I grew up in a tropical farm and the first plant that I planted was a lima bean, and the first fruiting plant that I planted was the Senorita banana. They fruited in just a couple of months, and got to enjoy the fruits of my labor and was hooked for life in growing plants where ever or whenever I can. I learned to make wine on my own accidentally when I was just 12 years old. Was attempting to make vinegar to impress my father who was a vinegar brewer but what I made turned into good wine in the middle of the vinegar cottage and was able to nail it down. Been making various wines from various fruits that I grew, ever since.

I showed talents for mathematics and sciences at an early age, and to combine with my love of plants, took up Agricultural Engineering in college. Worked at various International Research Organizations as a number cruncher for Agricultural Research and also did a lot of original scientific research work. Was invited by UC Davis for Graduate Studies and so took up their offer, and pursued Quantitative Agronomy, Agricultural Ecology and Crop Modeling. We developed award winning academic Expert Systems Software that are still used for decision making in crop growing even if the information available are qualitative or fuzzy. But alas, the pay isn’t that great, can’t even sustain my family through my post graduate work.

Fortunately, I came at a time when information system was getting hot, that was in mid 1990’s. From my engineering background and number crunching talents known by other friends who worked at Silicon Valley, I was invited by Intel to work at their Fab Shops through their subcontractor to build them in-house n-tiered database applications at the job site that’s integrated with engineer favorite AutoCAD and Excel seamlessly integrated with their Oracel backend. I can speak the language of the engineers and software system developers and so really helped them get the job done, and stayed a while until I can afford our own house. My love for growing plants has reeled me always down to earth and have loved pushing the envelopes of what can be done in a typical teeny tiny yards of urban homes.