Mental Blabberings

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...

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!

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...

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 in...

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 i...

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 mig...

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 s...