Hurdles Mine

Dear Sugarplum, everyone else is sick but me. I'm in isolation now, but I'm not in panic. I am at peace. It is almost like a quiet river is flowing in me. Day 1 "You should quarantine yourself, we have been infected with COVID19 again." "Again? when was the first time?" I replied, laughing, and went along with my day. I made breakfast, read for a few hours, watched television for some more and used my phone till the battery died and I had to put it on charge. Yesterday was a little slow, but nothing unusual, not a warning, not a sign. I saw the missed call and when I call back X's tone was off. "Why are you at the hospital?" I asked but the Whatsapp call got interrupted so I had the unwanted honour of seeing it in writing; a text message that reminded me of the morning conversation. "...Therefore I will not fear, thought the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea". I had posted this on...

Sugarplum, I'm up against the Indians. I make a lot of noise in my tech community for someone who has never successfully participated in GSOC or Outreachy before. All that talk about opensource and community development but deep down in my heart of hearts eh, I'm scared of the Indians. A small introduction: Sometime in August 2017 during the second semester holidays of my first year in the university, I attended a women techmaker meetup led by our tech lead, Amanda. Derick, Courage and Perside were there too. They told us about outreachy and open source and why its a good thing to apply and lots of other stuff. Speaker after speaker emphasized that the skills learnt during the 3months we will spend contributing, are second to none. They said that the communities are friendly, the contributors are friendly, they themselves are here to guide us when we need help and feel totally lost. Dear sugarplum, at that event, we went as far as opening the outreachy website and looking ...

During the time I spent working as the only female in a construction site, it got to me how much I had to adjust to fit in. It did not happen automatically for me as seemed the case with my male counterparts.  I believed that although the changes I underwent seemed trivial, they contributed greatly in making me feel at home in the electrical engineering world. I took note of every hurdle, for your reading pleasure. I hope you find this helpful if you are a little girl trying to fit into an engineering suit. 1.         You cannot be picky.  I had been picky since birth. I was very selective about what I ate, what I wore and wouldn’t wear,  and I especially did not like to have dirt on my hands. This all changed on the first day I stepped into the construction site(or 'chantier' as it is referred to in my locality). The electrical connections were being done simultaneously with the bricklaying so I was almost always around du...