So, as I earlier mentioned, we finally found the U.L.B. and also found the booth and staffed it for nearly the whole day (I haven’t managed to view any of the speeches, neither one of the Gentoo ones nor any of the others), I talked to some interested people asking about Gentoo itself, but also asking about the EFIKA’s (the Genesi PPC’s), one by Camille and Julien providing video forwarding (from one EFIKA to another via cross-over cable), and the other one by Chris playing Descent 2 and Quake 2 at the end. Peter (I think the PR guy from Genesi Europe, will have to ask Chris / Mike again).
Ah, and I nearly forgot about the best part. I finally met my “new” dad ;-P though he’s a pole humper, he’s really great and I adore him for being himself (hey SpanKY), along with Chris (wolf31o2) who’s really adorable for being himself, and for being all knowledgeable. Though I also finally met SeJo (who’s really charming but also a bitch :-P) and KingTaco (who constantly tried to hump my dad), met most of our youngins, Alex and the amazing Peter (welp) and of course my all-time-favorite handsome Rob.
I talked pretty long’ish to Chris and to SpanKY (who was always trying to make fun out of me, and succeeded) and gained a lot of insight as well as got to know them. I also managed to get in touch with the rest of the developer attending FOSDEM (that’s genone, jokey, kugelfang, spb, dertobi123, wschlich, grobian, genstef, nattfodd, tove, pylon and all the other …).
Later, in the evening we went to some restaurant (by bus and by foot), which was funny though since we left around 1900 when everyone else was leaving too and about 200 other people were trying to get somewhere else of Brussels. It was really nice, christel shouting all over the street, telling some of us to get on the next bus, half a minute later to stop and get back here to the tram. After Petteri looked at the tram schedule, we agreed to go get the bus, because the tram was already late (we were too).
We drove till Brussels Center (the bus-driver was driving like mad, he took every hole in the street he could find and was waaay to fast), I managed to talk a bit with Rob about his work in Gentoo and real-life issues affecting the development and finally walked the remaining way to the Restaurant (we somehow got lost – again) but found our way to the “Rome”, which was really a nice also as the food (we had a three-course meal with either Tortellini or Carpaccio, and again beef and lamb as main course and weird bakery stuff with butterscotch).
Between the courses I talked some more to Bryan, Alexandre and Christel; all of them we’re quite charming all evening and suddenly Dimitry comes at us and is like, “Hey I need all your money” (OK, *now* I’m lying, that was Christel who came up with this sentence instead of Dimitry telling that he needed the money for the dinner collected :S). So Dimitry and Christel went ahead and collected the money from the people staying at the hostel (so Dimitry would be able to pay the manager). That went pretty good and was without trouble (at least the two didn’t say something about having trouble). So we sat again, and talked some more, some more horseporn came up.
And Dimitry came along yet again, asking poor Christel to collect the money for the dinner and that’s what they did. They went along the table and as they were at the end, where SpanKY and the rich dutch translators sit at, as she didn’t knew their names (the ones from the dutch people), she decided to accidentally piss them off (she labeled them “young one 1” and “young one 2”), which they found out later by looking at the sheet.
Soon they finished and Dimitry was able to pay the dinner. So he talked a bit with the restaurant people and soon found out, that the drinks (even the non-alcohol ones) weren’t free. So he raised some more money from everyone. As they finished, we sat again and talked some more (gay horseporn came up again) along with the “The Internet is for …” song (nooo, I’m not gonna say it!!), but instead Christel tried to convince everyone to sing it loudly, which of course everyone refused to do).
Sometime soon they threw us out, because we were way to much people (~50 or so, because some just came along) and we were quite loud too 😛
So we decided to get some beer (I really *so* wanted to get drunk this evening and probably Christel wanted to see me get drunk), so we went looking for another pub where all 50 of us could stay. We walked and walked and walked and walked and lost some people, as they apparently decided to go into the other direction and then sort of vanished (*pooof*). As we were back at the center of the city, someone decided to get into the street where it was smelling like pot. There was also a pub that was quite nice (according to Alexandre), but quite filled. So some of us decided to go back out, but the rest apparently decided to stay, as they were quite comfortable with it (Peter even asked me later what all that pulling was about).
So we went someplace else (at the Grand Place again), and we sat outside. The rest bought beers and handsome Rob insisted on still owing me a beer for something (I’ve no clue what for he would owe me a beer) so he bought me one ! yay ! Hail Rob !!!!1one
We spend some time sitting there and making fun out of jokey (apparently he was on the menu at this bar, pub, whatever) and had some more fun listening to the “The Internet is for …” song again and some of us ordered another beer. Rob went of to make some photo’s of the city hall for his fiance(?).
He came back a few minutes afterwards telling us (what we already knew) that it is pretty cold (he was all tucked into his jacket, which he bought on advice of his fiance – he should tell that story himself). So we walked back to the hostel (it was quite a bit of a walk, but it was nice), Christel was completely out of breath and we met some of the userrep people back in front on the youth hostel and we had some more talking (again). Somehow, one of them came up with the idea that we should buy some latex or spandex superman-like capes for the next Gentoo Event for all developer attending with like pink or purple color and the Gentoo logo on the chest and Bryan was like “I would definitely wear that” and “that would probably scare off all potential users” and he was really encouraged about it.
We did some more talking and I got a bit insight into the userrep stuff (thanks to Christel and Bryan explaining) and finally went to bed around 0200 after trying to bribe the manager to give some more beer. My other room mates (that’s Marius, Markus, Robert, Torsten and some mystery guy) we’re apparently loooong sleeping.
