Kyleisalive
What brings you here, to FunTrivia, today?I stumbled upon FunTrivia many years ago when I was becoming a teenager, while looking for WWE quizzes (I was obsessed with wrestling at the time). A few years later, I had a new obsession: the “Law & Order” franchise. So I searched for L&O quizzes and found FunTrivia again (it’s always within the first three results). As I played, I remembered that I had already been here once, and was tempted to create an account. When I discovered the hourly and daily games, the addiction began. I kept coming back to FunTrivia just to play those games and get those points! For some reason, I had never tried to write a quiz, but one day, out of nowhere, I checked the Author Quiz Challenges list and told myself: why not? After I wrote my first quiz there was nothing that could stop me. I suddenly saw so much potential for so many things to turn into quizzes. And then I discovered the Author’s Lounge and its challenges, and FunTrivia became part of my life!
But, to answer the question, what brings me to the site today is mostly the people that make this community, everyone from administrators to editors to teammates and random players. It’s interesting that even though I know none of you in person (not that I’m aware!), I do think of you guys as my friends. FunTrivia has helped me through some hard stages of my short life as well. Another thing that keeps me here is the quiz-writing; I can’t live without it now! It’s just a very complete experience; I learn, I help others learn, I help complete challenges, and I even improve my English. It’s perfect! Badges and daily and hourly games also have me hooked, but what really brings me to FunTrivia is the people and the quiz-writing.
Ever since I began to learn how things worked here, I wanted to be an editor. For some reason, I always want to help out actively in anything I’m involved in, so I remember asking you, Kyle, how that was possible, like three years ago. Today, I haven’t given up on that yet! I’m more than aware that the editor position needs a lot of experience and work, and that there are other players certainly more prepared than I am right now, but I definitely see myself as an editor here in the future. That’s also one of the things that brings me to the site every day; I just keep writing and improving my quizzes so that someday I can become an editor. There is an amazing difference from my first quiz to my most recent ones! There’s plenty of time, and in the meantime I will continue writing quizzes while I patiently wait!
Looney_Tunes
Which category is your favorite in which to play quizzes? What about the one you for which you enjoy writing quizzes the most?My favorite categories to play are For Children, General Knowledge, History and World. I like For Children because it brings back memories from my own childhood (which was not that long ago) and I enjoy the mixed difficulty, as it’s not always incredibly easy. I like General as well because it certainly improves my knowledge of interesting tidbits I could use at some point of my life at any time. Then there’s History and World, I particularly like those two because I like learning about the how the World was and how it is now, it really helps understand our present and future.
As for writing, I think For Children and History are my favorites, but challenges at the Author’s Lounge have made me love writing in every single category! (although Brain Teasers might need some more work). I enjoy writing in For Children because I can play with the difficulty threshold and end up with an informative, fun and relatively easy quiz that anyone can learn from. I also enjoy History because it’s one of my favorite topics to study and read about, so writing just completes the circle. As an added bonus, editors in both of those categories are almost always incredibly fast! I recently got a quiz placed online in the FC queue by NatalieW 10 minutes after I submitted it!
Salami_Swami
Of all the quizzes you've written, do you have a particular favorite? What about a favorite quiz someone else has written? Do you have a favorite author?Hmm, let me think… there’s actually plenty of them that I particularly enjoyed writing. “Fighting for Peace” will always be one of my favorites, since I put a lot of effort on it, more than I had put on any quiz before that one. That quiz was about the Arab-Israeli conflict and its multiple wars. I was in Israel at that time learning about that, so all of the info was fresh in my mind and directly from the source. There’s also a couple more, such as “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Books for Crooks” that I liked a lot. I was looking for an Editor’s Choice with both, and I was relatively close. I thoroughly enjoyed the knowledge I got from writing both those quizzes. My (healthy) frustration from not getting thumbs in those quizzes led me to write “Please Give Me an Editor’s Choice, Please!” as a special 100th anniversary quiz, stating my 10 favorites and why I think they should’ve gotten an EC (you will see that some don’t really deserve a thumb, but oh well). That is also one of my favorite quizzes I’ve written. I seriously hope I won’t have to write a 200th quiz, begging the editors for a thumb again… It’s up to you…
As for someone else’s quiz, there’s too many quizzes and authors to mention, but to name a few that have really grabbed my attention: Kyle’s “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” and the historical cue cards one, or skunkee’s “A Rose by Any Other Name”. Those were incredible. I have also liked many of dcpddc478’s, Plodd’s and Creedy’s quizzes, and looney_tunes’ quizzes during the Masterclass were also impressive. I don’t want to leave anyone out, there are some remarkable quizzes in this site, and all reflect great effort.
