The best part is that I am a little braver after six weeks.

The goal is to become a little better than yesterday, so I am very happy.

Before SEC-08, I had deliberately lived a fairly isolated life for a while. I also had not done any real engineering for about a year.

Maybe I am shy. I do feel nervous when I have to demo something unfamiliar. I am not always comfortable around people, especially in a new environment.

At a secret Bitcoin meetup in China 3 days ago, when G told people what we had been doing during the previous two months, he described it as: “She and twenty boys.”

Okay, that sounds a little like I went to a gay club.

I do not like labeling myself—female, Chinese, engineer, or anything else. A Git commit does not know your gender or nationality.

But I have to admit that differences exist.

They are not good or bad. They are just different.

So here is the formula:

SHY + NO IDEA ABOUT CUTTING-EDGE NOSTR + CHINESE + FEMALE + JET LAG + FIRST TIME IN MADEIRA + STRANGE GROUP FOR SIX WEEKS = ??

Chaos and disaster, at least in some ways.

The people in the group were great. The difficult part was from being me in that situation.

But that chaos also stimulated different parts of my brain.

The new environment forced me to prioritize what was important. Every day, I tried to talk with other people a little more. I learned to ask for help when I could not deal with the stress by myself.

It was a good chance to verify that I am not a robot—although, many times, I wanted to be one.

Do not stop because you are afraid of failure.

Sometimes just do things in order to fail. That is okay. Making mistakes is part of the purpose.

The engineer side

FIPS is great, and it just works. The difficult part is explaining it to people.

When I tried to explain FIPS to friends at a Bitcoin conference, they asked:

“Do you mean Federal Information Processing Standards?”

Haha.

I think ….

I am still learning how to talk, how to build, and how to be around people.

But more important,

drink poncha ~