Napoleon Dynamite: Story of My Life

Someone told me I should loosen up and stop being the nerdiest, most boring person ever.

Let's see. Every day, at 6.05pm without fail, I'll be in front of my TV to watch Questions Pour Un Champion, a French general knowledge quiz show akin to the American Jeopardy. I even registered myself on their website to be a contestant. Earlier this year, the production came to my town and invited me to participate in the preliminary test comprising of 50 very difficult, random general knowledge questions encompassing themes from science, mathematics, mythology, art, literature, cinema, gastronomy, music, history and everything in between. I got 13 answers right, but I needed at least 20 to qualify for the second round. And I was the only person in the room who knew the answer to "What is the name of an energy center in tantra?", the answer being "chakra". I was quite disappointed for not making the next round, but I was still quite proud of myself for being one of the youngest participants that day and the only non-French in the room.

I spend my days reading books or surfing the net just reading trivial stuff. My favourite Internet-related pastime is clicking on a random Wiki page and just keep on clicking on subsequent interesting links I see on each page, just reading away. Since I was young, I love committing silly little facts to memory for no reason.

As much as I say I hate computer-related stuff, I can get very easily engrossed in computer programming. I remember spending 3 straight days of April in front of my PC building a math program using C language. To do this, I had to construct algorithms from scratch and by the end, I had almost 15 pages of algorithms consisting of mathematical equations transformed into loops. Programming is all about the maths. I told everyone it was hell, but actually I secretly enjoyed it because after all the debugging was done, I had a beautiful, flawlessly functioning program that allows people to solve complicated matrix problems like a boss. And as much as I hate computer-related stuff, I managed to repair my old computer quite a number of times on my own, and it worked great for 5 years.

I like watching old movies, all the way back to the silent era. I have a huge collection of them, and my friends used to call my external hard disk "the hard disk of death" because according to them, just browsing through the list of films I had made them want to hang themselves. I organize my movie collection based on the genre, then the year of release, and then the director. In two weeks, I'll be attending a Stanley Kubrick retrospective held by a small movie theatre in my town.

I love museums. I can spend hours just looking at one painting. I studied about art movements. I read extensively on impressionism. I love Claude Monet, and one of my biggest dreams is to go to the MoMA in New York.

I love philosophy and can talk for hours about Jean Paul Sartre.

Most of all, I'm finishing my master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, and I'm fascinated by fluid mechanics.


So in short, yes, I am the most boring, nerdiest person in the world, and I'm actually proud of it. What's wrong with being a nerd anyway? A couple of years ago I tried to be one of the cool guys, but I felt like I fell short.

Being cool is awesome. Everyone adores you and wants to be like you, but at the end of the day all that pretense wears you down and all you want to do is just be yourself and do the things you really like no matter what people say.

Since I was a little boy I've never been one of the cool kids. Even in my family I've always stood out as the nerdy bespectacled boy (I'm the only one of my siblings to wear glasses). So I don't see why I should start caring about being the cool kid now. If being a nerd means being ambitious, having goals and a passion in life, then please God let me be the biggest nerd out there.

So to all the nerds out there, don't let the cool people bring you down. Do what makes you the happiest. If people slag you off for being a nerd, just remember that Jim Parson, the actor from The Big Bang Theory, is one of the highest paid actors on TV right now for playing Sheldon Cooper, the most humongous nerd of all time. So who's cool now, eh?