China...

It has been one week since I got back from China and Singapore and my body clock is still really screwed up. I leave again in a week, so I will really never know what time or day it is.

I'm working hard at getting everything ready for IGC (10/10-10/11) and have asked Stephen Zepp to do a boot camp for those attending. I only have room for 30 people, so I hope that the demand isn't too high. It is my first IGC and I am not sure what to expect. All I have made sure is that there is a 12x16 screetn and projector for a wii tennis tournament, 50 machines to play everyone's games on and enough good food and beer.

I have been going back and forth on what I have thought of the trip and what I accomplished (or not). Most of my time was spent talking to schools about the importance of game education and what it teaches over traditional classes. For the most part I spoke on behalf of the IGDA and discussed the curriculum framework and the importance of soft skills. China has 23 million university students, 50% of which are in some area of computer science.

Check out the photos from China on Flcikr more to come soon from the 2nd half of the trip. Next trip scheduled is Japan for TGS, CoFesta and DiGRA. Tracy Fullerton and Magy Sief El-Nasr and myself are doing a game design workshop on September 28, 2007 at DiGRA.

Personal life: I am still getting use to life on the farm. It is very different and the noise (or lack thereof) is particularly comforting after Beijing. Now that I have come down from the beautiful lake in the mountains, I am trying to get use to life as a flat lander - Eugene is a mere 430ft. above sea level. No wonder everyone rides bikes around here, the air is clean, the land level and there are some roads that look like the go on forever. They call the hills around here mountains, but when you are use to living at 6500ft. above sea level they are called hills. I hear there is some decent snow just an hour or so away, I'll believe it when I see it. I have a feeling they are just playing ssx in their dreams.

So off to buy a bike...