The Worst Game of Pool ever

A few students and I went in search of KTV. KTV is karaoke, which is a pretty popular passtime in China and Japan. We walked for miles in all directions following signs leading us down dark alleys and through side street, but still no KTV was to be found. I was amazed how few bars and nightlife activities are located in this area. I am staying in Sinjhuang City, near the Fu Ren University. I would think that the place would be hopping considering it is around the campus of a university with several thousand students. I guess students here take homework and studying more seriously.

After our marathon search for KTV we settled on playing pool instead. There were three of us so we decided to play a game of high, mid, low under rules I had never heard before. Maybe they are crazy Bostoner rules (both of the other students were from Boston or there abouts). If a person scratched then the other 2 people got to remove 2 of their balls from the pockets. This made the game VERY slow. As soon as anyone hit any balls in, they were almost immediately taken out again. I have never played by these rules before and I think they are stupid.

At any rate, we soon realized that none of us are very good pool players. We could hardly get any balls in the pockets, though hard we did try. I think I turned out to be the best of the three, but that really isn’t saying much at all. The game went on and on for hours as we shot random balls around the table with no success. Our skills seemed to get worse as the game wore on. Balls were literally flying everywhere. The cue was bouncing out of the table, and instead of the balls being deposited into the pockets they would bounce out onto the floor. The table of Taiwanese pool players next to us began to get a little scared and worried by our behavior. They were jumping out of the way each time they heard our balls crashing, least they get hit with a stray. It was so utterly ridiculous that we had nothing else to do but howl with laughter. The balls just wouldn’t stay on the table, and we too were dropping to the floor rolling with giggles. The other problem was all of us would scratch on just about every turn. By the end we had to abandon all rules and we were merely all working as a team to knock ANY ball into a pocket.

I think our game took about 2 hours to complete, and then we shamefully ran out of the place. I don’t think anyone else in the world has ever played a worse game of pool.