DIMIC

Yeah, it’s true. I am alive! I haven’t had the time to post about my trip to Seattle and Vancouver until now. We’ve been extremely busy with school and stuff like that. Like the fact that I need to finish a game in three weeks. Fun, fun, fun…

Like I said in my post earlier (this one), I’ve been on a school trip to Seattle and Vancouver and I loved it! Especially Seattle was wonderful. I completely fell in love with that city and would love to do my internship there. Like in Valve for instance. They got some cool stuff and one weird chain of commands. We also visited a lot of other companies. Actually, we’ve visited so many that we barely had any free time. So I definitely need to go back there some day.

In Vancouver I had a half day off in which I took the so-called Sky Train (a sort of combination of a train, a monorail and a tram) to visit a retro game shop in which I spend my last dollars. Bought quite some stuff (bought more as souvenirs but those have already been given). Totally forgot to add the two books, the guides and the plush I bought as well… I’l try to add pictures of those as soon as possible. Promise!

I’ll quote here what I also posted on my own Facebook wall. It’s not covering all the days there because we had very, very limited internet access in the hostel in Vancouver. Not that we did much there except going to more presentations. Also on the eve of the last day in Seattle something terrible happened to a fellow student (who I happened to have spend almost the entire day with with so much fun) so I didn’t do a ‘fourth day in Seattle’. What did happened just before we left to go home again, was that the teachers handed out some prices. Like who bested some teachers in arm wrestling, who was the funny one on the trip,  who picked up a girlfriend there, … My name was also called and wanna know what for? For being the ‘collector’ of the trip. And for that I won a real collectors item, namely the Hard Rock Cafe glass. It was fun.

Let the quoting begin!

On the first day in Seattle, the city gave to me:
– dizziness and sickness which resulted in me trowing up
– feeling a lot better after some fresh air and nibbled on some toasted bread
– a nice tour around the city in which I saw an Isetta, ‘ye olde curiosity shop’, a guy with a ferret hitted on me, saw a import and retro games store called Pink Gorilla and fell in love with Seattle
– another tour but through the stadium that changes it’s name about every year depending on the sponsor or something like that and that’s not really nice to visiting teams but they are for their fans called the ’12th man’
– a nice gift shop that held a sale
– a restaurant called Mario’s that served only pizza and they didn’t look good so we went to Luigi’s and they had pasta’s as well, so we finally know which one is the better brother
– another tour this time through ‘the underground’, an awesome history!
– a lot of beggars of which you don’t want to ask directions which someone of our group did
– a security ranger type of guy that looked very young and very puzzled when we ask if he knew a comic book store
– a lot of really nice earrings
– sore feet
– free food at the hostel that left me sick again

On the second day in Seattle the city gave to me:
– nice eggs for breakfast with toasted slices of bread
– a bus trip that didn’t really knew if it wanted to be friends to my breakfast… luckily all ended well
– a visit to DigiPen, the school on which my education is based, nicey-nice
– a tuna-cheese sandwich in the Panos in which some of the people that work there don’t speak English… the memories of home
– a visit to Valve which was pure awesomeness…
– nicey-nice pictures of the lobby of Valve, a Double Dragon cabinet and a life-size turret (more was off-limit)
– some great speakers about Valve and future products! If I tell you more I’d have to kill you
– some great goodies
– free drinks at the Pike Pub and a lot of chats with Microsoft employees which was really interesting
– a shower and some reading time before nighty-night

On the third day in Seattle, the city gave to me:
– a very small breakfast just to get started
– a bus trip through a wonderful environment
– arrival at the Big M (Microsoft)
– breakfast provided by MS
– presentations about Microsoft, Student Programs, Imagine Cup and Cloud
– lunch provided by MS (not that bad but way to much for little ol’ me)
– back into the bus towards a different MS building
– more presentations but really interesting because it was more about gaming and game development; Halo 4, Kinect projects and more… loved the Q&A!!
– got random selected for an amazing presentation, that guy was insane!! 😛
– back at the hostal for reading and sleeping time, nighty night!

And now on to the pictures! I’ll see to add those items I forgot and some other stuff that I bought as presents. Also, before I forget. Some of these items are also for contests that I’m going to host on DIMIC’s first birthday! No, I’m so not telling which ones.
Oh, I also added some nice scenery pictures! Just for fun.