| Ad Astra: afp: Den Haag Kewl Meet |
Attending: Arwen, Boris, Sindy, Jos, Kimberley, Michel, Olaf, Patrick, Rolf, Tijmen, Uwe and Yours Truly.
How sad is it to bring your own mouse to an afp meet? Not as sad surely as being asked to bring a mouse with you... Anyways, the official reason of the meet was to visit the ice sculptures exhibition at Madurodam, hence the first kewl AFPmeet.
Madurodam is, for those of you outside .NL, a sort of scale model of the Netherlands. Good fun if you're eight or so and more fun if you're with a group of geeks trying to determine if everything is built to scale.
Apart from a mouse, I was also asked to bring along a supersoaker, for which nefarious purpose became clear Sunday...
I arrived in Den Haag Central Station at about 13:30, got something to eat and was waiting for the rest to show when I spotted Boris looking around. We chatted some and after a while Patrick arrived, with Arwen, Uwe and Rolf tagging along. After killing some time by looking around the nearby mall for a non-existant toy shoppe, we went to catch our tram, where we ran into Michel and Tijmen, both a little late.
Went to Madurodam and decided first to have a look around the models outside, before braving the coldness of the exhibition. It was nice weather and pretty crowded so after some time we decided to go in. The exhibition hall was climate controlled and a few degrees (centigrade) below zero, as to keep the ice sculptures from melting. The sculptures self were pretty neat, if a bit kitsch. Lot's of famous monuments (Eiffel Tower, Taj Mahal etc) and similar sculptures.
High point of the exhibition was the Icemaiden, the first barebreasted girl on an AFP-NL meet, leading to such comments as her being "too coldhearted", "frigid" and "you'll only melt her heart". The usual afp banter iow. Arwen was the first to notice the cold and went outside quickly, were the rest of us rejoined her after a while. Personally, I wasn't bothered by the cold that much. There's something to say for a layer of fat. Following a quick round through the rest of the park and the beginning of rain, we started looking for the pub.
Needless to say, we found it, just as it was really starting to rain. We quickly went inside and immediately noticed this was a *good* pub for meets. Why? Because the first thing we were asked was by one of the girls sitting at the bar if she could borrow my supersoaker. I said yes and she quickly went off to fill it in and started shooting at her friend. Who in turn also demanded a supersoaker, but was indignant (and soon wet!) when he noticed it was empty...
After that, we quickly settled in and started getting the obligatory Guinness, Coke and Ciders. Various fluffy toys were brought to light and quickly claimed by Arwen, the usual candy was passed around and a new tradition was born...
You see, some time ago I trusted a "friend" who wanted me to buy a book from him. This was a book written by "Britain's best sf writer"[1] and was the story of a group of courageous mammoths living in an inaccessible region of Siberia and their struggle against the evil of humanity. People who've read this should know which book I mean, the rest of you should treasure your ignorance, which *is* bliss in this case...
So I had a absolutely crap book and nowhere to get rid of it. What better way to lose it by offering it as a prize for the person making the worst pun of the evening? fitting "punishment"[2], if I say so myself.
Arwen then came up with the idea to let everybody present sign it, which we did. Yes, the words "Apply holy match here" are somewhere in the book now...
Anyway, at around 18:00, the rest of the meet joined us, this being Kimberley and Jos and slightly later Sindy and Olaf. All of which were promptly forced to sign the book.
The rest of the evening followed the normal course for a meet: plenty of geeking on diverse subjects, innuendo, puns, penguining, fondling of said penguins and more puns.
I also discovered what was inside at least one juggling ball when i accidently tore it in half: coca^Wflour. Which inspired Uwe to an impromptu filk: "If you're going to San Francisco...". Pretty soon, it was once again time to leave the pub, leaving it sadder bud weiser.
Losing Kimberley, Jos, who was the happy winner this time, Sindy and Olaf to go to their homes, the rest of us went to Patrick place, where we were promptly installed behind the numerous computers located there. No aftermeet crashing is complete without an IRC session, isn't it? More people seemed to think so and pretty soon we had three different meets online at the same time. Sad? You tell me...
The next morning, after Michel left early to go to work, the poor guy, we slowly woke up and started breakfast. At the same time Patrick demanded payment for the use of his house, so we were forced to listen to his extensive collection of dodgy eighties hits..
Breakfast done and over with, we went to a nearby park, for a combined hydro weaponry/juggling session. Various supersoakers and waterpistols were filled and innocent ducks were mercilessly subjected to streams of water, as was your humble narrator when he aimed his own gun slightly too fast at Arwen.
After a while, we went back to Patrick's place, were a second breakfast was found hanging of his front door, courtesy of Olaf and Sindy, who had promised to join us, but had arrived too late. The gesture was appreciated though. The meet then slowly dwindled down, until the last of us were finally kicked out around half past two or so.
As always it was fun.