Ricky, the Australian teacher, and I have taken up pool (are you now humming “Ya Got Trouble in River City” from the Music Man?). Even though I haven’t played pool in many, many years and I was never very good- it still sounded like fun. For the last month we have been periodically going to the pool hall that is located under one of the dorms. Ricky and I seemed to be pretty well matched. We both bounce the balls over the side, we miss the cue ball every so often, we don’t call any of our shots and if there are a bunch of balls together we aim for the bunch and hope one of ours goes in somewhere. We are even so predictably bad on the break that if one of us wins a game the other has to break.
Pool halls in China are not like pool halls in the US. There are no quarters on the table or playing the winner. If there is an open table you play at that table until you are tired. You pay by the hour not by the number of games. Also they are really not ‘halls’ it is sort of like playing in a garage with the door open. Notice the gloves and scarfs. All the tables we have tried are lopsided and all of the cue sticks are warped, which is actually nice cause you can blame some of your bad shots on the table and the cue stick. So far the score is Katie 6 WINS and Ricky 2 wins. I have to admit to all of you that most of it is dumb luck – but I will never tell Ricky that.
