I suppose it was a little over three years ago that my friend Jeff Dunlap moved back from Chicago to the Detroit area. When we (our college roommate, Jonathan, and I) asked him what he'd like to do when he came in, he answered simply, "Pub trivia."
I haven't been the same since.
The time was ripe. Over the months previous Andrea and I had wandered into a few places (thanks to Groupon) where we happened upon a trivia night while at my day job (I was at DTE Energy at the time), one of my co-workers shared his pub trivia exploits. I even tracked down a few places in Detroit to play a round with two of my favorite DTE co-workers.
I had played a little "Quiz Bowl" in college with Jeff, Jonathan, and a few other housemates. We named our team after Matt Lieberman. We called it "FOJWPP" (pronounced "Fodge-Whip") which, of course, stands for "Friends of Jewish Water Polo Players." We didn't fare too well, having our asses handed to us by a team called "Lamer than Last Year."
I don't remember if Jeff, Jonathan, Andrea and I won our first pub trivia game as a team but once we had a taste, we were game for more.
Or maybe it was just me.
I finally found something that I was halfway decent at.
Jeff was always good for finding the answer to something crazily obscure. Jonathan and Andrea could always provide good scientific answers (they both have biology and anatomy in their backgrounds) while Andrea is also terrific at brands and cooking (not to play into stereotypes). Meanwhile, I just know a lot of stupid shit that has never served any purpose before.
We found a game night that worked with Andrea's bowling schedule for the Fall and Spring and fell into a routine. It was a something of a big deal for me when I cleared out my calendar for every Tuesday night (no podcasting allowed) and committed to my first real team event that I'd ever been in. I take that back. I'd been on a bowling league before. This was the first team event where I could actually make a difference and not be a burden.
I know I went overboard with my newfound love. I became the jerk who would immediately write down the answer if I knew it and would often forget to even show the rest of my team what I'd written before I marched the answer slip up to the host. And, worse, I would second-guess my teammates, especially if they just had more of a gut feeling and didn't say, "I know this." Yet, I was fine going with my gut (which was often wrong).
Is it any wonder why things fell apart after two years of me being a bully?
I wanted to feel wanted and when it came to the second time we were in the regional finals, I felt like my teammates were being a little wishy-washy about who was going to attend. We could only have four people out of our usual seven or eight (Jonathan and Jeff's spouses joined the game as well as a friends of Jeff's and Jonathan's). I "gracefully" demurred to be part of the four that went to regionals in an effort to be fair. Yet, I was secretly hoping that this offer would be refused: "Oh, no, Mike. You need to be there, you're so great!" When that didn't come, I seethed. Then I became apoplectic. It was all part of my horrible passive-aggressive personality.
I wasn't graceful when I texted the group the day before the contest that I should be there and basically gave an ultimatum. Not cool, man. Not cool.
This posting was supposed to be about me looking for pub trivia here in Shanghai but, instead, it's turned into another round of facing my personality defects. Not cool, man. Not cool. Too much damned self-reflection and navel-gazing. That's not entertainment.
Suffice it to say, the Tuesday Night Trivia fell apart after that. Plus, there had been some dissent about the time and night that we would play. I admit, too, that the menu at our venue had become a little stale after two years.
I removed Trivia from my calendar and started scheduling interviews for Tuesday nights.
Before I left for China, one of my old trivia teammates sent me a link to an article about "Pub Quiz" places in Shanghai. It hadn't dawned on me in the slightest that this would be a something to even consider over here but then it seemed completely natural. A bunch of ex-pats getting together in a bar, drinking, and reminiscing via trivia? Yeah, that sounded about right.
I started looking at the places in the article -- most of the venues had closed or stopped doing trivia nights. I also wanted something local to my apartment so I wasn't taking the Metro an hour and a half across the Huangpu.
After posting on a Shanghai Ex-pat group on Facebook, I finally found a location just a few kilometers away from my place that does Monday night Pub Quiz, The White Horse. And, if you're gonna ride, ride the white pony.
I went there last week where a group of Canadians was supposed to adopt me. Alas, it was Canadian Thanksgiving so they weren't around. Fortunately, a nice chap named Lance came over (from the "Damned Yankees" team) and we teamed up. Between Lance's knowledge and some blind luck, we managed to win handily. I earned a free drink voucher and got to pick the following week's theme (Sci-Fi).
One of the strangest things about going to Pub Quiz last week was being in a place where almost everyone spoke English as their primary language.
This trip is definitely making me more empathetic to people who can't speak the language of a place (like me). There's this attitude in the U.S. of "If they come to the country, they better take the time to learn the damn language. English, motherfucker, do you speak it?!?"
Yes, I'll work to learn Mandarin but I can get around most of the time without it. Likewise, I'm sure a lot of U.S. immigrants would think or say the same thing. And, don't I know that English is an incredibly difficult language to use. Even just trying to find translations for English words and phrases in Mandarin lead me down rabbit holes of, "Oh, wait, that can be a homonym for this other word..." Just today I was thinking of how I'd ask for a receipt for something. Receipt is both a noun for the piece of paper and a the fact that something is being received. It's also a verb for marking a bill as paid. So, should I ask for a bill instead? But a bill usually implies that something hasn't been paid. And, again, one can bill someone or receive a bill.
This morning, too, I was trying to remember the word to tell the barista at Starbucks that my coffee was "to go." Or, in British vernacular, "take away". Just think about how many variations of those phrases you can think of. Are you talking about verbs or adjectives here?
BTW, you'd most likely want shōu jù (receipt) and dǎbāo (to go).
I'm off to The White Horse for that Sci-Fi trivia. #LLAP
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