Ten Things I Learned from My Father which Last a Lifetime

After almost three decades living with my father, I have realized I have learned so many things from him which are really worth enumerating. These lessons have proven very helpful for me as I made this journey in life. Although things will not work out fine for me at times, I still manage to prove on one way or another that the discipline of following these lessons I learned from him still matters everyday. Here are the Ten Things I learned from my Father which will last a Lifetime.

1. Do not do unto others what you do not want others do unto you.
• We all know this famous Goldern rule. My father is one follower of this.He does not want to take advantage of other person even if he knew he can. 
2. Leading by Example
• He practiced what he preached. If he tells us not to do this, he would also do the same even if it means sacrificing his pride.
3. It is better to give than to receive
• He always love sharing his blessings to his friend. 
4. Life is a gamble
• He will always try to gamble at things and I knew he is only testing the water. Then he will observe the result and come up with conclusion. This is how he became street smart. I only learn those things when he is speaking with his friends.
5. Just do it
• I used to complain doing things he always instructed me to do so especially early in the morning. But now, I am still seeking that wake up call early in the morning to face the day ahead. Just do it is all I remember speaking to myself everytime I think twice of following him.
6. Never boast
• Although he has lots of things to be proud of, he did not use that to gain attention. Instead he used it in a very appropriate manner and in appropriate situation.
7. Learn to stand on your own
• My father along with his sisters learned the early sacrifices in life at a young age. They learned to live by themselves and manage to help each other to keep their children at school.
8. Be consistent
• As a child, i learned to discipline myself the way my father taught me. I observe that his consistencies of being angry all day once you disobeyed him, early on led me to believe that I must follow his instruction and never deviate from it. This is also applicable to my child. If I did not show consistency throughout the day, she would think that i am just joking around and she can easily entice me with her naughtiness. Kids like her must see from their parent consistencies of their action because otherwise, they will not follow you and will not be disciplined.
9. Learn to have friends and Network yourself
• I am surprised even now that my father was able to learn many skills throughout his life. He can be electrician, a carpenter, a driver, a welder, a farmer, a healer and a cook. With this skills set, he was able to network himself and have many friends along the way. I also appreciate that even younger generations look up to him because he can discuss lots of manly things under the sun. He even know both Ilocano, tagalog and Bisayas.
10. Become a streetsmart guy
• Having all the skillset and the network, my father ultimately became a streetsmart guy. He knows the in and out of the metro. Even where the road leads from each streets because he was formerly taxi driver.

Happy 66th Birthday Father :)

My Daughter at Three

My daughter and wife are doing school assignment. I am surprised to see my daughter now learning to write down letters as her mother dictates her so. Just 5 months ago, we have a hard time teaching her to recognize alphabet letters. But now is very different, at the age of 3, she now can write even in air the letter shapes and most importantly write them down.

Monitoring such development of our child is really one of the most precious moment being a parent. I did not personally teach her the skills, only my wife and my mother in law patiently went to school to fetch her. The school did the most impact on her development and acquiring such skill.

This is one of the reason I refuse to become OFW. Because if I was not here with my wife and daughter, I would be crying lots not witnessing our daughters development. She would not feel my hugged after she wrote down one word, as display of my joy for her success. The nightly ritual of giving her special gift everytime she made high grades in the school will for sure matter to her. And most importantly, the discipline I as a father can instill to my child early in her development will for sure have a long term impact( I need to display myself consistenly as an authority). I dont want to sound righteous but based on my observation, having no father or mother in a child development has negative impact in most cases.

I remember that having a parent with me guiding me in school and disciplining me, really matters in my development. The simple smile I am able to brought to my mother and father after giving my grades with honorable mention noted in it really is fullfilling to me as a child. That invigorates me further. My father is not showy on appreaciating my achievement but I can sense how proud he was to me as a child by how he tells my achievement to his friends while I listen subtly. I would like to infuse the same feeling to my daughter as early as now.

Facebook post will not transcend to her of how proud I am. She needs a hug, a smile from me, a lift in my shoulder and a fairy story to further enhance her imagination. As Einstein wrote ,  'If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.'

Living in An Exponential Law

Ive already watched this video about 5 years ago and its really worth watching even now..

