Geekness Confirmed! Woo!

Pure Geek 43 % Nerd, 52% Geek, 47% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Geek, earning you the title of: Pure Geek. It's not that you're a school junkie, like the nerd, and you don't really stand out in a crowd, like the dork, you just have some interests that aren't quite mainstream. Perhaps it's anime, perhaps it's computers, perhaps it's bottlecaps, perhaps it's all of those and more. Your interests take you to events and gatherings that are filled with people you find unusual and beyond-the-pale, but you don't quite consider yourself "of that crowd." Instead, you consider yourself to be fairly normal. Which, you are.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on nerdiness You scored higher than 99% on geekosity You scored higher than 99% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Insane, y'know, in that camera-friendly way

I don't know what this means, or even if it's meant to mean anything, but damn if it didn't crack me up -

PSA: Followup

Now Playing: Chantal Kreviazuk – All I can do (is love you to pieces)

As an addendum to my previous post, I'd like to note that the concept of the Nice Indian Boy/Girl (hitherto to be referred to as NIB/G) is one that could only really take root in a diaspora setting. If you live in India, you're surrounded by 1 billion other Indians, so what's the point of describing the apple of your eye as a NIB/G? A Nice Indian Boy or Girl as opposed to what? The other 1 billion Indians in the country? In India, I'd think the NIB/G would be much more regionalized – a Nice Malayalee Boy/Girl, for example – because people there are more part of their own regional communities than the national one. Whereas with Indian people living abroad, the numbers of these regional communities are small enough that now they identify more with the national identity than the regional one. At this level, the Nice Malayalee Boy/Girl has no meaning, so the term's replaced by the NIB/G that we've all heard way too much about. Of course, with increased immigration, certain communities grow big enough that the national affiliation is dispensed with, to be replaced with regional ones again.

In commenting to that post, both Cale and Salil made points that I think merit discussion, so here we are.

From Cale:

“Nice Indian Boy though - hmm well, truly, properly, there're none of course, but the intensely fucked-up ones aren't so much in the country as tens of thousands of miles out of it. They're either born there and face "identity issues" or are immigrants that're disillusioned by the evils and loose morals of the filthy putrid icky West.

But here, they're either all dangerous-like a la Delhi Jats ... ”

Here I'd have to disagree. I'd I don't believe there's any difference in the level of fucked-up-ness between Indians at home or abroad. To me, a Manu Sharma is just as frightening as a Kimveer Gill, because the level of entitlement that makes you feel you can shoot a waitress for not giving you a drink and then get away with it borders on the psychotic. Different things mess you up – overindulgent parents, chemical imbalances – but the end result is equally scary.

Now Salil:

But it's not just Indians - plenty of others people immediately exempt their own kind from so many common issues. Indians, Aussies, Poms, etc - we're all human; ergo, fucked up in some way or another.

[As for Kimveer Gill, that incident asks the same question about another false stereotype. Remember how Moore's Bowling for Columbine started giving people the impression that Canada was some sort of lovely, gun-free utopia while madmen roamed the USA with .45s? Seems like quite a few people bought into that. *So* many people were shocked by the Montreal shootings. "In Canada? But isn't it so quiet and gun-free there?"]

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that all groups exempt themselves from common issues, because it seems to me that the development of the Nice Italian Boy (cf Mambo Italiano) or the Nice Greek Girl (cf My Big Fat Greek Wedding) or any other Nice Young Thing is the product of being part of a minority group in a larger community - and that it's only the Nice Young Minority Person who is somehow considered, by members of his/her own community, to be above the vices or peccadilloes or issues of the society outside. (Holy Run On Sentences, Batman!)

And yes, Canada is not some crime-free Utopia - last summer was actually dubbed the Summer of the Gun by the Canadian press because of the sudden increase in gun-related crime. Mind you, apart from a few neighbourhoods I'd consider Toronto completely safe - but I think we Torontonians have had to give up our illusions of living in a pristine gun-less environment. I guess it needed something as violent and jarring as the Dawson College Shooting for the stereotype to finally shatter south of the border as well.

More feedback is totally welcome.

PSA: Brown people are messed up too

Now Playing: Omkara - Naina

So, it turns out that the guy who walked into Montreal’s Dawson College and opened fire, killing one person and wounding 19 others, was Indian. You can bet that across the country, Indian aunties are saying, “Can you imagine? A nice Indian boy doing something like that!”

It’s not as though Indians are exempt from social phenomena present in the populace – how could we be, really – but a lot of us still prefer to think that we are somehow different. It’s as though certain things – infidelity, divorce, homosexuality, addiction, mental illness, murder – are somehow inherently non-Indian things that really have nothing to do with us.

We’ve all seen that bit in Bend it like Beckham where Parminder Nagra’s friend tells her that he really likes Beckham – and she goggles, sputtering, “But you’re Indian!” She’s entirely supportive of him afterwards, but there’s still that first moment of doubt when she’s all, dude, you can’t be gay, you’re Indian. And we – the Indian members of the audience – are laughing as much at her as we are at ourselves, because we too were staring and thinking, “How can he be gay? He’s a nice Indian boy!”

It’s not just Indians that do this, but South Asians in general. For example, my current family doctor, a Sri Lankan Tamil, whose practice consists mostly of Tamils, asked my mum which hospital she worked at, so she could look into referring people there. Mum obligingly tells her, adding the doctors there mostly do family medicine and addiction medicine. The doctor immediately loses interest, saying, well, our people don’t really do that stuff, do they?

Huh?

Newsflash, people. Us Indians are the same as the rest of the Canadian populace – we’re just as frelled-up, fracked-up, fucked-up – Kimveer Gill being a case in point – and we fall in love regardless of gender and we have things we can’t bring ourselves to stop doing and we see things that aren’t real and we cheat on our spouses and we leave them and you know what?

We’re not special. That nice Indian boy (or girl) doesn’t exist. Quit the illusion, take the red pill and look at reality.

Melancholy in a bottle

Now Playing: Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me)

Tagged by Hem -

I am thinking about...
escape.

I said...
more than I ought to have.

I want to...
write better.

I wish...
I’d grown up the way I thought I would when I was 15.

I miss...
the way I used to be.

I hear...
the rain on windowpanes.

I wonder...
what matters now.

I regret...
quite a lot, unfortunately.

I am...
giving in to my more melodramatic instincts.

I dance...
like I’m trying to get it out of my system.

I sing...
only at Church and karaoke. God gave me this voice, so he can’t complain, and my friends should have known better to take me to a place where microphones and Celine Dion songs are available.

I cry...
quietly.

I am not always...
happy to be laughed at.

I write...
contrivedly.

I confuse...
what people say and what they mean.

I need...
to get out more.

I should try...
exercising my muscles/exorcising my demons.

I finish...
books I’m reading very quickly, but put everything else off. (just like Hem!)

I infect, I mean, I tag eM, Cale, Rishi, Beth & Salanth.