Laverne Canlas is a geek at first sight. And her dark T-shirt says it all in white witty print: “WHAT ARE YOUR SUPER POWERS? I’M RICH. I’M BATMAN.”
Funny, it was peeking out of a Superman jacket mixed in playful contrast of red, blue and yellow. Zoom in and there are these LEGO trinkets dangling on her checkered shoulder strap bag.
The moment I saw Verne, she was squeezed between a queue of KathNiel fans in the lobby of SMX Convention Center for this year’s AsiaPOP Comicon. It was impossible to miss the signature look of a geek in her.
Verne’s breed of geekiness started in the ’90s. If you remember the time when Power Rangers and Sailor Warriors were like the supreme gods and goddesses—that’s the generation of animé that she was raised in.
As a young girl, Verne confessed she never had a Barbie doll. But talk about animé figures, video games, comics and wall scrolls, her room takes you to a chamber filled with these cool stuff. And above all else—LEGOs!
“My love for LEGOs was inevitable. It started when my dad got me Duplo when I was a toddler,” Verne said. Now at 34, LEGO was the toy she had never outgrown ever since. “It’s not embarrassing for adults to still be collecting LEGOs. Adults are the master builders.”
For Verne, LEGO transforms the characters she adores (ahem, Squall Leonhart) into real, tangible figure. “I want representation of the characters I play in video games, the animé I watch. I would sit at the center of my room, look around, and there I see my collectibles. For me that kind of material representation relieves my stress.”
Being an animé geek is a legacy Verne got from her parents, with a boost from the Marvel comics of her elder brother Errol. Apparently, this otaku went through a comfortable childhood with her dad as a seafarer, and her mom as her companion watching “Hunter X Hunter.”
At about 5 years old, her dad brought home an Atari. Verne recalled playing “Galaxian” with her brother. Then, by the time the Nintendo ES was released, they soon got into “Super Mario,” “The Legend of Zelda” and “Tetris.” They’d even sleep to the illusion of bricks falling behind their eyes.
Those recollections of childhood led Verne to geek up, and that, apparently, became her lifestyle. Yet underneath the layers of fabric irony she’s wearing the day we met, what shocked me was the fact that Verne is actually a doctor, though, she switched careers and chose to become a medical transcriptionist instead. Her reason—passion over profession:
“If I do hospital work, other than being tired, I won’t have the time to attend events like this. At least in my line of work in medical outsourcing, I’m free to go to conventions, which is happy for me.”
Many people would either be shocked or complaining that Verne does not have the looks of a thirtysomething. “They’d say I don’t look my age. It’s because I do what I can to live a stress-free life.”
There are three reasons that kill the geek inside us, said Verne: finance, time and stress—which are all side-effects of—admit it or not—adulthood.
While everything seems rushing and crushing into her life, Verne still remains true to her geekdom.
“We tend to let go of our inner geek because we grow up,” she told Super. “I don’t let go of collecting LEGOs because this is what brings me joy. I keep going to conventions and toy stores. I don’t need to buy items, I just go there to breathe.”
As a LEGO collector, Verne admittedly spends most of her money on toys. She could have sold around P100,000-worth of her collectibles, give or take a few digits, but that does not stop her living in her LEGOLAND.
“I don’t let go [entirely] of my LEGO collection because this is the only remaining thing that brings me happiness. My collection uplifts me, so I keep on going.”
