korean billiards

I've been debated whether or not to retrograde this blog. Since I started this a bit late into my journey, should I go back and recount those old stories. I am still throwing the idea back and forth in the orbits of my mind.

This is an event of the past but it's easy and quick, so I figured it'd be a good place to start.



A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to play billiards with three male teachers at my school. They play nearly every Friday and their expertise in the game showed. As for me, I have never been so disappointed with my ability to pick up a game. I wasn't bad; I was downright awful. After 2 games I had amassed four points for my team (out of about 50 - although I came DANGEROUSLY close to winning the game for us. Twice.).

No matter, Korean pool is still pretty wild - and requires a different set of skills than what I've become used to.

To begin with, the table has no pockets.

You play the whole game with four balls - one white, one yellow and two red.

The game is simple for the most part. There are more complicated games that we sampled but my kindergarten skill level prevented any of those from taking place.

Your goal is to have your ball (white is one team, yellow the other) hit both red balls without hitting the other teams. You can play with certain minimum wall touches, but we didn't.

Essentially, the game boils down to English (a word, which unfortunately, I was never able to communicate properly to my Korean counterparts. For obvious reasons. They just thought I was translating. I can't blame them though - the double meaning of the word is strange and they are not English teachers in the school. Our most complicated conversation came about discussing major league baseball and was more a listing of players we both knew....)

And as I mentioned, I sucked. But I will play with them again soon and hopefully avenge myself. As it gets colder I may want to take refuge in the indoors and practicing my game couldn't hurt.

They have no problems with people playing by themselves. And since each table has a timer (for pay rates) I noticed that many men stay there for quite some time (one was over 5 hours).


So that was my Korean pool experience and detailing. Quick and easy.

Side note: Koreans pronounced "Phillies" very much like "Police" - so much so that when my teammate asked if I liked the Phillies, I responded yes and starting to sing "roxanne". Massive confusion.


Lastly, 23% of American adults cannot name a single scientist when asked.

http://www.virology.ws/2009/06/30/many-adults-cannot-name-a-scientist/


e.g.