And so finally the first semester of my experience in CMU ETC is finally over. Time flies and it seems like 5 years ago when the first round of Building Virtual Worlds (BVW) arrived. It’s probably the most tiring and most hours worked of any semester I have ever experience so far, and much more tough than any semester in NUS, and the most number of hours I have spent in school. Fortunately, I did not find the need to sleepover yet. After all, school’s only a 20 minute walk away so it’s nice to be able to walk home at 2am to a bed.

Last week, we had the BVW Spring Festival. It was THE ETC event of the semester, where there is an open house, and guests get to play the worlds that we built for Round 5 which lasted 4 weeks (pitch + interim + tech final + deco). It was the most amazing thing to be involved in because it involved both technical work in building a game, as well as art and craft work in terms of decoration. My team decided to re-pitch RaillyTricky, the game we created for the jamodrum during the lighting round, and recreated it with an additional portion of depot cargo loading. 2 players would load cargo unto the train using joysticks, and then the trains will spawn on the jamodrum world. I was thrilled as I love trains, and this was a recreation of the iOS-style train games (kind of) unto the jamodrum. We had many hurdles along the way in terms of brainstorming, track layout, gameplay mechanics, and we eventually figured it out. It is also amazing how the depot loading game got totally revamped in the last week from 2 players competing to 2 players collaborating. The jamodrum layout also became much more beautiful and polished as compared to the lighting round as the 3D Modeler and I did pump up the graphics to Appaloosa cartoon-themed.

In the last week, we stayed up to midnight/1am/2am almost every day to do the Wild West-themed deco and programming. Sam and Sakar was great in creating wooden stuff such as the Saloon door, Railroad crossing signs, railroad tracks, and 3 standing building facades. Steph helped to paint them, and Mara did awesome paper mache cacti, and I helped out with misc printing of stuff for the deco. It was somewhat like rag-and-flag, as each team spends a considerable amount of money to decorate the room just for one day, and then after that half the things are thrown away. What a pity, wished we can show the world to more people across more days.

On the day itself, we had many guests, of which the guest-of-honour was  Jason Vandenberghe from Ubisoft, a pretty cool guy. He went around and played all our games and gave us feedback. The thing that he said to us was that gamers’ comfort is very important – user feedback of what’s happening to the controls will cause either enjoyment or frustration to the game. Our game is probably the best use of the jamodrum, if only we can fix the user feedback when they turn the wheel and/or lock it. Because currently, the game is very frustrating as the trains keep crushing, even though you think you have control of the junction. It’s the HCI – human-computer interface gap user interface problem again.

On the whole, it was a success for all the groups as all the guests enjoyed the games (and the fudge!). Our world is probably the most tedious to decorate as compared to the others. It was sad as we tear down the stuff the next day (reminds me of rag again). I wish there was more chance to bond with the other groups and play their games.

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Here’s a summary of some new things I have learnt this semester:

• Teamwork and feedback. Making games is a head fake, as Randy would say. Teamwork is the real deal, after working with 7 different teams throughout the whole semester and receiving peer evaluation feedback at the end, I learnt a lot about myself, my own working styles, and how I interact with others. (Apparently, 3 people asked me to smile more, contrary to the fact that other people have said in the past before that I never stopped smiling. Perhaps I had more stress here which caused me to smile less.)
• Interest Curves. A term which, oddly, isn’t on Wikipedia. Interest curve, or the climatic arch of a story plot, lies beneath any entertainment tech: stories, films, games, apps, museum installations etc. [How was the interest curve for Avengers? Peaking!]
• Kill your babies. Usually the first few ideas of a brainstorming session ain’t the best ideas because they are the most common ones people thought of before. Also, don’t hold on to your own idea too tightly.
• Surface Pleasures. (courtesy of Ralph). Things which add visual and graphical interest to a piece.
• Naive users and playtesting. Naive users are people who don’t play games, who don’t use computers, who don’t know how to use a joystick. Test, test and test. After testing with at least 10 groups of people who played your game, using think aloud or otherwise, you will know what works and what doesn’t. Also, don’t assume that Naive users know the lingo you put into the language of the game.
• Theatre in games: How is games similar to theatre? They let the player assume the role of an actor in the game, being able to immerse in a fantasy world and act out all the roles possible to the player. Now everyone can be an actor, not just in the theatre. Hence the poetics of Aristotle do apply in games too!
• Improvising. Both in improvisational acting as well as in brainstorming.

After much deliberation on whether we should fly to Florida, Mark, Meng and I embarked on our road trip from Pittsburgh to Miami, Florida and back. The price of renting a car is about the same as flying per person, and if you fly there, you still need a car to get around. Hence we decided to drive, although I’m the only one who loves driving. I like the freedom of being on wheels, and it’s 16 hours to Orlando which is quite a feat.

Day 1

So we drove our Volkswagen Beetle for about 8 hours to Gatlinburg, TN on the first day, to the foot of the Great Smokies, the most visited national park in the states. Driving through Pigeon Forge is like through a mini vegas-like strip, there are so many bogus brightly lit tourist-trap-like attractions along the way, including a Titantic, a Christ in the smokies, magic shows, etc. It’s hilarious. We stayed at a red carpet inn, which is cheap and decent enough.

Day 2: Great Smokies

The next morning, we were surprised by the crowds in the town. It’s certainly a touristy place. There were so many people queuing for the pancake pantry! We decided to drive out back to Pigeon Forge where it is less crowded. For some reason, it is pancakes land and everywhere else is selling pancakes. And so, we ate pancakes, and southern biscuits with gravy. It’s like the biscuits from Popeye’s, but they have this tasteless porridge-like gravy which I think is weird. But I still like the biscuit! After breakfast, we went to the Roving Motor trail, which is a one way driving trail through the forest. The map says there’s a trail to the forest, so we parked where everyone parked and hiked the trail to the Rainbow Falls. Little did we know that the trail is 5.6 miles back and forth, and it will take us at least 3-4 hours to finish it. But since 2 of us liked hiking, we decided to go for it anyway. The trail was uphill beside a few streams and there some nice bridges and trees. But we were not that equipped for hiking since we are like wearing jeans and normal shoes (although I had my timberland). But compared with Mount Kinabalu, this is nothing. Haha. After much perseverance and meeting many people along the way, we reached the falls. The interest curve for the hike wasn’t spectacular, but there’s a small section with a view. The falls is not that magnificent as expected, I wasn’t expecting a Yosemite. Nevertheless, it was a good exercise.

