third place

It's only the second time a gang of us yelled and screamed our way through Elephant & Castle's Thursday night trivia contest but we really outdid ourselves. Not only did we place (3rd overall!) but we also won a bottle of wine!

One of the questions was about a puzzle from China where you arrange 7 pieces to form a geometric shape. I knew right away that the answer was tangrams, even though the clue struck a discordant chord with me. Back in grade school, my third-grade teacher had taught us that tangrams came from Japan, when somebody dropped a square tile in front of the emperor (the square being a fancy emblem for Japan's more popular pastime, origami.)

But now I see that wikipedia corroborates the theory of Chinese origins. Could it be possible that my teacher misinformed us all? My world is crumbling before me... but at least I know that between a group of 10 or so people, we can place third.

image courtesy of google image search

Third place!

Trivia is only on Thursdays but Elephant & Castle on Clay Street is a lovely place to go for happy hour. Can you say $5 snack plates?

no buzzers, just a keyboard

Just took the Jeopardy! online quiz... I think I did better than last year's performance. And hopefully, that's enough to get me on the show, since I obviously didn't get a call from them since last March.

I'm happy that I didn't miss the test today and relieved at how quickly some of the answers came to me... judging by yesterday's program, I thought I'd do worse this year!

get theeself a globe!

After re-watching the latest episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day, I decided it was time to check out this concept of antipodes.

Antipodes are points on the earth that lie precisely opposite to each other... or the ends of a diameter through a sphere. I found this handy dandy antipodes map to help me double-check some facts.

On the show, the team is trying to figure where to go next. They see that a bank of sorts was bombed just days before the Miracle in Buenos Aires. But they learn that a person of interest has just flown into Beijing. Weighing the options, the team is about to go headfirst into Beijing... that is until Rhys, playing with a globe - figures out that Beijing and Buenos Aires are antipodes of each other. After some speculation of what exactly "the Blessing" (cause of the Miracle) could be, the episode ends with the team agreeing to split up and investigate both locations simultaneously.

So first off, huge foreshadowing whenever a team splits up. This means that at least two people (one on each end) have to die, right?

Next, I have to check out this antipodes connection between Beijing and Buenos Aires. Are they really antipodes? If so, they should be sister cities!

Anyways, plugged Beijing (39.91 degrees North, 116.40 East) into the Antipodes Map and found that they are close but not exact antipodes of each other. Beijing's friend on the other side of the world is a spot (39.91 degrees South, 63.60 degrees West) along the border between the provinces of Río Negro and Buenos Aires in Argentina. Can't discern any towns - Viedma is about 100 miles south - but the point lies along Highway 50 and is just 5 miles south of Lago 8 de Agosto.

As is only fair, I entered Buenos Aires (34.61 degrees South, 58.38 degrees East) in the map and found its antipode: a spot in the middle of the East China Sea between China and South Korea! The exact spot is about 125 miles west of the coastal cities of Rizhou and Lianyungang.

Looks like the Torchwood team is only 500 miles off of science but given the scale of the entire world, I think that's commendably close. Good job TV script writers!

By the way, if you know the coordinates of a point, use this map to find out exactly where it is. Very handy.

Hmm... looks like the antipode of San Francisco is in the Southern part of the Indian Ocean, halfway between Madagascar and a little island called Kerguelen. In fact, it looks like all of North America and the Indian Ocean are antipodal regions of each other. The antipodal swathes of Africa and Europe fit in the Pacific while Australia's antipode is swallowed by Northern Atlantic. Looks like the chances of reaching land on the other side is slim unless you're in South America or a sliver of land along East and Southeast Asia.

Don't forget! The season finale of Torchwood - possibly the series - is this Friday evening on Starz!

from starz.com

school is in session

For some reason, the SFUSD and surrounding school districts and programs like to begin the Fall semester in mid-August. My school year has always cut short my summer , even if that summer is full of gray fog obscuring your neighbors across the street. Oddjob started middle school this Monday and I renewed my taste for CCSF last night.

