The past couple of weeks we had become hopeful that DUMBO was going to return to its former glory when we had so many more people that we had been expecting turn up for the past two events. This week's attendance was a bit of a disappointment as we were only able to occupy 4 lanes and really, we could have done it on 3.
Compared to the past where we would need to book the entire bowling alley and all 12 of its lanes and well, you could say I am a little disappointed.
There are a couple of reasons why this could be the case and one of them is that the Vietnamese people are all preparing for Tet, a holiday that I do not understand but realize is the most important one of the year. At the end of this month and for all of the start of Feb the entire country is going to grind to a halt as for a couple weeks basically everything shuts down. Some people who don't have traditional careers get a jump start on this holiday and have already left. So that's a lot of folks eliminated from contention right there.
Also, there is this thing going on in Vietnam right now where Immigration is once again threatening to kick out all the foreigners who don't have work permits. While the "veterans" of the area tell everyone to not worry because this is an annual thing and normally happens around Tet in order to get more money out of people via bribes, a bunch of folks are getting their affairs in order and arranging to either leave or getting an agent to work something out for them so they can have a few more months here. I haven't really gotten as concerned about the whole situation as I probably should. It doesn't really matter to me what threat they throw my way, I am not going to just up and abandon my dog and there is a bunch of paperwork that has to be done in order to move an animal legally, internationally. If it comes down to it I will simply overstay my visa and pay whatever fine they come up with. There is nothing that could possibly happen, even threat of prison, that would separate me from her and that's basically all there is to it.
Back to the bowling
While my scores were nothing particularly eventful I was quite pleased with how I was picking up spares yesterday. I didn't do a great deal in the strike portion of things but I was a spare picking up machine yesterday and since I bowl with a right to left curve, this is something that is normally very difficult for me to pull off especially if remaining pins are on the right hand side of the lane
My apologies for the blurry image but that's just kinda what my phone does when taking a photo of a screen. I do NOT have an expensive phone and don't understand people that spend $1000 or more on one. Also, the scoring system at these lanes clears the rest of the game unless you take a pic before the last ball is rolled so you'll just have to take my word on it that I was picking up spares frequently prior to the last 3 frames.
At one point I even picked up a rather magical spare that was on a 4,7,10 split and this is tough even for professionals to successfully do.
This was probably my proudest moment of the entire day yesterday and the only reason why it worked is because I bowl with a curve and it hit the 4 pin at just the right angle to kick it across the lane where it casually and slowly, and at the last second, rolled into the 10 pin, barely knocking it over. You could give me 20 more tries at that same shot and I would likely fail on all 20 of them. I'm not really that good and most of this was luck. I did make me happy though.
At the end of it all the people who had the awards at the beginning of day still had them by the end, but we did crown a new women's champion and at the moment this is determined only by whoever gets the highest score of the day until we can actually get more women to come on a regular basis. "Tra" scored a 108 and I am not trying to be misogynistic, I am just stating a local fact: The women that play in Dumbo very rarely break 100 points so this was a pretty special moment.
Afterwards we all went out and drank too much, as is tradition. I had 13 beers and no food before I called it quits and headed home where a very grumpy puppy was waiting for me. I think she was upset with me because how DARE I leave her alone all day long.
Once I gave her some pizza crust all was forgiven and then we watch an episode of some new scary series that I have forgotten the name of until I passed out. :)