After that, we finally drove up the mountain route 441 to Newfound Gap, which is the mountain pass, peaking at about 3000 ft. At the summit, we were rewarded with a nice view of the Smokies mountain range, and we can see the mountains fading away into the horizon. Now, that’s what I call beautiful. After that, we began our 4-5 hour drive to Altanta, GA, our next stop point. We lost data signal with T-mobile after the mountains, and have to rely on instincts till we got signal for the navigation to work.

Arriving into the wide freeways of Atlanta reminded us of LA because of the carpool express lanes, the heavy fast traffic, and the sound of the round that keeps repeating. Downtown Atlanta looks boring and empty as usual, with some parts looking shady. Typical American urban diaspora. We checked in and drove around, walked around the Centennial Olympic park (Atlanta hosted Olympics in 1996), saw the Coke museum and Aquarium.

Day 3: Atlanta

The next morning, we ate Krispy Kreme donuts and I dropped my friends off at the coke museum, and I went to…passion city church! It is about 15 minutes drive from downtown, and I didn’t know they are megachurch size now. It was typical: huge parking lot with traffic ushers and a warehouse-like building. What was atypical was this huge 5-storey statue of a hand promoting their human slavery freedom movement. When I stepped into the building, I was filled with awe. The design was minimalist, with clean lines and colours. The auditorium was huge, probably sits 4-5k and they have 2 services. Someone else led worship along with Christy Nickels, and it was really good. We sang a couple of new songs, I’m Not Ashamed, Revive me, Your Love Never Fails. And just nice, they releasing their new album, White Flag, that weekend, and I could buy it for just $5! Louie Giglio preached about John 14, and that the plan of God is not to give you the plan of God, but to give you Jesus. It was really really bleased to be there. The lighting was cool too, they used many LED lights to create colour wash.

After church, I visited the coke store and bought some souvenirs. We then ate at Cracker Barrel, a diner recommended by Josh. The eggs Benedict was super awesome! Finally I have the chance to eat them here. Then, we began our 7 hour drive to Orlando, FL. The portion near the borders was pretty boring, the interstate is super straight, not scenic, no buildings, not much nature. Fortunately it has 3 lanes for easier overtaking. The Floridian part was pretty dead too as we were not driving near the coast. Finally we arrived in civilisation as we saw theme park, outlet malls, and houses. We are Orlando! The place we stayed in Kissimmeee has actually many gated communities. It is a rich neighborhood.

Day 4: Universal

The next day, we went to collect our tickets from Undercovertourist at the local UPS store, and we went to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. The parking lot queue was typical: long and expensive at $15. The citywalk area is quite familiar with shops and cinemas. The theme park was very crowded! It was a nice spring sunny day with temperatures at 20-25 degrees. I haven’t perspired in the sun for such a long time haha. The Islands of adventure isn’t as big as I expected. It’s probably just slightly larger than Singapore’s. In fact, it is designed the same manner, a loop with a lake in the middle and the different worlds around it. The only difference is that they have a separate park which is the production houses and hollywood-themed area.

The first world we visit is the Wizarding World Of Harry Potter. It was pretty cool, it looks like the Hogsmeade neighbourhood in the movies and Hogwarts castle! It was super crowded with many people queuing for butterbeer, and so we did. It tastes like root beer with lotsa cream on top. Pretty good. We had to queue for more than an hour for the castle ride, even though we went by the single rider, but it was pretty good. It combines real moving props, with omni movie screens and a semi roller coaster ride which bumps up and down like a quidditch broom. The next ride we went was the dragon rollercoaster. There were fractions and we chose the Chinese fireball one. Actually the design of it is very similar to the battlestar galactica in Singapore, with two roller coasters side by side ascending together and passing one another. The ride was quite thrilling with a couple of loops and twists. Fun! After that we walked around the Dr. Seuss world, before watching the simbad live show. It is somewhat like the waterworld show in LA and Singapore. We walked to Jurassic Park but we didn’t take the ride as I already took it before and we didn’t want to get wet. We queued for the Spiderman 3D ride for like 2 hours?! We strategised and 2 of us went to take Dr. Doom’s drop tower first which had a shorter queue. I always loved the adrenaline rush and the screaming at a drop tower. It is a stress relieving machine. Still the Spiderman queue took like forever to get into the Daily Bugle themed building. Apparently, the new transformers ride in Singapore is based on this rose’s technology: semi roller coaster with giant 3D screens that brings you into the worlds and see Spiderman fight the victims in the “Scoop” vehicle. The interest curve was not bad, and I like the immersive experience. I must say the instructions cartoon is quite lame and funny. The last ride which we wanted to take was the Incredible Hulk roller coaster. We tried the single rider lane but it actually took longer. When it was almost our turn, the ride broke down! Talk about right place right time: if we had went by the regular queue, I could have been in the roller coaster that was stuck on the incline. We could see the workers escorting the riders down the stairs. It looked a little scary. We decided to not wait anymore for the ride. Sad. 4 rides and 2 shows in 8 hours.

I ate dinner at the foot court, and the next highlight was the blue man show! We managed to get college student discount at only $34 instead of the usual $90+. It is the best musical/concert/comedy/circus/performance I watched, well worth the price! They are very creative and there was lots of audience interaction. I love the invisible silent emcee at the start: the LED ticker tape. It’s amazing how scrolling words can interact with an audience. Within minutes, we were waving hi to some guests, wishing a birthday girl and clapping and cheering to…a ticker. It was hilarious. I also loved the LED screens used in the background of all the performance. They were very dynamic and cool. The blue men would walk to the audience and pick up random people to do tasks, such as acting with them on stage, body painting, etc. I also liked their satire and parody of the Gipad (iPad), the rock concert movements generalisation, etc. There was one part where there were bouncing balls and everyone was asked to stand up and shake our butts and dance. Haha. The lighting and video effects were pretty well done too, there were some parts which filmed the audience as we interacted, and there was one part with a camera pointing to someone’s mouth and it cuts to a video of the camera going deep into the stomach. Amusingly seemingly real. On the whole, the interest curve kept peaking. I think it’s more interesting than a Broadway play.

