Orientation / Jet Lag / Orientation again!

Orientation Week

During the orientation week, we were mostly seated in our development team as a main purpose to break the ‘ice’ among each other. We received talks, advices and information about Boston, MIT or US culture differences by Chor Guan, Clara and other staffs and those previous batches of students. Of course, there were a lot of ice breaking games and also games and activities for us to learn more about game development process such as prototyping. We had to come out with game paper prototype within 30 minutes to present to the whole group.
There were a few talks about piping, scrum process and Gambit scrum-liked process and QA testing process which a lot of us benefited as we at least learnt a bit of development process before flying to MIT to do a real game! Could not wait to start making a real game!!!

TP Students + Jet Lim

My family sending me off to Boston

Friends plus girlfriend that came to send me off

Day 0

Well basically we had a very very long 7th June 09. We took off from Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 3 at 23 30 on 6th June 09. We boarded the new airbus, Airbus A380 to London Heathrow Airport. During the 13 hours + flight, I watched a few movies like, ‘The Watchmen’, ‘League of the Extraordinary Gentlemen’ etc. Did not sleep as I felt the seat space was rather cramp, thus quite hard to fall asleep. After enduring the long flight, we still had 7 hours at Heathrow for our transit. The first hour was alright as I took a walk around the airport but basically nothing much to see or buy. Pound is so expensive! After walking around the airport, I grabbed a bacon scramble bagel from Bagel Street. It cost 3.95 pound for a small bagel but it was nice, or rather I was feeling very hungry. And the whole group spent the rest of the time trying to sleep or chatting random stuffs or doing stunts. And FINALLY, 1 30 the gate opened! RUSH IN!!! Another 6 hours + flight to Boston! After reaching Boston and getting past US custom, all of us were totally knocked out. We had pizzas for dinner at 8pm; the pizza was huge and was much nicer than those in Singapore. After dinner was OTOT (own time on target), I spent the rest of the night chatting on msn/skype and unpacked a few things from luggage and went to bed at 2 plus am.

Also saw a few US dorm mates, they were quite friendly and would interact with you. A different culture over here in MIT or rather US, most of the people here are super duper friendly.

At London Heathrow Airport

MIT

My dorm for the next 9 weeks. East Campus

My dorm mate! A cute CAT!

Day 1

Well woke up at 6am in the morning to chat with friends and play some games, was rather cold in the morning with my 2 fans blowing at max speed! Is like having my aircon room back at home! Went down for breakfast at 9am, was rather a nice breakfast with assorts of breads and orange juice. After that we had our MIT Campus tour by either MIT staffs or students. Today weather was cold and windy, a nice weather to be walking around campus and exploring. Also went to get out MIT ID card printed, and then catered lunch came. After lunch was the trolley tour! It was interesting. Basically we sit on a tram like bus and we opened up all the windows. The tour took a ride around Cambridge and Boston. IT WAS SUPER DUPER WINDY, thus all of us were freezing whenever we went downhill or drove over the bridge. Notice that Cambridge and Boston buildings are a bit different in styles? One felt modern and the other felt a bit run down. After the tour was OTOT again. I went to a MIT shop where it sells all different kinds of things related to MIT or being used in MIT, ranging from household items to clothes to books to dorm needs. Planning to buy a MIT jacket back to Singapore, but was rather expensive for as it cost around $100 for a jacket. Hope MIT or the school will buy for us a jacket. =) hahaha. Dinner was over at Central Square, Wendy’s. It is a place where it sells fast food, mostly burgers. Had a ¾ lb hamburger but was not very nice. After that we went to Shaw’s / Star supermarket to get our groceries and laundry washing needs. After that went back to dorm, had a bath and here I am typing this. I will be sleeping after this as feeling quite tired from the walking. Going to rent a bicycle this few days to explore Boston. Looking forward to tomorrow orientation as we will be playing games! Kudos

