This was my trivia team! We were called the T5 socialists, and Issam (the guy with the long hair and the hat holding the trophy) invited me to join the team a couple weeks after I had started staying in Romania. Out of the eleven or so times I played with them, we won about seven. I’m perfectly unashamed to admit that during this period of my life, at least 20% of my ego was wrapped up in winning trivia every week. We were like the Evil Empire of trivia teams, and always the team that other teams were trying to beat. It got so bad that at one point there were even discussions about forcibly breaking us up.

Also, it should be noted that trivia at T5 Social is brutally difficult by most people’s standards, and as a result of playing on this team for so long, I’ve come to reailze deeply that extraordinarily smart people are everywhere, including in the most unlikely of places