Day 5: Disney

Today is Disney. We ate at Perkin’s for breakfast, but it isn’t as nice as Cracker Barrel. It is slightly more expensive as well.We didn’t go to magic kingdom but we decided to try DisneyQuest in downtown Disneyworld. Disneyworld is HUGE! It is like a self-contained town with multiple theme parks, lakes, hotels, buses and even a monorail. One good thing about the downtown place is that parking is free. Haha. We shopped a little before going into the indoor amusement park. The highlight is the Pirates of the Carribean thing designed by Jesse Schell, an ETC faculty. It is a ship simulator with 180 panorama view with 3 projector screens. There was a steering wheel and throttle, just like my BVW naive user round! Haha. Next was a river rafting simulator, and HMD Aladdin carpet, which was quite dizzy and disorientating. The best thing I think is the cyber spacemountain, in which you can design your own roller coaster, and then ride it on the simulator. So if there’s any upside downs, it really goes upside down! My friend designed a 4 out of 5 thrillometer one which was pretty crazy. The only thing lacking is the free fall feeling.

We only spent 4 hours at Disneyquest, cos the rest of it was mostly arcade games. Next, we drove to the town of Celebration, which is a Disney-designed real living town (thanks to www.mousesavers.com for the tip). The architecture is clean and theme-park-like, reminds you of the picture perfect streets in Desperate Housewives or Mayberry. The main street is pretty nice with some shops in front of the lake. It was a good hidden find as it wasn’t very crowded, and we ate at this pretty authentic Thai restaurant (which is quite out of place). I like this place.

When the sun set, we went to the Disney Boardwalk to take the free ferry to Epcot. We saw the fireworks at 9pm behind some very strategically placed trees. Haha. But it was still near enough and not too bad, although we couldn’t hear the music and sound effects. Next, we drove up to Contemporary Hotel to catch the Magic Kingdom Wishes fireworks. There were a bunch of people crowded around the 4th floor observation deck, as well as the stairwells above it. The good thing is that the music is piped to the speakers there. The bad thing is that the stupid monorail viaducts blocked some of the view, and the angle is slightly skewed so it is not directly behind the castle. Later we took the monorail to the Polynesian Resort where there is an artificial beach to view the fireworks as well. It is much further away from the castle as it is on the other side of the lake, but it is a clear unblocked view. I’m proud that I managed to find a back exit route out of Disneyworld to avoid the jams.

Day 6: Legoland

On our last day in Orlando, we went to Legoland! We ate BK breakfast, and they have sausage with biscuits too. Managed to save parking charges at Legoland by parking for free at the strip shopping mall across the road. I didn’t know Legoland was that kiddy until now. We were seriously overaged for it lol. Most of the people there were family with kids! Haha. And the rides are very kid-friendly as well, the most intense roller coaster was nothing compared to the Universal one: no upside downs and twists. The shows were also quite cheesy, the pirates one had some water skiing stunts with people dressed up as Lego figurines so it wasn’t that bad, but the city one have some lame firemen playing with water. We couldn’t sit any of the driving school rides as they were for kids. The Lego technic and coastersaurous roller coasters were not bad. The castle and Egyptian themed worlds were so-so. The main attraction was miniland, where they have mini replicas of landmarks around the states, all made with Lego! Pretty amazing to see very detailed models of New York city, San Francisco and other major cities. They even programed some cars and figurines to move in them. The 4D shows were also not bad, they had no dialogue conversations but they depicted the stories pretty well. The 3D effects were pretty well done.

At night, we tried to search for an A&W nearby but it no longer exists. Sad. So we found a Captain D, which is quite similar to Long John Silver’s but much greater selection and bigger portions. In fact, I think it is pretty decent good fast $8 seafood platter with fish, crab, shrimps, and “hush puppies” potatoes. After dinner, it was another long 4-hour boring drive to Miami. We had to drive a non-toll route as the Florida turnpike in Miami uses electronic devices like our ERPs. While driving inside greater Miami, there were so many police cars…I spotted at least 10!

Day 7: Miami Beach

In the morning, we drove to Miami Beach and parked at a garage which was strangely cheaper than the street parallel parking. Unfortunately, the clouds came and started to pour just after we were taking pictures at the beach. Walking along the touristy Lincoln mall with all the expensive shops was pretty boring. The rain came and left and came and left. Later we managed to walk along the beach again. It was quite quiet and peaceful, although not picturesque. After that, we drove to downtown to see the bayside marketplace. As expected, it was nothing much. We took the free metromover around, which is very similar to our LRT. Saw the arena which Hillsong United had their live recording. Other than that, nothing much. At night, we drove to little havannah to eat at an authentic Cuban restaurant called Versailles. It was huge and pretty awesome. I had grilled chicken which has very flavourful seasoning, and my friends had some imperial rice which is like fried rice. The food is slightly different from Mexican, slightly similar to Indian cos of the balsmanti rice. Now, this was the only worth-it thing in Miami! At night, we drove 3-4 hours northwards towards Titusville.

Day 8: Kennedy Space Center

Kennedy is Orlando’s “space coast”, where NASA headquarters is. (Thanks to penny for the tip.) The tour was very interesting, as the bus would bring you around the facilities and tell you where are the space shuttles launched from and how the launch pad works. Too bad the space shuttle program has ended. The coolest part was to visit the Apollo Saturn V facility, where the actual Saturn V rocket is on exhibit, the one which brought man to the moon. There were many video and multimedia presentations of how they launch the rockets, with some sadness about Apollo 1. We also watched an IMAX 3D movie of the Hubble space telescope. Looking at the stars makes you wonder about God’s creation as indescribable. Another cool thing was the space shuttle launch simulator, which is like a theme park ride thing. You sit in a capsule and it tilts upwards and rocks to simulate a shuttle rocket launch. They even have a FOD warning haha. Pretty awesome. The effects and lighting were well done, and the interest curve peaked well at the end. The space shop is quite cool, they have space foods and space blanket. We also visited the Hall of fame, which was more like a museum.

After NASA, we drove up to check out Daytona Beach. Wrong place wrong time again: it was bike week! There were hundreds of bikes everywhere and we couldn’t find a parking space. We had to park pretty far from the main pier, and we walked to the shore and take a look. The beach is definitely nicer with finer sad, and more happening than Miami. You can even drive on it. Later, we found the A&W nearby, which is strangely integrated with a Long John Silver’s. Sadly, there’s no curly fries. But root beer float and chilli cheese fries are good nevertheless. After dinner, we drove 3 hours north to Kingsland, GA where we stayed for the night.

