BarCampPune3 - A Snippet

I attended BarCampPune3 [blog link] today - well, technically yesterday since it’s 3 in the morning now. It was interesting, due in larger part to the people I met than to the knowledge I gained from the sessions/discussions. Meeting people is always fun - and I didn’t really network as much as I should have.

Here’s the highlight of the day though.

It’s about 4.30 in the afternoon, and we go to the cafeteria to have tea. We grab our cheese sandwiches from the guy handing them out and pour ourselves a cup of tea each. Then Salil notices this huge vessel of thick red liquid lying next to the tea.

“What’s this?” he asks me.

“Tomato soup,” I reply. Saying “I don’t know” doesn’t come easily to me and that’s exactly what it looked like - tomato soup. Why anyone would serve tomato soup at tea was beyond me, but BarCamps are strange places and funny things do happen there.

“I like tomato soup,” Salil says and proceeds to pour himself a cup.

We carry our stuff to a table and sit down to talk. Midway through the discussion, Salil looks takes a couple of sips of his soup and tells me, “This soup is terrible! It tastes like ketchup!”

We don’t pay any attention at that point. When we’re done talking and eating and drinking, we go to place our cups and plates in the dirty dishes tray. That’s when I noticed at all the plates kept there had a thick red liquid in them. I glance around. Yup, everyone’s got the red stuff in their plates and they’re eating it along with their cheese sandwiches!

“Dude,” I look at Salil. “That WAS ketchup!”

Heh!