Champagne Christmas Quiz 2012

[Guest thaiworthy]

Abang, I am sorry to hear about your mother. She is two years older than my own, so I understand how you feel. It's great that you can be by her side, though-- for many it is difficult. Regarding your suggestions . . .

 

I agree with point number 2, all entries should be submitted via PM. I would be very surprised if that didn't happen for next year's quiz.

 

But I disagree with point number 3, as I am very thorough and for many of us (or maybe just me) it takes up to an hour just to remember how to turn on the computer.

 

I am reminded of a line quipped by comedian Don Rickles when I saw him live at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. At the end of his performance, he caught a guy looking at his watch and said, "Did I do enough, sir? (aside) How do you like this?! This guy's timing me here. I feel like a hard-boiled egg!"

[Guest fountainhall]

I also send my best wishes to your mother, abang. The prize can wait - and should I happen to be in Singapore I'll let you know and certainly arrange to bring it with me.

 

Thanks for your suggestions. I agree that answers by pm make much more sense. I had thought posting on the thread would make everything more transparent. But my posting all the answers after the deadline is just as effective and ensures everyone competes on an even footing. I tend to agree with thaiworthy that a beat-the-clock format is rather unfair, but for a different reason. There are members here from many continents, including Australia and North America. It's almost impossible to find a start time when everyone will be awake and alert. So I remain in favour of a fixed deadline - at least for a first round.

 

More and different prizes are another lesson learned. Vintage champagne is clearly not of much interest. And the format based mostly on geography which I've used in the last 2 years needs to be changed in favour of a more general type of questions. I'd like to make the competition of more interest to more posters. The only problem is that I have limited means and I cannot afford to lash out a lot of cash!

 

So all these thoughts will go into the melting pot. If anyone else has any thoughts about -

 

- format

- type of questions

- more interesting prizes

 

- it would be great to hear from you.

[Guest abang]

I am looking at a Tiger Airways flight on Sun 23 Dec 2012... cross my fingers now...as it cant find a return flight home..

[Guest fountainhall]

The Cathay Pacific daily flight still has seats departing 23/returning 27 @ S$467.60. The price skyrockets for returns after 27. Not sure how that fits your budget.

[Guest abang]

This is the latest..

Got my ticket on Sun 23rd Dec 2012 ... no return flight yet..

 

This is good.. this allows me time to visit Pattaya and visit the other forum users..

Am I welcome to show off my assets?

[kokopelli]

 

Am I welcome to show off my assets?

 

Regrettably I will not be in Pattaya until 4 Jan or thereafter. I do think the boyz will enjoy your assets and you theirs.

[Guest jomtien]

Have you seen the Tom & Jerry classical music cartoons - also, I think for MGM? "The Cat Concerto", their take on the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody, won the Oscar in 1946, as did another later one "Johann Mouse" about the Waltz King, Johann Strauss II. The one I like best, though, is "Tom & Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl" also set to the music of Johann Strauss. Brilliant animation perfectly synchronised to the music and very obvious real-life 'conductor' touches' make this a classic.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsv8IT8UlSI

 

 

Yes, I have quite enjoyed them. My favourites though are the WWII era Warner Brothers ones. Made so that kids could laugh at them and adults could find things to think about. Hard to beat Daffy Duck and Hitler in a cartoon. Puts things in perspective!

[Guest thaiworthy]

Vintage champagne is clearly not of much interest.

 

Vintage wine, then? Kokopelli is the epitome of the eternal optimist. Here is a glimpse of his plans to win the Christmas Quiz for the rest of the decade.

 

[Guest fountainhall]

Have you seen the price of vintage wine???????? I love the idea - and the wine - but I fear there is no chance of that being amongst the prizes!

[Rogie]

I congratulate Thaiworthy and admit I am more than a little envious of his prize. I remember many years ago, in the mid-seventies when I joined a wine appreciation class held in the evening once a week. We were the usual mixed bunch of people, all amateur wine-lovers, some with more experience than others, and in my case any knowledge I possessed was pretty superficial. I would say the seventies were when people in Britain woke up one morning, looked around and realised there was life outside the ivory tower whose ramparts were the white cliffs of Dover. An age of discovery, the broadening of horizons and the decline of the Little Englander. One of the most profound changes was in the travel industry. Once people saw their friends and neighbours flying off to Spain's Costas, places in the Med such as Majorca, the incredible Greek islands, the sophisticated south of France, Italy and places in north Africa such as Tunisia, they all wanted in. The same went for wine: us Brits discovered it.

 

I digressed somewhat. Back to the wine appreciation class. At the end of the evening, the tutor always announced the subject for the following week's class. When he said next week was sparking wine, including champagne, there was a buzz of excitement. The tutor decided which wines to buy and bring along for tasting, and he obviously had good taste. I don't think i knew there was such a thing as vintage champagne, I just viewed it as posh sparking wine. The tutor seemed a bit more animated than usual that evening and when he brought out the champagne l wondered why it was in such a strange bottle. The closer I looked, the more I thought how beautiful it looked. I wasn't so ignorant I hadn't heard of Dom Perignon, I had, but it was just a name to me along with all the other Champagne houses.

 

It was lovely, and I decided I wanted more of this nectar. Did I fulfil my wish? Unfortunately not. The tutor popped my bubble when he told us how much it had cost. So to this very day, not one further drop of Dom Perignon has passed my lips.

[Guest abang]

This is coming from me, someone who does not live in Thailand.