Day 9: Savannah

We planned to see the St Patrick’s Day parade in Savannah which was 2 hours north. But it was super crowded and messy, all the parking garages were full, and the street parking were full too. I had a strange encounter with the policeman. He claimed that I almost knocked into him which I don’t think I did. He gave me a verbal warning, saying that if I don’t know how to drive, I shouldn’t. Thank God for favour in times of adversity. I was pretty nervous. In the end, we decided to get out of the place. Sad that we cannot see people in green doing crazy things.We drove to SC and had a brunch buffet at Shoney’s. It was a sumptuous one for only $7.99, with breakfast stuff like eggs, Bacon, biscuits, waffles, and lunch stuff like chicken, soups, salads and ice cream. The fried chicken was very juicy and tasty like KFC. Pretty worth it for lunch. We also saw a fireworks shop, which is an eye opener. In some states, you can set off your own fireworks! No need to wait for countdown on new year’s day. Hah. After that, we began our 11 hour chiong back to Pittsburgh and hence I have time to type this. The Virginian mountains were pretty scenic.

Another sad thing that happened was that the USB cigarette lighter charger broke down, and we couldn’t charge our phones for the GPS. Fortunately, we have 3 phones to take turns.

Pittsburgh is warming up for spring! It’s like 20 degrees now. Woohoo.

So seven weeks have passed and now finally it is spring break! It has been a tough and long first half of the semester, for we have been working for 7 days a week without much of a break, thanks to BVW.

We had 4 rounds of BVW so far. In the first round, my group had to use the kinect to create a world to guide a character to achieve his goal. Our first interim build was badly criticised, but we worked hard in changing our kinect mechanics from just gestures to full body mapping, and managed to pull it off in the final round with some praise. In the second round, which is probably my best so far as I had a pretty good team to work with. Everyone is skilled at what they were doing, and it was quite easy to come to an agreement during our meetings. It was a naive guest round, and my team decided to make use of the commonly understood mechanism of a steering wheel and throttle to control a steampunk style airship. With the use of cloudstoy, L3DT and contrast enhancement in unity, we managed to create a beautiful world which allows the guest to drive through floating islands to collect gold. My teammates also made additions to the pirate ship wheel prop we had, creating a throttle which can store a Wiimote. Our naive guest successfully finished the map without any troubles, praise God! Anthony Daniels (the voice and actor behind C3PO) was present, and he tested our builds and said that it was absolutely wonderful. In our third lightning round, we had to build a multiplayer game on the jamodrum within one week, and my team decided to use the wheels of the drum to control the turntable of – my favourite – trains! There are four drums and hence four turntables, and the coloured trains will spawn randomly, and they have to be guided to the correct coloured tunnel. We had a lot of favour with the professors as they liked the mechanism, as we are controlling something other than the moving object. They felt that it had potential to be expanded to a bigger game. And our fourth round, which is a second lighting round, we had to develop another game in one week, this time my group chose the playstation move. We decided to do a multiplayer rock climbing game, controlling only the 2 hands of a ragdoll, similar to GIRP. We made it comical and added powerups to the holds, so that you can climb faster or throw eggs at the other player. Haha. Our professors liked the idea although one of them didn’t get the eggs thing. Haha. The class was laughing a lot as the ragdoll was very funny as it maneuvered up the rocks.

The other time consuming but enjoyable module was Visual Story, which is about filmmaking. Our first assignment was creating a promotional video of our team: loose screws factory. We had a reverse asylum idea and we filmed what we were crazy about. As for me, it was maps! Haha. Our second assignment was retrofit, which is to readapt a movie scene and recreate it in (almost) exactly the same manner. And so we chose Stranger Than Fiction. Initially we wanted to ask Don, our professor, to act for us. But he was too busy. So we had to use our backup plan: act in a penguin suit! One of my teammates gladly volunteered for it, and it turned out to be pretty good and funny! We also managed to get Anthony Daniels to be the narrator! It was very amazing to see him do what he does best: voice narration in the sound booth. I also managed to get his autograph and see him speak on C3PO voice animatedly. He is hilarious and I think I’ll miss him.

As for fundamentals, we had an adventure module (see other post). So far, Don has been a funny lecturer, teaching us the fundamentals of theatre and plot. The last class is improvisational acting, in which we learn what people do in whose line is it anyway. Each class, we learnt how to make one another look good, and how to help to progress the story and assume everything that is said is true.

Another small interesting thing that happened was that we had to create resumes as part of our class, and apparently my resume format was recognised as one of the best, and the staff kept telling everyone to follow my resume, and in the end, everyone sort of saw and followed my resume format and ended up looking like mine. Haha.

After coming into ETC, I realised that the headfake, as Randy would say, is not creating video games, but to teach you how to work in teams with different kinds of people. There’s not much teaching or learning of technical skills here, you are expected to be already good at what you are doing, and then work in teams to create things which you cannot do alone. The things we learn are just additional “surface pleasures” that make our games and interactive experiences better. I’m still not sure if that is good or bad for me, I would just see where God leads me to. I’m sure there’s a reason for me to be here. It is tiring to work 7 days a week without a sabbath now, and I’m not really liking it. There are also not many film projects, but only one or two special effects one approved each semester. The only hopeful stuff is that there are future film-related projects which are to be tied up with some local studios in Pittsburgh and New York, which seem pretty promising. I can’t wait to get out of cold and boring Pittsburgh! It’s trying too hard to be the most liveable city yet it doesn’t have all the happenings of a city and doesn’t have all the charms of a suburban town. The most happening event I went is the free cultural district gallery open house and the Distant Worlds concert. Other than that, the downtown is pretty dead on weekends.

One of the other ironies is that in NUS, we tend to not interact with people from other nationalities unless absolutely necessary, but now in ETC, we are forced to interact with them and some of them have become my best friends. Being able to speak another common language, like Chinese, helps too. It is fun to share our cultures, to tell the Indians that I love Indian food, share steamboats with the Chinese, and also makes me proud to be a Singaporean at times.

Yesterday we went for our first ETC Fundamentals Adventure Module to Seven Springs Mountain Resort, about an hour’s drive from Pittsburgh. Activities include skiing and snowtubing (and eating), all fully organised and sponsored by ETC! =)

The first activity was skiing, with a 1-hour lesson given to everyone, beginner or intermediate. Although I skiied 2 years ago in Montreal, I kinda forgot and decided to join the basic lessons again on the bunny slope. It took us a while to get our boots and equipment together. The first time I learnt skiing was without the poles, but this time we all have the poles. The instructor thought us basic stopping and turning, and we went up and down the slope a few times.

