Trivia Night

Last week we held the final Trivia Night of the year: MEGA TRIVIA. It was the end of the year grand championship where teams of students, faculty and staff had to answer the 100 questions on 100 topics that I had written over the past few weeks.

It was the fourth Trivia Night of the year. I can remember the first one I conducted last August with my two phenomenally extraordinary colleagues (J Soms and S) who helped me make the questions and run the entire show. Back then our Central Asian students could hardly comprehend the joys of nights of trivia. Now, though, students and staff alike relish the competition over obscure facts and miscellany.

How could a boy five years of age, that eccentric little child I was, enjoy trivia even at that age? I remember sitting and watching the American trivia game show Jeopardy with my mother as she ironed clothes. It was the original TV version of the game hosted by Art Fleming. What causes people to develop such peculiar fascinations? This fascination has endured, not dulled by time or circumstance.

In high school, I competed on a local TV show with my high school Knowledge Team (trivia wrapped up in an academic package). It was High School Bowl, aired every week on KHQ TV in Spokane. We lost to arch rivals Central Valley High School. It was a bitter pill for a competitive teenager like me, but I carried on undaunted.

Finally, several years ago, I reached the pinnacle of trivia. My 20-year quest to make it onto the current version of Jeopardy finally was realized. As was the case with High School Bowl, I lost again, this time in front of a national audience of millions. But for me the simple act of competing on Jeopardy, under the pompous countenance of Alex Trebek, was the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail: to be one of the 350 people to make it on the show of the 750,000 who try each year was ample compensation and is the biggest bucket list check-off a Trivia Maniac like me can ever have in one's lifetime.

And so MEGA TRIVIA was conducted last week. It was a particularly amazing competition in that J Soms, The Barista, and Lordian were playing via Skype from Bishkek too. The Dean's team won, but we won't say that they were aided by a ringer, a young campus visitor armed with a brainful of trivia that would have proven formidable in any competition.

Another of year of Trivia Nights has concluded. I particularly enjoyed these nights because Dean and teacher and staff and student and Kyrgyz and Pakistani and Tajik and man and woman could all work together at one table trying to achieve a common goal, every person able to add a piece of their random knowledge to the mix. I wonder if it will become a tradition at our campuses in future years. Who knows? I am just contented that, at least for one year, I could share one of my deeply-held passions with people I've come to love.