It was 13 January, 2018.
It was just an ordinary day, yet not so ordinary. It was the day when I hosted my first meet up in Dallas.
There were two particular reasons why the day was not-so-ordinary and rather very special to me. One- as I have already mentioned above, it was my first ever meetup in Dallas, and two- I hosted an international hangout meetup at the same time and we had a wonderful session with @ErmesT , @HelloSamsonR and for a very limited time with @OSAMA .
The meetup was scheduled at 3.00 PM. @MuhannadK and I went to the venue a little before the scheduled time. Starbucks was totally packed with customers that day. So we thought we would sit outside. But it was a freezing cold day. I could not sit there for more than 5 minutes. I had to go back inside. The reason I am talking about the weather here is, looking at the weather report, I started getting a little worried if people would really show up for the meet up. But to my surprise, I spotted @RussellR standing at the queue for his drink. Well, I was at least expecting him to be present for the meetup as he already promised earlier that he would.
I wonât say Dallas people are lazy, but it seems like they are not very active in terms of social activities. From our previous experience in the Worldwide Food Crawl meetup, Muhannad and I had a bet between us. He said, the total turn up would not exceed 3, including the 2 of us. But I was confident that at least 4 would be there, if not 5. After meeting Russell, we had Pavan (he is still not in Connect), level 5 and after a while @ToyinOy , level 4, joined us. And that made me win the bet with Muhannad. 
The introduction part was a little funny. I came to know that Russell was a tea lover. He said, if he had a factory, he would make tea there.
Pavan turned out to be the âtoo busyâ guy and hence he never had enough time to try new food. I already offered him to tag along with me, so that I could help him try all the junkies from Texas. 
Well, Toyin, on the other hand, seemed to be fun. Because, she said she had always wanted to live in Australia or Singapore. Like I always wanted to live in New Zealand. After all wise girls want alike.
And my Yosemite partner, Muhannad, said if he had a factory, he would make spaceship in that. I just hope one day he really makes one and I could buy it for my trip to Venus.
I loved this fun discussion.
We had a very fruitful discussion among ourselves, along with Ermes. We shared our views about contributing to maps. We came to know that Russell, who is a trusted street view photographer and has over 30K points for his amazing photos and reviews in maps, had two wonderful 360 cameras that take amazing photos, without much noise. He definitely is a Visualist, a Multimdia Guru, an Advocate and the Fact Finder all together. Pavan, on the contrary, seemed to be a little quiet and shy guy. And Toyin is fun and a Visualist, of course.
We spent more than 2 hours time over tea. Eeven though Starbucks is famous for coffee, but I realized we all had tea that day. Not sure if itâs the weather or something else, but one thing was for sure, Russell was going to do good business from his tea factory.
If you want to go back to that moment and spend some time with us, you may want to go to this album.
Lastly, Ermes, I loved our virtual meetup a lot. As usual, you had been very helpful and cooperative, and stayed there up late for us, it meant a lot to me. Sammy, this was the first time I had heard your voice, even though I could not see you on the screen, but I enjoyed talking to you thoroughly. After that virtual meetup, now I feel like hosting more meetups like this. We should do this often, what do you think?
And Osama, I could neither see you nor could hear your voice, I just saw you logged in there and something happened and you just disappeared. Donât do that next time, okay? 
And finally, Muhannad, I want thank you specially for supporting me all the time. Without your support I would not be able to host this meetup. Thanks a bunch, my friend. And by the way, thanks for making me get addicted to Green Tea Latte.
Thank you for the recap.
. Yes Toyin is a Nigerian name and yes, I am originally of Nigerian origin. Hope this helps!