After some practice, Meng, Seewon and I decided to take the “Polar Bear Express” chair lift to the top. The first incident was that my friends were too slow when getting unto the chair lift and they were pinned down by the chair, one person on top of another. It was a scary sight. Fortunately they managed to stop the lift and assisted them to get out of their skiis. We managed to get on the next lift. The chair lift was kinda scary and unstable and sometimes you wonder if you will drop down. Haha. At the top, I was afraid I would make the same mistake as the first time I skiied – not coming down fast enough and hence falling under the chair lift. Fortunately, I managed to come down fast enough.

We took one of the easiest trail. The first part was quite gentle, and it was a good practice for myself as I slowly began to remember my skiing skills. My friends kept falling as it was their first time. We reached a sharp curve and I managed to go down very slowly by opening up my legs very wide. After a while, I managed to get the hang of the S-shape maneuver as we went downhill. Later, we reached a very sharp U-turn which was very steep as well. No way one can go down straight. I decided to go on the outer circumference and slowly down, and fortunately I didn’t fall. In fact, I didn’t fall for the whole day except for one when taking out my skis. Lol.

After that, we had lunch at a function room, which was some DIY sandwiches and nice soup! After lunch, it was snowtubing time! We have 2 hours to snowtube as many times as we want. The queue was really long, but there was a nice magic carpet to bring us to the top. There are 2 grades of slopes, one higher and one lower. We tried the lower one first, then slowly everyone decided to stick to the highest one as the interest curve was higher. Haha. After a while, people started to form groups to come down together. It was quite funny as the groups become bigger and bigger, and soon, there were like 6-8 people in one straight line. We realised that it isn’t very feasible as the last few would usually get detached or fall apart. Lol. Twice, they even hit the sign at the top before even going down as the train was too long! haha. Later, another group found out that forming 2 columns is a more stable group and they did that. We had to pass our ring attached to our tube to the person behind us. I took some videos, it was really really funny at the end as the first person would usually smash against the fence/wall and get bumped out of his/her tube. Haha.

After snowtubing, some of them went for drinks, while the rest of us went back to ski. Meng and I managed to ski many times down the beginner’s trails with different combinations, getting the hang of it already. I managed to find out how to conquer the sharp curve better each time. Later, we tried to find another trail, but we ended up coming back to the same trail as we got lost and there were not enough signs. After a while, we managed to find 2 seniors and we went up together to find the Lost Boy’s trail, which is longer and easy and fun. It was like a never ending straight downslope, with a climax at the end when the slope became steeper. However, two of our friends kept falling and was lagging behind. It became a question of whether I should wait for them. Team spirit and camaraderie? I gave them some tips, and then I decided to go down first and wait for them at the bottom.

At the bottom, we waited for them for about 20 minutes. We have to take another chair lift up and then come down another route to go back to the main area. My friend was shocked as he thought there was another route to walk back and he is not good enough to conquer another slope. We had to go anyway, and this time, this chair lift was a long and tedious ride. The snowing didn’t help as we were eating snow most of the time. Haha.

We decided to go by the deer path, but my friend got lost as he was trying to put his skis on (he fell), and he couldn’t find us. We had to call him and wait for him. Thank God for phones. He managed to catch up. The two seniors were surprised that the trail still merged with that sharp u-turn point which they wanted to avoid. lol. Well, we finally managed to go down in the end, about 30 minutes late for dinner.

Dinner was an awesome buffet with lots of seafood, pasta, salads, soup, and cakes! It was a good spread, with fresh salmon and crab and oysters, and lots of cheese, some meatloafs with horseradish (I like the wasabi-like taste), and the desserts were very very delicious, although it was pretty standard American fare. After dinner, we set off for home at 8pm.

AWAKENING is an eye-opening documentary about the Jews in New York City who are passionate about Jesus like never before. It is the beginning of the prophecy of the 144,000 mentioned in the Book of Revelations in the New Testament of the Bible. I am sure this documentary will inspire Jews, Christians, and other people from around the world, with the movement possibly spreading to other major cities with both Jews and Gentiles present. It is about bringing the gospel to the hearts of the people who matter to God most – the Jews as God’s chosen people, as well as to the rest of the world – the Gentiles.

Carefully touching the challenges of evangelism in a cosmopolitan city like New York, the documentary reveals how Jews can be fulfilling the Great Commission in their own bold manner, sometimes in ways not seen in other Christian evangelism efforts. It is a testimony of the love of Christ being poured upon the streets by the children of God who are not ashamed of their identity, their culture, their roots, their race and their Savior. This film certainly answers what it means to be His salt and light in the world, and is a great example to many Christians to follow. The methods should not different; for we are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of salvation for those who believe (Romans 1:16).

I still can’t believe that more than 30 people came to bid me farewell. I felt so shy, honoured and appreciated. They were my care group mates, my video department friends, my NS friends, my previous church buddies, and my NUS friends. Thanks to everyone who came! I also made a short speech and said that it is amazing how we are such a big church yet we have such kingdom friendships in a small setting. It is truly amazing and brings a sad yet happy smile to your face when you step through the immigration.

The 30-hour flight seemed never ending. Tried not to sleep on the first leg but ended up taking naps because some of the movies were too boring. It didn’t help that the screen on the 747s are the older ones and hence smaller and dimmer. But the SIA food was good, really good and huge portions. The second leg after Frankfurt was good as it was quite empty, and we could lie down on the seats and sleep. The few hours layover at JFK was boring, at an airport that has nothing much to do. Although I just discovered that the Delta terminal now has iPads for internet surfing, which is a great improvement. The 1-hour flight to PIT was interesting, felt like in a private small jet.

As expected, Pittsburgh is cold. The last time I experienced such cold winter was when I was touring NY with Josh. But Pittsburgh is colder as it goes below 0 degrees Celsius. The first few days was mild, but it began to snow and get colder, to -10 deg. I didn’t felt long johns were useful in the past, but now I think they are useful (although I still prefer not to wear them as it is too hot when indoors in school). But the weather is kinda irregular as well, there are some days it rained instead of snow, and then the next day it becomes a sunny 10-15 deg like California. Quite amazing. Snow is quite fun, haven’t seen so thick snow, but shoveling snow isn’t fun.

It took us like 3-4 days to find apartments as this is the low-key season. We had to make many calls and only managed to tour 3 different apartments and decided on the best one. Although for all of them, it is at least a 20-min walk to school. But nevertheless, it is still better to stay near school as the public transport here is horrible, unreliable, and infrequent. The one we chose has 3 bedrooms, just nice for 3 of us, and has washing machine in the house, which is very convenient. And the unit number is 3355, triple triple grace grace! Settling in took us 1-2 days, as we had to drive to IKEA and Walmart to buy our furniture and groceries, it’s like buying a whole house of stuff from the departmental store. When we finally could sleep on our own bed in our own room instead of the hotel, it was a sign of relief.