Law of exponent is always present in our daily lives. In fact, we are living under this law. Stated loosely, every decision we make each day has exponential effects in one way or another. Realizing this, I follow this law personally. That is, do not make decisions that you knew will have further exponential and detrimental effect to you..

For example, a single decision of going to work early will need two or more corresponding commitment. One, put an alarm clock beside you, two - dont eat too much at night so you can have better sleep and wake up earlier, three- dont watch late night shows and the list goes on to comply with just by a single decision.

And not following the commitment above will also has exponential effect. One -  you will be late, two- doing this daily and you will receive memo in the office being late, three - you will be of course more stressed not following company rules on tardiness, four- you will leave a bad impression to your employer.




This simple yet unnoticed law in life can make or break someone's career, health and success. :)

An Analysis of the Voters Population

The picture below will tell million votes. According here, Almost 65% `((18.44+15.9)/54=63.6%)` of the voters will be from age 18 - 49 years old.

Well the image is from James Jimenez of Comelec, we can conclude now that only less than 20 million `(7.9+7.8=15.7)`of the 54 million voters still a fan of old action movies. It was obvious from the past that those who got elected in the high position were famous during eras when action movies and matinee idol dominated the television and movie theaters i.e. Lito Lapid, Erap and Vilma Santos(I dont mean they are all bad politicians).

Six years ago, Erap won the election in manila. Im beginning to wonder that despite the large number of young voters in Manila, he still manage to won.

Furthermore, Bam Aquino whom I just known in his television show before must have won because of the youth vote. The statistics must be true. Even Angara must have affected the youth after his stint in the impeachment.

Next year 2016. I will expect that winners of the election will be chosen by the youth, otherwise, another hocus pocus have happened.

I would now suggest that Survey companies must adjust their pre election surveys/interviews according to percentage of voters in the graph. Because if youth really speaks that much, why is Binay still winning in the statistics/poll despite the negative criticisms he got?

This article from manila times discussed the statistics further..

STAAD Steel Design Reminders

When using STAAD for steel analysis and design, one must be careful for the following:
1. Geometry
2. Number of load cases
3. Load list applied in design parameter
4. Post analysis result showing displacement
5. Failure ratio must not exceed 1. Though ASD can sometimes be 1.10.
6. Check code member must be applied to all steel members.

Soil Bearing Pressure:Pipe support foundation

I am designing pipe support foundation using a spreadsheet. Since there are lots of iteration, I thought I need a quick guide of finding the optimum foundation size by a given load. And the famous :

`P/A + 6M/(bd^2)`

is really necessary.

How quickly important is this? For example, we have an allowable soil bearing capacity of 50 kpa only. This means we are only allowed to stress the soil at that limit. Given a concentrated load, and lateral load applied on top of footing and an initial sizing of footing, we can then compute the Max pressure of footing at the edge by using formula above.

Ex: `Py=60KN; Px=50KN`
        `e=3m("top of pedestal to bottom of footing")`
         `B=5m; D=4m`

Thus,
`P/A=60/(5*4)=3Kpa;  (6M)/(b*(d)^2)=(6*50*3)/(5*4^2)=11.25Kpa`
And we have maximum soil pressure of 3+11.25 = 14.25kpa only which is way below than our allowable soil bearing capacity of 50 kpa. Using my calculator to prepare an equation with variables; i can easily manipulate or optimize the footing to lessen the dimension at the same time not exceeding `50kpa`.
     

I need to divide 1 by 2

`1/2 = 0.5`

Thanks..

ok math

dsfsafsa
`P(X)=(e^-mu mu^x)/(x!)`

Geothermal Project

We are using a spreadsheet to design geothermal structural supports. Although this one is very useful, one needs to verify its result. The last time I used this was when I need to find foundation support of platform. That is, I need to tweak certain parameters of the spreadsheet because this is actually used for pipe support. This was another instances where understanding of the theory really matters. An engineer can use different spreadsheet and software and tweak it depending on his purpose as long as the theory is not violated.

But now is different. Its actually a pipe support problem. 

For the first phase, the Wellsite 19 with just 8 supports is easy. No clashes with the existing support and the design is straightforward input of the parameters. Although one footing is on top of existing support, there needs to have proper detailing.

For the second phase, we are now designing cross country pipe supports. That is, the ground elevation is in a high gradient slope. Add to that the inconvenience of having existing supports almost every other pipe nodes.