The Boston Tea Accident and other jet-lagged miscellany

I've only had three days of work, so it's hard to know for certain how I'm going to like it at my new job, but thus far it seems to be going pretty well. Everyone is extremely friendly, and they are continually surprised by how quickly I do things (even though as I was mostly asleep on Tuesaday and half asleep on Wednesday, surely I wasn't being efficient!) and by how well I understand what they ask me to do. The stuff I edit is highly technical and most of you would probably find it pretty boring, but so far I've been finding it rather interesting. At the very least, it keeps me using my brain.

What I spend my day staring at, albeit with lots of techy stuff open.

The company seems to be 90% men, most of whom are in their 20s or 30s. The department I'm part of is all men, except for me. I'm also the only foreigner in the company - so I totally stand out no matter which way you look at me.

My department seems to go to lunch as a group every day. Luckily, they have been choosing places that are not any more expensive than what I'd been spending at Paris Baguette down in Daegu on a daily basis, so it's not going to affect my budget. I'd been kind of worried - given that my office is in the 'Wall Street of Korea' - that lunch expenses would get out of hand... but so far, no.

Apparently the department also has a 'dessert quiz tradition' (as they put it). Someone asks a history question (a date when something happened), and everyone writes down what they think is the answer. Whoever's answer is farthest from the correct answer has to buy dessert for the rest of the group after lunch. They said they usually ask questions about American or European history (since they all know Korean history). The question one of my coworkers suggested was 'What year was the Boston Tea Party?' - which then led to a rather involved discussion of what the BTP was and why it occurred. (I told them my mother the history teacher would be quite impressed with their knowledge! And also, I learned that in Korean, it's referred to as the Boston Tea Accident - my coworkers thought calling it a 'tea party' was hilarious.) Anyway, while they were all fairly knowledgeable about what and why, they were all waaaaay off on the date. I guessed 1774 (the correct answer was 1773), whereas they all guessed dates in the mid to late 1800s. Hooray for not having to buy dessert today!