A Shuffle of Nerds

I've never seen as many Nerds in the one place as I have at the Googleplex in Silicon Valley. There are more Nerds here than there are in Kaffi Vin on a weeknight in Reykjavik, I swear to God. Whole shuffles* of them, all keeping the world wide web in check so the likes of you and me can get on with our blonks.

I like Nerds. I think I may have been one myself in school, despite never being particularly good at science or maths, or any of the other things that Nerds are good at. But I was never any good at kissing boys either, or colour-coordinating my outfits, so I seemed to qualify by default.

Everything at Google is blue, green, yellow, and red. The sofas, the bean bags, the lava lamps, everything. I sit waiting for Bjarni to finish work so we can head up to San Fransisco for the evening, aimlessly Googling random stuff and emailing Alanis to check whether that's ironic or not.

In the lobby there's a real-time projection of all the (clean) searches that are being made across the globe right now. I stand and stare up at it, eagerly waiting for my own name to scroll by, until my neck begins to ache and I give up. The best search I see simply asks why? which I immediately search for too, but don't find any particularly conclusive answers to.

I make Bjarni take me to see the Blogger people, but I just peek at them through their window, resisting the temptation to waltz in and introduce myself, California style. I'm not allowed to disturb Googlers while they're working, apparently. Even though by the looks of it they're just sitting there on the internet like every other office worker in the world.

*Shuffle: the collective noun for Nerds.