Stata Building

Trolley Tour

Day 2

Woke up for cereal breakfast we bought last evening and also opened up a can of noodle to eat as I was feeling hungry. After breakfast, we walked over to Stata Building for our morning games. It started to rain when we were walking over. With the rain and wind, today weather was 11 degree celsius. COLD! Basically we played a game where each group has to take 20 photos with no wordings for the judges to recognize a game franchise within a timeframe. My group did metal gear solid and it went pretty smooth. My group was the first to go back and summit the photos within the time limit, thus winning a ‘Manly Professional Cosmetics’ set. Cool, something for my girlfriend! Also there were 6 hats/caps for the scrum master aka producer which is my role. The order for the group to pick the hat/cap for the scrum master was determined by the points given by the judges. In the end, I had a cap that is meant for sailor? After the game, we went to Game Lab, which will be our office for the next 8 weeks for lunch. Cool, there were tons and tons of sodas, red bulls, coffee, teas and much more in the lab itself. Each developments teams were issued a room of theirs to work in. The working environment was conducive and well-equipped with software and hardware needed and relevancy to the game consoles and working style. And then there was discipline meeting. And then I went back to our dorm area as there were fresh fruits and vegetables selling outside our dorm every Tuesday. I bought 6 apples and 2 boxes of strawberry for just USD $7. The strawberries are super sweet compared to Singapore. I went back to game lab to play board games. Board game was fun as I was winning! After that, it was OTOT; I went with those living on level 5 dorms and 1 more producer to supermarket again to buy our groceries and my supper cans food! We then go back to our dorm to cook our first dinner. We had soup, tacos and beef pasta. We over cooked a bit, thus all feeling full. We had sweet strawberries after that, and then a few of us stay at the rest area to watch some funny youtubes videos while I started to blog for today. I went over to athletic center with another dorm mate to check out the facilities available. The weather was freezing cold outside with rain mist and strong winds, felt like 8 or 9 degree celsius. Will be sleeping soon after this or walk to the bridge side to take a look. Ciaos

Sweet Strawberries

SODAS and REDBULLSBoard Game

Day 3

Our MIT ID was activated and was given the purple card to tab into the building. I found it quite troublesome as one card is just to tab into the first floor building where our MIT ID is to tab to open doors. Anyway we had a series of lectures in the morning include: Branding; Game Design; Intellectual Property etc. After that we proceeded back to our office for lunch again and meeting with product owner. 2 of our 3 product owners were on a trip in Singapore, so my team only met 1 product owner. He gave us a brief re-introduction of the research topic and showed us a quick example of what the technology the research can go up to. And the day ended quite early as the schedule was rather up to the product owner. However even we ended early, my group was one of the last to end our discussion with product owner due to the complex of our technology used for this research! Headaches days ARE coming! :P I went back to the dorm early to rest as felt quite tired or restless for no reason. I rested awhile in the room before going to the kitchen to cook dinner with a few dorm mates. Was a filling dinner and then went to bed quite early. A short day for me.

Me on roof garden

Day 4

Today was the ‘official’ starts of our work as for the past 3 days, there was no program planned for us to work as to help us get over jet lag ASAP. I think this arrangement was rather good as we won’t feel stressed out to work as soon as we arrived here; we also used this time to get to know our US counterparts. We had a morning lecture about brain storming and after some activities on it; we went back to our development room to start our brain storming on our research topic. Well I started my group with brain storming, we came up with a few brilliant game mechanism ideas and we worked on paper prototyping for those for better illustrations. I had my lunch packed back from the food court downstairs, was rather nice. Towards the end of the day, our embed staff; Andrew Grant was rather surprised that we managed to come out with so many good prototypes. I asked my group to go back and think of more ideas to improve on those prototypes before ending the day. After work, I went downstairs to COOP to buy the MIT jacket which cost me around 80 bucks. Ouch! After that, I went to 1 of athletic center to take a look as my athletic pass was activated earlier today. I saw an indoor swimming pool which I wanted to take a swim in and a few levels of gym. I planned to go jogging with my audio artist along Charles River after dinner. So headed back to dorm for early dinner, my dorm mates cooked steak with mash potatoes. The steak was hard as we defrosted the meat too hasty, so in the end we had to stew the meat. I abandoned the idea to go jog as was feeling tired! Going to sleep after this. Nights.

Anyway now my team is working towards the green light meeting milestone where we have to present our ideas to the product owner for the ‘green light’ to go ahead with the game production.

Also the link for photos taken during this trip:
Gambit 09 Pics