When Imélie returns home, after attending a trivia night at a bar because her boss brought her along, she can't help herself but watch her old clips from past quiz bowl tournaments. After all, she feels the only thing of value she got out of the trivia night was a free dinner for her colleagues and their prospective clients. Yet, with the trivia night host, she abstained talking about her record as a quiz bowler beyond that it was the trivia game format she had the most experience playing. After all, the host seemed more interested in the logistics of hosting a trivia night than the background of the person that had suggestions to make!
"Honey, what happened for you to cry like this? Is it something that went wrong at work?" Sun asks his lover upon seeing her cry.
"Yes. My boss made me go to a business dinner at a bar. I entered, for the first time in my life, a bar trivia night and, while I won it, it was a mediocre game at best. But it made me realize how restrictive quiz bowl question writing is" Imélie explains what happened at trivia night.
"Of course you'd win, you're a smart cookie! But what do you mean, you played a mediocre game?"
"While short questions that are straight to the point make it more fun to occasional trivia players, that kind of questions doesn't necessarily reward the players that know more"
"I guess you had more complaints about that game if you feel it's a mediocre game!"
"Plus the questions involved are mostly middle school level even though drinking age is twenty-one years old, in which case I would have expected the majority of the questions to be at least high school level, and maybe even some college level questions for good measure"
"Stop living in the past, honey! You must have realized that not everyone can even know as much as you!"
"I need to be alone for a bit"
And, of course, how could she ever forget about the medal ceremony of the WNCC? In long form, the Women's National Collegiate Championship. An individual tournament with only female players, like the EGMO in high school mathletics. Her greatest quiz bowl accomplishment as an undergraduate and, by extension, Tulane's. "And the gold medalist of the undergraduate division of the inaugural, 2029 Women's National Collegiate Championship, from Tulane University, Imélie Tremblay!" keeps ringing in her mind, as she also watches that clip where the tournament director gave the three female undergraduates their respective medals. "This is the culmination of four years of hard work, I couldn't have asked for more from a graduation gift. If you like learning for its own sake, and you're a minority or a female, you should do quiz bowl" she pontified upon receipt of the medal.
"When you play quiz bowl at the highest levels, you will never again see quiz games the same! I used to be... the best!" Imélie cries after watching the WNCC undergraduate division gold medal game and its medal ceremony for the umpteenth time. "I accomplished everything the Green Wave accomplished in the past twenty-plus years in the quiz bowl arena; 2029 was the only season where the Green Wave accomplished anything significant as a quiz bowl school!"
She also kept the green and blue shirt of the university's quiz bowl team as some memento of these happy times but does not wear it very often. Man was I talented enough to win it all! And I also appeared on the Hullabaloo as well as For 10 points, fix this community! Imélie keeps reminiscing about how her winning the WNCC undergraduate division gold medal was the peak of her collegiate quiz bowl career. Hopefully today's Tulane quiz bowl team is good enough for me to be what they need to go to the ACF Nationals or the ICT was I to try to go back for graduate school! The Tulane I graduated from was just terrible in the quiz bowl arena; without me they were just a bunch of male dairy queenies that were nothing more than buzzer rocks!
A torrent of thoughts seems to submerge her mind as she recalls various articles For 10 points, fix this community ran about women and minorities in quiz bowl and how they needed to work harder to be accepted as team members in their own right. About how problematic it was for them socially if they were underperforming to the point of being reduced to mere dairy queenies or buzzer rocks, with the distinction being made based upon how important the social aspect of quiz bowl is to the player so tagged. A player for whom the social or touristic aspect of quiz bowl is more important than the competitive aspect is called a dairy queenie while a player that doesn't partake in the social or touristic aspect, yet buzzes in very rarely in games, if at all, is called a buzzer rock.
Her train of thought shifts towards her high school days as compared to undergrad. Sure I wasn't as popular in college as I was in high school, and I attended Tulane because, you know, it's the dream school of I don't know how many Louisiana high school students, but certainly a good chunk. Got in early decision.
