How's your general knowledge?

So one of the interesting* features of working for a world news TV station is that everyday is a general knowledge quiz of some sort. Now I'm not one to say no to a bit of trivia every now and then (as long as it involves questions on early nineties music, useless celebrity gossip from 10 years ago, or sporting events that Australia has won) but lets just say that middle eastern cities, and world leaders are not my forté.

Belonging to the generation of NSW students who only had to do one year of history and geography in highschool (anything more was the student's choice), I was one of those wise students who chose to do the absolute minimum and hence finished geography at the age of 14 and history at 15. I decided to choose subjects like music, textiles and French instead. This means that I have quite a crap background in geography and history- quiz me on countries i have travelled to, the aboriginal people, or Captain Arthur Phillip and I'm your girl - but if you're looking for a broader, more detailed knowledge of the history and politics of numerous countries, then unfortunately I'm probably not the best person to ask.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a dumb ass, I have a fair idea of what is going on in the world, but I'm definitely not up there on remote cities, or foreign politicians.

Fortunately, during my 2 interviews for the position that I currently hold, both interviewers told me they would come to the general knowledge quiz at the end of the interview and conveniently for me, they forgot. I like to think it was due to my completely calm and confident expression which gave off the 'don't even waste your time testing me on my immaculate general knowledge' impression, even if on the inside, I was kicking myself for never being home to watch the news, not owning a radio, and not having bought a newspaper since arriving in France over a year ago.

I soon recognised the problem in my first week when I was asked how to spell 'Tyre' in French. My initial reaction was to ask why we were doing a story on an uninteresting topic like tyres, but then something told me to check wikipedia just in case there happened to be other forms of tyres I wasn't aware of. This turned out to be a good plan of action when I read that Tyre, as well as being something found on the outer part of a wheel, is in fact a city in Lebanon - and the French spelling is 'Tyr'. Without exposing my ignorance I was able to reply in a matter of minutes with the correct French spelling - very professional of me I know. This however was only the first of many close calls that I have since experienced. Everyday I pretend as if I know exactly what everyone is talking about and so far no one has found me out. Fortunately I have a good memory and so my plan is to continue to bluff for the next few weeks and hopefully by then I will have learnt most of the foreign cities and politicians names in both English and French and no one will ever know of my early days of shame. Having said that, if anyone wants to help me out with a list of remote cities, a detailed world map, or a list of foreign politicians with spelling and pronunciation included, feel free!

*the word 'interesting' can equally be replaced by 'stressful', 'disturbing', 'worrying', 'exciting' or anything else that might take your fancy...