Mental Blabberings

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...

So earlier in the year I resolved to write about something on a weekly basis. Unfortunately I have failed that particular resolution. I thought I would have been able to write about something once a week -- that I would be able to get time to write about something interesting to me for any given week. Unfortunately it's not the time that's the problem: it's the motivation. I have found that more and more I did not need to write about what I thought more now that I think and read more than I need to express myself. I have found that in the past two months I had little need to share my thoughts about the world. However though now I find myself writing about not writing which is a little bit of an oxymoron. Let me share with you a few reasons why.

One of my favorite activities is analyzing and performing experiments in my head. There are a few tough questions that I kind of think deeply about when I'm on the train, on the plane, running, or when I have long swaths of time where I'm alone. I tend to ask questions like "how do we know what's right and what's wrong" or "why do people generally mind their own business when they're in the train" or questions like "if we were to rebuild society again (for whatever reason) what would that new society be like given current knowledge and technological capabilities". I don't intend to post my thoughts about these questions -- those are for a different time -- but I do think it's healthy to be asking these questions even to just yourself.

Two years ago today I became a father. Reality didn't hit me hard enough at that time. I was still relatively young and wasn't aware of how my life would be affected by becoming a father. It's one of the best things men can be in their lives yet it takes a lot of us a long time before we realize this. Today I celebrate my daughter's second birthday and my second year of being a father. This post is about remembering what life was back when Julia was born and how much different our lives are now. Two years ago I was still working as a consultant to the largest telco in the Philippines, helping make a growing messaging service something that can scale to a lot more users. I had a great manager at that time but I was too thick skulled to realize this at that time. I had a lot of things going for me: I was fresh from helping evolve a pioneer social network's internal system to handle 3x the original amount of requests (and more) and was getting ready to make a name ...

Library Books by timetrax23 When I was a kid growing up in a small town in the Philippines, I didn't have access to a public library. Nor did I get much from the libraries in the schools I went to except for oddly enough friendships that have lasted a good while. It wasn't until I was doing research for my thesis subject when I was in college that I finally appreciated (and wished I leveraged more) the utility of libraries. In search of better more relevant and up-to-date materials before the proliferation of Internet connectivity in the Philippines I found myself going to UP Diliman (three hours commute from UP Los Banos) to find related literature. I found the three hour commute very pleasant and I was looking forward to being able to read more about the subject I was trying to get my head around. Fast forward ten years later and I find myself seeing how transformative and important public libraries are and how they're something that I definitely wish my people in th...

Tonight is our last night here at the Somerset Darling Harbour right at the heart of Sydney. This location is so convenient that everything interesting and worth going to is just a short walk and maybe then a short train ride away. Walking to work takes at most 20 minutes for me at a leisurely pace. I've grown to like the sounds of the city here and have felt comfortable walking the Pyrmont bridge to work on a daily basis. Tomorrow though will be the first night at our newly rented place half an hour away by bus and 15 minutes away by train. There have been a lot of "firsts" in the Somerset for me. First time I've ever lived in a place paid for by someone else longer than a week. First time to use an oven to cook meat. First time to use a dryer without having to put coins into the machine that's located in a private bathroom. First time feeling like it's all getting real. See, it's been almost exactly 90 days since we moved into this combo two-bedroom ...

It's not my first time to the US and I'm really not much into doing the tourist thing. Like the previous times I've been to the US, usually it's a business trip (except my first one, which was really a vacation). This business trip though doesn't feel like business -- and there's only one reason why: Google. If you've followed my postings recently you will know that I'm now working in Google Australia. Part of that work is going to the Googleplex for required training and the requisite meeting the team. This three-week trip was a chance for me to get assimilated to the larger Google and all I can really just say is: wow. Wow because the environment is so conducive to solving problems. Wow because it's so humbling to be around great minds solving great problems. Wow because I never thought finding my dream job would come true. One of the best things with seeing the world and finding out more about the different cultures you can get into cont...

What have you done recently? You! What have you done lately?  by Clarkston SCAMP This is a really hard question to answer. If you're not careful and take note of what you're working on and what your accomplishments are actively, you will forget them. And when you forget that you are capable of making a difference and getting things done it's easy to lose sight of both where you are and how far you've actually gone. If you think about it really hard, you might be able to answer this question in some sort of haphazard reply like: " Uh, yeah I got this done, and that done, and ... you know, stuff... " -- which doesn't help you nor the person asking you. If you don't know what you're supposed to do, what you're doing, and what you've already done, you won't get anywhere. This week is the first full week I've had at work. Obviously I can't and won't talk about what I did at work, but I can talk about what was going in my...

Old School Mail by Oran Viriyincy Try this thought experiment: think about the time before there was the Internet. If you remember far enough back and if you're as old as I am (I'm turning 28 soon) then you will remember a time when there wasn't really an easy way to connect with friends and family if you were far away from each other. Actually, it's also really hard to connect with friends and family even if you were in the same house -- whether it was back then or now. The biggest difference between before the Internet and now that the Internet is "mainstream" is that now the Internet gives you little to no excuse to not connect with friends and family. And when I say friends and family, I mean every member of your family and every friend you have. I remember back before I was in college, my grandparents immigrated to the US. My mother's parents became US immigrants and I never really got to bond much with them while I was growing up with my father...