Her trip down memory lane takes her through the social life during her last two years in high school, and how, in her mind, it differed from her time at Tulane. But that's because Venomous Agenda girls' fast track to social popularity passed through academics, at least at the time, and people adored you if you were female and a starter in either quiz bowl or mathletics. Then people knew how smart you were. In that environment, girls wishing to become popular better hope their brains were strong enough to handle it. In a way that's bizarre because, in almost any other high school that wasn't one of these elite high schools that we called our rivals in the mathletic and quiz-bowlistic arenas, or equivalent, high intelligence is socially undesirable in a gender-neutral way, or at least was treated as such back then. For Venomous Agendas, nothing could scream high intellect like a high level of performance as a mathlete or as a quiz bowler. Boys could still gain popularity that way, however.
And the next stop down memory lane had more to do with the specific people she knew during those years in question than the social life. Also, the parish school district didn't have a whole lot of resources to devote to academic extracurricular activities, and therefore we needed to keep team sizes small. So, we had to make the so-called Title IX funding count for both quiz bowl and mathletics, but luckily, we had access to girls in both areas that actually performed well. In mathletics I remember Éliane, Geneviève and Krista, and man Gen was a mathletic phenom. In quiz bowl, I remember Marcia and Florence; say what you will about Flo causing us to lose a tight game against Wayzata, and therefore getting us eliminated from the HSNCT, either one would have been an improvement over my past teammates as a Green Wave! Or Sadie even. But my senior season had Jennifer and Sadie as the girls the Venomous Agendas fanbase hyped as their mathletic and quiz-bowlistic future respectively. Because of this I lost the math team captaincy at the start of the Math Madness playoffs to Jennifer, but I still was the math and science girl for quiz bowl, Sadie was, as a sophomore, the history and RPMSS (religion, politics, mythology and social studies) girl on that Venomous Agendas quiz bowl squad. Meanwhile, William kept doing literature, but Sadie could still do some of it. Much like I could do history a little bit. It always had to be girls. What did I do to remember my high school days at that level of detail anyway? That was a lot of overly detailed memories from my past... unless my memory is playing tricks on me somehow? Has my memory gone out of control? This is far too long a trip down memory lane for it to be healthy! Why would I need to recall these things now anyway? WHYYYYY?
"Maybe we should do something with our bodies tomorrow night so that you stop living in the past and the life of the mind you used to live... like, you know, bowling?" Sun asks her lover before going to sleep.
"Bowling? That reminds me far too much of what you accuse me of living in the past about!" Imélie protests to her lover.
"How could bowling remind you of quiz bowl anyway?"
"Right now, I'm unable to think straight"
"There is definitely something wrong with you"
"For some reason, my brain is just... fried right now. May as well go to sleep, too..."
Poor Imélie! Unable to think straight, she just goes through the motions, and takes a shower before going to bed with headaches that get bigger at every moment. And these before-after images of herself that flash in dreams, albeit with no real recollection of their content the following morning.
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"Honey, did you have a good night?" Sun asks Imélie.
"More or less. What about some Cajun style gumbo?" she suggests to her lover.
"That ought to cheer you up..."
However, at work, Imélie has a meeting in the chief engineer's office, regarding something that, while related to her current project, a DLC add-on for divorce planning, is much more personal than simply design documents for what should a divorce planning tool comprise. Asset distribution and their tax consequences, alimony and child support agreements (despite their fiscal neutrality at the federal level, some states still need to distinguish them for tax purposes), and so on.
"Remember during our last meeting that, for some reason, IRC Section three-fifty-one was mentioned as a potential feature we wanted to add before the DLC is released?" Juan asked.
"The way the legal department talked about it, that specific section had to do with corporate tax. Why has IRC Section three-fifty-one been added to the project all of a sudden?" Imélie asked the chief engineer. "Tax lawyers and accountants don't have the same needs, nor the same UI or UX expectations out of this DLC, as would couples undergoing a divorce, or even the family lawyers they hire!"
