May 30, 2015
This is not a game: Neutralising the AMOG
The next day we awoke to find ourselves once again having made landfall, although this time we appeared to have stopped in the middle of nowhere. Other than the port building and the long pier extending to it there was nothing of interest to be seen on the flat land that surrounded it. This was because we were supposed to stop at Kuala Lumpar, the capital city of Malaysia, which, unfortunately for the cruise ship, was not accessible by water. Consequently most of the passengers filed onto waiting buses and zoomed off to see the city 50 kilometres away, while Tom and I, intimidated by the idea of walking that far, opted to spend the day on the boat.
We weren’t going to waste the day though, and set about on something of a mission. A couple of nights earlier we had taken part in a darts competition that, through a terrible series of misfortune, neither of us had managed to win. The winner was a man named Paul who was incredibly lucky – he made his winning ‘out’ by pure fluke, and I know this for a fact, because he didn’t even know what his out was before he threw for it. “Well done Paul,” announced Josh, the Canadian cruise employee who was in charge of such things, “You scored 48 which leaves you on, oh, incredible, that was just what you needed. You win! What do you want as a prize? Champagne? What’s your room number, I’ll have a bottle of champagne sent to it.”
Now this final sentence caught us by surprise, particularly Tom who seemed suddenly very much like he wished he’d spent more of his life practicing darts. I’d assumed that the prize, if there was one, would have been a pen or a keyring, or some such silly thing. A bottle of champagne was an incredible reward for a man who clearly had only won by accident. And so it was with this still fresh in our minds that on our Kuala Lumpar morning we scoured the ‘Princess Patter’, the leaflet that entered our room each evening with a detailed list of all of the next day’s onboard events, for other competitions that we could enter. “We’ve got to enter all of these, Tom” I said. It took us a while to get through breakfast, second breakfast, brunch and first lunch, however, and it was the one p.m. soccer shootout that we arrived at first.
I’m not sure why, perhaps because most of the other passengers were 50 kilometres away or perhaps because the passengers that had remained on board were too geriatric to make it to the sports court on deck 15 (the only part of the ship not accessible by elevator) but Tom and I were the only participants in the soccer shootout. This was a fantastic state of affairs, that seemed to guarantee us a bottle of bubbly, but we still went through with the formalities of the shootout. Tom went first, steering his first six shots easily into the small open goal at the other end of the court, before I meanly resorted to distracting him, causing him to lose concentration and finish with a score of eight out of ten. Showing no mercy I then guided all ten of my kicks between the posts and turned to our referee expectantly.
“What do I win?” I asked, “ A bottle of champagne?”
“No,” She laughed, “You can have a pen or a keyring. What’s your room number?”
This disappointment would have been enough to crush the spirits of most men, but we had the solace of a second lunch to console us, and we rallied ourselves for the 3.15 carpet bowls event. Being on deck five and involving much less physical effort, this was a much better attended competition with about twelve entrants. Tom and I were the only ones under pensionable age of course, but what we lacked in carpet bowls experience we certainly made up for in enthusiasm. We were sure that the larger field would guarantee a bottle of champagne would be on offer for the winner, and our youthful determination was in evidence as we each swept aside our first round opponents.
Tom’s victory was particularly enjoyable. None of his first three rolls had been terribly impressive, all wayward or overthrown, and his skilled opponent had managed to get one of hers touching the jack. And so with the last throw of the game Tom predictably resorted to hurling the ball down as hard as he could, spectacularly hitting his intended target, smashing the balls away towards his and stealing an unlikely victory. I whooped with delight and high-fived him as he returned to his chair. He looked almost apologetic towards the aged folks around us but I told him not to worry: “It’s a legitimate tactic, man, well done. We’ve got them riled now.”
Josh, who was once again running the competition, attempted to stop our unlikely charge through the field by pitting us against one another in the semi-final. His mistake, of course, was that this naturally only guaranteed us a place in the final, and I guaranteed that it would be me by insisting that Tom have the first turn. With no chance of smashing me out with the last throw of the game I took the win and the chance to go for the champers.
In the final I was up against an old man who clearly knew what he was doing. Not only was his run to the final peppered with near-perfect bowls, but he also stood firm before we even began.
“You go first” he told me.
“No, you can go first.”
“No, you go first, really.”
We both knew that going second was a big advantage, but this game was supposed to be good-natured wasn’t it, and hell I wasn’t going to stand there arguing with an old man about it, so I took the first roll. It wasn’t very good. My opponent came in close to the jack. I misfired again. He got even closer. My third roll was worse than the first two, his came in bang on target. This wasn’t going very well. Tom sat by sweating. Our bottle of booze was slipping from our grasp. This was it. I only had one bowl left to rescue the day. Resisting the temptation to go for Tom’s smash and grab technique, I instead concentrated all of my efforts on pitch and length. It felt good as soon as it left my hand, and I watched as it curled around with a perfect trajectory, knocking into the jack and carrying it away from my competitor’s balls and into a winning position for me. My own ball now sat touching the jack. It had been a flawless shot. I once again whooped with delight, so proud of myself as Tom beamed from the sidelines.
