Quiz Night

Not much of note really going on around here these days, thus the lack of posts.

Saturday I went into the city and muddled around in the Victoria and Albert museum. It was a cool place, once again, free, and had some cool stuff, but it was hard to really get into it. It is literally just a museum of stuff. I couldn't find any particular theme holding it all together, and thus it was all just nifty peculiarities to look at. I think if I had been there with some good friends it would have been different, being able to point out cool things and joke about some of the weird stuff, but alone it was just a curious place.

From there I went to Harrod's, because I've heard several times from people at home that I just had to go to Harrods. Best way to describe Harrod's? Hell. It is a big, very poorly laid out, incredibly expensive mall. I was trying to meet my friends there, and it was just utter chaos; you couldn't find anything. Apparently there were maps, but I didn't pick one up somehow, so I was left wandering through bizarrely themed rooms and a lot of women's clothing. I was trying to meet three girls, and when I found them even they didn't want to stay. We left very shortly after.

Fast forward. Sunday night a group of five of us were planning on doing the quiz night at one of the bars on campus called the Stumble Inn. The student union's monthly schedule shows that they have it every Sunday night... but of course it doesn't say what time. Because, after all, isn't "Sunday" specific enough? So my friend Leah tried looking online. Nothing. She tried going to the Stumble Inn. It was mysteriously closed. She eventually found out that it was supposed to open at five on Sunday night, and asked me to go check when trivia was, since she choir practice. So at five I went suited up to go out in the rain walked on over. The Stumble Inn is entirely empty when I get there. And the lights are off. And the two pathways leading to the door... roped off. I took the hint and went back to my room. As has become the patter in England, I went to get a simple question answered and returned not only without the answer, but more frustrated and confused than before.

I spoke with Leah when she got out of her practice and she went over to the other student union bar, Medicine, which is literally located up the stairs from the Stumble Inn, and asked about the Stumble Inn's trivia night. She was told 8:45, and she told everyone else. So we all show up at 8:35, to be sure we get a spot. Of course, the bar is empty, except for the bartender (it was actually the guy that had talked to Leah at Medicine, but he had come downstairs to the Stumble Inn), and two people playing pool. So we sit down and wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. A couple more people trickle in, but it doesn't seem like trivia is going to happen. At about 9:45, just as we're about to give up, a huge mass of people storm in, techno music starts blaring and they announce trivia is starting. Why techno? I have no idea.

The next couple hours were spent trying to decipher the drunken words of the caller, who intermittently broke into uncontrollable laughs while asking the questions, making them entirely incomprehensible, and on several occasions answered his cell phone while calling. All the while, our ears were accosted by the unnecessarily loud beats one might expect at a rave, not a pub trivia night. My favorite question: "ThrUN, America 2, Australia 3?" A close second: "(hahahahahahaha)y bugh(hahahaha)? Oh, and because the night ended in a tie for first, it was settled in a dance off. Halftime was musical chairs, and everyone cheated.

We wound up having a good time ripping on the Inn for how incredibly bad their quiz night was, and making fun of the incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo emanating from our rude and drunken caller, but we are not headed back anytime soon. We're going to try quiz night at the Crown, a real pub (not a student union bar) in Egham this Sunday.

Stay tuned for what happens this weekend. I'm headed to Cardiff to visit my friend Jenn (from Colgate). I'm excited to get back to traveling!