Ray's Cross-pollinating Dad Brain

"... we don't so much inherit the world from our ancestors so much as we borrow it from our descendants." - Ray.

Circumstances change a person. Ray's relentless spirit is still mighty intact, yet becoming a father enhanced his perspectives differently - from being a restless robot to a sleepless robot with a knack for raising his biological clone-daughter. Listen to our conversation talking about life infused in science and heart, plus how we can tackle climate change.
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This episode's show notes and transcript: https://www.humanthesaurus.co/episodes/rays-cross-pollinating-dad-brain

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Transcript

Wish 00:00:02
Human Thesaurus is an intersection between a vast lexicon that best describes our human nature. It's my conversation to highlight people like you and me doing what they do best while equating them them to their own synonyms. If you want this kind of content, subscribe now. Episodes are released weekly. 

Wish 00:00:02
Hello, dear humanity. Welcome to the second season of Human Thesaurus. I'm your host-slash-heartsick, Wish Ronquillo Peacocke.

Wish 00:00:02
Ray is a hands-on technical leader, systems architect, and full stack engineer. With a background in information technology services and electronics industries, he always has been in a relentless pursuit of technological integration with technology startups, Fortune 500 enterprises and public sector clients alike. Solutioning and delivering projects as a chief technology officer, solution architect and a full stack engineer, Ray is a specialist in delivering technical prototypes and rapidly iterating them to achieve robust production, quality and scale. Yes, he is a genius in my mind. He has built projects and teams across both public and private sectors, developing capabilities in sensor technologies, identity, security, cryptography, fintech, big data, media and more beyond that. And also, Ray is a new father to one very round, super gorgeous baby girl. And despite his adventures so far, he continues to seek new things to learn as always, faster iterations and innovative ways to improve lives using technology. That's his goal. That's his life goal. I met Ray through my previous job in Accenture in Australia. I remember the first time I went there just to check them out. It wasn't my first day, it was like a few days before I started. And then I met this baby face looking guy, just smiling. And when he was introduced to me by Justin, who I had a conversation with in my first season, he's like, "hello, friend." And that's what he does to everyone. He makes you feel welcome. From day one, we really just got along and I remember that job very well because Ray always gives me a lot of laughter. Our laughters are just crazy while developing new things, exciting stuff. And I always describe Ray as the perfect AI robot that I've ever had. My synonyms for Ray are brain as a noun, tinkering as a verb, and relentless as an adjective. Within this conversation, you'll further understand why I describe him as such. So here he is, Ray Chang!

Ray 00:03:20
Hello, friends. My name is Ray. Same as the words robot as a noun, calms as a verb, and relentless as an adjective. I like the word sentinel and I dislike the word allergies.

Wish 00:03:36
Yay. Oh my God. Did we describe you the same as an adjective? That's amazing. I actually put robot as a noun, but that will be a very long explanation. So that's why I just added that in my intro dialogue, you're the most advanced AI robot I've ever had in my entire life.

Ray 00:03:59
I certainly have had the pleasure of working with a good number of robots and my tendency to follow the same patterns is almost to a fault.

Wish 00:04:07
I know.

Ray 00:04:08
So, yes, I totally resonate with that one.

Wish 00:04:12
Yeah, absolutely. How have you been doing? I mean, I haven't seen you since, what, 2019?

Ray 00:04:19
Yeah, I think 2019.

Wish 00:04:21
Before the Pandemic.

Ray 00:04:22
That's right. So we left Big Accenture and decided to go on a startup adventure of all time. I decided to go out in the wild world of startups just when we were about to have a baby. So that was a wild adventure and it still is a wild adventure. I've had the pleasure of working on a whole range of wild things, like music for people living with dementia, simulated stadium music, sounds or crowd noise when it was during the pandemic and no one was attending sports events. And more recently, I've been working on climate change. So that's been a really great thing to sort of focus on because I guess one of the things we sort of realise is that we don't so much inherit the world from our ancestors so much as we borrow it from our descendants. And I guess having a child, you sort of realise you got to leave something behind for them.

