Beware of geeks asking questions in bars

In the Ben Elton’s musical tribute to Queen, “We Will Rock You”, there is a scene in which the female protagonist says to our hero, “You are such a geek.”

She says it in a despairing yet affectionate tone, as in, “you’re such a geek but gee, you’re cute” kind of way.

What is a geek? This is a very serious question I have been pondering, in between wondering how I will ever survive without rice?

This is unthinkable to me and billions of Asians who have rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’d be like saying, no potatoes forever to people from Idaho.

Anyway, according to the most trusted source on the planet today, Wikipedia, a geek is “a slang term, noting individuals as “a peculiar or otherwise odd person, especially one who is perceived to be overly intellectual”.”

It adds, “Formerly, the term referred to a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken, bat, snake or bugs.”

Not knowing many people who have bitten off heads off animals, I’ve tended to associate geeks with nerds or dorks who prefer the company of computers to humans.

Being a “deek” – a dog owner who prefers the company of dogs to humans myself, I have great empathy with geeks. I see them as somehow brilliant, often misunderstood, always socially inept individuals.

Einstein was probably the original geek.

Anyway, there is now a growing movement to broaden the definition of “geek” to encompass anyone who is so passionate about one thing to the exclusion of everything else.

I met such a proponent recently. Christopher Lee is the founder of Geek Terminal in Singapore, which calls itself “the world’s first technology lifestyle F&B establishment”.

He named it Geek “because these days, anyone who is passionate about anything can be termed a geek. For instance, you could call me a business geek since this is my fourth business start-up.”

What this serial entrepreneur has done is collapse the walls between Internet cafe, business centre, restaurant, meeting room and retail – it’s a place where you can have a cup of coffee with friends, surf the net, hold product launches or company meetings and check out the latest gadgets on offer from Geek Terminal’s 30 partners.

Christopher says it was frustration that led him to set up Geek Terminal – the lack of a one-stop place where he could work all day, comfortably and quietly, when on his business trips.

“I realised that’s what business travellers need – a place outside the hotel, to work from, to meet people, to have presentations.

Companies also need a meeting space that’s not within a hotel – with rentals as high as they are in Singapore, most companies can’t afford the meeting space anymore.”
I spent half a day at Geek Terminal, which is at Raffles Place, and

I must say it felt cosy and comfortable. Staff leave you alone, you have lots of space to work, there are plenty of power points to feed all your gadgets and you get a pretty decent value meal.

Plus, it wasn’t as noisy as some of the coffee places …

And you know what, it felt good to be with other geeks, even for half a day.

With my new-found empathy for geeks, I then found myself in a bar in Bangkok in the company of three whom-I-would-call “the real geeks”.
All three work for an online start-up and all are techies. I was determined to show them life beyond the green screen, and so I took them to a bar.

As is the case in most bars in Bangkok, there were more girls waiting to serve customers than there will ever be customers.

My techie friends, all of whom were on their first trip to Bangkok, loved the place. I knew though I was in trouble when one of them, referring to the girls, asked me, “So what’s the business model for this bar?”

He is what I would call terminally geeky.

Catch Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at the Transit Cafe – www.thetransitcafe.com

By: Yeoh Siew Hoon