About

General Intro

✨ Hi, I’m Surendrabikram Thapa! 👋

I’ve always liked keeping things a little less cluttered. This blog, too, deserves less AI and more of my personal stuff. Here, you’ll learn a little about me, mostly the parts that don’t belong on LinkedIn.

I write about ideas, experiences, and questions that don’t always have clean answers. No optimization, no algorithms. Just words!

If you’re looking for my work, publications, or professional timeline, Google Scholar and LinkedIn have you covered. This space is intentionally less impressive.

Introduction Again?

Hi, I’m Suren.

I was tempted to add a typing animation here, the kind portfolio pages use to cycle through roles and titles. But instead of advertising what I do, I figured I’d introduce who I’ve been called.

I go by many names. Back in Nepal, my friends used to call me Surendra or Surya. Some shortened it to SBT. In India, people started calling me Thapa, going by my last name. In the US, I somehow became Suren. A few people back home even called me by my middle name, Bikram, which might be surprising, since at first glance my name suggests I do not have a middle name. I sort of do, and sort of don’t. That confusion is part of the lore behind my unimpressively long name. If you’re curious about the naming chaos, the last paragraph tells the full story.

So yes, a lot of names, a lot of references, and mildly confusing identity management. You might run into one of my closest friends and say you know Suren, only to be told they have no idea who that is. They probably just never knew that version of me.

Still, however you find it simplest to call me, please do. I will respond.

The lore behind my long name

I have always had a middle name. My actual name is Surendra Bikram Thapa. In Nepali, it is written exactly that way (सुरेन्द्र विक्रम थापा). Clean. Sensible. Symmetrical. And yes, it is literally symmetrical. I will explain that in the last paragraph.

So how did I end up with Surendrabikram as a single, uninterrupted unit?

The origin story begins in Grade 10, during the School Leaving Certificate examination, lovingly referred to in Nepal as the “iron gate to the future.” This was serious business. Forms were filled. Stamps were stamped. And the school principal, or headmaster, or some all-powerful administrative force whose identity remains unknown to this day, played a major role in filling out those forms.

Somewhere in that process, my first and middle names were merged. The form was filled with Surendrabikram as my first name and Thapa as my last name. Since my name in Nepali still clearly had a middle name, I overlooked the English version entirely.

The SLC results came out. I checked my marks. I celebrated. Also, the results did not explicitly label fields like “first name,” “middle name,” or “last name.” It was just… a name. So I went with the flow. I did not notice the missing space.

Then came high school, or +2 as we call it in Nepal. At this stage, you submit documents and trust the administration to handle everything. They noticed that I apparently did not have a middle name anymore and thoughtfully put everything together. Again. I still did not notice. To be fair, who notices a missing space unless it is pointed out explicitly?

I passed high school. Not “graduated,” because back then in Nepal, we did not say that. We simply passed. And then came university applications.

This is when reality hit.

I was filling out the form for my undergraduate degree in India under a tight deadline when I realized something was very wrong. I did not have a middle name. Or did I? What was my first name again? Surendra? Or Surendrabikram? The name no one can pronounce in one breath?

Panic ensued. There were only a few hours left. I noticed it too late. Everyone noticed it too late. Bureaucracy had already won.

I briefly wished I could go back in time and rescue that missing space. But life happened, deadlines crushed me, and I went with it. And that is how a perfectly reasonable name turned into an unimpressively long one. I generally try to motivate people in all matters of life, but if you are not Nepali and are attempting to pronounce Surendrabikram, giving up is encouraged.

Now, about that symmetry.

I grew up in a fairly math-loving household. If you assign A = 1, B = 2, and so on, the sum of Surendra comes out to exactly 100. And if you sum Bikram Thapa the same way, that is another 100. Clean. Sensible. Symmetrical. Just not spaced correctly. Thank you for reading this far!