BHSTweetup at Texas Roadhouse Grill 10 June 2010

I never expected to see so many prizes.

I came from a drippy drive from Southwoods, via SLEX. Traffic was light (rainclouds made it dark) to moderate and the only congestion I faced was at the northbound C-5 ramp to Market! Market!, Taguig City. (I wonder if they took down Cy's/Silverfilter's billboard with Ivan Man Dy.)
I park behind Pancake House and walk across a conveniently-covered walkway to Texas Roadhouse grill. The first person I recognized was Janette, whose eyes, smile & expression are always a warm, welcome sight. I also noticed her Mojito, two-thirds full. Post-work alcohol at a familiar watering hole leads to an interesting exchange of stories and ideas. She was in an informal session with one of her bloggers, so I ordered a regular burger with extra pickles & mustard, and a liter of draft.
The sight/size of the burger almost instantly devoured my appetite. The translucent, tall beer glasses have been around since the days of Silhouette Tower in Greenhills (Macho Mugs) and Third World Cafe in Malate. After Janette says goodbye to her colleague, we check our Foursquare & Twitter clients.
Apparently, Grace, Sherwin, and Jeff were in the function room, preparing the name tags, quiz materials, and the ABS-CBN interview. Two crew-members from the station were there to supervise the recording, albeit without a reporter. A few more people came in, like Bob and John. We were positioned in an eight-seater table in front of the door - an opportune place to see everyone walking in (you should try it sometime).

AT 7:30PM, there were approximately twenty attendees and Grace was being teased to dole out prizes. Foursquare users were secretly pining for a possible Swarm badge. Curiously, ACSlater states this about Swarms: And yes, if you are number 49, you get the badge when number 50 checks in. Then Yves (aka @PCOSMachine) posted this yesterday: LOL. 1st time I use foursquare here in the US swarm badge agad.ü http://yfrog.com/mgnbfj. I'm beggin the Q: does the badge go to all or just number 49?

As the BHSTweetup crowd grew, Grace started her intro and flaunted the swag (including gift certificates from Lime 88, Carnipure, a pair of Anthology shoes, a ten-dollar iTunes card, Mozilla Firefox buttons, Karrots Cases for iPod, reams of Marlboro Lights in flip-top boxes, Royce chocolates, Nokia portable speakers, Yahoo pens, Microsoft Office 2010 bags, among others). A quiz initiated the Games portion. The tweeps were grouped into five teams (depending on which table one was seated), given writing implements and five minutes to complete a writing task. Each team had to choose a letter (we choose H, pronounced "etch"). The teams would have to enumerate all possible (English & Filipino) descriptive words that started with their chosen letter.

If the decibel level was an indication of the fun that people were having, then I have to mention that I couldn't hear the host who was standing 3 feet away. Rod had to tweet the winning team for us to find out the results. Norbs mentioned that security was considering crowd control. There was a Quiz portion that followed, and a Bring Me game that lasted until 10:00+ because of all the prizes. Another highlight of the evening was the arrival (and subsequent photo ops) of Cecile, the brains & beauty behind Chuvaness. I also learned from Bob about the denotation/connotation of "Chuva." Chubby Rain = Chuva Rain? More than fifty people braved the drizzle & Makati traffic. The tweetup lasted until midnight, with the remainder catching up, paying up, and downing their drinks. If this tweetup was a burger, it surely had everything on it.

I'm looking forward to the other pics & blog entries. Please share if you have any, and hope to see you at the next networking event.