This is my first post, so I guess I pretty much have to start from scratch. Okay, so the first two weeks were orientation. I remember coming into the screening room with Andreas and then sitting down with our teams and the first friend I made in my team was Kris, who's apparently the game designer. The first half of the day, it was basically a talk by Chor Guan on what to expect when we arrive at Boston and the different kind of culture that Americans share among themselves that us Singaporeans may find hard to adapt to. such as the famous tipping culture. Well honestly, till now, I have not tipped anyone here in Boston. But I'll get to that bit later once I'm done talking about this orientation week.
So after lunch that day, Clara, the research associate at GAMBIT gave a talk on the essentials of game design. Then we had team building games where we had to make board games in our teams and with different people in a certain time limit. And in this process, I learnt the important of game-testing as it was one phase which really showed the flaws and loop-holes in the game.
So moving on with the orientation week, there basically many many talks. One of which was by Clara on the various research topics. That was when my team got to know our research topic, which I don't think I'm allowed to mention here. Well, I'll probably ask if GAMBIT is fine with it and if they are, I'll probably elaborate it in my further posts. Anyway, I was pretty excited about my team's research topic. It appeared pretty cool to me and I was so eager to get started on it. Awesome.
On the Friday of that first week of orientation, it was industry day. Basically many game companies came down to give a talk such as Ubisoft, nvidia, Lucasfilm, etc. I found the Lucasfilm particularly interesting - they've always been awesome to me! Hats off to them!
On the second week, I was absent on one of the days cos I had bad diarrhea. So then, Marleigh took over and covered the rest of the research topics for the other teams. And then finally, the last day was basically admin stuff and a presentation by Marleigh on what Boston is like and what MIT is like in particular. Sweet..
The next few days, it was just packing. A bit of tension here and there regarding the weight issues and stuff like that, but it went pretty okay and everything was alright in the end. I reached the airport on time with my parents and settled all the check-in. Well actually, I did my check-in online and got good seats with Andreas. My friends had come over to see us off. Here's a picture:
So anyway, our first plane was an A380! I was so excited over this. But it was nothing really. Just like an ordinary aircraft from the inside. The trip was long and I thought that I would get pretty bored and stuff like that, but hey, it wasn't too bad. I watched movies, played games and slept. Well, sleeping was a little uncomfortable, but what can you say? Its the best I could get for economy class :) And then there we were, at London Heathrow. After going thru the baggage checks and new boarding passes, the horrible time of waiting came - 7 to 8 hours! It was hell. So tired and sleepy and we were stuck at the airport. I spent about 8 pounds on 2 wraps! Thats very expensive! But I was so hungry. And the toilets were horrible. I was so happy when the time to board Virgin Atlantic came. I had a very good vegetarian meal on this aircraft after which I slept all the way till landing :) Fantastic.
And then we finally touched down on Boston and fortunately, I had no issues with anything at the airport. I passed through immigration successfully and got straight onto the bus to the dormitory. Andreas and a few others got stuck at secondary issues and baggage checks and things like that.
Below is the link to the photos. Enjoy:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=99259&id=506265123&l=c4ce71dd13
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