"Imélie, you're the only one I trust to keep the secret. But I'm undergoing a second divorce and I plan on using IRC Section three-fifty-one this time around" Juan answers Imélie.
"Asset concealment. It's the main reason I can think of for even using this in a divorce proceeding... Sorry if I'm a little indiscreet but this sounds like tax evasion. Also, did your first divorce involve Section three-fifty-one?" Imélie asks him.
"And this is why it is a secret. But no, my first divorce did not involve Section three-fifty-one. Getting this job as a chief engineer caused my first divorce"
"But other than me not doing any gossip whatsoever, why would you want to entrust the secret to someone else here?"
I knew people losing jobs sometimes led to a divorce, but for a job change to cause a divorce or separation, one of the divorcees typically had to move because of its new job, Imélie ponders, while her boss is divorcing again. But she is wondering how he would use Internal Revenue Code Section 351 in a divorce for asset concealment.
"I don't think I would like to know why you are divorcing this time around, beyond where Section three-fifty-one fits in your divorce proceedings" the front-end engineer voices her concerns.
"It would probably motivate you more if you know the rationale behind adding a particular module. Sometimes workers lose their morale when they don't know why a task or project is performed, even though they know what their role in it is. You're right, however, in that Section three-fifty-one is used to conceal assets, albeit a little expensive" Juan talks about Imélie's comments regarding S351 in asset concealment.
Oh my God, if he is planning to use S351 to conceal assets, he's very afraid his current wife is a predatory wife that's out for tax-free spousal rollover, alimony, or child support! Imélie reflects on what could even motivate his boss to use IRC S351 prior to a divorce.
A typical S351 asset concealment scheme consists of transferring the assets the divorcee wishes to conceal into a C-corporation, and subsequently the stock of said C-corporation is put up as an asset in a divorce so that, while, technically, the assets so concealed are the property of the corporation, the ex then gets up to 50% ownership in it. However, there is no reason to use S351 for assets that are worth less than what they originally paid for, or their UCC, for non-depreciable and depreciable assets respectively. In that situation, the taxpayer is better off deducting the resulting capital loss or terminal loss than using S351. The other drawback is the legal cost of getting the articles of incorporation and maintaining the shell corporation while the owner's divorce proceedings are underway. Meanwhile, the tax return will be very straightforward since there is no income and only a handful of expenses.
"Long story short, just don't think people get married and remain so in the long run. If you get married, you must plan for divorce before you sign the marriage license! Not necessarily around one but planning for a divorce before you get married can save you a lot of money and headaches if it does come down to one. It's not like in my grandparents' time, or even my parents', where you were expected to remain in a marriage for life. That's all" Juan has one final piece of advice to make.
And I think Juan's wife is on the verge of breaking the pre-nuptial agreement! There would not be any need for him to resort to IRC S351 otherwise! The project manager had my team on this project in a meeting with the legal department about IRC S351 at the very beginning of it! Now that we are nearing the end of it, and we are nearing a shippable state... Imélie ponders while returning to the UI and UX considerations, as well as the need for that module's UI to have some commonality with the rest of the software's UI, otherwise it would be quite jarring as a user experience.
Of particular importance to her is the input of depreciable assets' tax values, such as the adjusted basis, the UCCs, or undepreciated capital costs, and the fair market value. This is forcing me to learn about that aspect of corporate taxation, as well as about MACRS, Section 179, and capital gains and losses, the latter for individuals as well, because only then can I provide the best UX design possible; good UX design requires that I understand what will various users want out of what you are designing, as well as what goes into using it, she keeps thinking about how to make a the experience as user-friendly as possible, beyond question marks next to a particular legal or tax term and clicking or pushing on it would provide the user with a certain level of explanation she deems appropriate for a wide range of potential users. In addition, taxation isn't exactly the most appealing thing in the world, so it creates an additional challenge to her.