Wish 00:05:19
Yes.

Ray 00:05:19
So, yeah, that has been good.

Wish 00:05:21
Yeah, that's good. So you've got a lot in your plate, but where do you get all these energy while being perpetually tired? That's what you always say. "Hello, friend," "How are you, Ray?" "I'm tired." Yet you're doing a lot of things or where do you get that energy from?

Ray 00:05:43
It's a good question. I think when it comes down to it, no matter how tired you are, when you're doing something fun, something you love, it's not really work, is it?

Wish 00:05:52
That's true.

Ray 00:05:54
When you've got an awesome team around you, they invigorate you, they drive you forward and they're there when you need something to sort of bounce back from or something to rally yourself to continue pushing on. So I think that's really it, right. If you surround yourself with the right things, the right people have, the right partner who backs you and all those kinds of things, it's not hard. It actually becomes a complete pleasure and a joyful thing to work on.

Wish 00:06:20
Beautiful. That's right. Aside from all of these perpetual tiredness, I understand that you were experimenting before to find the right kind of system for you to meditate. So how do you balance that now with your meditation? What are your tricks that probably someone listening to us with another restless mind can kind of use?

Ray 00:06:45
I think that's a tough one. It's such a personal and tailored thing, but sometimes it really is just about letting go and going with the flow. Sure. Things throughout the day will bother you, things at a small, perhaps minuscule scale might bother you. Something at a massive scale might be troubling you. But sometimes you've just got to let it all go and do it a little bit at a time. Right. And you process those things and you keep moving on and keep moving on and you develop a rhythm to it. So, yes, perpetually tired. But at the same time, if you develop the right kind of rhythm and also surround yourself with right elements, that really changes things.

Wish 00:07:29
Yes, it does. But who are you? Who is this person? A few years ago, I would not hear you say this letting go thingy because sometimes we need to remind you to let it go, but it's hard for you. But probably. Do you think that being a father now kind of changed a little bit the way you think?

Ray 00:07:51
Absolutely. I think it's put things into perspective. Like, before having a daughter, a lot of things I understood conceptually, but I never experienced, and I didn't really get it. I understood why something might happen that way or what might take you down that road, but I didn't really understand the reality of it. It wasn't real to me. And maybe perhaps I just didn't appreciate that. But since then, I had to learn a whole lot, which has been good. I guess that puts things into perspective and that changes a lot. Sometimes you stop fussing about the small things if something is the problem. Maybe if you step back a little bit, it's not a problem anymore. You just keep moving on. Go fix it, move on.

Wish 00:08:32
Absolutely. Yes. Wow. I'm so proud of you. The AI just evolved so much. That's really amazing to hear.

Ray 00:08:44
I think growth is important, right? Like making sure you're constantly learning, constantly growing, and you're constantly developing. Whichever way you can, whichever way you want to is important. So yeah, focusing on that is critical.

Wish 00:09:00
Yeah. Wow.

Ray 00:09:02
Through all the sleep deprivation, but yes, absolutely.

Wish 00:09:05
Ivy really did a lot to you. I could see that. That's beautiful. That's really wonderful. I'm so happy for you for that. You have this capacity to care so much. Even if we're saying you're like a robot, it's not in a literal sense. That because you don't have a heart. You're purely logical, you're not. You are very compassionate type of a person who knows a lot of things under the sun, who keeps on learning, keeps on deciding what's in the world and what we need to solve. So within all of these things, this is interesting to me because I understood this before, but since we haven't hang out in a long time, how does Ray's brain work?

