Christmas Eve，2013-12-24

【Aiden in English】

        Question number one! I was with my team Team Trivia which consisted of eight people in total including me, the two brothers, Alex and Nick, the brothers' dad, and 4 other adults.

        This was how trivia worked. There were 20 questions that the cruise director, Willie, would give slowly one by one. Each person had a piece of scrap paper and a pen. When you thought you had got an answer, you wrote it down on your scrap paper. The person who had the best answer on the team wrote it down on the team's answer sheet. Apparently, questions always sounded difficult if you did not know how to answer. For example, "Which Greek inventor created wings made of wax melt when it flies too close to the sun?" (Icarus), "What is the common name for baby kangaroos, baby koala, and baby wallaby?" (Joey).

        "What is the original language of Brazil"? It was obviously Portuguese. We settled down and waited for the next question.

        After we got our final score, I was astonished to see that we had 18 out of 20. One of two wrongs was "How many time zones are there on Earth?" and the answer we had was 24. But the correct one was 27. The other wrong was "What relationship does Chitty Chitty Bang Bang have with James Bond?". Our answer was that both movies used the same car. However, the correct answer was almost too obvious. The two were written by Ian Fleming.

        We came out in second place and felt extremely surprised. However, most of the time we found ourselves in the last place.

        Team Trivia was not for an individual but for everyone on the team. Each person had his/her own role that no one else had. Everybody worked together and gave their best effort. In addition, Trivia brought out a piece of knowledge and that piece of knowledge came from our daily life.

【红霞译文】

        第一个问题﹗我正同队友们一起参加百科知识竞赛。我们这个队由八人组成﹕本人、亚历克斯和尼克俩兄弟、亚历克斯和尼克的爸爸还有其他四位。

        百科知识竞赛通常需要回答廿道题目，游轮总监威利慢条斯理地提问，参赛者每人手握纸笔，随听随写，先提交各自答案供大家讨论，然后从中选出最好答案代表全队参赛。难者不会，会者不难，百科知识竞赛尤其如此，譬如﹕“哪位希腊发明家使用过由遇热融化的蜡黏制而成的羽翼﹖”答案是伊卡鲁斯﹔“小袋鼠、小树袋熊以及沙袋鼠共有的名称是什么﹖”答案是乔伊。

        “巴西母语是什么﹖”这个问题很简单，我们写好答案，等待下一个问题。

        总分公布之后，我们出乎意料地答对了20道问题中的18个。两道答错的题目之一﹕“全世界一共有多少时区”﹖我们认为24，正确答案是27。之二﹕“飞天万能车与詹姆斯邦德之间有何关系”﹖我们猜成他们开的车一样，正确答案是他俩均为作家伊恩‧弗莱明笔下人物。

        这次我们得了第二名，大家喜出望外，因为以往我们常常答非所问，所以一直榜上无名。

        团队百科知识竞赛考量的不是个人实力而是集体合作，每个人都要尽职尽责，努力贡献自己的聪明才智。竞赛荟萃了方方面面的背景知识，而这些背景知识取决于我们平常每一天文化积累。

Christmas Eve in History(历史上的平安夜):

2012: Puerto Montt the City of Roses, Chile(智利蒙特港—玫瑰之城)

2009: 新西兰首都惠灵顿(Capital Wellington, NZ)

Dart Throwing (投飞镖 12-24-2013)

Christmas Eve Celebration (平安夜庆典 12-24-2013)

Nautica Opceania (“大洋·航海”号游轮)

Crosslink(相关博文):

Across the Indian Ocean(穿越印度洋)