Day 1: Public transport dilemnas, NZ army training

You would think a 10:30am start on the first day would be easily manageable. Unfortunately, if you thought this, you would be putting a lot of misguided faith into the Auckland public transport system. My 9:18am train from Kingsland stopped 3 times mid-journey due to signal failure at the Britomart station. I accepted the situation and was content with my 10:11am arrival, leaving enough time to walk to the Saatchi & Saatchi building on The Strand. Red was not so lucky, he had missed the 9:18am with me by 5 minutes and had to take the next one at 9:54am, which was scheduled to arrive Britomart at 10:11am. His train was similarly disposed to signal failure which delayed the journey by half an hour resulting in an 11am arrival.

Everything got better once we had arrived, Chris and Carine met us at reception. Carine showed us around the office and introduced us to everyone that passed by. I was particularly impressed with the coffee machine, to industrial cafe standards, and which gave me the opportunity I'd been pining after for years to steam some milk under a high pressured steam wand again.

I was also impressed with the fact that we already had desk setups with a Mac and username and password ready to use. First days are always better when you can just leap into it, with no delays or head blocks.

We spent most of the first day doing usability testing of a new NZ army training game.

Chris, Carine, Red and I had lunch at the downstairs cafe and it was good to get an idea of what we are all about. It's novel that everyone here has "o'clocks", like "sorry I've got to run, I've got a 1 o'clock". Maybe they should take the "less hui more doey" approach, as so eloquently put by Jeanie Richards.

A few more coffees later and our first day was over. We both left, confident that we had remembered at least 25% of everyones names, and content with the work we had done, which was surprisingly fun.