I have now been the DUMBO (DaNang Unadvertised Maniac's Bowling Organization) champion for 4 weeks straight after yet another successful title defense, which had to take place early this week due to everything being shut on TET aka, Lunar New Year.
One good thing that happened is that even MORE people attended this week and except for one lane that is against the wall and therefore no one likes playing on it, we had at least 3 people playing in every single functioning lane that this particular bowling alley has available. It is lucky that no other customers were there but once again, this is why we go in the morning.
I like that so many people are coming to these events but honestly, we are reaching the point where I wish that no new people would come since this week we had 2 lanes with 4 people on them and that is about as many people as I think you should ever have on 1 lane. A game takes too long if you put more than that.
In our mix we have mostly expats but a few Vietnamese people as well, most of which are girlfriends / wives of members of the expat community. We have England, Scotland, Australia, Ireland, Finland, USA, Canada, Vietnam, and China represented in our ranks. We did have a German guy come one time but he never came back... maybe we were not serious enough for him.
One thing that has been a bit difficult to manage is that not everyone knows about the courtesy rules of bowling and one of the major ones is that if someone to your left or right is already standing in bowling position, that you wait until after they roll before you go up to roll yourself. For many this "disturbance" doesn't bother them, but I am the kind of person that things in my peripherals really throws me off my game.
When people violate this rule we try to teach them to not do that and no one is doing it to be a jerk, they simply don't know about the rule's existence.
We also unveiled the women's belt that day, it is identical to the men's but the purchaser went to great lengths to paint the belt white. We don't have as many women playing in our league so the winner of that belt is determined by whoever gets the highest score of the day. The men's belt is only a one on one situation each week and your opponent is determined at random.
Speaking of which, I really dodged a bullet this past week because my opponent is one of the weaker bowlers in the league but I played the game not like a champion who bowled more than 200 last week, but rather like someone who had never done this sport before.
In both my games I barely broke 100, which is not the way that a champion should play. Had I been playing against nearly anyone else in the lanes that day, I would have lost the belt.
I don't know what the problem was but if you are a bowler, a golfer, or a participant in really any other sport, you are probably aware of days where you are just "off" and can't seem to get it together no matter how you micro-adjust your moves.
There are new tag team champions, and the competition was stiff, but in the end "RichRash" managed to scrape out a victory and claim the awards. For one of the members of the team, this is his 3rd team that he has held the belts with, he is known as "Ninja" because of the near silent strike that he has when he releases the ball onto the lane.
I think it is actually harder to do well in tag teams, because your score isn't determined by just you since you and your team-mate alternate rolls. I elected to sit this week's tag team event out since we had an odd number of people and I was rolling like crap anyway.
DUMBO will be back on the lanes next Tuesday and I know there are a few fellow DaNang-ians on this site. If any of you want to join us simply turn up at Lotte Mart bowling center at 11am on Thursday! The rest of ya, well, come and visit once the borders are open. There are plenty of reasons to visit DaNang other than just bowling too!