"I, uh, I can't read or write"

Jeff Goldblum: Ah-hah ah-hah ah-hah.. the letter 2, my friend!
Alex Trebek: No, 2 is a number.



My current re-obsession is the Traveler IQ game, reintroduced to me by Eric. He told me he couldn’t get past the “hard” level, so of course that made my new goal in life to beat him. I played this game about 5 years ago when studying for my Map of the Modern World test, but haven’t touched it since. I’ve won the entire game (and now know exactly where Queenstown, New Zealand is) but my story comes to you from the “Photos” part of the game where they show you a photo and you have to identify where it is located on a map. I got through the first few easy rounds- the pyramids, the White House, the parthenon, etc. I felt fairly confident as I had taken many of these same photos myself. Upon entering the medium level however, I was presented with a photo of a pagoda in the middle of some trees. This looked like a pretty boring and standard pagoda of little mention and so guessed Japan, inwardly insulting the game for giving me such a random, unimportant photo so early on in the game and outwardly confident I would be correct. Where was it actually located, you ask?

HA-FREAKIN-NOI.

Right down the street from me actually. In Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum area that I visited with Meghan. I’ve since seen photos of it in guidebooks and I refuse to visit it in payback for its part in my failure of that round.