Living a calm and productive life in the Philippines since October 2018. Prior to that, my family lived in New York City for almost a decade.
After working for media companies in the past six years with News Deeply and Cignal TV, I’m currently doing innovation and product work for the Palawan Group of Companies, the Philippines’ leading non-bank financial services provider. Our flagship service, PalawanPay, launched in April of 2022 (now with over 14.2 million users). Fintech is a lot of fun. I’m learning a lot. This is probably the biggest product I’ve ever handled (and it’s growing pretty fast).
As for my side projects, Slavatar remains. It will actually end up paying for all my failed (but worth it) experiments. Not bad for a thousand dollar investment I made all the way back in 2015. Still thinking of what to experiment on next. I’d love to work on information products and services. There’s just so much data out there that needs publishing.
I still maintain a nano-consulting practice with Southpaw Labs LLC, with a few clients on retainer. Side projects are great ways to augment your professional development. I highly recommend it.
The pandemic has changed us in a lot of ways. I’m just happy that we managed to survive all of that. Now that things are back to normal, I do miss the absence of traffic, spending time with the kids at home and a whole slew of surprisingly positive things from the lockdown that’s rapidly fading away. The spirit of 2019 is back, this time with inflation.
I ran the 2023 TCS London Marathon back in April and I’m so happy to be back in my quest to complete the majors (Boston is just a bonus, I’ll be happy with five stars). I recently ran the Asics Rock ‘n’ Roll Series Half Marathon in November. I can finally go back to cycling. I really miss it.
I’m currently obsessed with the following:
- What is up with all these amazing games?! - I haven’t had an epic gaming year like 2023 in a really long time. I recently completed The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and fell in love with it. Until, I started playing Baldur’s Gate 3 of course.
- Digital Gardens – I’ve been doing a considerable bit of (private) digital gardening the moment I transitioned to Notion (from Evernote) back in 2017. I do all sorts of stuff in Notion, ranging from my yearly dashboard, hobby logs(!), a system to process loose paper notes, weekly meal plans, shopping trackers and all sorts of stuff. I’ve performed way too many garden “remodelings” through the years and these continue to evolve. This website even runs on Notion!
- Story Formats – Playing with freeform tools like Notion and Day One gave me an opportunity to experiment with story formats. Story formats can be described as templates to convey a certain message. Think “Hot Ones”, “Wordle” and “Humans of New York”. I’ve been experimenting with monthly recaps, show recaps, media diet posts, etc in my private journal. The newsletter “Formats Unpacked” by Hugh Garry explains this better than I do. It’s also a great way to practice my writing as well.
- Revenue Exploration Studios – I like the idea of institutionalized innovation. I read Prehype’s “Acorn Method” book and loved it so much. It’s so good to see my current job through these lens.
I still do the following:
Record all my exercises in Strava, log food in MyFitnessPal, scrobble music in Last.FM, track app usage in Rescuetime, checkin in via the Swarm App, play Wordle and tally finances in Moneywell.
Keeping up with my Goodreads reading quota. I recently enjoyed Fuchsia Dunlop’s “Invitation to a Banquet”, “The Art of Leadership: Small Things Done Well” by Michael Lopp “Generations” by Jean Twenge and “How Big Things Get Done” by Bent Flyvberg.
Writing at least 1200 words a day on the DayOne app but it’s been going way, way over that lately. I should learn to be more concise. I also started meditating again via the Headspace app.
I’m curious about:
Gold! Personal Holding Companies. Personal Creative Studios. The right amount of exercise. Fiber.
Last updated November 30, 2023