It feels like everyone else starts school after Labor Day. But I'm probably just thinking of those TV shows and movies where the streets are lined with maple trees and kids actually take a school bus to school.

For the first time in five years I'm back in a legitimate classroom. In Feature Writing, I'll be learning how to properly create, research and interview for, polish, and publish a feature story. Hopefully my blog will get better along the way, too.

the more you know...

Watching another special on the History Channel, this time on the Dark Ages... can't find the show on the site but it's called The Dark Ages.

History International is pretty comprehensive without getting too much into details that us normal folk just wouldn't get. I thought I knew quite a bit and just needed a review but you know what? You learn something new everyday!

Today's tidbit: by no means did I think all knights were honorable heroes in shining armor but I thought for sure that their lords could keep them under some form control... Apparently after 1066 and the Vikings melted into England, there were thousands of unemployed knights armed to the teeth and looking for trouble. So even after the Viking threat was gone, Europe was plagued by roving bandits on the level of Medieval tanks. And this was enough trouble to contribute cause of a few of the Crusades.

Reminds me of the fallen samurai, or ronin, of Japan... Crazy!

I think this was the special I watched, but rather than buy the DVDs, why not wait for it to show up again on the TV Guide?

now the world will know

As a 16 year-old girl watching Jackie live her life according to Cosmo on That 70's Show, I helped out my little sister with those magazine drives by subscribing to CosmoGirl! Over the years I've bounced from one free trial year to another - all some incarnation of that fashion/beauty/shopping blend so prevalent in popular periodicals - but I've never really felt the need to renew.

So I'm so glad that when Hawaiian Airlines prompted me to use my points towards yet another subscription, I chose Condé Nast Traveler instead of another Vogue wannabe. And yes, I have since renewed my subscription!

Just got the July 2011 issue in the mail and had to tear it open right away... this issue has been declared "the Food issue" and Peru has a front cover storyline!

Peruvian produce, from Condé Nast Traveler

Absolutely love the photos, love that I've eaten some of the dishes in the narrative - seen my post on papa huancaína lately? - and love they give a brief but colorful history of the development of Peruvian cuisine. Most importantly, I love that Peru is getting this great culinary and travel exposure because let me tell you, I am sooooo sorry I did not visit Peru sooner than I did. At the rate at which I eat potatoes, I've got to be some sort of Peruvian at heart.

My only critique? Patrick Symmes focused on the seafood of Peru, which is unarguably wonderful. Pollo a la brasa - that favorite meal of families throughout Peru and the absolute best chicken you will ever have - is divine in its own right but was ignored in the main article... it was published that Limon Rotisserie is the SF place to get Peruvian food, including pollo a la brasa... I'm just not sure how you can leave something like that out when there are as many pollerias in Lima as there are Starbucks in Seattle. Maybe this is the gap between the highbrow travel featured in Condé Nast Traveler and the low-to-mid-priced-budget travel upon which I embark.

history!

I love the History Channel - especially History International - and am keeping the program on behind me as I type.

Just finished an episode of Clash of the Gods that focused on Thor. I'm glad that they chose to explore the hammer-wielding lug in depth because I have a feeling that the comic-book-turned-movie doesn't really stick to the Elder Eddas.

One of my favorite stories concerning Thor is of Thrym's Marriage (click for a nice elementary version of the myth) when he broke barriers and took those first hard steps as one of the world's first drag queens. Methinks Ru Paul would approve!

Right now a team is exploring Turkey in an episode of Cities of the Underworld... I got really excited when I the TV Guide said it was about Turkey but once again, Troy has taken all the glory. I would really like to see a special about the underground cities in Cappadocia - or visit them myself!

On the whole I do enjoy Cities of the Underworld... I remember an episode on Dracula and all of the passages underneath his citadels. The guys at History International do a good job of going past the archaeology and including tidbits of the histories of people of interest (did you know that as a young boy, Dracul was held as a diplomatic hostage by the Turks? Or that after fleeing several castles, he himself was imprisoned?)

Just in case you can't tell, this nerd loves History International! Keep on learning, my friends!