ChGK in the Prairie

Chapter 4: Fourth of July

On the night before the Fourth of July, Patricia's parents are around the dinner table. They then announce the guests they will be hosting for Independence Day.

"Tomorrow, we will have guests. Maybe you remember Bohdan and Yakiv among the guests" Patricia's mother tells the whole family.

Last I saw them, they made me play ChGK. I disliked the game back then, but for after-hour outings, my colleagues avoid bars because bars remind them far too much of their jobs. Or more specifically, their patients. This means I can't fit bar trivia my in social life. When you work around mentally ill people and/or addicts day in, day out, you want something different and non-addictive. I feel my own intellect suffering at times at work. Cooking wine alcoholic this, lack of activities for outpatient addicts that... My job is not the most intellectually stimulating in the world, but at least it pays the student debt, Patricia dives deep in thought upon hearing about these two first-generation Ukrainian immigrants being invited over to their home on the Fourth of July. I may as well ask about whether they're still playing this riddle contest.

But then her train of thought "resurfaces" and she decides to get a recipe for some of the items on what they intend to serve tomorrow. While her parents prepare hamburgers, Patricia, on the other hand, plans on preparing the apple pie, using store-brand ingredients whenever possible. And, of course, corn on the cob. After all, they eat corn on the cob regularly during summer.

That said, it's the pie that makes Patricia work harder in the kitchen. Especially with the crust, since she shapes the top so that a tryzub (i.e. an Ukrainian emblem, which was common in her early childhood) motif would appear. Corn on the cob only requires peeling off the ear before they grill it. But once the pie is done, she could put it in the refrigerator before returning to her bedroom.

Once in her bedroom, Patricia gets more flashbacks from her last meeting with Bohdan and Yakiv, along with their respective relatives. Obviously, if you spoke Russian at an appropriate level for the ChGK Worlds, you would definitely make our team! Bohdan's voice rings in her head. If he believes quiz bowl translates well enough to ChGK that I can play it competitively with them, there's a lot of questions remaining! He only told me about the basics of ChGK. There are online tournaments, and championships at the state, national and world level but that's all I know about ChGK tournaments.

"Bozhe moy! (Oh my god!) There's playing ChGK, and there's playing it competitively. I have a lot of questions about competitive play. Is Chto, gde, kogda going to fill that void in my personal life?" Patricia utters, a little confused about some aspects of ChGK.

"What void?" Patricia's mother asks, puzzled about hearing the words "void in my personal life" from Patricia.

"It's about intellectual voids. For much of my life, I was always told about how my intellect was an asset, but I feel like I can't use it at work as I would have liked" Patricia then starts crying. "I also want to prevent it from being a stranded asset"

"What exactly is a stranded asset?" Patricia's mother asks her daughter, not knowing anything about accounting.

"Stranded assets typically lose, or lost, usefulness for their owners"

You must keep using your intelligence regularly or you lose it. For my entire life, I was used to operate at a certain intellectual level. For better or for worse, my intellect is part of who I am. However, it's not about showing off how smart I am, Patricia muses, while trying to stop crying.

"I don't know... maybe you could try reading some material outside of medical or business publications" her mother tells her daughter about how to prevent intellectual decay.