Ray 00:09:53
Oh, that's tough. Everything is kind of connected. It's a system of systems, of systems, of systems. And you've got to work with that, right? Like, if you understand how something ticks, you can step back from it and understand what goes in and what comes out. And then at another level, that feeds into another system and another system and another system, and it becomes a giant nesting doll of systems. And they're all interrelated, they're all networked together, and one idea leads to another so a lot of what we do in, I guess, innovation related work, or innovation related matters, really is drawing upon other things that we've seen and cross pollinating them to things that we're applying now. It's all joining the lots together and coming up with new things based on the things that you've seen and ideas that you might have. So how does it all work? I wish I knew because then I could try and replicate it, but I'm still working on that one. Cloning hasn't worked out just yet. We've taken the biological route. She is currently very ramen hungry. Not sure how that one's going to pan out just yet.

Wish 00:10:59
Right. Can you tell me a little bit more about getting involved with climate change? I really love what you do, and you're working now with our former colleagues as well. What is it about?

Ray 00:11:13
Sure. So we're designing a system to help people better design carbon projects and better execute carbon projects. It's primarily in the agricultural sector, so effectively helping farmers better gain credit for the carbon that they're sequestering on their farms. And through that, they can generate offsets, which feeds into the carbon market. That's taking off fairly recently. So there's a lot of really exciting stuff happening in that space, but what a lot of people aren't realising is the importance of integrity in the carbon credits that are being generated. Without integrity, well, you've got nothing. True, because carbon is a really interesting commodity in that when you grow it, when you sequester it, I should say it stays on the farm, but it's effectively traded digitally. So unless you've got the right evidence of it being a real thing, it doesn't exist. So that's something that the market is slowly coming to grips with.

Wish 00:12:03
How do you make it exist?

Ray 00:12:05
Well, we have to make sure there's an appropriate audit trail. You do audits, you make sure you go and take the right samples to prove that it's actually there. And then you leverage a whole lot of other information, like satellite data, like a whole lot of mathematics, modelling everything else, to make sure that it's all coherent and that the cheques and balances are in place. Beyond that, a whole lot of audits and a whole lot of math.

Wish 00:12:29
Right. But how far have we come from having this concept now to sequester the carbon footprint and all of these things? And how far do we still need to go?

Ray 00:12:41
That's complicated. I think around the world, I would say probably Australia is very far ahead in terms of having a regulated system for carbon. More internationally, there's our voluntary markets, but the world is still sort of coming to grips with that. I know New Zealand has a system and Europeans are starting to look at it. Sooner or later, all these markets need to join up and then we'll start having international trade of offsets. It's all new and emerging, but very exciting.

Wish 00:13:06
Yes. So where does Carbon Count place themselves in this world right now? Is it a struggle to put it out there? Or does Australia really grasp the concept already? Or how is it right now? What's the status?

Ray 00:13:21
Yeah, it's interesting. One of the key factors for success of any start up is timing. I would say, if anything, we've realised we're probably a bit early to market in that we've built a more comprehensive system that helps with sort of the end to end process, and then we're effectively running around teaching the market about these things so that they can understand the need for it. That being said, it's actually hugely exciting. It's lovely seeing all the interest in the uptake and we're definitely seeing that the beginning of that take off. So that's very super exciting.

Wish 00:13:53
It is indeed. I'm very proud of you being at the forefront of this and really believing in it. I think it's really important. You always talk about when we were working together, you always talk about building something and that's all you wanted to do. I'm happy where you are. And apart from this, you've mentioned a lot, working with music and working with dementia, putting them together. Can you give me more information about that? Because that is also another exciting thing.

Ray 00:14:27
Sure. So in that particular space, or at least for people living with dementia, one of the interesting effects is that when people living with dementia hear certain music that they've experienced in their past lives or in their history, or that music that's important to them, that music tends to light up all areas of the brain and it can effectively reinvigorate who they are. And for those who haven't seen the effect and know someone, living with dementia is certainly worth trying. So building a system to help them select that music and basically make that music available to them is hugely valuable, because there's nothing quite like seeing potentially lost loved ones come back to life.

