Iceland Diary, part 2

So I didn't do daily updates like I was going to, so I just wrote everything right now, in one sitting , on the plane. Here goes!

Thursday

Arrived in Iceland at Kefliak at around 7AM and walked through a maze through security, cafes, and shops to get to our baggage. Leifur Eiriksson airport is not really the best designed, but we got our stuff in the end. It was a 40 minute drive to the Nordica, and it was during that trip that I realized just what they mean by 6 hours of daylight. The sky was black, and it felt more like 7 in the evening. Sitting at the hotel at 9AM the sun was barely up, but I had fun hanging out with the U.S. contingent and made a good group of friends who I ended up spending a lot of time with for the rest of the Fanfest. I had intended to go out around Reykjavík during this time, but the late start and the socializing put that on hold. We did head out around the block and found a nice bakery/café that had some of the best cinnamon rolls I've ever had. Not messy ones mind you, but very large, and covered in chocolate frosting. Delicious. I also noticed that coffee was served with a little carafe of cream and a bowl of white and rough sugar. It was great and I noticed that this was the standard to every place I went to. I'll have to make some suggestions next time I'm at Silver Diner with Chris…=)

After paying the bill (and learning some quick Icelandic from the café owner) we headed back to the hotel to see who else had arrived. Met a few other fellow pod pilots and browsed the EVE Online store that was set up which I ended up visiting a couple of times during my stay. I went up later and checked out my room which turned out to be the neatest hotel room I have ever stayed in. Not very big mind you, but very modern. All kinds of brushed metal finishes and lamps with big funky switches on the walls and a shower assembly that took me a little while to figure out! I enjoyed it a lot.

The only downside turned out to be a weird issue with the internet in my room, which, though it kinda worked, suffered some weird issue. I won't get into the technical (had to do with a DNS issue.) but I couldn’t get on IM, my PC at home, or EVE Online for that matter! The WiFi worked downstairs so I stopped down there when I wanted to pop online. For the most part though I just checked my e-mail which I exchanged with AA back in the states.

I slept very well that night…

Friday I woke up to the room keeper entering my room at 9:30, who I was quite surprised to see! She left quickly and I made a note that the knocking sound I heard wasn't a dream, and next time I should probably say something…

Went downstairs and sat with my friends and talked with a few new people over a cup of coffee. The Player vs. Player (PvP) tournament got underway later that morning and while I wasn't competing one of my new friends was. The weather outside was quite windy and was blowing snow the consistency of sand grains. I decided it wasn't a great time to go out so I stuck around and watched the competition and mingled with the fellow pilots. I also managed to meet up with some familiar names in game and proceeded to conduct a bit of diplomacy and info gathering. While the 58th Squadron CEO turned out to be quite an immature asshole I got some good info off of him. Also met up with one of ISS's head diplomats and together we smoothed some little issues over and discussed the situation in our area.

Attended a few roundtable discussions afterwards with Gnauton and Hammerhead, two content directors of EVE Online and had a great discussion with them and some other players. Gnauton met up with me again the next day and let me know that he really liked some of my ideas and that we should get in touch after the fanfest. I definitely plan on taking him up on it. It was a rather productive day. =)

I followed my friends around the PvP tournament and hung around for the championship. Our friend managed to make it to the semi-finals but lost in the end. It was a good match though, except that the asshole I talked to earlier ended up winning the match. Quite a disappointment, but not much to be done. We ended up wandering around a bunch more before deciding on dinner. Unfortunately by then nothing was open (11PM) that was serving food. So we wandered through Reykjavík in the cold till we found a little café serving drinks and dessert. Dinner for myself and everyone else turned out to be slices of a very good chocolate cake, and my coffee arrived in a little thermos (with the aforementioned condiments, take note!) and a little comedy ensued as we tried to figure out where the coffee came out of as it had no obvious opening, and we didn't want to tilt the thing over and make idiots of ourselves. Finally one of us figured it out. The six of us that went exchanged war stories in EVE for a few hours before pausing for a picture and calling it a night.

Saturday was the day for the presentations by the EVE Online staff which included an excellent art demonstration by EVE's lead concept artist. He ooh'ed and ahh'ed the crowd and told us at the end that the demo he gave would be available as a limited series signed piece available at the Fanfest. I managed to get in line for one later but the last one ended out going to the girl in front of me. Boohoo!

The rest of the presentations dealt with various new and upcoming technology in the game that was quite impressive, to me and the attendees, anyways. =) One of the ending presentations dealt with the concepts of good and evil in games, and I enjoyed quite a lively discussion with one of EVE's creative director live on EVE TV during the Q&A session. Hopefully some people watched it! The keynote delivered at the end by CCP's (EVE Online's parent company) CEO turned out to be the real bombshell though: CCP was merging with White Wolf, one of the leading Pen-and-paper RPG writers in the industry. He assured us at the new company would still be the same CCP we all knew and loved and that EVE would not be undergoing any changes as a result. We all were pretty happy with the news honestly, and the general impression we got was one of delight as we were quite excited to see what White Wolf would do with the EVE property for table-top RPGs and the like. CCP was to then help bring the World of Darkness (White Wolf's RPG universe) to the internet, but not for quite some time as EVE was first and foremost. This was crucial, as though many of us think highly of the World of Darkness universe, CCP understood that we would not accept any decrease in resources being used for EVE as a result. After all, we're more important!