Looney_Tunes
You are a regular participant in Author's Lounge activities. Which one would you choose as your favorite - the one that led you to the most enjoyable quiz writing experience?The Author’s Lounge changed my way of viewing FunTrivia forever. It all started when I read one of Kyle’s posts, which encouraged players to write quizzes as “a way to help out”. That was all I needed for motivation, and jumped right in. Ever since, I’m addicted to the Lounge. It’s the first thing I see most mornings, just to check on any updates! My first Lounge quiz was “Hopeless Wanderer” for the “Mumford and Sons' 'Babel' Challenge”. That one could be one of my favorites. However, two challenges I will never forget are the “Frontier Psychiatrist” and “Simpsons Quote” challenges. The former has a funny story, since usually, when I see new challenges are posted, there is always a title that grabs my attention. In this case, none of the titles seemed to work for me. I ended up writing four quizzes for that challenge! And then came the “Simpsons Quote”, I produced five quizzes for that one, and enjoyed every single one of them. That challenge gave me my first Video Games quiz, and some psychological therapy after Mexico was knocked out of the 2014 World Cup (check out “Everything Looks Bad if you Remember It”). You would assume that a lot of tears came out when writing that one, but I actually laughed at the fact that our national soccer team always finds a way to be eliminated from the World Cup. It’s maybe because I’m young, but there are people who have witnessed all of those traumatic experiences! The point is I really enjoyed writing that quiz for the Lounge. On the other hand, Time Crunches are always fun because I get to write in categories totally out of my comfort zone!
For as long as I am at FunTrivia, I will continue to try and help out with Lounge challenges, and maybe assist Kyle in its future management, who knows? I’m always willing to help.
Looney_Tunes
You were in my Author Masterclass team last year. What did you find the most rewarding aspect of that experience? What was the most difficult aspect?Wow, the memories! The Masterclass was a rather rewarding experience, since I got to learn a lot from you (LT) and my other teammates. It was great to see the results of collaborative work between each other, and how interweaved ideas turned into great quizzes. I liked the fact that there were certain challenges to be fulfilled within the Masterclass, and we all worked together to accomplish them, I learned a lot from my teammates.
As for the most difficult aspect, there were two obstacles that stopped me from performing as I wanted to in the Masterclass; one was that I had a scheduled trip and was traveling for half of the Masterclass, with limited internet access, so writing, researching and submitting was hard. The other one was that at that moment, I was experiencing my first-ever heartbreak, and that was painful! I was in a severe depression state, since just weeks ago, I had encountered with the feeling no man or woman wants to ever find: unrequited love. It was tough to move on from that, and believe me I tried. I was just too sad to do anything, my school grades dropped, I slept all day, and wasn’t even able to do some of my favorite things, like play and write at FunTrivia for instance. A heartbreak in the middle of the Masterclass was the worst thing that could’ve happened to me! I was looking forward to it since the very first day it was announced. I felt really bad about letting LT and my teammates down, but I was way too sad to write anything. I actually even wrote and composed a song about how I felt, and while that helped, it didn’t completely heal. In the end, the Masterclass proved to be effective to help in the healing process. I wrote a quiz, “For the Brokenhearted”, which I will always cherish as one of the most special quizzes I’ve ever written. One of the Masterclass requirements for that specific quiz asked for it to be written with a personal voice, and I took that very seriously. Every single bit of that quiz reflects how I felt at that moment; I chose to write about lyrics of ten songs I listened to while heartbroken, and how each song made me feel. I could even say it was a therapeutical experience, since it did help me in the healing! I wish I could have participated way more actively than I did, and I really hope there is another Masterclass or something similar in the future, where I can make up for what I couldn’t accomplish in this one.
I invite you all to play “For the Brokenhearted”, and maybe understand some of what you just read.
