Can you find the birthday girl?

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Tonight we wished our fellow quadriller Shawn a fairwell on his leave of absence. The gathering was at the Player's Club in Gramercy Park. The private club is for theatrical professionals as well as other artists and dignitaries. It is located in an antique building which was renovated in 1888. The club interior was full of old fashioned furniture and paintings of various club members dating back more than a hundred years ago.

During the party Shawn presented his skit "Is God A Lousy Landlord?" played by 4 people who attended the party.

Proceed to Mind Game 2.

My good old time friend Ismerie is visiting from France this week. We got together with some old friends at my apartment for dinner and looked over many old photographs of us hanging out together in the old days.

Today I went to my first ever Oscar Party. It was held at an upstairs private party room in the Blondie Sports Bar on the upper east side. The room looked like the TV department of Best Buy. There were more than 30 TVs all around the room and two projectors. There were complimentary appetizers but unfortunately I arrived too late and only had one chicken wing that was left. A bunch of Quadrillers came to the party and we had a good time guessing the winners of various categories on the supplied ballots. The top three people who got the most right got a free beverage from the bar. It turnes out that I only watched two movies of all the movies nominated for Oscars this year - King Kong and War Of The Worlds. OK, now I have some choices to replentish my Netflix queue with!

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Today the waltz performers of the 2006 Viennese Opera Ball gathered at my apartment to bond together reminiscing about the ball by watching the DVD that the videographer of the ball made. After watching the DVD, Kerrie - our choreographer - presented awards to each person. Here is the list:

• Amy - "Babydoll Award" - for the cutest look in the waltz costume.
• Andrew - "Worst Attendance Award" - he is not even here to pick up his award!
• Charlie - "Best Connections Award" - for hooking us up with all these outside performance opportunities.
• Chris - "Sweep Her Off Her Feet Award" - for most dashing entrance.
• Jia - "Coquette Award" - for best fluttering of eyelashes.
• Heikki - "Never Lose Your Cool Award" - for always maintaining his composure.
• Jamal - "Good Son Award" - for bringing mom as his date to the ball.
• Joanne - "Gold Medalist In Curling Award" - for tirelessly curling hair all evening.
• Joey - "Rico Suave Award" - for the most debonair use of arms.
• Maggie - "Miss Congeniality Award" - for always having a ready smile and agreeable attitude.
• Mika - "Scarlett O'Hara 18" Waist Award" - for the most slender figure on the dancefloor.
• Nao - "Ballerina Award" - for best demonstrations of the balletic aspects of the choreography.
• Naomi - "Best Attendance Award" - for attending all of her rehearsals, plus other performers' rehearsals as well.
• Raphael - "Best Demonstration of Waltz Choreography Award" - for always being ready and willing to meet with the choreographer before each rehearsal so he could help demonstrate the choreography for the others.
• Uli & Joergen - "Siamese Twins Award" - for the waltz couple most joined at the hip.

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Last night I put together a "quiz engine" which will allow you to create a quiz with your own multiple choice questions and answers. People will be able to take the quiz and have it graded. All you need to do is create a quiz definition file and upload it somewhere on a web.

Here is a sample contents of the quiz definition file:

quiz=["Sample Quiz", "Question 1", ["Answer 1","Answer 2","Answer 3"], 0, "Question 2", ["Answer 1","Answer 2","Answer 3"], 2 ]

The quiz with the above definition file looks like this. The correct answer for "Question 1" is "Answer 1" and the correct answer for "Question 2" is "Answer 3".

This is the structure of the quiz definition file:

• Start with quiz=[
• Enter the title of the quiz in quotes followed by a comma. For example: "How well do you know Raphael?",
• For each question you need to specify the following:
  • Question in quotes followed by a comma. For example: "Question 1",
  • A list of answers inside square brackets followed by a comma. Each answer must be in quotes and commas separating each answer. For example: ["Answer 1","Answer 2","Answer 3"],
  • Number of the correct answer in the list of answers starting with zero. For example if the correct answer in the example above is "Answer 2", the number should be 1. If there is another question after this one, put a comma after the number.
• end with closing bracket ]

You must save the file with .js extension. Upload it to some place on the web. Then you can use this URL to see the quiz: http://raphaelpungin.com/quiz?q=[url to the file without ".js"]. For example if the URL to your file is http://members.aol.com/aoluser/myquiz.js, you would use this URL for the quiz:
http://raphaelpungin.com/quiz?q=http://members.aol.com/aoluser/myquiz

Note that if your questions or answers have quotes inside them, prefix them with a back slash (\). For example: Who wrote the book \"Moby Dick\"?

