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Meetup.com is helping Hongkongers with shared interests get together

Meetup.com puts people with a common interest in touch for friendship - and maybe a little romance, says Charley Lanyon

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Meetup.com is helping Hong Kongers with shared interests get together

I don't fit the profile of a thirty-something with a full head of wavy hair, deep blue eyes, the body of a pro athlete, nor do I enjoy paying HK$1,000 for a bottle of champagne."

From the self-deprecating way freelance consultant Bill Neuguth describes himself you'd expect a shy, awkward man. But on Tuesday nights in the basement of the Hong Kong Brew House he is brash and gregarious, greeting people as they arrive, flirting, his booming voice filling the room.

Hong Kong is just too fast, too cold. There is no opening to be social
Bill Neuguth, meetup organiser

Neuguth knows everybody's name. At the weekly Hong Kong Eclectic Movie Night get-together he founded he is in his element - he owns the room.

Neuguth is one of a growing number of people who are turning to Meetup.com in search of some social, and often romantic, fulfilment, which is often hard to find in Hong Kong.

"I didn't know about [Meetup before coming to Hong Kong]. This is a big city full of so many people who you never meet because it's so impersonal. Hong Kong is just too fast, too cold; there is no opening to be social."

It's bizarre to hear him talk like this surrounded by smiling friends. It's clear that for Neuguth, Meetup.com changed everything.
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