the knowledge.

In the meantime, I realize I could have used the time I wrote this post in writing part of the book. However, I've always liked sharing how I think and what I think.

Hopefully the book I'll write will be something people will find worth reading.

Cheers

One Step at a Time

2012-09-04T00:09:00.002+10:00

There's a cliché that goes something like "Every journey starts with a single step" and I think it's not been said enough. Thanks to the messages of encouragement and support I've received from friends and family from all parts of the world my journey towards better coping and moving on is well under way. Before I go any further I would like to say thank you to everyone who prayed and sent their well wishes for us. I am humbled and grateful for the support I have received from all those who took the time to help me feel better.

The first step for me was trying to figure out how I really felt. I couldn't do this while there were a lot of things going on around me. I needed to step away -- literally, took myself out alone for a long run -- and clear my mind. I had a lot of questions but not many answers. This journey I took alone for a couple of hours allowed me to breathe, get tired, feel pain, and identify how I really felt. I couldn't write about how I felt right away after that run as I needed to be able to exhaust myself of the grief I was carrying around.

View Therapy in a larger map

Now though I feel a little more at ease with sharing how I felt and what I still feel at times. Surprisingly thought it came to me while I was on the run that I felt tired.

I was tired of not being fully exhausted. I didn't let myself be completely spent both physically and emotionally for a long time. I realized that I always tried to hold everything in. My emotions were getting away from me the more I tried to not show them. I always wanted to maintain a facade of strength, of invulnerability -- more appropriately of invincibility -- that was not healthy. I realized in that run that I was hiding behind a face of an undaunted warrior when I really was a broken fighter. I didn't know it until that point of no return where I suddenly realize that I was defeated.

Half-way through that run I ran out of questions. I kept asking God "what do I do? where should I go? what should I say? what should I think? when should I stop? why am I here? why did this happen to us? why now?" but the answers aren't immediately obvious. I was thinking about what could have gone wrong, what could we have done, what could have been the reason, and all the uncertainty made me feel powerless. I was not in control and I was being reminded of it.

Then it hit me. Suddenly I felt exhausted and relieved at the same time. It was like the answer was staring me in the face all along -- and tears fell down my face as I began to return home.

Just keep moving.

It was so simple and so powerful. I may never know the reasons why this happened to Jeni and I and even if I do they'd largely be irrelevant. Even if I knew what I should think and how I should feel and how I should act, that knowledge doesn't do me good. Whether it happens now or later is also irrelevant. In any case I should just keep moving.

I then let myself feel anger. I was angry that I wasn't able to do anything -- that I was helpless. I became angry that I wasn't running fast enough. I felt anger at my legs for not being able to keep moving as efficiently as I wanted. I developed an anger for being too heavy for my own good. I embraced my anger for not being able to affect the situation.

I then let myself feel pain. I was hurt because our baby is gone -- and it felt like our baby was taken away. I soaked up the pain that came from trying to run away from the reality of what happened. I felt the pain on my thighs and hamstrings as I lifted my feet and knees on every stride. I embraced the pain I felt because I wanted to feel something.

Then I felt hopeful. Before this run I didn't feel anything but here I was going through all the deep rooted anger and pain and going through the suffering. I am starting to feel again which gave me hope that at someday I was going to feel alive again. I embraced this hope because it made me want to keep moving.

I then get home and I was calm. I saw my wife and daughter at home and this gave me peace. I felt peace for reaching my destination safe and sound although battered and sore. I embraced this calm as my daughter calls to me and beckons me to play.

I am home and I feel I can be whole again.

"Come to me all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." -- Jesus Christ in Matthew 11:28

I'm positive that if I just keep moving that it will all be clear soon and that whatever has happened would be something I definitely will learn from. If not anything else I'm really learning more about myself, my faith, my limits, and how I can grow as a better person.

One step at a time.