WHERE DID YOU GROW UP? WHAT WAS YOUR PATH TO CAL? I was born in the Philippines, where I also spent the first two years of my life. Then, I moved to Oman, a Middle Eastern country, where my father works as a pharmacist. I spent most of my life thus far in a small semi-urban city called Al Wadi Al Kabir (literally, "The Great Valley", where the city is located), and I go back home every vacation. I am half-Indian (from my father's side) and half-Filipino (from my mother's side), and so it is very hard to place myself in a particular culture bracket. Even though I am a Filipino citizen, my exposure of the culture is limited to television shows and food, and I can understand some Tagalog, but not speak it. I studied from Grades 1 through 12 at an Indian School in Al Wadi Al Kabir, and so I grew up in a predominantly Indian culture, enjoy Indian food, and occasionally listen to Hindi songs and watch Bollywood movies. After high school, I took a gap year to decide where I wanted to go and pursue my education, and in that year, I applied to US colleges, coached the SAT while I was studying for it, interned at a newsmagazine, and earned my first paychecks. I applied to Cal on the suggestion of a fantastic college counsellor, and now here I am! :-) I have already completed my B.S. degree in EECS here (with a minor in Math), and am currently pursuing my M.S. degree in EECS as well. In case you're wondering if EECS is for you: I wasn't sure either! I had always thought that I should stay away from CS, because I had the unfortunate impression that CS people spend their time secluded in a cubicle. I was so mistaken: CS is one of the most social majors I know. I came in thinking I would be either a bio-engineer or a chemical engineer, and I took both Chemistry 4A (the first course for chemical engineers) and Computer Science 61A my first semester. I didn't do as well in the former, because I spent too much time enjoying the latter. CS61A also gave me the impetus to be a TA, and I have been a TA seven times since. Moral of the story: if you think you may like EECS -- if you even have an inkling -- give it a shot! HOW MUCH PROGRAMMING HAVE YOU DONE (& WHAT LANGUAGES)? I had done a fair bit of programming in school: computer science classes back home dealt mainly with how to use Microsoft products, so I am an (unfortunate?) expert on those products. However, we also dabbled in BASIC, Logo, and C++. At Berkeley, of course, I did a lot of programming, and my resume proclaims that I have coded in Scheme, Java, C, C++, C#, Python, Scratch, BYOB, F#, LaTeX, MIPS, Verilog, HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I am also especially interested in the design of programming languages and compilers, which plays an important part in my research. WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES? WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR TALENTS & SKILLS? I am answering these two questions together, because they seem to be related. I am a competitive Scrabbler, and so I enjoy the occasional game of Scrabble. (It's not much nerdier than chess, and competitive Scrabble is more about your strategies than about the words you make.) I also code small personal projects on the side, but I have begun to find lesser and lesser time for them. :-( I can do reasonably large arithmetic in my head, the fruit of having to do so for years in school. I enjoy science fiction -- in particular, I have taken a liking to "The X-Files" and "Doctor Who" -- and popular drama shows. I also love to teach and explain, and I like to think that I am witty and punny, but your mileage of this may vary. :-) I also absorb Internet memes, and spent a *lot* of time browsing the Intarwebz. (Though I reckon that this isn't an amazing fact nowadays.) I have not fed my non-nerdy side much, especially before college, although I am actively trying to change that. I enjoy the occasional game of basketball, and I started to pursue martial arts when I came to America: I am currently a green belt in Tae Kwon Do, and I am considering Judo. HAVE YOU DONE ANYTHING REMARKABLE? HAS ANYTHING MEMORABLE HAPPENED TO YOU? I am slowly coming to believe that I am an anonymous Internet celebrity, which is both thrilling and intimidating. I interned at Gmail in the Summer of 2008, and I was tasked with writing up experimental features under the Gmail Labs initiative -- basically, we pushed out features that users could try and give feedback on, and if the feedback was generally good, the feature would be permanently incorporated into Gmail. This is my "remarkable achievement", because code that I wrote one summer is now being used by millions of people over the world, and that's exciting. It is also a testament to how powerful and ubiquitous Computer Science is. My main features were: * Users can now add "EOM" ("End of Message"), or some variant thereupon, to the end of a subject line, to signify that you are not planning to include a body; this also tells Gmail not to show an alert asking if you wanted to send a message without a body, which it would otherwise do. * The Default Text Styler, which allows you to set the style (font face, font color, and so on) of an e-mail as soon as you begin to compose one. * The Message Previewer, which pops up a little pane when you right-click a message, allowing you to preview the contents. * The Forgotten Attachment Detector -- my pride and joy. The idea was not mine, and it was already implemented internally; my task was to re-implement it publicly. Basically, the Detector determines if you were going to attach a file to an e-mail but didn't do so; it scans through the text of your e-mail, looks for variations of the phrase "I am attaching", and checks that you have actually attached something. If you haven't attached anything, it will pop up an alert before you send the e-mail, thus saving you from the embarrassment of sending an e-mail without the necessary attachments. This is, apparently, the most useful of my labs, and was soon upgraded to become a permanent feature of Gmail. The considerable online attention to the Detector consistently amazes me. Friends often tell me how the feature saved them, and the Detector is seen occasionally on Reddit. The Internet is an amazing place. Of course, an even more memorable incident is when I first heard I was coming to Berkeley: that was the best day of my pre-college life, and quite possibly, the most life-changing. I thank God for this opportunity. WHAT COMMITMENTS WILL BE CONSUMING YOUR CYCLES THIS SEMESTER? I am currently TA-ing CS10, doing research in program analysis and embedded systems with Prof. Sanjit Seshia, and taking classes. In the evenings, I practice Tae Kwon Do, and I work out regularly. I also partition my free time between tutoring for HKN (the EECS Honors society), advising for EE20N, a class that I TA'd for four semesters, and going to church. I also have to find time to sleep and eat!