Also, I had a cold and sore eyes in the first week, probably due to my body adjusting to the weather. The sore eyes infection caused mucus to clog up my eyes every morning, and it was very uncomfortable. Thank God it is gone now. My eyes shall not grow dim nor my strength abated!

Pittsburgh is a pretty boring city compared to other cities I have visited. My relatives keep telling me that they want to visit me some day, then I always tell them there’s nothing much to do here. I was right, there is really nothing much to do here, even though this is USA most “livable” city. The downtown is pretty dead at night, although there were many theatres and they try to bring in some broadway plays. There’s supposed to be some nightlife in the Southside, but doesn’t seem to be as happening. There’s a few attractions, but most of them are not that interesting or large. The only time I saw downtown crowded was when there was an open house of art galleries. And there are no subway train systems, only a lousy “T” LRT train which doesn’t bring me to anywhere useful so far. The only cool thing about Pittsburgh is the Duquesne Incline and the wonderful views of the 3 rivers on Mount Washington. There’s also no Chinatown here, although there are still Chinese restaurants scattered around.

And about school! The Entertainment Technology Center, for some reason, is located in the middle of nowhere, although at a very scenic spot by the river. There’s like no amenities or FOOD nearby, although fortunately there’s some free dry food and snacks in our kitchen. Classes are really cool, with the legendary Randy Pausch’s Building Virtual Worlds, Visual Story (which is my favourite as it is about filmmaking), improvisational acting (like playing Who’s Line is it anyway), and fundamentals. The lecturers are very passionate, and the environment is very inspiring with many movie posters, props and all kinds of memorabilia around, from Star Wars to Harry Potter. There’s even Super Mario stickers in the toilet wall, and an irritating talking robot which greets you when you step out of the lift lobby. The only sad thing is the usual gender disproportion, and also there are too many computer science majors versus art-related majors, which sort of defeat the original purpose of putting left- and right-brain people together. However, Randy Pausch says, in the “dream-fulfillment factory”, you are not just learning how to make video games, but how to work with one another.

Thanks to BVW, looks like my weekends will always be burnt as deadlines are every Monday. I would definitely need this as my verse for the semeter:

He has filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and understanding, in knowledge and all manner of workmanship, to design artistic works, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting jewels for setting, in carving wood, and to work in all manner of artistic workmanship.

Exodus 35:31-33

And so we embarked on our long-talked about trip to Mount Kinabalu, thanks to yt who organized everything for us. The AirAsia flight was quite horrible as I experienced the worst turbulence ever, like a roller coaster ride. When we reached the city, we took cabs to Masada Backpackers hostel in Kota Kinabalu city. After checking in, we walked around for dinner. Jr was pushing for KFC (again!) of all things, and I don’t want to eat KFC when you can eat it in Singapore and also in USA, and I don’t want fast food. Fortunately, there was a Malay coffee shop which looked quite decent and enticing. Each of us ordered different varieties of Nasi Ayam and Nasi Goreng. Pretty decent, and my wish of eating as much Asian food as possible is fulfilled.

We slept earlier as we had to wake up at 5am to take the 6am coach to the foot of Mt Kinabalu. However, for some reason, I was too excited and didn’t sleep much as the bed felt warm. The tour bus had to go a huge detour to a ulu resort faraway to fetch two other tourists. Hence we only reached the Park HQ at like close to 9am. We met our 2 guides, Joe and Ronnie, as we were a group of 7. After collecting our permit passes for climbing, and renting hiking poles (10 RM each which were good professional ones) we set off in a mini bus to Mesilau Gate, which was a bumpy 30 min ride. We chose to take the Mesilau trail which is longer and more adventurous, but slightly different terrain with some down slopes in between instead of upwards all the way.

Sadly, upon reaching the gate, it started raining. We had to put on our ponchos and rain covers, and it was quite demoralizing. Fortunately, it stopped raining soon after. Thank God. We could took out our ponchos at our first shelter as it was very stuffy and inconvenient to move in one. Finally now we can enjoy the fresh air and breeze.

For the first part, the terrain was mostly similar to Singapore rain forests: trees, warm, soil, muddy and many steps. However as we progressed in elevation, the air became cooler and fresher, and there was a lot of different algae and moss growing on the ground, making it look like a “coral reef”. We also spotted some interesting flora, such as the Kinabalu Blossom, and some clusters of pitcher plants.

After conquering many different kinds of steps, from rocky to wooden ones, we reached a shelter with a nice view in the clearing. In the distance we could see the rocky cliffs we will be climbing to the summit. But Low’s peak is not viewable from this angle. We also had lunch at another shelter, which includes a ham cheese sandwich, 2 hard boiled eggs, an apple and 2 bananas. It isn’t a really enticing lunch, although I heard if we chose the Via Ferrata package we would get a chicken wing. Lol. At every shelter there is a toilet with a cistern, and pipes with rain water, which the guides drink but we are advised not to. We also spotted a random squirrel near us. However, my right shoe’s sole started to come off, and I had to use gutters and black tape to secure them. The left sole also had to be secured too. Wonder if it’s because I used the shoe alot last time, or because I stored it in the cupboard for too long.

As we continued, the terrain and flora changes to a dryer ground with many cypress trees. It was very beautiful and peaceful as you could see clouds below as well. KC said it’s like a beautiful garden, and I would say it’s probably close to Eden.

Later on, at the 6km mark, the trail merges with Timphoon, the main trail, and we have another 2km of horizontal distance to go before reaching Laban Rata, our “base camp”.

The initial part of the Timphoon trail was mostly normal rocky stones, from orange ones to grey ones. As we got higher, the last part we could feel the air starting to get thinner and colder, with some chilly winds blowing at about 10 degrees Celsius, and Vic had difficulty as he was getting a slight headache. I had to wear my gloves as my hands were getting numb. We slowed down our pace slightly, and the view was also amazing as we were above the clouds. We could also see the sunset in the horizons, with the open heaven rays effect! The steps seemed never ending, I was singing to myself randomly some worship songs, mediating some verses such as I can do all things through Christ and Psalm 91. Phil had some muscle cramps and they were lagging behind us pretty far away. At last, at about 6.15pm, we reached Laban Rata. Joe joked with us that we can play volleyball to stay warm, and indeed there’s a volleyball court. Lol.

