Trivia, quizzes and totally unimportant knowledge

    OK we all know that I like to play computer games, that I enjoy blogging, love taking pictures and am lucky enough to have a wonderful, large circle of friends and family with whom I get along very well indeed.

We also know that I love to read, have fun watching an English program called « The Chase » (and must I admit it ? watch rom-coms and bed-time reading is not at all on the serious side, but rather what my spouse used to call « love trash »), enjoy walking, love renting my summer flat in the mountains, will travel on most any excuse and in general enjoy life.

However, I have also been known to spend a couple of hours jumping from one cute Facebook video of small animals, children or most anything at all once started to another dozen of the same.  Then there are the days that I get caught up in the «quizzes».

I have just successfully 15/15 passed FB’s version of « grammar » ; have found out that in a former life my lover was an Italian of whom I have never heard (and whose name I have not retained); that I am a good candidate for German citizenship, i.e. 95% correct or 19/20 (not sure why I would want to be as am rather happy with my Swiss citizenship and still have my American citizenship as well; that my general school knowledge is also excellent (95% and the one I missed is probably the German population, which I suspect is also the one I missed under being a good candidate for German citizenship : hmmmm… the fact that I am living in Switzerland is perhaps having FB slant my quizzes towards anything German?). There is however one fly in the ointment – I am now annoyed that I wasted so much time on FB trivia so the last quizz « Can you pass the agression handling test» was not the greatest success. I wonder why?

Bragging

Yep, got to admit it, I really am chuffed and so am sharing my exploits.

As an elementary school attendee I found things fairly simple, usually got E (for excellent, I am the generation before numerical grades at least the first few years) with one notable exception: handwriting (and that has not improved, neither with practice nor age, some things just aren’t doable).

In Junior High, the majority were A’s and that continued on throughout High School, again with a couple of exceptions, French was one as I recall (lucky to pull a B- some semesters). French was my worst grade in university as well, so it’s perhaps cosmic

justice that I have spent my entire adult life in a French-speaking area of Switzerland.

Mind you, the two years that I attended school in France, I did manage good grades and got the first two “Alliance Française” certificates (hated those dissertations though). The third one had to attend the Sorbonne in Paris to obtain and I had neither the funds, nor the time for that last one. Never mind, I have managed to work, raise a family and pay my bills without ever having recourse to a translation – although when it came to legal matters I found them as complicated as any in English (usually more comprehensible however – go figure).

Today I was reading the local official newspaper, wherein is recorded any new laws, any changes to former laws, criminal procedures, bankruptcy applications as well as the bankruptcies themselves, notifications of real estate purchases, notifications of any official matter (i.e. street changes, amendments to any budgetary items), tenders for tasks/jobs at the cantonal (state) and city and communal levels, any changes to business statues, deaths, etc.

There was an article on how the requirements have changed for obtaining Swiss nationality. One of the new requirements is that the person applying must be fairly fluent in the language of whichever canton they are living in (or at least one of the four national languages) with exceptions made for illiterates, handicapped or the very aged applicants.  The links led to a quiz: twenty-five questions about Switzerland and the Canton of Geneva.

I got ALL 25 right!

OK so I do read a lot, have played tour guide in the past, I was still very proud that I aced this quiz (that I didn’t have to take when I got my citizenship). Give me some more: learning is such fun!