To mark the one month anniversary of my very first nodermeet, I shall share my very personal perspective of the event. It is as it was! Verily.
Product design theory teaches you that the first forty seconds of contact is crucial to your lasting impression of an object... or a person. If this applied here, I think I would have been either led by the hand all day or thrown off the Ha'Penny bridge by the end of the evening. Designers, aye? What do they know?
The hostel I booked for myself was called 'Barnacles' and it promised to be just around the corner from Temple Bar. Since it would not be my first time visiting Dublin, I was pretty sure I'd manage to meet Dimview in time for lunch by 1pm. I had told her I'd be wrapped in a green shawl. I lost said green shawl in the Arrivals lounge. No matter.
Making it to the Temple Bar area in one hour seemed to be a doomed project. Besides not getting off at the right station, which was conveniently titled 'City Centre,' I realised that I had been walking for a good twenty minutes in the wrong direction. Apparently, I had forgotten to cross the Liffey. Thank goodness for Wntrmute who decided to join the kohlcass-Dimmie minimeet at the last minute, as well as the roaming credit he allowed me to waste asking him to please find her and to say I would be rather tardy. This helped ease my mind and kept me from believing several angry Scandinavian-looking women walking past to be my should-have-been company for the afternoon.
I finally found my hostel and checked in, glancing towards the doorway from time to time. The Dimview and Wntrmute I found outside were very good at making my pre meet stress go bye bye. The first surge of excitement came over me and the thoughts whizzing through my head were something on the lines of Aaah! They're real! And my hands don't go straight through when I touch them!' Hence started an onslaught of hands-need-to-be shaken-cheeks-need-to-be-kissed which would morph into poking later on. Dimview took over the navigation controls - a gesture I appreciated dearly - and led us to a place to have lunch. Soon afterwards, darl asked us to meet him somewhere near St Stephen's Green - 'Look out for someone wearing a flouncy scarf', he proposed. And there he was sporting the infamous Duck t-shirt and a hairstyle that was only matched in greatness by IWhoSawTheFace's later in the evening. I quickly volunteered my nodername and real name, which he did not recognise. Tip: If you don't recognise someone's nodername at a meet LIE! LIE! LIE! Lie through your teeth. This left me rather subdued and I kept asking Dimview to re-confirm that she was aware of my E2 existence.
While Wntrmute was away freshening up, darl, Dimview and I made our way towards Trinity College. After convincing darl to go see the Book of Kells, the only editor in the house for the evening and I tried to visit a nearby museum, failed and were subsequently content with finding a place to sit and chat. Soon after which our Oxford lad emerged... literally jumping with literature endorphins, if there are such things. He even managed to describe which page the Book had been turned to. What followed mostly included coffee, singing amnesiac's The Nature Song and me disgracefully leaving Wntrmute's earlier favours unrequited by not noticing his where-are-you-guys? SMS. I was too busy trying to get my companions to provide some warning as to what to expect from meeting IWhoSawTheFace. As the conversation proceeded it became clearer and clearer that Dimview and darl knew nothing about Malta - this must eventually be remedied by complete immersion. When I finally noticed Wntrmute's attempts to reach me, I had to pass him on to Dimmie for instructions even though we were around the corner from my hostel. Who knew! It was then my time to make a short disappearance.
To everyone's genuine surprise, I made it to Dakota unattended in half an hour.
Dakota is a slick, stylish bar with just the right people-to-barstool ratio. We availed ourselves of a central table and even had an 'Other Users' list. The devious Wntrmute kept threatening to add my gossip about noders who would not be present during this meet to the aftermath. When JellyfishGreen arrived asking for 'Everything Squared' darl and I were left dumbstruck for about half a second before we could answer. Yet the guy had been to Malta! The boys spent some time deciding whether to take alcohol, a Neolithic magnet (the Neolithic era in Malta was the most advanced of its time) or a headless fertility goddess. Aah! Mid-chat I was suddenly being thrust into full noogie surrender mode and heard a loud, yet familiar voice booming 'This one's from MALTA!' I proceeded to entering stage 2 i.e. complete noder encounter shock. IWhoSawTheFace's entry had been like a tornado blazing through the room, and once my jaw dropped, it seemed as if it could never be secured shut again. He brought Hershey's and let me poke him every now and again to test whether he was really solid matter. Soon after, comic books were spread over the table.
Unfortunately I would only learn that JellyfishGreen is truly the most polite Canada boy of them all a few days after the meet. I thought Uncle Face had also brought the comic books to the table and actually turned to JFG and said 'You can keep these - I'm sure you appreciate comic books more than I do. I'll take the chocolate.' He didn't seem to be too enthusiatic about my outburst of generosity but smiled graciously nonetheless. I'm guessing my system heard 1. Canadian and 2. married and went into self-destruct.
Suddenly there were Oirish noders everywhere. CloudStrife and token non-noder Thursday, one Haruspex who gave me the opportunity to exercise my golden If-you-don't-recognise rule and ReiToei who I chose to avoid as much as possible since we had bickered in the catbox very recently. As I cowered in fear, Dimview told darl I was distraught by his lack of immediate recognition. He reassured me saying he'd figured out who I was later in the day, smartly accompanying this with a squeeze, which left me weak at the knees and very forgiving. ReiToei persevered. The Guinness in my bladder helped me reason that if I introduced myself to him by another name, he'd probably think the non-noder was his great foe kohlcass. My plan worked brilliantly until I was foiled by the aforementioned Haruspex. Fortunately this gave ReiToei and I the opportunity to ameliorate our situation.
There were a number of extra things I learnt that night, these being:
1. Indian restaurant waiters in Dublin are both rude and pesky.
2. There are pubs in Dublin that look like someone's sitting room.
3. Once you walk right past your hostel, mischievous noders will try to make you do that again. Yet when they realise how disoriented and ditzy you are, they are sweet enough to walk you home.
4. Noders are good-looking and generally less scary than you would imagine. That being said, it did get a bit weird when the smarter among us had a good, long chat over dinner about the sublime beauty of abstract geometry.
5. Some noders give the bestest hugs! Some give 'em twice!