Random Ramblings
Created | Updated Apr 19, 2007
Another two weeks have passed by nearly unnoticed. This means that the upcoming London Meet is only a good week away now! If you've never been to a meet but would like to attend one, check out the meet page.
This will be the fifth h2g2 London Meet I've attended, and I'm really excited. I'll never forget the first meet I went to — we had winter weather in July and left the picnic in Hyde Park early, seeking shelter in a warm and dry pub, because we had an unhealthy blue-ish colour from freezing so much.
One thing you'll find is that hootooers are an incredibly friendly and generous bunch. There'll always be somebody who offers you a place for the night. Serephina was my first hostess back in 2004. She didn't even know me, yet she offered me to stay at her place — she even had her son spend the weekend elsewhere in order to offer me a bed and not the sofa. Now, Croydon is pretty far away when you land/depart in Heathrow, which is why I didn't come
back to further invitations from Serephina and Genie.
For other meets, I stayed with Reddyfreddy and with MazinMadFiddler. They're all wonderful people and perfect hosts who did everything possible to make my stay fantastic and unforgettable. And that's not all: the people you meet at the meet, be they friends you knew before or people you've never heard of, are all very friendly and generous. And they're patient, repeating what they said for the umpteenth time for a poor foreigner like me. Usually, there'll be a pub quiz, but don't worry: it's all just fun. Although I generally can't answer the questions, it doesn't really matter. Last time, there was a question about an entry and the Researcher who had written this entry was in our team, and guess what: he couldn't answer the question! I bet you can imagine just how much
we laughed. If we're lucky, the italics will come at some point and give t-shirts and badges to the winning team.
If London is too far away for you and you can't attend a meet, why don't you try to organise one local to you? There are several groups for Researchers who aren't London-based; there's the Post Page listing the Regional Researchers' Groups. If there is no group for your region, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are the only Researcher living there. And even if you are, don't let this put you off. We had a very nice, if small, meet in my hometown only a year ago, and the recent Devon Meet was even smaller in numbers, but just as successful and wonderful.
So in case you are curious now and want to know where and when the next meet will be, check out the Forthcoming h2g2 community events page. It is a good idea to subscribe to this page so you'll be notified of any planned meet-up. Plus, this is the page to go when you want to announce a planned meet yourself. Maybe
you'll be surprised to see how many meets are being planned — some of which never get beyond the stage of planning, but then, c'est la vie!
