Afro Headquarters

Monday, May 18 saw the departure of Mr. Niels Vandeputte. The uni islanders walked down to the central station and waved good bye as our dear friend headed towards København Airport to catch a plane back to Belgium. Instead of making the traditional cardboard cut out of a person, we took a hollowed out watermelon, carved a face, gave it some hair, and then taped the name “Niels Vandeputte” to it’s forehead (reminiscent of the times we have played “who am i” here at uni island). The head of Niels is looking more like the “Lord of the Flies” and now resides outside the apartment on the balcony, watching over uni island and warding off evil spirits.

Tuesday, May 19 was an incredibly awesome day. My Interaction Design class and I had rented two vans for the day, and we drove over the Øresund bridge into Denmark and then all the way to LegoLand!! At Lego headquarters we were given a short lecture on the history of Lego, the word Lego comes from the Danish phrase “Leg Godt” which translates to “play well.” We were then given an assignment, everyone was handed a box of Lego for building either a racing car or truck, we had to build our vehicles as fast as possible and then be ready to race. I built my car, in no time at all, i gave the pull-back motor a couple tests and even built a small jump in the conference room we were in and then i was ready for the race. we all lined our cars up in the hallway outside the conference room and pulled them back to wind up the motor. The Lego employee counted down and the vehicles were off, mine was on a slight angle and got clipped in the left rear wheel by another car, which caused my car to turn hard left and then t-bone a truck, although i lost the race, my car suffered minimal damage in the 3 vehicle pile up, the same cannot be said for the truck, that lay in ruins after the race. After lunch a person from one of the Lego Design Teams showed a presentation on the Lego Design Process and how employee’s can easily move from one design team to the next, how ideas are developed and what methods are used. Then we went for a tour of the production plant and saw all the Lego being counted, sorted, faces painted on, bodies put together, pieces packaged and placed into boxes and placed on crates ready for shipping to all parts of the world. At the end of the tour we were shown a scrap box of pieces that are found during clean up, we were able to make our own customized Lego characters with the assorted pieces, I made a cyborg in a white tuxedo with green pants and a medieval war helmet. We went back to the conference room to get our bags and we said thank you for the tour, and as a final gift from lego we were given each a set of Lego from the Ferrari Racing line and a copy of Lego Magazine. After Lego Headquarters we walked over to LegoLand where we had arranged for entrance to the park (Lego isn’t the owner of LegoLand parks), we had about an hour to walk around before we had to drive back to Malmö. I only got see the Lego miniatures of famous landmarks, mostly scandinavian landmarks,but there was a working replica of Kennedy Space Centre with a small smoke and light show to simulate a rocket launch. Then it was back to the vans and back home to Malmö, we arrived at 9 in the evening (12 noon PST) and I called home to wish Trevor a happy birthday but there was no answer.

Tuesday, May 26 started out as a nice beautiful sunny day: Oli, Krysta, Marine and I went down to the beach to go swimming in the Baltic Sea. We had to maneuver around alot of seaweed to get out far enough that the water was deep enough to actually swim in. The water wasn’t too cold, and with the sun shinning we all dunked our heads and swam about the seaweed forest of the Baltic Sea. As we got out of the water, and dried off via towel and mother natures hair dryer, the wind, the clouds began to grow darker and we could tell a storm was coming. Back at uni island not too much was happening as everyone was, and still is, busy with final projects and final exams. As the evening crept over uni island so did the storm clouds, until the wind was blowing with such ferocity, and the rain was falling and I could look out my window and see lightning flashing across the sky once every 30 seconds. The storm only lasted about an hour, and now today it is sunny again with only a few clouds in the sky.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.