Mental Blabberings

It's mother's day and I had another fun day with Jeni and Julia this time on a lazy Sunday morning and a traveling Sunday afternoon. We went on a train ride to Ashfield and went right back because we got there really late -- it was already dark and they weren't feeling all to adventurous to ride a bus and back to see the surroundings. Before that we went to the Google Australia office to let them see the place without the people (and have some snacks at a micro-kitchen). But this is not what the post is about although that would be really light and fun to write. No, this post is about how fathers like me feel on a day that's supposed to celebrate how mothers are awesome. Tulips by Muffet There are five things that fathers feel I think when Mother's day comes along. Well that's a lie, there's a lot more feelings but here's a quick top five of what I felt this day just to give other non-fathers an insight into how us fathers feel on this day. Actuall

This day was tons of fun! There were quite a number of firsts for the family since we've arrived here in Sydney. Exploring as a family is so much fun, I wonder why we didn't do much of this while we were in the Philippines! Today Jeni, Julia, and I went on our first train ride from Town Hall Station to Circular Quay. That wasn't a very eventful train ride and it's pretty much your standard fare going to Circular Quay but we did get some hiccups on getting the tickets and getting through the gates at pretty much all the stations. We still have to get used to the idiosyncrasies of the Australian train system. Once we got there, we just headed to the doctor's office for a quick visit -- he was pretty cool and very inviting. He explained things very well and Julia got comfortable really quick after a few minutes of silence from her as she does with strangers. Next thing we know she's exploring the doctor's office and playing with the cabinets and walking aro

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