Kyleisalive
What's a topic you've wanted to write a quiz about that you haven't yet? Why haven't you?There are plenty of topics on my waiting list, but I have been looking forward for two years now to write a photo quiz about my experience when I went to Israel. I specifically took pictures for that quiz two years ago, knowing that I could use them in FunTrivia someday. At the time I wasn’t able to write photo quizzes, so the idea went to the back burner. Now that I can write those, I haven’t really gotten any time recently to write anything at FunTrivia, so that has been a major delay reason. Don’t worry though, since I’m on vacation right now and plan on writing many quizzes.
I often also try to look for topics that don’t have quizzes of their own yet and give them one, and use Mexico as a focus for several of them, hoping it will one day be enough to get my country into the International hourlies.
Looney_Tunes
What do you do with your life when you are not on FunTrivia?I wake up at 5:30 AM (sometimes earlier, sometimes later) on weekdays to exercise early in the morning, take a shower, eat breakfast and go to school (so plenty of my time is consumed by schoolwork). I take singing and piano lessons, and swim twice a week. In addition to that, I’m an active participant in the Student Council, in fact, people have been thinking I’m the President for five years now! I’m actually about to start my last year of high school, and now I’m a candidate, let’s hope I win! I’m also the lead student event organizer in my school, which means I often get a walkie-talkie and run around the whole school coordinating events of all sorts. I also coordinate the school’s student newspaper, and spend plenty of my time doing community service as well. So you could say I’m a pretty busy guy at 18 years old (just had my birthday on July the 4th!). Now I have to start the process of deciding what I’ll study, which is kind of stressful, good thing is I still have some time.
Still, all of that real-life pressure doesn’t stop me from being here at FunTrivia for most of my time.
Salami_Swami
What is your favorite thing about living in Mexico City? Least favorite thing?My favorite thing is probably how some of the people here behave, in terms of hospitality and kindness. We also have many interesting historical buildings and some nice landscapes when it’s not all covered in pollution. Sadly, there are quite a few things I could label as “least favorite”. Traffic is insane, you could spend a whole hour without moving a single inch (and this is not an exaggeration). Air pollution is also incredibly insane, there are days when I actually can’t see the sky because of the gray smog covering it, and even worse, I get to see all of that gray smoke coming out from public transportation vans (known as “combis”), who are by the way reckless drivers who think the streets are theirs (and to some extent they are, since they stop wherever they like to pick up passengers). We have a problem country-wide, which is mentality, and changing it will be hard, perhaps impossible. It is a society where almost everything and everyone is corrupted, from government officials to police officers being bribed. Safety is also an issue, since robberies and murders are not surprising anymore. Here in Mexico City, you can see things of all sorts, things you won’t see anywhere else. We are already accustomed to the fact that in addition to the traffic we must bear because of the overpopulation, we have to deal with protest marches every single day, and we take for granted that streets will be closed because of these, provoking even more chaos. Not that I’m against free speech, our government has a lot to work on, but protests have been way out of hand since some time ago. I mean, last week we had teachers protesting the fact that Internet would be installed in schools! They are also demonstrating against having a skill test to make sure they actually know something before teaching. What’s wrong with them? I’m sure many things could change and be improved, but it’s very hard when the entire society is corrupted and our mentality stops us from changing.
Looney_Tunes
I know from your quizzes that you love soccer. Do you play the game yourself, or are you primarily an observer?I do love soccer! I play and watch it since a very young age. Even though I stopped playing it competitively a few years ago, I still play when I have a chance. I try to watch as much soccer as I can, mostly on TV. I watch almost every single game in the Mexican league (and some of them are extremely dull and boring), as well as some European soccer and of course, international soccer. Oddly, I don’t have a favorite team in any country of Europe, but I watch as much as I can. As for here in Mexico, I root for Pumas U.N.A.M. Soccer is a subject I know plenty about and enjoy, so I try to write quizzes about it every time I can.