We rushed into the dining area, where we finally we sit down properly and have a nice buffet dinner. Originally our dorms were supposed to be separate hut some steps and distance away, but Joe helped us to rearrange another dorm that could fit all of us!

After our dinner, Phil and yt finally arrived under the moonlight. Temperature was probably around 5-10 deg, reminds me of California and Santa Cruz. It was a full moon with some stars, quite nice. There was no hot water hence some of us couldn’t bathe. I tried to splash the freezing cold water on my body and managed to wash my hair. After that my fingers became cold and numb. At about 8pm, all of us settled into our heated but cold beds and went to rest. This time, I managed to sleep a few hours although the pillow was hard, and shoulders aching from the weight of my backpack (but I like the fact that my Deuter backpack pushes the weight on the hip straps so that it is less straining on the shoulders. Maybe it was because I strapped my camera bag to my front chest belt for easy access).

We woke up just few hours later at 1.30am, ate some fried bee hoon and eggs for breakfast, before setting off for the summit at 2.30am. We used our headlights and climbed the initial part which was mostly steps, again. After about 800m, the ropes portion began. The first part of the rope portion was quite shocking and scary to me as the rocks were about 70 degrees steep and I had to pull myself up with two hands on the rope together with my hiking pole in my hand. After a while, our guide kindly took the poles for us so that we could concentrate our both hands on the ropes. Some parts I have to use certain rocks to pull myself up too. It was quite scary as one lost grip and you could stumble down. I kept mediating Psalm 91 to myself along the way, the angels shall bear me up lest I strike my foot against a stone. Further up, the gradient became gentler. Although the rocks were still about 50 degrees steep, we could still walk normally without using the robe and just our hiking sticks. It became harder and harder to breathe, as the air became thinner. We were advised not to rush in case we cannot catch our breath and get climate sickness. I had to stop to pant every 20 steps or so, as one gets out of breath very easily. It was also cold with the winds blowing at 0 degrees or so. A hoodie or beanie is very useful now. Slow and steady, the last shall be first. Zhan was surprisingly fast at the front and didn’t seem to have any breathing problems. I was like, I can so all things through Christ, and when I am weak, then I am strong. Keeping hydrated is also important even though one doesn’t feel thirsty, as it helps in acclimatization. It seems like we never reach the edge of the ridge, as we pass one ridge, there’s like 2 more above it with lights indicative of people in front.

Halfway through we reached the checkpoint, where we had to show our passes, and also where the last toilet is located. They checked our names and we continued. It was slightly flatter and easier as we were less than 1km from the summit. Finally we could see a peak where a cluster of lights gathered, and we knew we were pretty close! However, for some reason, we also saw many people coming down, for the fear of rain. At the very last rocky climb to the summit, it started to drizzle. No reason to give up now. So we quickly made our way up, and soon after 100m, we reached! Praise the Lord. At this time at about 6.30am, the sun is rising but it was too cloudy to see anything. We took some photos with the summit sign and sat around to admire the view. It was a small piece of rock and a lot of people crowding around. But the view is magnificent with all the clouds below you, the mist around, and the “desolate wasteland” of the different rocky peaks of the mountain.

We could not stay for too long as the drizzle threatened to pour. Yt and Phil managed to catch up with us in the end. We were one of the last few groups to walk down the mountain. By the time we reached the checkpoint, it became a downpour. We had to slide down some of the rocks, or walk backwards like abseiling. It is quite amazing as the terrain looks slightly different in daytime and you wonder how did you manage to climb those rocks which you are going down. The rain made matters worse by causing the rocks to be slippery and the paths to become streams and rivers. The cliffs become more dangerous, and my waterproof ski gloves from wintertime were apparently not waterproof. I could squeeze water out of them!

It was a long way down as each step became painful for us due to exhaustion, and the rain did not help. We reached the base camp at 9.30am, finally have some hot drinks and breakfast, packed up and began our descent. Thank God the rain stopped, and it was a nice leisurely walk. The first part was quite nice, with the water flowing through the stones like a Chinese garden waterfall. However as we continued, each step became more and more painful, as our thigh, calf and ankle muscles get stretched and have to withstand our body weight and our backpack. The hiking pole helped a bit, but soon I struggled through every step, and it seems like forever to reach the next resting hut.

Halfway down we were walking through the mist along the timphoon trail. Visibility was low, like <100m but it was a nice cooling weather. We saw many spider webs spun very nicely, like a colony of spiders. There were also some random birds, earthworm, squirrel, and houseflies? The mist is like we are walking through the clouds. When we reached closer to the bottom, it sounded as if the lower elevation areas were raining or showering, but we are still in the mist. Fortunately, we didn’t meet the rain at all. Each kilometre seems to take forever. It doesn’t help that my shoes and socks are wet, and my soles are not very secure. Some portions have 50cm high steep steps, and soon I joined the slower ones to form a trio with yt and Phil. Haha.

Finally, we reached the last 1.5 km or so, in which we persevered till the end without any rest. We saw a waterfall, and the last 100m was another long flight of steps, this time upwards. It feels weird to climb upwards after going down so many thousand steps! Every step is a chore, but we finally made it to the end of Timphoon Gate! YAY!!!

I received a few revelations during the trip. Because every step was painful, I kept mediating on the Word of God and singing songs to myself. Psalm 91 literally came alive at the rock face, as the angels will lift me up, lest I dash my foot against a stone. I was quite afraid of losing my grip. Also, I was thinking, since we have dominion over all the earth, we will have dominion over the mountain! No climate sickness or pain show reign over me because I will reign in life. I was also reminded of “Walk As If”, and that I shall walk as if I am healed, without any pain or blisters.

The last leg of my internship was really busy. There was a deadline we had to work on and I worked for 12 hours for one of the days, doing up graphics in Photoshop and Illustrator. Also, my JavaScript/Jquery skills probably went up by a notch as I had to code many functions for the website to work. I did not expect myself to write so many lines of code! I helped my boss re-edit a short video piece. As it was towards the end of my internship, I began to consolidate my files and started to write some documentation to handover to my boss before I leave. At this point of time, many of the interns are leaving as well, and it was sad to see the office getting quieter. My boss could not bear me to leave, and he even considered sponsoring me to return to work for him in future. How undeserving I felt!

