As a continuous celebration for our end of 2nd Sprint, Trey invited us to go drinking. He is absolutely genius, one of the best American I've ever seen.

On Friday afternoon as walking back to dorm, I received sms from Edmund. He asked me to come to Muddy Charles Pub to have early drink. When I got to the pub, Trey and Edmund were waiting there with big glasses of beers in their hands! The first time go drinking in US is really an experience. After a whole 2 weeks working hard, finally we could enjoy and reward ourselves with some alcohol ! 3 of us talked like a machine - Beer came in, words came out!  

The beer here is quite tasty and very easy to drink. But it is not light at all ! Only after 2 glasses, Edmund and me almost got drunk and could not walk in straight line. I forgot to take picture, but look at the pic below, we became more crazy than this! We talked, drank, sang, and did all the funny stupid things. It was really amazing!

Here is our Trey!!!	Crazy Me and Edmund!	Me and Thang on Harvard Bridge

People said that, the best place to make friends is at the pub. I totally agree! It really helps me understand more about American, about their culture and their thought about Asian people like us. Some said American discriminates against foreigners. Well, maybe somewhere else, not in MIT ! 

After the drink, we went for dinner at California Pizza Kitchen with about 7 friends. I'm not a pizza person, but the delicious Pizzas here really made me hungry and eat like a pig. It was not so expensive, but as we ate too much, each had to pay more than 12$ / person. Of course Edmund, Trey and I were still the most talkative guys at the table. The beer was really strong. 

When I came back home, rested for a while, Donny ran into me with a freaking news: he bought 6 bottles of beer and planed to get us all drunk tonight! That's really cool ! He made an offer that we could not refuse . 5 of us drank beer, ate snack, talked cock and watched Desmond playing Wii.

At about 1am, Thang, my junior arrived from New York to my dorm. My friends gave him a bottle, and I think he drank all. He looked very tired because of such a long travel trip. He took a summer class in Berkeley University, and then went travel around USA. He comes to Boston to visit MIT and Harvard. He is staying in my room until Monday, and then will fly back to San Francisco. I heard that he will come back to Singapore soon. 

Anyway, it's fun though! I can meet my friend right here, at MIT, and together enjoy the life here. For me, it is simply awesome!!!

Well, I'm looking forward to Six Flags trip on the next Monday. And Washington DC trip next weekend. And New York trip again sometime later, and... Texas trip to visit my uncle (still not so sure if I can go or not, but I really wish to meet him again). 

And I'm looking forward to the visit of my old friend, Tue, too... still can not contact him...

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Here's a schedule of Friday's proceedings:

9am-9:30am Teams prepare for sprint review

Yep, we crunched again, there were many features that we could not finish on time. Yesterday I had to stay up late and try to finish coding. But then I collapsed at 2am after nearly 15hours coding... freaking tired ! I could not sleep well also, and woke up at 8h continue to fix bugs and integrate assets. Finally I eventually completed the requirements and submit the latest version at... 9h30 am. I was late for the meeting again, and had to run like a crazy guy to the lab!

9:30am-11:30am Sprint review with product owners

 I reached the lab at ... 10am, the Sprint review already started. Luckily the latest version arrived on time. The product owners were quite happy with our work! 

11:30am-noon Tour of the new lab at 5 Cambridge Center (NE25-388) near Kendall Square - where we'll work in there starting next Tuesday. Here are some photos of our new lab: 

Noon-2pm: Lunch time!

My teammate, Kristina invited Lynette and me go to eat Vietnamese food at Le's Restaurant in Harvard Square! The food is absolutely awesome! The noodle tasted exactly the same as it is in my hometown! I definitely have to bring my group to this wonderful place

2pm-3:30pm All teams do a 10-minute demo Room 3-133

6 teams had to demo our own projects in front of everyone. My team's project, in comparison with others, turned out to be not bad at all ! We have completed almost all the required features for this Sprint, and integrated almost all the assets provided. 

After the demo, we came back to our old architecture studio to clean stuffs and do the Scrum retrospective, discussing about what went right, what went wrong and how to improve our work efficiency. I feel that we understand more about each other, about the Scrum process, the communication is getting better, and each of us know exactly what to do next. I believe the next 2nd Sprints will be very excited

On Monday next week, we are all going to Six Flags - the world's largest chain of amusement parks and theme parks !!! There will be a chartered bus to pick us up at 9am in front of MacGregor House.

The next sprint planning meeting will be at Tuesday, 10:00am, in the new GAMBIT Lab in Kendall Square. But for now, forget about next Sprint and enjoy the weekend first! YEAH!!!

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2 more hours ! And we will be on the way to NewYork!!!

We have planed to go last week, but it was too rush, so we postpone to this weekend. We will take the bus at 2am and reach NewYork at about 6am. Liberty Status is the first place to go! We hope to get picture with Liberty Status at the sunrise. It's sure awesome!

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The Fourth of July is right here, outside my window, at the Harvard Bridge! Sparkling, Cheerful and extraordinary Awesome  !

For a whole day, I stayed in MacGregor to rest and waited for the firework show tonight on Charles River. I planned to run at 7h30 am, cook breakfast for my group at 9h45... and I woke up at 11am... the whole morning was gone thank to the god-damn phone! Yesterday I already set the alarm, and put in on the table. Why on earth it was under my bed, and turned off in the morning? Maybe I was so tired... the movie Transformers last night was still jumping in my head... What’s a movie! I'm looking forward to Transformers 2, which would be ...never launched , according to my buddy's opinion.

Anyway, I still cooked breakfast for me, Edmund and Teddy. Then we did laundry, went to student center to buy stuffs, and came back to ... cook lunch. Guess what did we eat in both meals? Instant noodle, eggs, vegetable, sausage and mushroom. Not so bad for such poor students like us right ? After the lunch, I locked myself in the room and do some coding. Yep, coding again... Until 6pm, Bruce came back from Star Market with his spaghetti. He went into the kitchen and cooked dinner for 6 of us. Yummy, his spaghetti was cheap and delicious, only 1$ per person.

Dinner finished! Let’s walk to the Harvard Bridge to find a good view! Tonight had rain, a bit cold, windy. But we all really excited. Flying over 15000 km to here and see the firework behind a window is a waste! We want to really enjoy the show, to feel the atmosphere by our own perception, and to share the happiness with all American nearby. Yes, this is the day America was born! This is their mother land's birthday.

The rain and strong on the bridge were really great! It reminded me of New Year celebration in my hometown. There are something fresh, something new for everyone. Oops, it was getting colder and colder, we had to come back to our dorm to change clothes, get umbrella and drink hot milo. We were all like wet rats running around... really funny! On the bridge, ambulance and police cars were ready for emergency situation...

Here are some good shots!  

The firework is absolutely genius! It goes so well with the songs. It lasts for more than 20 mins. Unfortunately my camera's memory card is full in the middle of the show, I cannot record the entire show. But my friend did.

Well, portraiting the beauty of firework with my broken English is the most idiot thing to do ever, so I better post the clips here and stop talking . I decide to put the videos taken by my friend Jing Ying too, her video quality is good!

Here is the first clip: 

The second clip:

The third clip:

The last clip:

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