The Delhi blogger’s meet (XIIth) concluded on 29th July’06 in Cafe turtle, Khan market. Some highlights :

1. Cafe turtle is a cosy place (read it’s good for twosomes or even threesomes but not 22somes).
2. I had made reservations for 20 ppl which was double the number I had expected to turn up and the eventual number overshot even that. As they say, the merrier it was.
3. After making the reservations I was informed that the cafe closes at half day (read 7:30 pm) but nothing could be done at that point of time. “Shaadi cards already distributed” kind of situation. Though we have had the experience of changing the “shaadi venue” just before the “pheras” earlier too.
4. The organiser who got us to hold DBM XII got stuck up in a crisis at his workplace. Eventually he never turned up. Do you ever remember being in school and a certain teacher not turning up for class? How noisy was the place? How was the organised chaos with no agenda on hand? I wouldn’t be wrong in saying that we resembled a bunch of school kids creating ruckus. We even had backbenchers!
5. Some old timers came after a long long time. It was like the DBM’s of yore all over again.
6. There were bloggers, former journalists, future journalists and even theatre artists. Thankfully no sting operations.
7. The ppl at Cafe turtle surely got boggled when I made reservations. I spelled out “Delhi bloggers meet” for them because they just couldn’t understand the words I was uttering. Eventually I got a call from them confirming the “Daily bogglers meet”.
8. During the round of introductions, where everyone was supposed to start with “I am xxx and I blog at yyy”, the restless mind-boggled waiter silently shimmied on to the terrace like Jeeves and introduced himself in a jiffy – “I am Jason and I am here to take your order”. Do I need to add, he was the most sought after member of the evening. Oh and Nikhil ordered himself yet another fan, but this time it was the sorts that creates a current of air.
9. We had our own share of celebs in this meet. “NDTV called me””CNN IBN asked me to express my views” were very common phrases uttered quite frequently. We will soon have our own P3 coverage too. :p. Unfortunately, this time our cameraman was busy taking footage of the food instead.
10. The back benchers were having a mini blog meet of their own. Some updates anyone? :).
11. Masala chais, coffees, cakes and pastas. These were a few of the favourite things that the bloggers ordered. Who says you need booze to make you feel like you are having fun?
12. I spotted “Lazy lunch” and “lazy pasta” in the menu while Lazylump spotted “Fairy cake” in the menu!
13. I finally got to meet toinks after 3 years of virtual interaction! The grand mommie of rediffblogs is onto blogspot now.
14. At 7:25pm a bill was duly waved under my nose. All and sundry paid for their own consumption and some more (read tax).
15. Those who were still interested in hanging around moved over to the Yellow brick road .
16. A good turnout and a good funfilled DBM!