Epilogue

I’m still in contact with Andy, the fella who I met at the first event I went to; we regularly catch up and talk nonsense over a couple of beers.

One evening with Andy is particularly memorable: he invited me to a business networking Meetup, where I met the Crown Prince of Burma, who was a very nice chap. One of his friends, a nice Serbian lady tried her best to sign me up to a Burma Society.

I’m still in touch with Grace, the woman who I proposed to. She came along to an Atari Video games party that I held at my house. We remain friends.

I haven’t seen the internet date I went hiking with. That fizzed out; the excitement of trudging around damp fields in Surrey didn’t really help with the prospects of romance.

My friend Mary, who came along to three random Meetups is doing well, but she doesn’t think she’s going to be become a Christian anytime soon.

Since completing the quest, I haven’t played badminton again, or done any more Orgasmic Meditation. I do, however, plan to go back to Teddington Laughter and Relaxation for another balloon massage.

Although my quest has finished, I’m still going to Meetup groups. There are a few reasons why: I’m addicted, I love meeting people, and there are some great groups out there that help me to learn more about the area in which I work: technology.

When writing this epilogue, I discovered that some of the groups I visited have now closed. London Salsa and Ceroc Friends is no more, Flash mob Fridays has disappeared, and Entrepreneurs with Chronic Illness closed after moving to being an ‘on-line only’ group for a while.

My own Meetup, Free London Comedy, is going well. It now has over fifteen hundred members, and there are some fabulous regular visitors. I really enjoy being a host; I love seeing people having a great time. Three notable regulars are Gaurav, an architect from Mumbai, Bruce, a vet from South Africa, and Simone, a finance expert from Germany.

Now that I'm done, there is one question that I keep coming back to: ‘where shall I go to now? New York, Los Angeles, or Sydney?’