Captain’s log - August 29 – Quality Inn Dining Room, Dallas

Even though it’s called the dining room, I just had my breakfast. It’s now 10 am.

3 days ago I wrote my last post. Nothing much happened on the 26^th. I took the plan from Boston to Wichita and went to the hotel. The hotel looked good and the room was clean and big, yet in it was this big leather chair that you could even sleep in! I still don’t know what the deal with that. I left my bags and went outside for a quick tour. Around the hotel were Panera, Pizza Hut, MacDonald, Subway and the Wesley Medical Center (one of the 4 biggest hospitals in Wichita). Unlike the Pizza Hut back home, this one serve BBQ chicken wings under the name of “Wing Street”. I took a meal back to the hotel with me and that was my dinner (it was lovely!). The next morning I called Ms. Tonya Witherspoon around 9 am and she drove by the hotel and picked me up (a very nice lady, and I’m not saying that because she might read this :P). We went to Wichita State University Engineering College, which is located in a historical building by some famous architect (I already forgot his name; I’m never good with names). Over there I met Ms. Karen Reynolds (Another nice lady :) , Hi Karen!). We talked for while about collaboration plans and what am I doing and what are they doing. After that it was around 11:30 and it was time for lunch. Tonya and Karen took me to this nice Antique/BBQ place; there we exchange some cultural difference and the like. After lunch, they took me to the “MindScape”, a great ….. (I can’t group it really with a store type because it’s not really a store; it’s more like a lab with a couple of Macs and Xbox360 and Nintendo Wii). Anyway, it’s a GREAT place and there they showed me a couple of the projects kids did (like a clay animation short movie which was really awesome), and frankly, I want to create a place just like it back home so I will talk about in the next staff meeting. Tonya and Karen then took me back to the hotel (Thank you again for a wonderful day :) ). I forgot to mention that I got to play with the Wii for the first time and before I also forgot, they asked me to say hi to Saeed, so ….. Hi Saeed !. After a quick rest in my room I went to Panera for coffee and to meet with a friend from the #gamedev chat channel (SteevR). We had a fun time talk about game development, Tabletop games and such, so much fun that we stayed like an hour in the place after the closing time (and they were nice enough to let us stay). I wanted to get another dinner for Pizza Hut Wing Street, but they said that you cant order after 9 pm (even though it says on the door “Open from 11 am to 11 pm”). Anyway, there was a Walgreens next to it and I had a microwave in the room so I thought “I’ll make some TV dinner” you know, try America. So I bought some chicken with corn and mash potatoes side dish, at first I wasn’t sure about this but a large hospital was next door so I thought what the heck and tried it anyway. It turned out to be a lovely meal (Lucky for me) and that was the end of my day. Yesterday I took my breakfast at Panera and then went to the airport to take my trip to Dallas. I went about 2 hours early and luckily Wichita had the only free wireless internet I found in all the airport that I been to so far. The trip was around 50 min and I was in the Quality Inn in under 2 hours from the time I was on the plan in Wichita. The first thing I did was to put my bags in my room and try to walk to the where the Anime convention is (to see how long it will take). It took about 45 min walk, but since Texas is almost as hot as Saudi Arabia, I must find a better mean to go back and forth. Renting a motorcycle (first choice) or a car was not possible cause I need to co-sign the lease if I’m under 25 (and I’m 23). Taxi will take too much money seeing that a trip from the airport to the Inn (about 20 min) cost 40$. So I am going out today to rent a bike (100$ for a week). I don’t understand, I rented in this Inn because it was close to the convention place (within 1 mile). But checking the Google maps it says 3 miles. So next time I’ll double check with Google first before trusting the Expedia.com numbers. Moving on, after the walk back I got me some dinner from Denny’s and went to bed. Woke up today around 8 and I sat down for breakfast and to write this so ….. THE END! :D . Have a nice day and see you soon (That is, if I was going to meet you soon, if I never met you then there is a slight chance I won’t see you soon but then again …… ANYWAY! BYE!).