May 6, 2010

Self-declared nerd

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a true nerd. A cool one, perhaps. After all, I do wash my hair regularly, wear makeup on occasion and get out of the house from time to time to meet up with friends or attend events. But still a nerd.


There is lots of evidence. I LOVE math. Always did. Nothing gets me more excited than solving an equation or writing a proof. I spend hours on my statistical software - and this makes me happier than almost anything else when I'm feeling down. I program my own models. And I can even read papers in Econometrics (the journal) and understand them.


I have a photographic memory. Usually when I see things written down, they stay in my head, although I will admit this gets harder as I get older. I am meticulous about everything: analysis of data and interpretation, but also the writing process itself. 


On facebook, I draw network maps of my friendships. I ordered a genographic kit from National Geographic (which prompted a "nerd" comment on my fb status). 


For pleasure, I read almost exclusively in the sci-fi and fantasy genre, although I will stretch to vampirism when running out of options. Or, I buy and read things like a pictorial history of Canada, as I'm doing now.


All of these point to nerdiness. And worse than that, I'm even more of a closet nerd than my friends suspect: I love playing video games. In particular, I have an arguably unhealthy obsession with Final Fantasy. Some nerdy friends of mine who were studying to be medical doctors got me into this, years ago. 


Needless to say, the moment I heard about the release of Final Fantasy XIII (which in the past I would have tracked incessantly online, but now that I'm too busy at work, the release date slipped by without my knowledge), I HAD to have it.


We bumped across a special bundle deal in Singapore: a PS3 with the game. Beautifully designed, all in white. Special edition, all-region playable, lah-dee-lah, etc. Of course, they were out. Probably a good thing since I hardly care to explain to customs why I'm bringing in a PS3 console all the way from Asia.


The moment I hit terra firma in Canada, I began to search for the bundled package here. Only to find out, to my great disappointment, that XBOX 360 snagged the only bundling package in North America. Short of importing the PS3 from Japan, I would have to get a different kind of console. Now, I realize they're all more or less the same, but there are switching costs - I do have some other PS2 games that I might wish to play at some point.


Long story short, I decided to get an XBOX bundle. The only problem was ... Montreal seemed to be sold out. Completely! Some "guy" had gone round to all the electronics stores, and bought up all their stock (and the stores let him). Highly ennuyeux. And I expressed my disappointment to all the store managers. After all, that guy is probably just going to make a profit on Ebay - they should limit the number of bundles sold, just like Apple do with their iPads.


In any case, the entire thing became sort of ridiculous with me driving all around Montreal from store to store until I finally hit on one that still had two in stock. I felt sort of foolish. After all, I'm nearly 37 years old, and here I am, taking time "off" from work to find a frigging XBOX.


But I got it. And I set it up, all by myself. And even managed to find the right TV channel for it. Didn't bother doing the online thing with it, since I don't care. I just played the game for about an hour or so this morning. I'm limiting myself at the moment since I have a conference to prepare for next week. But it'll be a nice distraction for me over the summer when the office is quieter and hubby spends all his time doing photos on his laptop. 


Woo hoo.

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