Creedy
Hi Eddy, one of your hobbies is playing the piano. Do you have a particular era in this art form that you prefer above others? And if so, what is it?I have played the piano since I was 7 years old. I started out playing classical music, from Bach to Beethoven, but have explored many eras and styles over time. I really can’t name a favorite, but I do have a favorite composer, whose music is new-age influenced. His name is Ludovico Einaudi, you probably know him or his music if you watched the movie “Intouchables” in 2011, about a quadriplegic man and his assistant, as Einaudi composed the score for that movie. His music is just so inspiring and touching, playing it gives me goosebumps because of how good it is! Currently, I am inclined to play while singing instead of playing usual piano pieces, I just play the chords and sing along.
Creedy
Singing is another hobby of yours. Can you tell me the emotions that this extremely satisfying skill raises in you when you sing?It really is beyond description. Singing is possibly what I most enjoy doing, I especially realized this last December when a benign tumor was removed from my tongue, I spent weeks being unable to sing and it was the worst feeling ever! Singing is my form of expression, and getting out feelings of any kind I may be having at any given time. When I sing, I often try to identify with the lyrics and feel the music, I think that’s how you achieve a sincere performance (even if you’re singing alone and to yourself). I close my eyes, smile occasionally, and legitimately suffer when singing songs that contain lyrics that directly apply to a painful (or happy) situation of my life, and both of these cases, either painful or happy, are frequently connected to love. I think emotion is an essential part of good singing.
Salami_Swami
You are stuck in a waiting room for several hours with nothing but your mobile phone. What games are your favorites to keep you occupied?I’m not much of a mobile phone game person; I guess I’d stick to iCopter and Cube Runner, which are incredibly addicting games! Those were released a long time ago but are still pretty addictive. A similar one, ZigZag, was released a couple of months ago and it is also addicting (but frustrating as well!) I sometimes play FIFA in my phone but mostly on my iPad. There’s also this great word association game called IAssociate, which can also keep me entertained for hours.
Creedy
What kind of exercising do you enjoy most, and do you think it necessary that people try to do some form of exercise several times a week, if they are capable of doing so?Swimming is a very complete sport, and setting aside all health benefits it can provide, it helps me relax and think clearly, making it the exercise type I most enjoy. I also like to work out focusing on arms, abs and cardio, I think having a healthy body and exercising is essential not only to a good lifestyle but happiness as well. I do think it is very important to exercise any way a person can, but on a regular basis. I must admit, lately I haven’t got any time for the gym, but I’m planning on returning soon!
Dpcddc478
What do you like to do to make learning fun?I think learning should always involve something that affects whoever is learning in any form, as it sparks interest. Otherwise, it becomes dull and senseless to learn something. I think that’s often the case with sciences, for example, more specifically Physics. I struggled with that subject at school, the subject itself is hard, but there are good teachers and bad teachers, and I had a terrible one, who literally wrote how to do it, and then ten problems with random numbers and names I couldn’t understand. I find that counterproductive, since it doesn’t appeal to me at all and the fact that I can’t solve it frustrates me and stops me from any possible learning. Not that I have anything against Physics, but it wasn’t a good year as to that science for me!
I think good devices to make learning fun are music or opinion discussions where there are supported arguments, anything that makes the person who is learning slightly interested. Quizzes (both playing and writing, but specifically writing) have turned out a very effective way of learning for me!
Dcpddc478
If you could meet anyone from the past or present, who would it be and why?From the past, I think it would be someone like John F. Kennedy or Albert Einstein, remarkable people that made great contributions to humanity. I would love to have a chat with Einstein and listen to what he had to say, face to face!
From the present, probably musicians; Elton John, Passenger, or even the members of Mexican band Los Claxons. It would be great to talk about both how they composed the music and what inspired them to write those lyrics that are so easy to identify with in certain situations.
Kyleisalive and Dcpddc478
If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would you choose to go, and why?Based on locations I haven’t visited, I would choose England or Australia, it would be very interesting to get to know those countries. I would also like to go to countries like Israel (I always feel welcome there, especially being a Jewish person), or to plenty of U.S. locations like Houston, or a cruise ship, basically anywhere in the world! Another place I would like to go as much as possible is Acapulco, mainly for its beaches, unfortunately, safety has been a major issue over the last couple of years.
Kyleisalive
Chicken or fish?If you give me chicken-filled enchiladas, I’ll choose chicken. Otherwise, fish, maybe… Not sure actually.
Thanks to all participants for a great interview!
Interview with Lpez
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