Random notes from a tweetup attended by myself, Ryan, Justine, Anna, and Jason. These turned out to be very cool people, so I might get a little gushy below. Sorry.
- For me, last night involved a 300 mile round trip, 4.5 hours on trains (for 2.5 hours in Shunt), and about £125 spent on tickets and (quite a lot) of booze. I got home at around 2:30am. It was 100% worth it.
- I’ve met a lot of people from the Interwebs (I think this little jaunt puts it at over 50 now) and I’ve never been disappointed by the experience; I have always found the rapport carried over into real life. Even by those standards though last night was special. I felt very comfortable with these people, and remarkably quickly.
- Jason I didn’t know very well, I’ve only been following him for a few days. He’s quite like you would expect from his Twitter: very, very sharp witted and with a very British command of deadpan dry humour. He also drinks girly drinks (Baileys? Really?) very slowly.
- Anna I didn’t know at all before the meet. She has an impressive ear for the Welsh language (and recently spent a week staying somewhere just ten miles from my house, it seems), nailing the pronunciation of my (thickly Welsh) address. She is beautiful and talented and her and Jason are clearly very much in love. They are a sweet couple. In my (admittedly limited) experience, Americans in Britain are one of two kinds: stereotypical vacationers on hideous whistle-stop “11 countres in three days” type tours, or sickeningly cosmopoliton, well read, well travelled types who remind me I’m just a dullard from the provinces. Guess which kind Jason and Anna are?
- Ryan is my kind of guy: a very smart geek (the electric blue gay cowboy shirt I’m ambivalent about). There was a moment where I mentioned in passing that I was load testing on a live production system and in a glance, we compressed an entire conversation (“what, really?” “yes, aren’t customers stupid?” “well, what can you do?” “exactly!”) into a few seconds. I look forward to meeting him again so I can find something technical we disagree on and have a spirited debate over; I would enjoy that, and I’d probably lose. He’s also entirely too willing to offer his sofa as a crash pad to near-strangers and that will cost him one day when he wakes to find a loud Welshman occupying his house.
- And finally Justine, who, whatever you may think of her from her Twitter and Tumblr feed (funny, warm, rough-and-tumble Londonder accent, infectious laugh that’s just slightly dirty, that awesome hair), she’s all that and much more in person. She’s also tiny and that means something coming from me. And she reverse lies about her age.
- Jason may be pleased to know that, for all my teasing him about his slow drinking (practically obligatory when you drink with Americans I believe), I vomited on the train on the way home. I swear it was motion sickness and not alcohol consumption. Ahem.
- I also, somehow, whilst stinkingly drunk, managed to negotiate two tube lines and Paddington station and thus not miss my train despite leaving Shunt much later than was sensible.
Overall, I rate this transaction “A++++, would meet again”. Hopefully soon.
(There are more pics on Jason’s flickr).
21 Notes