Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Winning the night

Not to generalize but what sports bars are to Americans, pubs and particularly quiz night pubs seem to be a British/Irish animal. With very few real pubs in this town, the only place to head out for a night of pub food, beer, and social gathering around trivia is Murphy's, along Rufino St., Legaspi Village.

The first time I attended one of the quiz night events (Tuesday's from 8 pm onwards) our team composed of two Americans and two Filipinos, didn't do too badly. We seemed to have hit our stride with Irish films and actors (go DDL!), but lost it when it came to Irish sports and politics. We patted ourselves on the back for making it as far as we did, had some sticky toffee pudding and promised to do it again.

Unfortunately, the two Americans had to move on to another post, but last night, with the encouragement of another set of expat friends, I joined a team that was diverse in all manner of speaking - race, age, experience with quiz nights. We had folks who were strong in general information, literature, sports, and surprisingly science (we were all taken aback by how well we did in the latter topic). It worked out to our advantage that we maintained a steady score for most of the topics, and only faltered in one area - geography (ports in Finland? mountain passes in Eurasia?? gah!). At the end of a nail-biting evening, two teams breathing down our necks, we scraped by with a win! The lemon-pledgy shooters notwithstanding, we enjoyed working together to get over 80 answers right. B+ for us, and a free roast lunch one of these Sundays.

5 comments:

Katrina said...

Kudos!!! You had a great mix of people in your team, so there was someone to bat for most topics.

They give lemon shooters to the winners now, not a bottle of wine?

Did you get to have your sticky toffee pudding? ;-)

While you were at Murphy's, I was at Sala Bistro. There were 7 of us and most of our main courses were average (the Angus steak, which was NOT cheap, was disappointing daw -- the guy didn't even finish it), especially given the price. The cocktails (YUMMY Ginger Maple Martini!) and desserts were good, though.

ChichaJo said...

Congratulations!!! :) I have yet to attend quiz night...I'm too chicken!

Watergirl said...

Katrina, the winners win a roast lunch, the second place winners win a bottle of wine, and the third place winners get to make up questions for the following week. We didn't get a bottle of wine when we were declared the winners, but there was another round of shooters (our third since we had won two sections too). I passed on the shooters after the first round. But I did order sticky toffee pudding!!

Joey, it's not that traumatic! And even if you don't get the answer right, hey the last place folks always win a round of something to drink! So that's something to aim for :)

torn said...

Ha! I knew you couldn’t resist (nor could I). I felt like I was in some corny Hollywood movie where once, just once, the little guy comes through on the rails to win. In recounting our famous victory I think you forgot one thing: 9/10 on “the human body”, a striking indication of the number of hypochondriacs on our team! Still savoring the moment …

Watergirl said...

Lol, I forgot about our Human Body rating. heehee, or we're just humanistic in that way. Go go Flakes!

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