Google Australia Handprints by Ariaski It's no secret that I've gone Google . As part of that move I had to leave the Philippines and get into temporary residences as well as get up to speed with the Google way of doing things. There's a lot for me to learn -- and I mean a lot -- but it's a good thing that I do have time. I've been doing some thinking lately though about my web presence and what Google knows about me on the Internet, and I see that I have been a loyal Google product user even before I joined the company. Just to give you an idea of what stuff I already have in Google, here are some links to things that you might not yet already know about me that Google already does: My Profile -- this is technically the most comprehensive profile of me that Google has. I keep this maintained even more than my Facebook account . My Web Album -- although I don't have much there publicly available, I use it a lot  for backing up my pictures. If you know ...

I get reminded once in a while why I work so hard and why I keep working harder and trying to improve myself. I get reminded that the best things in life are free -- not necessarily without cost, but more because the best things in life do not come from what you do but what you get from being with people you love and love you. Lunch was a good time being with friends -- and being able to foot the bill without having to think too much about it, and how a good lunch out experience builds better relationships with people. Being able to connect with friends and building a more open communication environment without strings is something no amount of money can buy. This is why the best things in life are free. A great dinner and movie with someone you love and loves you too you can get anytime; even footing the bill(s) without thought. But the unforgettable experience of being with someone you love and letting that person feel safe and not have to worry about anything; letting that person kn...

So now I'm having a hard time sleeping. Think of it this way: I get to sleep at 4 am, then wake up exactly 6 hours after that. I wouldn't call it lack of sleep entirely, but when after 6 hours of "sleep", you feel tired, it's as good as not sleeping at all. I'm getting cranky, impatient, and unproductive as ever. I'm running out of ideas as to how to deal with this in a better manner than blogging about it, so I'm trying that. As I'm writing this (offline, because I haven't dealt with the internet connection at home problem yet -- not too much a priority compared to all the other expenses moving to a new place entails) I'm watching CNBC to try and lull myself to sleep with business news. If you know me, it's hard for me to find anything on TV uninteresting: then maybe just listening to unending blabber would help my mind rest; which is highly unlikely. I'm going to give this a few minutes -- if I start yawning then it's done its...

So I'm back in the office now. It's not a joke this job that I do... It's not a joke by a long shot. So when there are meetings, conversations, things to do, and other issues that need to be resolved the last thing I want to think about it eating. But then when you're in a metropolitan city where all the conveniences of the modern life -- and modern food -- are at an arm's reach, how can I avoid thinking about food? The answer is I don't. I think about it like I ought to think about it: what I can eat and what I ought not to eat. I can talk about it and I can think about it but I stick to the food that I should eat. I get it from friends and work mates: "So what *can* you eat?". The answer is simple: only those that's good for me. That means low sodium, low fat, high fiber, low/no sugar, virtually no cholesterol, all good natural food. And that's not just because I'm on a diet to lose weight, that's also so that I can stay a bit longer ...

Each day gets better. Not only does my love for my girlfriend grow stronger every day, the chest pain I've been feeling for the past week is starting to go away. Today is the first day I feel that I can do anything and move about without the chest pain bothering me. When I woke up this morning (pretty late) it felt different. I wasn't feeling any discomfort in my chest anymore -- or at least it's not like it used to be. Now I'm enjoying this day like I used to enjoy everyday with virtually no pain in my chest. I also had a very nice IM conversation with my love -- who also commented on my first day post -- and all I can say is that my day is going very well. I hope the coming days are more like this day, and that the road to reversing diabetes and hypertension would be as nice as this day. If there's something that I need to get through which will take more out of me than anything else I've ever done is saying "no" to a lot of the food that I used to e...

It's Sunday -- Family Day -- and my uncle, aunts, and cousin are here in the province to visit my grandmother. I always loved family day because it gives me a chance to get back in touch with family. Topic of the day is my diet and my illnesses. It's no secret that our family is very open with each other and that I'm very thankful that our family sticks together through thick and thin. I feel definitely lucky that I was born into this family even though almost everyone's got health problems among other problems in life. One of my aunts also has heart ailments/abnormalities and she's now 50+ years old. We have the same congenital heart disease (mitral valve prolapse), hypertension, and high cholesterol levels. But she's very strong and has the brightest outlook in life. I definitely admire her and look up to her as far as being strong and sticking through it goes. I'd like to live up to 50 or even more (my grandpa lived up to 72, and was strong for most of th...

So I'm diabetic and hypertensive... It used to be so easy to decide what I'll eat and how much -- it used to be anything I thought of, and as much as I can have . Today is different: I've got to follow the diet else risk worsening the situation I'm in. I'm taking five different medicines: one for diabetes, one for hypertension, one for fixing my digestive tract functions, one for the ulcers, one for the esophagus' wounds. I take some before meals, some before breakfast, some after meals. Figuring out the schedule takes time and I think I'm going to get the hang of it after a few days or after a week. This is just another challenge which I hope I can overcome soon. I just have to make it part of my routine -- drink meds before eating, eat what's allowable, drink meds after eating. I should get some exercise into the mix as well but not too much since I have Mitral Valve Prolapse . Given that I need to lose weight to keep the diabetes under control and to ...

How do you live with a disease and let your loved ones see your suffering? If you're single (like me) how do you convince your girlfriend that spending the rest of her life with you will be worth it? How do you make it all better when you yourself are degenerating by the day? These are very tough questions that require two answers. First answer would be: in a relationship, it's not all your burden to bear . Second answer would be: you shape up and do your best to be the best person you can be for yourself and the relationship . Having spent close to one week in a hospital for chest and nape pain gave me a glimpse into what the troubles people in relationships where one person is suffering face. Only this time I'm the suffering one and my girlfriend can only be there and watch. Not only was I suffering from the pain of my condition, but I also felt the pain of seeing my love suffer every time I squint and writhe in pain. Trust me, unless you're really screwed up in the b...