I jumped online for a bit afterwards and found my alliance CEO online. I shared with him some of the info I had gathered at the fest and we "consulted" for a while regarding diplomacy. It was rather neat and reminded me again of how fun the "wheeling and dealing" can be in EVE. After receiving some instructions I signed off and looked to track a few people down to get some questions answered and solicit some deals for our alliance.

Afterwards our group met up again for dinner, this time at a proper Icelandic restaurant. I had some great salted cod and we talked for a few hours before heading back to the hotel for the big party…

The party was quite enjoyable, and for a conference that originally had about 3 girls in attendance it was quite surprising that so many seemed to be at the party, even though we still out numbered them 2 to 1. Not that I picked up anyone mind you, though a British gentleman I met, despite being much older than many of us, nevertheless used his charm and good nature to talk to a number of the ladies, and danced with quite a few of time. I watched with much amusement and admiration. He was quite apparently a fine gentleman and a seasoned professional. ;)

The party room was quite elaborate, with EVE decorations and black and neon lights in a dark room. The women bartenders done up with wild hair and makeup meant to resemble the Gallente fashions in the game. I'm not so sure they liked it so much, as the girl I had a picture taken with didn't smile too much, but honestly, neither was I. I thought I was at the time, guess it just didn't come out.

I did have reason to smile later though, as I won the first place prize for the raffle drawing with a free year subscription to EVE Online! Guess I won't feel so bad buying that second account now! It turned out to be a good thing also, because after I announced my in-game name and corp, 4 members from Digital Foundry (an allied corp) found me. I met some allied pilots for the first time there and got to place some faces with the guys I fly with. All 4 lived in Iceland and had come for the last day. They got pretty smashed though, and proceeded to run around and try to kick each other in the nuts occasionally. Funny, and odd, but funny.

The music was pretty good; we listened to BeatX remix a bunch of EVE tunes (which I later found out from EVE's communications director would be released soon!) followed by RoXoR, the in-house band. Their guitarist was surprisingly good, and they did a great job. After that we started wrapping things up. I met up with Kieron, EVE's community face, and gave him my account name for my free year before heading up to check e-mail and go to bed.

Sunday morning I got up really early as Dave and I (one of the friends I had met here) had planned to do some sightseeing in Reykjavík since our flight wasn't until that evening. I was up and ready by 7:30 and headed downstairs for the continental breakfast. It was continental alright! Eggs, bacon, pancakes, potatoes, all of the essentials along with some Icelandic stuff like marinated fish that was absolutely delicious. I ate with a few friends I recognized and was joined by the leader of Aurora, EVE's role-playing and events coordination team. We exchanged stories and discussed game events before he had to take off. We were later joined by EVE's communications director, and we discussed the merger a bit more and what it would mean and got the feeling that this was a very good thing for CCP. Dave and a bunch of my other friends were down here by this time, and we had a great last chat before we each headed in our separate directions. One girl and her husband were being taken to the Blue Lagoon to be interviewed by Danish TV (she was one of the only female EVE players there) while Dave and I headed to the city.

We decided to take a cab to the Saga Museum which was in a large landmark building on a hill overlooking the city. The cab was the nicest one we've ever ridden in: a Mercedes Benz fully equipped with leather seats, lots of buttons, other stuff, and lots of buttons!

We arrived pretty soon though, and went inside a large building that had once been 6 large water storage tanks. They had hollowed them out for shops, with a large glass dome on top spanning a few floors, with the top one reserved for a restaurant. Open only at night, it revolved around as you dined for a 360 view of the city. We didn't do this of course, but we did get up to the observation deck, and I took a ton of pictures of the city.

From there we decided to walk to the Icelandic history museum, which had a larger collection and spanned a larger length of time than the Saga museum. It was quite a hike and we weren't always sure where we were going, but we saw a lot of the ordinary city along the way. Dave was very enthusiastic about seeing everything we could in the time we had, and this was great as I was in total agreement. We turned out to be excellent partners and I doubt I would have seen as much as I did had I been with someone else. We managed to see the museum in the last hour we had before heading back to the hotel to catch the bus to Keflavik.

It was the drive back that really showed me how different Iceland's landscape is. From the city, you can see a massive cliff and mountain across the bay that literally rises out of the sea. It's a spectacular sight. However, once you head inland, you can see vast plans of cracked rock and gravel. The thin grass and moss covering the rocks in patches is the only think that differentiated it from a lunar landscape. It really does resemble the surface of the moon.