The full stack developer is there for programming the actual calculation of the stocks' adjusted bases, the realized and recognized gains, and the report allowing an easy comparison between not using S351 and using it. I, on the other hand, must run through the tutorial capsules through the legal department and, of course, toggling these on and off. So even though we're both using the same knowledge, we're using it for different purposes, Imélie keeps going on her train of thought.
And yet the purpose of Section 351 is to ensure that businesses that were hitherto run as sole proprietorships would not incur undue fiscal hardship to their ownership by incorporating. With the full stack developer, at lunch, Imélie gets into a conversation about his future family.
"I will soon be a father!" the full stack developer exclaims upon receipt of a SMS from his own lover.
"Good; a boy or a girl?" Imélie asks.
"It's too early in her pregnancy to determine the child's gender" the full-stack developer answers her.
"Better save money now for the purchases you will need to make at birth. I trust you know what these purchases are..." Imélie points out.
"Don't worry, Imélie, my friends gave me their purchase lists. There are a few items that differ depending on their gender, but..."
"If you're talking about toys or electronic devices, please be careful. Make sure you have a gender balance in what you pick so that your kid doesn't fall prey to stereotypes!" Juan comments as he starts eating his lunch in front of everyone else.
"I know you haven't fallen into the trap" the full stack developer continues before he takes a bite of his lunch.
Stereotypes... I got lucky the full stack developer treats me with respect, and the legal department as well as the backend developers. And I got lucky at school. Yet for some reason the Venomous Agendas fanbase seemed weirdly obsessed with trying to get a female mathlete to qualify for the IMO. It may have seemed progressive to some people outside of southwest Louisiana, but they just swapped out a stereotype for another. Rather than to consider girls as bad at math, my hometown instead considered boys as too undisciplined for academic success at best, and dumb at worst, Imélie ponders, triggered once again, but she quickly puts an end to this unintended trip down memory lane and takes another bite of her own lunch.
"I already have an ordered list of what to buy for my child as far as educational materials, and at what age I should have these by" Keshav continues.
"What do you provide your kids these days?" Imélie asks him, wondering if he engages in hothousing with his kid.
"I make my child listen to a variety of music: classic, rock, lullabies, pop, and so on, so forth. Also I give them sone reading material at night so they can go to sleep in an attempt to learn something new" Keshav answers Imélie's question about purchasing lists for child-rearing.
"Ouch, Keshav, you're stuck in the past for parenting. If you do this too much your child will grow up mentally ill!" Juan adds, angry at Keshav's attitude towards parenting.
"We only want what's best for our kids!" Keshav retorts, while this heated debate about parenting styles tends to take up more space than Imélie would like.
As much as I live in the past in some respects, my bosses do so in others. However, today has given a lot for me to think about. First, the tax consequences of divorcing, and later child-rearing! Now is not the time for me to confront them on that topic, the UX engineer starts thinking, while the two vice presidents had a heated discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of hothousing in early childhood. She can sense Keshav is kind of stuck in an old-fashioned way of parenting, while Juan prefers limited supervision. Meanwhile, the full stack developer is listening closely to arguments from both sides of the issue because he feels it's going to become his future in at most nine months' time.
"In any case, I think it does no good to force a child to perform certain activities. However, there's a fine line between encouraging and forcing a child" Imélie belatedly adds, after she finished eating her sandwich.
"In that case it's best to explore activities that are related to the child's core interests" the full stack developer adds to what Imélie said.
Man are they doing everything in their power to make me remind about my past, one way or another! This is not healthy, and I'd be better off eating faster and quietly or else! Imélie muses while the three computer experts talk in greater depth about parenting in ways she doesn't seem willing to contribute more than she already had. But she seems to eat at a much faster speed than before. In the end, before she returns to her station...
"May your future child bring you years of joy!" Imélie wishes to her coworker.