Pub quiz

Today was a banner day.

As is regular on Wednesday nights, there was pub-quiz trivia-night at the Mitre Tavern, the oldest building in Melbourne (according to their website). Our team is called "Sheik Sheik Djibouti".

There are usually about seven or eight teams of four to six people each. There are six rounds of ten questions on topics such as entertainment, history, geography, sport. This week, I remarked that it was amazing that there wasn't a single question about royalty... However, I remembered that there was one question about which European country has had only female monarchs since 1890 (answer here).

There were also questions about which two (1, 2) european countries have flags that are blue and yellow. Actually there's a third.

I'm really lucky when there's questions where we need to name all the US states that border the Pacific Ocean. Or name the three US states that begin with "C". In the next round, the question was to spell Conneticuit. Ok, right the spell checker gets it now, but I was ready to go to my grave sure that it ended with cuit. I was wrong. Maybe that's why my mother (who lives in Hartford) never gets any of the letters I've sent. It's all terribly embarassing. Embarrassing even.

We had to name the five oceans and rank them by size.

The Australian actor that turned down the male lead role in the movie Ghost? This guy. Guess who else turned down the role?

Anyhow, we came in second place at the end! Or rather we were tied for second place. When there's a tie, there's a drink off. In Australia they call it "Skulling", which is something like the American "Chugging". Drink the beer as quick as you can and when it's finished you put the empty glass on your head.

Peta was elected to do the drink off for our team. She had to take down a pint. Her opponent was from england... Strangely enough, he visited last year and went to one pub quiz and had to do the drink off then and then this time it was his second time visit to the country.

It was an absolute dead heat and the room erupted. Many seasoned veterans had never seen a tie before so no one was quite sure what to do. So we had to elect a second person (Debi) from our team to drink a pot (a half pint... a jug is a double pint). Again, it was extremely close but sadly we lost by a hair.

For those of you who wondered where the guys were in all this, I'm not much of a drinker and had no clue what to expect. When I got home, I practiced on a tall glass of water and about two gulps from the bottom I spewed everywhere for what seemed like a half minute. I'm not even sure how long it's going to take to clean all this up.

So there it is, first time in the top 3 (prize was a $30 gift certificate) for team Sheik Sheik!