Wish 00:15:09
Wow. Where are you at this stage for that one? Is it a platform? What product is it?

Ray 00:15:16
We've actually parted ways since then and the founder, Nick Johnson, has pushed forward and forged forward on that one, so I'm really proud to see where he's gotten to.

Wish 00:15:26
That's fantastic. Do you think that Ivy, your daughter, changed your view of the world?

Ray 00:15:32
Absolutely. I think it's made me realise that we need to have a world for those that come after much more in a realistic and tangible way than in the past. It fills me with lots of concerns, but certainly a lot of hope for what's to come as well. So if we can set up the right things, hopefully someday she'll do interesting things too.

Wish 00:15:56
By golly, you've grown man. Oh, the daddyhood evolved something in you.

Ray 00:16:04
Yeah. Or the excessive sleep deprivation, I can't tell which.

Wish 00:16:08
But you're always sleep deprived. What's new about that?

Ray 00:16:12
This is very true. Yeah. I think having kids takes that to potentially another level. But yeah, that has been interesting. I think the teams that I work with have been incredibly accommodating for these kinds of things. And she actually knows that the team and some of their names and can say their names, them, so that's been pretty amusing. Yeah. Fun rides, at the very least.

Wish 00:16:32
Yeah, indeed. Are you still in touch with some of our group of friends?

Ray 00:16:38
Absolutely. Some of us work together on a daily basis. It's the same old crew and I'm sure one of these days will rope you back into it one way or another.

Wish 00:16:49
Yeah. I'm wondering how is everybody? Like, is there any new news about some of them? I mean, I've only spoken with Coco. And also, of course, Luiz, John and Roobs.

Ray 00:17:03
I think they've been really good. Everyone's kind of forging forward in their own ways, right? Sing's bought a place.

Wish 00:17:08
Wow.

Ray 00:17:09
Roobs as a partner in Perth. There's all sorts of growth in all sorts of fun areas. Everyone's really enjoying the ride of startups and all the ups and downs. Luiz, of course, is at big enterprise now, but he's still trying to do innovative things. That common thread of innovation tends to stick with all of us, to be honest. We're just that kind of people. And I think it was rare for us to forge such team, so hopefully we can build more of these kinds of teams and bring them together one day and just see what magic happens.

Wish 00:17:41
That's true. That's true. What are the valuable things that you pulled as a memory when we were working together? Because that time is something very I mean, personally, for me, that time was somewhat very good and very bad. Looking back to it, it's more endearing than anything, having to work with the team that we had. How about you?

Ray 00:18:09
Yeah, absolutely. I think in hindsight, it all kind of became one blurry mess, didn't it? It was always go, go. Even leading up to launch, we were completely frantic putting everything together. We managed to pull off our launch and then it was go, go, go into another project, taking a robot to the Sydney Opera House, of all things, with an orchestra of 35.

Wish 00:18:31
Yes.

Ray 00:18:31
And then immediately after that into big enterprise projects, and then tic tacking from that to innovation projects, and then back into burning projects or anything else under the sun. To be honest, it was very interesting being orbital dropped into burning situations and then simultaneously supporting innovation efforts. But I think it gave all of us an incredibly broad look at what tends to go on in projects, how we can fix them, and also how we can make sure innovation stays on track. Because innovation fails. It's part of the Iterative process. But all of that shows that if done the right way, you'll fail a few times, but you'll get to that result and you'll get some value out of it. That's important.

Wish 00:19:13
Yeah. And you mentioned earlier about integrity as well. I think that was the common denominator. I think in the team that we had, we wanted to instil the integrity in our work, which is a little bit hard in a big enterprise. But I think that's the most valuable thing that I've gotten and observed. That's why I am still sentimental about the team that we had.