I mentioned this to a young lady sitting next to me on the bus and we had a great conversation on Iceland, it's weather, and a bit of it's politics. I think it's great to find out about a country's viewpoints by directly asking someone who lives there, and a fellow EVE player heading back mentioned to me that he learned a bit by picking up on my conversation. The Icelander had no problems discussing things from me and I found it to be one of the better chats I had during my stay.

I arrived at the airport, and was reminded of how small it was compared to BWI or Dulles by the fact that it only had 15 counters total, and so the line was quite long to get through check-in. Luckily it didn't take too long and I found most of the gang I flew out of Baltimore with, even a nice lady we befriended on the way there heading to Scotland. She was on her return flight back and we shared our experiences in our different countries.

And that about sums it up. The Icelandair crew is getting ready to serve some dinner, so I'm going to wrap this up for now. Got a report to write for my alliance regarding some new developments in EVE, so I have my work cut out for me. Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did experiencing it. =)

Iceland Diary, day 1

Left at 2PM on a very rainy Wednesday to head up to BWI. Just dad and I for this one, and we arrived at the airport with no problems. Got to chat for a long while in the restaurant (which was very reasonably priced!) talking about the election the previous night and a few other odds and ends…We sat in the concourse for a while before I decided to head in.

I was looking around the entire time while waiting to pass through security to see if I could spot anyone else heading to fanfest. Sure enough, I found the "gate camp" once I passed security and joined a group of about 10-15 people heading the same way. The protocol of "name, corp, alliance" was the order of the day and I ran into a few individuals from RISE, ASCN, and others. The highlight was a nice long conversation with Tom of Guiding Hand Social Club fame. Having engineered the most sklliful and elaborate heist in EVE history, I was pleased to find he was a rather nice and intelligent guy. I spoke at length with a few other individuals and overall was pretty glad to see that there is a nice group of peers on this flight I can tag along with once we arrive in Iceland.

We boarded the plane and it still has yet to hit me that I'm leaving the country again. Maybe I really have become comfortable with it. I forgot to look up how to say things like "please", and "thank you", and "hello" in icelandic; hopefully I'll be able to pick up something or other before I'm required to use it in a setting that would otherwise make an ass of myself.

I'm stairing wearly at the glass of orange juice sitting precariously next to my laptop. Somehow I don't trust the indentation in my tray enough to keep the cup from spraying vitamin c all over my computer. Guess I'll have to finish it quick…

I was hoping for a scenic flight, and the start of it seemed promising. Despite the dreary weather the skies were clear once we pierced the cloud cover and I could see city lights glowing up from the low clouds in a great dome like a volcano getting ready to punch through. I could see other planes crisscrossing beneath us, and the moon illuminated the sky for miles. But it got dark rather quickly afterwards and now when I look outside I just see black.

The pilot just told us though that we'll be cruising at angels 37 (I'm such a dork: That's 37,000 ft for you non pilots) and we're passing over New York at the moment. Ride is getting a tad bumpy, which isn't all too bad. I love flying, the rush that throws you back in your seat and the sensation that the ground is falling from beneath you as the wheels leave the runway. Occasionally the plane will dip a little and I get a slight falling sensation that's wonderful. Of course, that now went away and the plane was shifting side to side which

Nifty tip: For you Google Earth users. Go to Tools: Options, and set your Google Earth cache to the max (2GB). Then zoom in and around everything you can regarding your location and be sure to turn on things like locations and such. Then, when you're on the plane, all of that data is cached and you're free to look through it at your leisure even without no internet. Yay!

I smell fried chicken all of a sudden. Strange.

My legs are starting to cramp up a bit (already???) and my head is feeling a tad funny, so I might wrap this up. I have a feeling that this OJ is going to pass through me pretty quick which means I'll need to bother this cute and athletic couple next to me…I should have gotten an isle seat. Damn me and wanting to stare out the window…=)

Ooooh, dinner time! Definitely gotta go. Look for more tomorrow! =)

10:37EST - 02:00 EVE Time

It turns out that it was chicken I smelled, and something that tried to pass for Swedish meatballs. It wasn't that great, but not that bad either.

The guy in front of me keeps trying to lean his seat back, which isn't helping me type this. The plane is a bit cramped. Fortunately the bathroom had a line, and I got to stand and stretch for a few minutes. Good stuff.

I think the couple sitting next to me appreciated the break as well (since I made them get up…=P) They're both trilathon runners or something. Something more as well, judging by the loving, but tasteful PDA I'm witnessing. She keeps trying to get comfortable, but it's hard, and I can sympathize. There isn't much room to go anywhere…

I had planned to sleep, and I might still do so, but the moon came about and lit up the ground below, which I can only assume was Greenland. I could make out rocky peaks and crevasses filled with ice with no lights for miles. It's barren, and yet so inviting, I want to go down and hike across it in the moonlight. I haven’t even stepped off the plane yet and I'm already thinking about going back…

For AA: It just hit me while I was eating those "Swedish meatballs". The star center for the Toronto Maple Leafs is Mats Sundin. =)