Today after I had lunch/dinner with the family in the most amazing Persian restaurant*, a cousin called me and tricked me to go to Edgware Road in London (An Arab “colony”, for those never been here). He knew that I’ve never been there and he knew that I would never want to go there so he just told me the directions and I found myself there (being all new to London). Ok, I admit, there’s nothing to be ashamed of but I try to avoid my people here for reasons I’d rather keep for myself. Anyway, that doesn’t even relate to my subject, what I want to say is. He assured me why I should stick with my alias, geek in practice that is.
I know how geeky/nerdy I am, but I never looked eye-to-eye to people who call me a geek or a nerd. Let me explain a bit, when I’m in Saudi there are few people who I can debate with in few occasions. Mostly, it’s just chitchat and sport talk (read football, soccer for Americans). Hence, I usually keep my debatable thoughts for myself most of the time which leads us to my point, that is, how on earth do you know I’m a geek or not? However, when my cousin and I were talking we were exclusively debating about everything from society to finance to politics to engineering (of course to our extends of knowledge). We agreed on many things but I played a devil’s advocate just to enjoy discussion (I think he did as well, sometimes). I felt at the end of our evening that I am, actually, a geek in practice.
While I am pouring my thoughts into my keyboard, let me say something about us Saudis. We like to argue and we think arguing is debating but we lack the basics of any debate. We don’t see that arguing hurts others while a healthy debate enriches thought and diversifies minds. And at the end of the day, most of us believe that “debating” is unhealthy for our bodies, minds and souls and try to avoid it and consider some sort of “taboo”. Wait what? you read it right,we love to argue but try to avoid it most of the time but when we do engage ourselves in arguments we don’t respect our arguers. And that is exactly why sometimes I doubt my potential as a geek!
(*) Alounak, That’s for you Hish 
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