I went to school next to an airport.

I crossed that runway twice a day. We also had an extracurricular science program. Mr. Sam introduced me to a lot of cool technology, including computers, spacecraft systems, and airplanes. I wanted to be an inventor. I kept a sketchbook for ideas. One day I’d make a perpetual motion machine.

Started to really love math and technology.

I began actually understanding that book about designing planes. When I wasn’t messing around in class, I was finding all the little quirks on my calculator. And later on my laptop. My friend introduced me to genetic algorithms and machine learning. Back in that day we called them multilayer perceptrons (MLPs). Did I say I really loved math and technology?

These damn engineers have no sense of aesthetics.

After grinding the best grades in high school, I wanted to just chill out in uni. Unfortunately, instead of getting to consummate my love for planes, I was heartbroken by the engineering profession as practiced in the real world. I should have studied applied math.

I enjoyed the pandemic because I got to reassess my priorities.

Found a job working as a data scientist and product developer at a Malaysian startup. Only thing going as viral as the virus was the rise of artificial intelligence. I built some vision models, some text models, and some classifiers. It was fun. I was becoming an Accelerationist (But the Good Kind I Promise).

Studying engineering was unbearable.

I have to go finish uni. At this point, I was really interested in revolutions, how to start a technological revolution, how to affect change through enterprise and products, how to design the better world, Cybernetics. But luckily I found a job that kept me sane, nestled in an Amsterdam canal house.

I fell in love with the canals, and the bikes, and the trains, and the polders, and the canals, and the bikes…

After visiting Amsterdam, as an intern during summer, I realized the Dutch had a highly entrepreneurial and innovative atmosphere. I also learned that they’re incredible engineers, culturally. And in general, a highly practical progressive problem-solving society. Exactly what I was looking for.

From building dashboards and cleaning data pipelines to building core applications.

Instead of doubling down on data and the analysis side, I loved building and architecting the right internal systems for the company as it was rapidly scaling. I loved that with growth comes the opportunity to take things and make them 5x better, 5x faster everywhere.