Eindhoven Meet, version 8.0

Thanks to Kimberley Verburg for some corrections, I had somehow managed to remember Karen as Rachel, oops.

Attendants: Eelco, Uwe, Rolf, Roach, Kimberley, Jos, Arwen, Jeroen B, Rutger, Boris and yours truly.

I didn't take pictures this time, as the digital camera at work was sadly unavailable. Fortunately Uwe and Rolf, unlike me, aren't too cheap to have their own cameras and their pictures are available at their website.

The meet was supposed to start around fiveish and after an uneventful train trip from Amsterdam I was in Eindhoven at around 16:30, so I decided to wander around a bit.

So just as I started to wander, who should approach from the opposite direction but Eelco, Uwe and Rolf, who had had the same idea.

After a bit of that we decided to go to the Trafalgar pub, where the meet then commenced, us being the first to arrive.

Sign you're at a pub where meets have been held before 1:
"Hello, four Guinness?"

We settled in at the reserved places and awaited the arrival of the rest of the pack, whom dribbled in slowly. Fluffy toys were brought out, as were various chocolate foodstuffs. The big Tux Uwe brought along was immediately claimed by Kimberley and stroked to death.

Kimberley brought along a care package from Karen, containing several toys for Eelco: a set of toy soldiers to defend his thesis with, a BMX finger bike (no jokes please) and a deluxe snooker table, toy sized.

The "deluxe" part of the snooker table was hard to determine, but at least it led to a flood of predictable jokes about balls dropping...

Of course, when discovered the balls weren't smooth enough, some disturbed individuals got out their knife and started filing away all the burrs.

There were two new faces at the meet, Boris and Rutger. The former had seen the meet announced at AFP, the later was blackmail^W convinced by Eelco to come.

Conversation flowed gently, as did the Guinness. The news about the con not happening was of course one of the main topics of discussion, but it also included the usual amount of geeking, even *credit card* geeking by some sad, sad persons.

Sign you're at a pub where meets have been held before, 2:
"I assume you want your usual table?"

After we had eaten, which was pretty good for pub food, the first people had to leave already. Kim and Jos were the first to leave, followed by Roach, leaving behind a pile of his compilation cd's.

The rest of us continued bravely without them, leaving the pub at about 1:30 AM, where we who would spend the night at Eelco's house plunged into the waiting cab after saying goodbye to the locals going home.

Having spoken English all evening, Eelco became quickly aware how difficult it is to then having to speak Dutch at the cabbie, while the rest kept yammering away in English. Having been in similar situations I could sympathise.

Finally at our sleeping address, you would think we would all want to start unpacking our sleeping bags and hit the sack right?

Wrong. Not while IRC is still waiting. One IRC session and general clowning around later and it was about three-ish, time to go to bed, which we did.

After some time spent unconscious later, people started waking up. Especially after the smell of coffee started drifting through the house thanks to the hospitality of Eelco's parents, who were not at all shocked at finding several weird critters inhabiting their living room. I wonder if they have done this before....

Breakfast took a while to finish, especially since the conversation was more stimulating then the various caffeinated beverages but sometime before three Eelco finally kicked us out.

In all a highly enjoyable way to spend a weekend, but I knew that already as did we all.

Quotes:

No quotes from me, Arwen has them except for one:

Rutger: Why are you writing all this down...?