Hi all. Beware: this is going to be another one of those 'what-I-don't-like-about-the-world' kind of article. So if I'm boring the h*ll out of you people please tell me. Not that I'll stop doing so, but then at least I know why absolutely no-one seems to notice the possibility to spam back at me :P (Yeah you folks had that one coming ... for some time now. You live with it *grin*) Right. So Biek ... what's wrong this time? Last night Bas and I went playing snooker again, as we usually do on Tuesdays. There's this unspoken rule that, when in a given week there's no competition game planned, we use that weeks Tuesday evening to play a couple of practice frames. And it's not uncommon either that we're there on Tuesday regardless of snooker competition. Now I know this, Bas and Jaap know this and Erik (the owner of our snooker place) most certainly knows this. And it's not that this is some overnight behavior, we've been doing this for the past couple of years so it's nothing new. For neither side. Now over the years we had our share of surprises with this establishment. Not really big issues, just your average share of little things like encountering the absence of coffee or beer (even all flavors at a time) but it could well be that things like this happen everywhere all the time and it's just me, kind of annoyed, not seeing the whole picture ... who knows ;-) And these are no big problems of course, when there's no beer, you take a coffee ... wait a minute ... unless there is none left of course ... hmm, I'll need to think about that one ... The thing that bothers me most however is that, even though we're playing snooker and have reserved that snooker table for 'the evening' and therefore should be allowed to use it for as long as we like, he simply tells other people that our table will probably not take long to become available and after telling them comes asking us how long we were thinking of playing that night. Is it me, or am I missing something here? So last night we decided that we were not quitting just yet, you know, just to make a statement. We said that we were going to have 'at least' one more frame, leaving him to go back, explain this to his, probably more favorite guests, and then returning to his own snooker game for crying out loud! Believe me, if I was the owner, and someone wanted to play snooker and I didn't have a free table available I would stop snookering for myself and give them my table, but hey that's just silly old me thinking I guess. Unfortunately when that frame was finished both Bas and I were not in the best states fiscally. Both our backs are far from good and when we've been playing snooker for too long, we tend to simply ... erm ... cave in more or less. But desperate times call for desperate measures so I asked Bas if we could 'please' do another frame. (Yeah I can be that type of bastard when needed) He agreed so we racked up and started another frame, which wasn't appreciated a lot across the room ... mission accomplished for as far as I was concerned *grin* We still had fun nonetheless and when we finished that frame we simply had to stop, which of course is a shame on a moment like that *evil grin* I don't think I'll show up for the night tournament I was planning to join next Saturday ... I simply don't feel like attending it right now. No, what I do feel like right now is going to bed and stay in for the rest of the ... week! Boy I feel just about my entire body now ... What was it that Christian Bale said in the end of the (quite nice) movie Equilibrium? 'It's a heavy cost, but I pay it gladly ...' And that's all there is to it.