I actually first came across you on the Internet for the cool stuff you did reverse engineering the Obsidian sync engine! (On that note, I remember the CEO's response was praised for being measured/reasonable, but if I'm not wrong they subsequently broke it.)

> As a child, I was always told by everyone around me, family, friends, teachers that going to the US or UK should be my dream. Those that manage to go either via scholarship or wealth are described as geniuses and assumed to be smarter than the rest of us.

On this particular point, similar phenomenon here in Singapore and I studied overseas and came to a similar realization as you. But one irony is it's not something you can credibly say/know without actually having done it.

Now that you're there, my advice is to make the most of it and aggressively filter for people with similar interests as you and accept that you probably won't assimilate in with the mainstream and that's OK!