Ok so let's see some quizes here! Post a comment with the URLs to your quizes!

Here is a quiz that my co-worker put together!

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid -- aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Click on the photo to see more. Description and videos coming soon...

The ball was featured in the Styles Section of the Sunday New York Times on page 12. Click here.

Links:

Quadrille Ball 2005 Quadrille Ball 2004

Today I hosted a double birthday party for Renata and Kerrie. Although there was no formal dress code that I knew about, apparently Kerrie told all girls to wear "party dress" which is knee length, with fluffy bottom, often in the 1950's style. Men were supposed to come in velvet jackets. Moreover she bought an ascot for me and MC to match our jackets. So everyone looked very nice and festive.

Just like last year, Kerrie handed out a quiz on how well you know her. The questions where different this year though. Last year I won and this year I did not even get a passing grade. If you know Kerrie, feel free to take the quiz yourself.

Quiz scores out of 10 points: Margaret     9 MC     9 Jennifer     7 Joanna     7 Raphael     6 James     6 Clayton     5* Yan     4 Renata     3 Joey     3 Judith     2 Take The Quiz * technically Clayton's score was zero, but K awarded him 5 brownie points for providing his own creative flattering answers. Photos Click Here

Videos:

On Kerrie's birthday we went dancing in the American Museum Of Natural History at their annual Winter Dance gala. The proceeds from this event, including a silent auction, support the Museum's scientific and educational programming. The dessert/dancing portion of the evening was held in the museum's biggest room called Theodor Roosevelt Rotunda. The room featured huge skeletons of dinosaurs. The entrance to the room was covered with huge drapes representing the entrance in a tent on an oasis to represent this year's theme "Desert Oasis". The crowd was young and very good looking. The DJ played a variety of music some of which was more danceable than other, but Kerrie and I had fun making stuff up dancing and posing in front of photographers.

Oh and now I am an official celebrity! Look at the left column of this page!

Photos:

My Photos
WireImage
Patrick McMullan

I created a Yahoo group for the users of Fotki.com

Click to join fotki-users

Here I am with the hostess of the "Martini Bowl Party" which was the first Superbowl party I have ever attended. I hope that I did not get too spoiled being there!

I was happy to see the correspondent from New York Sun Amanda Gordon at the Viennese Opera Ball. On page 12 of today's issue of the paper is the article she wrote about the ball. She did several boo-boos in the article though:

• The debutants did not do a "trimmed-down versions of the waltz", they did the polonaise.
• The two professional dancers in petticoats and white wigs did not do a waltz either - they id a minuet.
• There was no horse and carriage at the ball this year because the freight elevator in which the horse is brought into the hotel was out of service. Amanda must have left the ball early and assumed that the tradition of having the horse and carriage in the ballroom was followed this year as well.
• And finally the biggest boo boo: she did not put any photos of me in the article! :)

The group of the waltz performers which I was a part of did get a credit as "enthusiastic and regular ballroom dancers." At the weekly Quadrille Ball post-rehearsal party on January 31 the news paper article brought some excitement because several Quadrille Ball dancers featured in the photos.

Online Version of the article

Description along with, more photos and videos are coming soon...

Photos

My Photos
WireImage
Robert Lowell
Adam Nemser
Other

Videos

News Media

New York Sun Article
German World Magazine

My friends and I spent a weekend on a ski trip in Adironacks. We stayed in a charming chalet for two nights. The chalet had 3 levels and was able to fit 11 people. It had nice deck outside from which we could see the sunrise.

On the first day we went hiking on a trail close the chalet. It was my first time hiking in the snow. Going up the hill was kind of tricky since the feed would slide backwards in the slippery snow, but going down hill was a blast as we could just slide down holding on to the tree branches. Some parts of the hike was just like walking in the Winter wonderland.

At night we did exquisite home cooking. On Saturday we had French crepes for dessert and everyone had to try to flip it in the air. Here is the video of our efforts:

During the day some people went cross-country skiing and some went to the slopes of Gore Mountain. On Saturday the weather was crappy. It was warm and raining. It was like skiing in Spring. But on Sunday it was great, cooler and sunshine. The visibility was great.

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