Ray 00:19:40
Absolutely. I think in big enterprise, smoke and mirrors is very common, especially in any kind of consulting for our particular team. And I strongly put my foot down on this one. No smoke and mirrors. We're going to do it for real. If we're going to say we're going to do it, we're going to do it. Someone comes to us and they sold smoke and mirrors, we're going to make it a real thing. But with the right tweaks and with the correct explanations to the client on what happened and so on and so forth, that integrity sticks with you. Right. Like that's real. It's tangible. We build real things and having the confidence to be able to move like that and know that you're building on strong foundations is critical for anything really complex that you're trying to do.

Wish 00:20:19
Yeah, that's right. When it comes to these things, there are lots of still aspiring tekkies out there. What is your key message to the future generation of people in tech?

Ray 00:20:33
I would say that's a tough one.

Wish 00:20:36
It is. But what would be some of the basic things that you think that someone could carry all along? Because tech and innovation is always a wild ride. It's always a gamble.

Ray 00:20:48
I'll give this one a try.

Wish 00:20:49
Yes.

Ray 00:20:50
I would say find your niche and then find another one and learn to cross pollinate, learn to come up with new ideas, don't get attached and learn to create something and iterate on it. The faster you can do that and the more iterations you can do, the sooner you can get to something that's really valuable in tech, which is incredibly fast moving in all regards. The sooner you can test your ideas and continue to improve on them, the sooner you might land on something that's genuinely amazing.

Wish 00:21:20
Right. What should we be afraid about? The future?

Ray 00:21:23
I think there's a lot of bright things in the future, but on things to worry about, climate change is definitely one of them. We're seeing significant changes in climate around the world. We're seeing devastating losses of people's livelihoods in some places. That's a point of concern, but there's also a lot of hope in that we can potentially fix that in time. That's why I'm working on it at the very least. So that's certainly something that is top of mind, at least for me.

Wish 00:21:49
So what should we be excited about the future?

Ray 00:21:53
I think there's so much to be excited about.

Wish 00:21:55
Tell me. Tell me everything.

Ray 00:21:59
I guess we as people are always working on something new, something exciting. There's a lot of work going on in the energy sector. There's someone cooking something up in their own garage every day. That eagerness and dedication towards craft that's inherent in people is hugely exciting. And there's always new things being created out of that. And I say full steam ahead for anyone who's working on those secret little projects that might eventually grow into something amazing. As for specifically what, to be honest, I can't name it. It's always those things that suddenly turn up and you sort of wonder, well, why wasn't there that all along? Right. It's people solving real problems and adding real value. That's the exciting stuff, really.

Wish 00:22:46
Yeah. So how far we would quantum computing, though?

Ray 00:22:51
There's a lot of people working on it, I would say, but as a mainstream solution, probably quite a while away, to say the very least, only because it has various cooling requirements and a whole lot of technical detail to it before it's available to the common user. And even then it might be only be more suitable for a certain set of problems. I would say we're pretty stuck with the kind of computing that we have today. Get comfortable. But there's more than enough flexibility in what we have today to do some really interesting things.

Wish 00:23:18
That's right. Would quantum computing affect environmentally our entire ecosystem? Is it like a crypto type of thing?

Ray 00:23:29
I would say that quantum has the potential to completely change cryptography specifically, but that's typically used in very different ways compared to climate. It might be useful in certain areas of simulation where they're trying to come up with more efficient solvers and the like, for example, climate simulation, although I'm not specifically in that space, so very happy to be wrong there.

Wish 00:23:53
What you made me think, you made me really think. So this is the thing. Every time we hang out, you always make me think since I need to prove that you're the most advanced AI, I'm going to ask something very random. Let me think of something very random.

Ray 00:24:10
Go for it.

Wish 00:24:10
What is the best animal that you can ever think of and why?

Ray 00:24:18
I'm going to have to go with Narwhal and the reason for it is purely because my daughter has been singing that song and doing the dance for it.

Wish 00:24:28
It's a narwhal song from what's that?

Ray 00:24:33
I don't even know where it's from.