Here’s a quick summary list of the things I learnt in this internship:
- Technical skills: JQuery, HTML5 / CSS3, Pachube
- People skills: Working with other interns, satisfying the views of different people

Around NYC

As I was leaving, I packed my weekends with as many activities as I could. My friend visited me and we went for a trip down to Washington DC and Baltimore, and we did a road trip to Niagara Falls. DC is pretty amazing with so many free museums and monuments. The reason I wanted to check out Baltimore was because Marina Bay was modelled after the Inner Harbor, but it turned out to be quite disappointing. The road trip was the best as we popped by Buffalo for…Buffalo wings! Niagara Falls was cool as we could get down for a shower on the American side. We also went to Letchsworth State Park on the way back, the “grand canyon of the east”. Well there was one part where there was a canyon, but it is neither huge nor grand. The last two weekends I squeezed all the attractions which I haven’t seen, such as the Bronx Zoo, New York Botanic Gardens, Empire State Building, America Museum of Natural History and Guggenheim Museum. I also attended a concert by the Newsboys at Central Park and visited different churches. The final few days were busy meeting different people as final goodbye dinners, having exotic Mexican and French food, and having a final dinner with my boss.

I think I will miss sitting beside the East River below the Manhattan Bridge during lunch, listening to the trains passing by, looking at the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline. On my final morning, I took the free Staten Island ferry for the third time and watched the sunset, breathed the cool 20 degree lower Manhattan morning rush hour breeze, before setting off for the airport.

The past week has been a rough one. Firstly my boss was rushing for a deadline on Friday to apply for a grant, hence we had to work extra hard everyday. On Thursday I worked for more than 12 hours till 11pm, skipping dinner even lol. I had to do many mockups of webpages and some infographics, HTML, CSS and video editing. It was also tough as in hectic times one gets worked up and hence causes minor arguements. But it was all good.

And then my arm old injury started to act up again. Can’t remember how I aggravated it, probably while stretching for exercise I think. and maybe because sitting too long at a computer is also not very good. Thus it kept getting twisted and I have to twist the muscle back. For two mornings it tormented me like a torn in the flesh. I woke up feeling dizzy on Thursday morning, as if I was very weak and my eyes couldn’t open. On Friday morning, my involuntary stretching while waking up twisted it while I was still lying on the bed, and it took me a while to twist is back. I was like speaking in tongues and trying to twist back my incapacitated arm for a long while. Felt like I was helpless and my right arm glued to the bed. All my blood and energy is like flowing to my arm and I was trembling…Finally I managed to twist it back. Praise God. But it acted up again while I was jumping from one pavement to another, and even while opening a heavy door! Argh. Jesus was bruised, cracked his arms on the cross, and by his stripes, I AM HEALED. His grace is sufficient in my weakness.

And on Saturday, my friend and I checked out Flushing for the alternative Chinatown and saw so many Chinese people, supermarkets, bubble tea and street food along the main street. They look out of place in a city like New York, but I felt right in place there. We went to eat a Chinese buffet with seafood at this restaurant called East Buffet. I ate two or three plates and I felt very full unusually. Then I went to the restroom, I thought I wanted to pee, then before I knew it, I had diarrhoea! It was disgusting…I think it was the lobsters or the crabs which were not fresh, cos usually I’m not allergic to anything. The bad thing was it cost $32 and I almost wanted to complain and ask for a refund, but I didn’t.

And another thing that happened was that my watch’s display cracked slightly. Grr. And I lost my laundry net at the Laundromat…usually I leave it there on top of the washing machine and it was fine, but this time someone took it! Argh.

But no weapon formed against me shall prosper! The enemy has been defeated! We are victorious!

At the same time everything else was happening, on Saturday NYC time, which is Sunday in Singapore, our rag and flag documentary was featured in The Sunday Times. It was really unmerited favour as I do not know how the reporters found out about it. Even though they did not quote my email interview and did not put our link, it was still good publicity. More to come! On Sunday, it was another awesome weekend of “Jesus be the center” at HillsongNYC!

Time flies, one more week and I’m back home. Although I still have a long list of things to do, I can’t wait to be back too.

This month got busier as there were many meetings throughout the week. We met up with most of the people in the team, and managed to discuss some statistics and indices which we are interested to monitor for our website, and how to go about creating a suitable analysis or visualisation for all these data. To prepare for this, I played with the Pachube API to be able to create datastreams and push data unto it, and Pachube allows us to store all these data and output as a graph or various other means. It was interesting to be able to use my raw PHP and Javascript skills to push and get data from a server. I learnt how JSON and XML requests works, and how to use AJAX to interact with all these data. It was quite insightful.

After that, as we get closer to the website launch, I began to create HTML/CSS templates for our website. It was a tedious process to convert the design graphic into multi-browser compatible code, it can be quite a pain. We tried to rush a demo so that my boss can show something to grant organisations. Along the way, I learnt the basics of the newer HTML5 and CSS3, which is still pretty fresh to me. I am still having difficulty making it compatible with all browsers.

We also have some new people on our team, and I created a list of to-dos and agenda for a User Experience (UX) discussion. As our website is still pretty in the mockup stage, there were a lot of questions in my mind about where do things go and how to certain things work. Some of the questions could not be answered immediately, and we had 2 meetings to talk about them. The first meeting was a more generic one with the rest of the producers in the team, while the second meeting was a more in-depth meeting to talk about user interface, user friendliness and interactivity. An important component is to how social networking works and where should they be featured in the page. I also learnt how important it is to have “call to action” buttons and links, to motivate users to explore the page.

Google NYC

I visited the GoogleNYC office here in Manhattan for a meetup about their 20% projects. 20% is the time Google engineers set aside to do projects outside of their normal job scope, to test and experiment new stuff that they might be interested in. There were many tech-savvy people at the talk, and of course, Google always feed people with good food. The 3 speakers talked about Google Spreadsheets and Docs, and also about the Google Art Project (http://www.googleartproject.com). It is interesting to see how the Google Maps and Street View technology was used to capture a virtual tour experience of a museum, allowing users to zoom in close to paintings and pictures. Very cool indeed! You do not need to visit the museum anymore!

Around NYC

The last few weekends, I visited a number of forts: Fort Jay in Governor’s Island, and Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island. It was nice to escape from the hustle and bustle of the city, out of the island, into places which are more peaceful and quiet. I also visited the United Nations building and the Museum of Modern Art. There is a television broadcast studio branch of Trinity Broadcasting Network here, and I attended one of the recordings which was a Christian talkshow. It was very interesting to see how such a recording is done, with the cameras and the director’s prompting, and being part of the audience.