But, of course, my rattled opponent still had one bowl remaining. He stepped up, looking nervous, seeing his victory slip from his grasp, yet bold enough to send his last ball hurtling at great speed down the carpet and bang into my ‘winning’ ball to steal my glory from me. “Oh, that’s not fair!” I declared, before marching back to my seat to apologise to Tom. It would surely take days to get over the disappointment of having been so unbelievably close to winning the bottle of champagne. Over my shoulder I heard Josh congratulating the winner: “Well done Graham, great bowls. Now, what do you want as a prize? A pen, or a keyring?”
We gave up on the competitions after that, and concentrated on third lunch, snacks, dinner, tea, supper and feast-time, before getting dressed up for the party that was taking place on board that evening. I use the term ‘dressed up’ quite inaccurately, of course. I don’t think either of us actually changed, but Tom put on a Hawaiian necklace, and we were ready. Tom was particularly ready, because he’d at some point encountered a girl on the ship who he seemed to have taken quite a shine to. “Her name’s Briney,” he told me, “Briiiiiney.” I’d been reading the book that Tom had lent me on picking up girls and I thought it might be fun to encourage Tom to use the tactics described therein to try and pick up ‘Briney’ this evening
The party took place on the top deck beside the pool and featured music and dancing and such party-like things. It also featured the sea god Neptune, who doused us with a wet towel in some sort of bizarre ritual to celebrate our upcoming equator crossing. ‘Briney’ or Briony as I would later discover to be her actual name, or ‘the target’ as we now described her, was easy to spot. There were only three other young people at the party. Fortunately two of them were attractive females – Briony herself, and Monika, a Polish girl who I’d met on the first day. Unfortunately as we watched them dancing from an overlooking balcony we saw that the third was an AMOG. For those of you not familiar with the acronyms used in the pick-up book we were referencing, an AMOG is the Alpha-Male Of the Group. And this was the ultimate AMOG. A big guy, tattooed arms bulging out from under his vest top, he danced simultaneously with both girls, cautious of any outside interference. “You’re going to have to neutralise the AMOG first,” I said to Tom as we watched, “After that make sure you get three IOIs, then attempt to get the target to a secluded location, overcome any LMR and make a kiss close.” I think I might have been spending too much time reading this book. “She’s a HB though man, a real SHB.”
What followed was somewhat pitiful. We made our way down to the dance floor and for the next half an hour Tom made repeated half-hearted efforts to get close to Briony, only for every attempt to be rebuffed by the AMOG, who was incredibly good at moving his elbows whilst dancing in such a way as to prevent any advances being made upon his girls. Tom clearly hadn’t been paying enough attention to the book, or to me, because he entirely forget that the key to success with Briony was to first befriend and neutralise the AMOG, and before very long he gave up and settled for embracing the sea god Neptune.
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The next day was spent entirely at sea as our ship finally decided to stop pausing at Malaysian ports and actually head definitively south towards Australia. After taking part in another soccer shootout, from which I was able to increase my overall winning haul to a pen and a keyring, I was walking back alone when by chance I passed Briony, Monika and the AMOG sunbathing. Briony said hello and invited me to join them as they were about to go for a swim in the pool and I thought that if Tom wasn’t going to neutralise the AMOG I might as well do it, and, not that Tom wasn’t enthralling company, but I thought it might also do me good to spend some time with some other people too.
I introduced myself to the AMOG, who under normal circumstances went by the name of Rob, and made attempts to befriend him as the four of us jumped in the pool. This was surprisingly easy because he was actually a very nice guy. A 22-year-old chef from Perth, with plans to soon head to Europe and work for a Michelin chef there, Rob was in fact nice enough that before very long I found my allegiance to Tom wavering. I suggested, as I so often did, that we all go to the buffet together.
Monika preferred to remain by the pool, and so it was myself, Rob, and Briony that found ourselves eating together inside when the announcement was made over the tannoy system that we were crossing the equator. I peered out of the windows looking for the big red line that surely crossed the ocean here, but found nothing, and settled for taking a photo of the three of us to celebrate the momentous occasion.
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We rejoined Monika outside by the pool and my new friends sipped on margaritas as we continued cruising in the southern hemisphere. It was here that Tom found the four of us, arriving with a bottle of champagne sparkling wine from Langkawi grasped in one hand. He placed the bottle on the table in front of us. Here was his moment. I’d laid the groundwork, got us in with the crowd, befriended the AMOG, done all the hard work. Now he could come in and show his generosity and kindness to Briony by sharing the celebration.
“Erm,” he said, pointing at the bottle, seemingly aware that courtesy meant he should offer it around, “I was kind of hoping to drink this myself.”
With that beautiful introduction Tom skipped off to the bar to get some glasses. He returned with three, one for himself and one for me, and a third which he placed on the table between Briony, Rob and Monika.
“So do you want any, or what?” he said to them bluntly.
“No, no, no, it’s okay.”
He poured himself and me a glass each and we congratulated one another on having crossed the equator, although unfortunately his dramatic entrance appeared to remind the others that they had somewhere else that they needed to be, and it was soon just the two of us again.
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