Wish 00:24:34
The name of that cartoon thingy. The one who's singing badger badger too. It's the same.

Ray 00:24:40
Is it the same? I have no idea. But she certainly knows the song and asks for it fairly often. They're the Jedi's of the sea now.

Wish 00:24:47
Yeah, I used to know that entire lyrics before.

Ray 00:24:51
There you go I just linked it.

Wish 00:24:52
Oh here, let me check that right now. Oh, it's a different one.

Ray 00:25:00
It's a kids version.

Wish 00:25:01
No, it's the same. Yeah, I know this one. I know this one, the same guys who did the badger badger song very much. 

Wish 00:25:01
In closing, what's the word or phrase that you can impart to our listeners and why?

Ray 00:25:19
I would say keep at your passions. There's so many things that you could potentially do in life, in the world, all that sort of stuff, but finding the right thing for you and driving that along is valuable and important. The only way you can really relentlessly work at something is if it really means something to you. So don't let that one go.

Wish 00:25:42
I love that. That's fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you for hanging out with me. I really enjoy our talk, as usual. I hope I could visit you soon and meet Ivy. I haven't met her yet and we can have a lot of good trips once again. Or we're still going to pursue a Taiwan group trip reunion or something.

Ray 00:26:08
That sounds fantastic.

Wish 00:26:09
I think that's still on my mind.

Ray 00:26:11
Just be warned that if you come over here, you'll probably be eating ramen because Ivy demanded that. Or barbecue duck. Easy.

Wish 00:26:16
No problem. Or probably you should come over because there are way more rolodex of amazing ramens in Singapore...

Ray 00:26:16
Duly noted. 

Wish 00:26:16
... like, more than our exposure in Sydney.

Ray 00:26:31
Seriously, don't tell her until she's older.

Wish 00:26:34
Okay? I'm going to tell her that. Actually, I'm going to go against you. Like, if you can stay with me, we're just going to eat ramen the entire time.

Ray 00:26:44
She would be there in an instant. She's not afraid of other people, new people so long she's got food, 

Wish 00:26:48
That's pretty dangerous. We have to put what do you call that? Baby kind of you put in a waist like a baby

Ray 00:26:57
Leash, or a GPS.

Wish 00:27:00
What's her favourite character now? Like, is it Peppa Pig and things like that?

Ray 00:27:06
I don't think she has one. She has little Lego people that she names after my work colleagues.

Wish 00:27:14
Of course.

Ray 00:27:17
Yes. They're just part of family now.

Wish 00:27:26
From this episode, one of the most important words about life is integrity. It is a quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. It's similar to words uprightness, probity, ethics, sincerity, virtue, unity, solidarity, truthfulness. Michelle Obama, the former First Lady of the United States, quoted: "We learned about honesty and integrity, that the truth matters, that you don't take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules. And success doesn't count unless you earn it fair and square." I learned from my first boss in my first career to keep your ethics straight, for you only have one name. It was mind blowing for me that shook my world and I really took that to every single step that I took in my career and in my personal life. I will never, ever compromise on my integrity. Yes, we're only humans, we can't be perfect, we can't be truthful all the time. But you have to strive to be responsible for every single action that you take. The choices that you make will affect yourself and everybody else. A single second of a mistake can change everything. So you have to be very mindful and make sure that you're going towards the right way. Sometimes it's hard, but you have to try, because that's the only way to go in life. To keep your integrity, to keep your honesty, to keep the lightness in your heart. Then you won't be able to experience bitterness or anything negative, because your conscience will be clear. 

Wish 00:27:26
I hope you love eavesdropping here. You should start thinking about your synonyms. What are they? Perhaps you can share them with me through emailing your audio or a message about you, even via my social media. Thank you for listening to Human Thesaurus. Join me again next week for another episode. I'm your host Wish Ronquillo Peacock. Have a fantastic day and thanks for listening.