Triviale Poursuite

First Monday to work after a pretty relaxing weekend. Highlights included two separate picnics featuring the not-very-French-but-certainly-very-tasty food item of BBQ'ed ribs. The first was at our friends Nicolas and Sandrine's apartment in Sceaux (a suburb of Paris which is fortunately a short 15 minute RER ride--the RER is a similar version of the Paris metro which uses many of the same stations in the city but also serves the outlying suburbs). The second was at Claire's sister Laure's apartment in Noisy-le-Grand which unfortunately hindered by the rain. However, despite the rain we still managed to gobble down some ribs and also as a result I was introduced to the French version of Trivial Pursuit.

For those of you who know me, I am a long-time fan of the show "Jeopardy", I was a "Quizzo" regular in Philadelphia, and my high school team from Duluth earned 2nd place honors in the 1992 Minnesota State Knowledge Bowl competetion. All of this counted for nothing, however, during this past weekend's debacle that was my introduction to Triviale Poursuite. My team lost big time--we only got 1 pie wedge ("camembert" in French) against our rivals. It really puts into perspective how much of my knowledge is America-specific--especially stuff like pop culture, as well as politics. Sports, which is traditionally one of my stronger areas in the 'States since I like baseball, basketball, football, and even hockey pretty well, was an obvious weakness--I just can't tell you that much about soccer, rugby, or Grand Prix racing (there was a question on Grand Prix which everybody else knew but I didn't, and I was the only male in the game...) Guess I better start reading "Le Monde" instead of the NY Times...

French phrase of the day (courtesy of Flora, who works in the lab with me): "Quand le chat n'est pas la, les sourris dansent", which translates to: "When the cat isn't there, the mice will dance", and is obviously very familiar to our own "When the cat's away, the mice will play." Case in point: Corinne Antignac (the big boss) is on vacation for 2 weeks and people in the lab are taking this opportunity to turn the music up in the lab. Apparently it is normally forbidden in the lab so this is a special treat!