Hello World

If you find anything on this website interesting and would like to chat about it, feel free to email me at: hello@terencemahlatini.com

Background

First of all, I find it hard to write an abridged version of myself. Attempting to capture everything quickly becomes an existential crisis. Below is the compromise that might give context for some of the posts.

I was born in Gweru, Zimbabwe and that’s where I spent most of my childhood. During school holidays, my parents would send me to the village and if I was lucky, and there was an Adventurer or Pathfinder campout, I would spend a couple of days in the wilderness hiking and exploring with my friends instead of chasing goats and cattle.

My mother is Ndebele and my father, Shona. I speak to them in their respective languages, even if it’s a three way conversation. My vocabulary is split roughly 40/60, and fortunately, my secondary school teacher was bilingual, she bridged a lot of gaps; I managed to pass Shona with a B during my O’Levels, something I still consider a miracle to this day.

Speaking of my secondary school, it was a mission boarding school roughly 45 mins away from my hometown. There were rules against going home without a legitimate reason; I found one every term. Among other things, my secondary school experience was a bit unique, I was a prefect for 3/4 years. In my second year of tenure, I wanted to quit because I thought I was being robbed of a normal school experience but one of the senior teachers talked me out of it and concluded the matter by telling me that I didn’t have a choice.

For high school, I got a scholarship at an international school in India (MUWCI). Being the only Zimbabwean on campus had interesting consequences, beyond answering a few questions about Robert Mugabe and our ephemeral trillion dollar economy, I gained awareness of my national identity but still struggle to define it. The school setup was interesting, half the school was run by students and sometimes it felt like the academic work itself was an extra-curricular activity. There was a grand sense of responsibility imposed by the idealism of the school; I was almost convinced that 16 –18 year olds could change and run the world.

The next step in my education was Whitman College, USA. In my first semester, my dream of becoming a doctor went into a coma, and I became a CS major the following semester. CS provided a closed learning loop that scratched an itch the natural sciences couldn’t: the theoretical foundations were relatively easy for me to grasp because I could build and break till something worked.

Currently, I work at Multicoreware, a company which mainly focuses on low-level systems programming. This blog will, however, try and stay clear of my work because Lord knows I already spend too much time on it.

A parting quote:

"'Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I am human. Not one single truth has ever been arrived at without people first having talked a dozen reams of nonsense, even ten dozen reams of it, and that's an honourable thing in its own way; well, but we can't even talk nonsense with our own brains! Talk nonsense to me by all means, but do it with your own brain, and I shall love you for it. To talk nonsense in one's own way is almost better than to talk a truth that's someone else's; in the first instance you behave like a human being, while in the second you are merely a parrot! [...] Well, and what's our position now? We're all of us, everyone one of us without exception, when it comes to the fields of learning, development, reason, experience, and every, every, every other field you can think of, in the very lowest preparatory form of the gymnasium! We've got accustomed to making do with other people's intelligence - we're soaked in it! It's true isn't it? Isn't what I am saying true?' cried Razumikhin..." — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment