tequp meet every Wednesday, and I finally had the time available to go to it last week. I can’t recall what exactly I did Wednesday… I guess packing and whatnot. I think I may have been doing some coding as well, although I can’t remember what exactly… I moved to packing in the late afternoon, and was glad I did – as it was I spent a good two hours after getting back from tequp finishing the packing, let alone how long it would have taken if I hadn’t already done some that afternoon.
tequp meets on the 2nd floor of Joe’s Garage, a cafe on Brunswick street. I don’t remember every going to Brunswick street before, despite having ridden across it and past it several times, and probably going past it on the tram a hundred times. I’d certainly never stopped along there. So I was quite surprised at both what was there – cafes, clubs, etc – and how many people were there, even at 6:30pm on a Wednesday.
I wasn’t sure what the arrangement was, and since I was unexpectedly on time – the ride took less than half an hour, whereas past experience riding to Laz’s made me think it would be at least forty minutes – and angling for a fashionably late entrance; I don’t like being one of the first people at an event when I don’t know anyone. :D
Well, that wasn’t entirely the case – I knew Mathieu, from WWDC this year. I’d also been invited by Keith, thus how I found out about it to begin with. So I wasn’t a complete stranger.
Anyway, I sat downstairs and had a BBQ chicken pizza for dinner, which was very nice, before wandering upstairs at about 7. There were five people there at that point – Rachel, Andrea and three others who’s names escape me at this point; I was introduced properly, but names & I don’t get along as a rule. :)
I was a little nervous to begin with, because I wasn’t sure entirely what it would be like. I also didn’t bring my Powerbook or anything, since I was both riding and thinking it would be safer not to worry about it for the first time, before I know what the deal is. I was also thrown by the fact that there were three girls (of five people) there at that point, which of course isn’t what you’d expect for a geeky gathering like that. I’m sorry to be sexist, but it’s not prejudiced; one need only attend WWDC to see the ever so slight skew. ;) Never in my life before or since have I been to an event where the queue to the guys’ toilets is a hundred people long, and there isn’t one for the womens’. :D
It started a little slow, but everyone was very friendly, and as people arrived and I relaxed – I guess – it turned out pretty well. Mathieu had in fact turned up right as I was finishing dinner, and he came upstairs a little while later, so that made things easier, a familiar face.
All in all, it was really good. The people there are predominantly creative people, not programmers, who work on web stuff primarily. There were two guys from plasq (creators on Comic Life, among other things), both designers, of whom Keith was one.
I don’t think I left there until 11:30pm or so, when most others had also departed. Since I still had packing to do and a drive down to Mt. Martha, I couldn’t stay any later.
As I noted, packing took a long time, so it was well into the early hours of the morning by the time I finally arrived at my dad’s. I snuck in as quietly as I could and went straight to bed, although this annoyed my dad a bit – he said later that he’d been woken up by something (probably my car driving in, or me closing the car door), but then didn’t hear anything else, so he was left wondering what was happening. :D Next time, he said, make more noise. :)
