[F] Brussels Meet report (Late)

[Michael The Roach Janßen]

Prelude: Many apologies for being this late in posting the report. My
computer had a weird idiosyncrasy whenever I tried to post to
news.lspace.org - it would just reboot without warning and without
saving open files. This caused me to re-write this report three times
(the third time I wisened up and saved it, but still couldn't send).
By now, a faulty video memory upgrade has been removed and it looks as
if this has caused the crashes...

But now, here goes...

On Saturday, May 30th, a swarm of locusts^W^W^W^W the Dutch afp
contingent, complemented by some others, descended upon Brussels for the
second time, this time to celebrate the advent of Penny Parkin.

A pre-meet was again held, with the attendees (TomdeM, Penny, Eelco and
Jeroen M.) visiting the Garfield exposition. Due to the driving skills
(I use that word in the lusest possible sense) of Belgian trucks, I
reached Brussels Midi not more than five minutes after the pre-meet had
departed :-(. But after only three more hours, the meet proper started.

Participants at the meet proper:

Tom de M
Penny
Eelco
Jeroen Metselaar
Heimi
Jos (with wingnut)
Jeroen Burger
Sierra
Peter
Cybercat
Jeremy
and yours truly, The Roach

Once the meet had convened, the Brussels Metro was taken into the center
of the city where a Jazz Marathon was being held. Well, some of the
music I heard were a far cry from Jazz, IMHO, but still... A small
chinese/vietnamese restaurant found itself invaded, after dinner we went
looking for a good ice cream parlour for some (just) desserts. The first
one we went to was partially closed due to employees being ill, but the
second one was more accommodating.
From there we went in search of a pub that served decent soft drinks
(yeah!), and stopped on our way there in a small cafe that was almost
empty to rest our weary feet a bit.

Topics discussed while I was there:

Minis
Zurich meets
Salespeople
Beer types
Restaurants and redesigning them
Forgetting pictures
Available pictures (Kimberley & balls)
Hairs on balls
Juggling
Planes in tunnels
Licorice turtles
Accents
What is "Splut" in Tamil?
Palmtops
Shoulder straps - and tying people together with them
Computers in vehicles
Safety pins
Trains
The HP pseudo-Psion
*VOM* and *SMACK* cards were displayed
Books as geektools
Being stuck in Belgium (aka 'A Fate Worse Than Death')
Jeremy on a leash
Visiting
Eating w/ chopsticks
Logging on IRC (especially on irc.lspace.org)
Cybercast of weddings
Euro-things
Role-playing games
Work contracts
The USA
SCSI and computers
afpeople present and absent
The CCDE
(People being able to walk past a PC shop without stopping)
Chocolate Godiva
Discworld model
Terry Pratchett
Reannual hangovers
Fisherman's Friend (also the chocolate-covered variety...)
Pubs
Dolls
......

And now, for the generally-feared Quotefile (dumduhdumdum...)

Tom: "I guess I must be cheap"

Tom: "If you bump into a gypsy, check your wallet" - Jeroen M: "And if
you bump into Penny, you know what to check..."

Jos: "Sorry, we're out of food. The fridge crashed - twice"

Heimi: "Deeper, deeper, deeper!"

Jeroen M about Jos: "He's not large. I don't think he's dangerous."

Jeremy: "I did that by putting it in"

Jeremy: "You want a bigger phone? Put it on that rail over there..." (in
the subway station)

Jos: "Let's organize the geek pride march"

Jeroen M: "You won't like it if I squirt all over you"

Jeremy S: "What are the three words women most want to hear? 'I was
wrong'"

Jeremy re Jos' T-shirt: "The turtle in 3D"

Jos re the CCFischerman's: "It tastes pretty good - at first"

--
Michael "The Roach" Janszen (AFP NLMeet reporter)
The Official Michelena Riosa Testosterone Brigade
Peerless Leader of the Post-Apocapalyptic Forces
Charter Member AFP Blame Society
Spammer trap - when replying by e-mail,
drop the last letter of the address...

[Kimberley or Martijn]

Michael "The Roach" Janßen reported:

> [...]after dinner we went

>looking for a good ice cream parlour for some (just) desserts. The first
>one we went to was partially closed due to employees being ill, but the
>second one was more accommodating.

At the ice cream parlour, certain afpers attempted to build a working
model of the Discworld using juggling balls as turtles, a plastic table
top as the Disc and a beer bottle as Cori Celesti. Spinning the Disc
proved unsuccessful and they realised that they were missing the
lemmings. However, the head garkon arrived in a flurry of "non, non,
non"s before suitable replacements could be found. It all became too
much for the two startled Brusselites near us and they beat a hasty
retreat.

<snip>

>Jos re the CCFischerman's: "It tastes pretty good - at first"

You'd think that after my run-in with the CCCBs that I'd know better
than to take food from an afpers hand. The CCFisherman's Friends tasted
disgusting, at first, second and last.

--
Kimberley Verburg sie...@dataweb.nl
To find out more about the weird and wonderful works of Terry Pratchett,
go to http://www.lspace.org/ where the FAQs for afp and abp can also be
found. They are also available via anonymous ftp from ftp.lspace.org

[Eelco Giele]

Michael "The Roach" Janßen <ro...@earthling.netz> wrote:

> But now, here goes...

> On Saturday, May 30th, a swarm of locusts^W^W^W^W the Dutch afp
> contingent, complemented by some others, descended upon Brussels for the
> second time, this time to celebrate the advent of Penny Parkin.

> A pre-meet was again held, with the attendees (TomdeM, Penny, Eelco and
> Jeroen M.) visiting the Garfield exposition. Due to the driving skills
> (I use that word in the lusest possible sense) of Belgian trucks, I
> reached Brussels Midi not more than five minutes after the pre-meet had
> departed :-(. But after only three more hours, the meet proper started.

People coming by cars, please say so next time, and ask for my cell
phone number.

> From there we went in search of a pub that served decent soft drinks
> (yeah!), and stopped on our way there in a small cafe that was almost
> empty to rest our weary feet a bit.

Not only almost empty, also very nice to us. Especially when the
supersoakers started to being waved _above_ the table and the waiter
almost got shot, I would have expected at least a glare, but nothing.

> Topics discussed while I was there:

> Forgetting pictures

Yes, yes, yes, I know. Here, try this one:

http://triple.stack.nl/~eelco/meetings/brussels2/index.html

All the other piccies will be indexed etc before I go on holiday,
please be patient.

> What is "Splut" in Tamil?

There should be a drawing of that. Where has it gone?

> Eating w/ chopsticks

This was not as much a topic discussed as actually done. I was
impressed with the amount of people who ate that way.
Although there was some minor discussion on how to hold them.
Everyone had a different technique, but most food got consumed
(unless it was to much for some people in which case the vultures ate
it *grin*)

> Fisherman's Friend (also the chocolate-covered variety...)

Yummy :) And very fresh too, they were CC-ed at the meet, in public.
Yes, we did scare away some people, in fact, I have never seen people
look so scared before. We weren't doing anything weird, at least not
weirder then normal for an afp-meet.

> Jos re the CCFischerman's: "It tastes pretty good - at first"

*grin* you young people, not used to anything. <"old" mode>In my day,
we used to eat a package a day.</"old"> The CCFF's were perfectly
edible. At least I'm glad we could think of something not allready
made by Carol[1] :)

Greetings, Eelco

[1] And I allready want to claim CCEL (CC-edible-lego), but then, it
seems I am the only one in Europe in the position to make that any
way :)
--
Bad or missing coffee...
User halted.