Leaving Kathmandu

I expected moving from Kathmandu to the UK for an MSc to feel like a bigger event than it did. In the run-up, it had all the weight of a decision — visa paperwork, goodbyes, the HND certificate I needed apostilled, a one-way flight. Then I landed, found a flat, and by the second week I was back to debugging a Next.js build at midnight, same as before, just in a colder country.

What actually changed

Not the daily texture of the work — that transferred almost exactly. What changed was slower and less photogenic:

• The problems got more specific. Kathmandu gave me the generalist habits — build things, ship them, learn the statistics properly later. The MSc is where "later" caught up: proper grounding in the math behind the models I'd been using somewhat instinctively.
• Working in kitchens before any of this stopped being a stray fact on my CV and started being an actual reference point — the MSc syllabus is demanding in a way that rewards the same stamina a dinner service does, just spread over months instead of hours.
• Distance made the base case clearer. It's easier to see what Yulan Mini Mart is actually solving for — a small Kathmandu grocer with no system for inventory or delivery tracking — from several thousand miles away than it was standing in the shop.

What didn't

The instinct to build the thing rather than just study it. I could have done a purely theoretical MSc and treated code as a side interest. Instead there's still a full-stack project running alongside the coursework, because the two feed each other — the stats make the engineering decisions better, and having something real to build keeps the stats grounded in an actual problem instead of a textbook one.

The mountains changed. The habits didn't. That's roughly the honest summary.