Entry 6, New Place

   People travel all over the world, from country to country, moving from city to city. In a life time, people will encounter countless places. Some places may only be one time, but some places could be their second home. To me, after moving to Hsinchu, over the course of the past three years, I have found a pool hall down town to be my second home. We would be there after school, on weekends, or just whenever we have the time to shoot pool, we would be there. At first, when I first walked into the pool hall, the tables were organized like a brick wall, side by side and one after the other. The blue and green cloth of the table was eye catching, and people always picked the one that looked new and unused. Cue sticks were arranged neatly on a rack infront of every table on the wall.The cigarette fumes numb my nose as I walk in, the smell of beetle nuts and cigarettes let you know this is not a place for kids. The people all gaze upon their game as you walk through them, carefully examining you in every way. That feeling does not feel good, it feels like I would get killed or mugged in there. The loud music in the background and the sounds of the pool balls smacking one another from table to table was deafening. To speak, we would have to raise our voice by quite alot. To be honest, I was a bit scared the very first time we went shooting pool.  After a whole summer of nearly every day shooting pool, the store clerks had got to know us, the common visitors of the stores got to know us as well, at last, it wasn't such a scary place after all. Even after such a long time, the excitement of walking into the pool hall gets me every time, the happiness was spawned by not just the game of pool, but just the fact that friends were all there. The pool hall is truly our second home.