This is my idea of prizes... for the future quizzes..

 

What we can do is to organise a post-Christmas dinner/party at one of the eateries.

The top 3 to 5 winners will get a cascading discount whereas the others enjoy the dinner at full price,

This way, we can have our celebration without incurring too much money...

Also make it BYO-bring your own, liquor.

The whole idea is to have fun and to thank everyone (including the organisers) and those who did or did not participate.

[Guest abang]

To wrap up the Christmas Quiz..which I happened to win the 2nd prize.

I want to thank FH for his diligence and generosity.

I received my award of THB 1000 from him personally on Mon 24th Dec 2012 at Hotel Malaysia, Bangkok.

 

This was what I did with that money:

 

THB 360 for 3 pairs of fake CK boxers

THB 150 for a pair of fake Birkenstock slippers

THB 290 for a pair of fake Adidas Rubber Shoes (the best buy of the lot)

and lastly, THB 200 for a REAL Naraya bag for my domestic helper..

 

which means, I did not venture into the Thai boys arena after my first night experience at Boys of Bangkok.

 

 

[Guest thaiworthy]

Congrats, Abang. You did quite well for yourself. Some wise and sensible purchases, I think.

[Guest thaiworthy]

Last night I was treated to an elegant dinner by Khun Fountainhall at Eat Me Restaurant in Bangkok. Thank you, Khun Fountainhall. I was awarded my first place prize, the grand bottle of 2003 Dom Perignon vintage champagne. It was a delightful evening, but the damn thing was so heavy as I had to lug it half-way across Silom. What could be in here besides champagne, I wondered. But I got the bottle home and examined it.

To my surprise there was no way to open it! I looked everywhere, top, bottom and sides and there were no flaps to unfold that I could find. It was locked up tight as a drum. Here is what I eventually found:



If you look closely you can see there is a small black secret button near the bottom. "What's this," I said, "another Fountainhall puzzle?" Is there really champagne inside-- or an artifact, perhaps? Maybe a map to unlock some secret passage in the Amazon somewhere-- leading to an even greater prize? Perhaps a key to some Mayan ruin with the real date to the world's demise? Or a scrap of an old historical document, stolen from the National Museum? I felt like Indiana Jones or Laura Croft in giddy delight, about to discover some fantastic new treasure. Maybe it was a poem with clues to finding a crypt in Jordan with the lost Holy Grail. He had just been to Petra, after all.  

It was then that I had found another button and pressed that, but nothing happened. No mechanical sounds or gizmos moving inside that would finally reveal the contents. Nothing popped out, open or turned. I looked at the other side and discovered another button and pressed that, but it too was silent. Then I pressed both at the same time and held my breath. I lifted it slightly and was finally able to peek inside, just like Howard Carter upon discovering Tut's tomb.

It was just a bottle of champagne.

I really must stop watching so many movies.
 

[Rogie]

I await with bated breath the post when you get to drink it. I haven't touched a drop of the stuff since 1976; take pity on a poor wretch such as I.

 

Dom Perignon should be available on tap (**) in any good wine bar - what I mean is it'd be nice to just sip a small glass when you find yourself on your own and feel in the need of a bit of cheering up.

 

** not sure if you can do that with sparking wines or not - it's a good way to serve still wines though, at least those with a high demand. I'm always leery of bottled wines in bars that've already been opened as there's no way of knowing how many days ago that bottle was opened, especially when you are poured the last glass-worth.

[TotallyOz]

Beautiful post Khun TW. Very nice! And, congrats again. I hope you enjoy the bottle as much as you did the box.

[Guest timmberty]

thaiworthy i hope im in the toilet next to you when you have your first go on a jappy loo .. most people wont have a clue as to how excited you are, and just assume you are inside with LMTU.

[Guest thaiworthy]

thaiworthy i hope im in the toilet next to you when you have your first go on a jappy loo .. most people wont have a clue as to how excited you are, and just assume you are inside with LMTU.

 

That made me laugh.

 

But that damn box looked like a miniature obelisk, like some kind of sinister and mysterious object only James Bond knew how to open. If it weren't for the silver labelling, it would have been seized by airport security. Bomb-sniffing dogs would have surrounded it and a swat team called.

 

But you're right, I did have a wonderful experience my first time on a Japanese toilet. They have them at Terminal 21. But you wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere nearby. To me, it looked like an alien contraption ready to suck my ass into a black hole. But I bravely tamed it, pressing the buttons and screeching like a ladyboy. LMTU would have run away, screaming.

[kokopelli]

"It was just a bottle of champagne."

 

Wash your mouth out with Listerine.  Not just a bottle of champage, a bottle of Dom Pernignon!

Bring that bottle to me and I will show you another little trick that Howard Carter was privy to.

untitled.bmp

[Rogie]

untitled.bmp   131.72K   5 downloads

 

what's that?

 

Whatever it is isn't visible on my screen and obviously I'm logged in.

 

Is it one of Carter's tricks? Have I been tricked?

[Guest abang]

The prizes of 2012 quiz has been given out and I am all eager beaver for this year's.

I would like the organiser(s) to consider my earlier proposal to round up the forummers of this board

and present the awards at the annual Boxing Day dinner. 

[kokopelli]

untitled.bmp   131.72K   5 downloads

 

what's that?

 

Whatever it is isn't visible on my screen and obviously I'm logged in.

 

Is it one of Carter's tricks? Have I been tricked?

Just an open bottle of champagne.