Week 12 Impressions by Nicole Greenberg

For the past five weeks I have had the opportunity to work with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, or which is better known as the NSPCC in their Fundraising and Appeals department. Although I am only working three days a week I have my own desk, my own computer and my own swipe card to get into the building, making me feel one step above all of the volunteers that come in and out of the fundraising and appeals department. I have had the opportunity to attend one of the events at Christie’s auction house which was a wonderful experience with a string quartet playing in the reception area, with champagne and the auctioning off of contemporary art to a crowd dressed in glittery dresses, and suits. I have to day that it was one of the first experience in London where I was asked to wear classy attire, what they call here as dressing “smart.” However, I have found that the most interesting and most entertaining events are those that allow for people to come together and battle it out for the title of quiz champion. The events are known as Quiz Nights.

For those of you who are unaware of what a quiz night is let me give you a little background: So people who are in charge of fundraising for the NSPCC have the opportunity to bring together colleagues from their work, neighbors from their communities, college students or a group of people for dinner, lots of drinks and a game, which in London is called a Quiz. To me when the event was described to me it sounded more like a game show of Jeopardy and the Weakest Link mixed together. The people who are interested in attending the event must purchase a ticket that can range in price from about fifteen pounds to forty pounds depending on the location of the quiz, the food that is being served and the amount of money that the event is hoping to raise for the NSPCC. When you arrive to the event they place you into teams of five and you then get to fight over who gets to be the team captain. Well of course everyone wants to be the team captain because he or she gets to wear this amazing plastic badge with a clip art picture of a boat captain…pretty cool huh? Once dinner is finished the game begins. Teams are quizzed on useless factoids ranging from knowledge about the NSPCC, celebrities and their personal lives, sports, history, music, taste tests of Krispy Crème donuts, jelly bean flavors and just about anything else you can think of. The team earns points for every question they get correct and loses points if they are incorrect, pretty simple right? In order to make it more interesting certain prizes are given out throughout the course of the game. One prize this week that caught my eye was a weekend trip to Paris, travel and lodging expenses paid. Along with the quiz the NSPCC can hold a silent auction. The one prize that caught my eye was box seats to a football match (aka soccer) between Manchester United and Chelsea that were auctioned off for seven hundred pounds by the end of the night. I know it is for a charity, and for a game that has been sold out for three months because it is the top two teams in the league, but I am still amazed that two tickets could go for that much!!!

The two quizzes last week showed the two extreme sides of the spectrum of a quiz night. The first quiz was arranged for a group of university males at a local Pizza Express, where all of the participants were intoxicated before the quiz even began. Although I was not able to attend I was told that it was pretty entertaining and my colleagues came back as the champions, something they were able to brag about for the rest of the week. The second quiz was a large corporate-sponsored event that raised a large amount of money for the NSPCC and took place in the Chelsea football stadium’s premier boxes. The event had a silent auction, dinner, desert and the main event was the quiz that had about twelve different teams.

I have to say that the hype up to the main event is pretty entertaining, especially because my colleagues are obsessed with knowing useless random facts and sharing all of the questions with each other before the actual quiz. The week before the quiz I kept on getting interrupted to be told that I should know one of the answers because it had to do with American history. Them not knowing that I have not taken a US history course since my sophomore year of high school, I got cut off by another one of my colleagues who knew the answer and then I was ridiculed for being a bad American.

Although I have learned many skills while at my service placement I have also learned many useless facts due to the obsession the British have with quizzes.