On another topic: last week I joined a professional development organisation, the kind of thing you join if you have a day job. Like, an organisation for project managers, say. Which it is. And this week I attended my first 'chapter meeting' (I warned my housemate, 'if I don't come home, I've been abducted by a cult.'). 'Chapter' meeting? Weird.

It turned out to be quite weird indeed. We played trivial pursuit.

I suspect at one other point in my life I probably played trivial pursuit, but it's likely I played no more than once. I am not really into games (too outcome-oriented, too 'what're we doing with our TIME playing this GAME, people?!').

A room full of 80 or so grown-ups playing trivial pursuit is weird. And certainly no weirder than even the weirdest con I've ever been to. No longer will I tolerate people mocking genre conventions!

'Is that where you dress up in Star Trek gear and tails and say nanoo-nanoo to each other?' sez someone attempting to mock me.
'Ever joined a professional development organisation?' sez me.
'Well ...'
'Ever been to their Xmas party 'chapter meeting'?'
"Oh, uh, sure...'
'Ever played trivial pursuit with a bunch of strangers, and stood up to dance arm in arm with the guy beside you because that way you can earn an extra 2 points? Spinning in circles until you feel sick, until your glass of semillon begins to look like a beacon on the table beside you, leaving a pale shining gold trail in your eye as you dance and dance ... and dance? Wishing only that it would end and you could get your two lousy points. Then you could find the trails of your life again, to drag yourself back to some semblance of reality. Have you? Ever?'
'I, um...'
'THEN DON'T MAKE FUN OF MY CONVENTIONS, YOU FREAK!'

Trivial pursuit turns out to be an exercise in 'team building through shared humiliation'.

At one point the MC announced, "I looked through the attendee list tonight and noticed this next question would suit the age group of most of us. It's a list of ten songs that were popular in Australian in the eighties! And there are some fantastic Australian bands in this line up. I'll play the first few seconds of each song. Ready?"

"OK," said the Austrian woman who was filling in our answer sheet. "Who was here in the eighties?"

Of the eight of us, there was only two who'd been in Australia in the eighties: me, and my new dancing partner, Nick. And the both of us wouldn't know Australian music from a lit match. I was 'most-Australian' (we laughed), being third generation while Nick made only second. The next most senior Australian at the table was called Sandeep and had moved here in 1991 from India. Our team of eight turned out to be two 'native-borns', three people from India, one from Brazil, one from Portugal, and the Austrian.

We lost both rounds of trivial pursuit. Something of which I am probably inordinately proud.

I can only assume my knowledge base is very non-trivial indeed.