Written by Jody Robinson

As Jacob and I were waiting for our flight, I heard two older men talking really loud. One of them was whistling a cheerful tune. The whistling reminded me of one of my buddies who always whistles when he's deep in thought or in a happy mood. I noticed that these two guys were shoe polishers. By seeing them, I automatically looked at my black boots and realized I forgot to clean my own before I left that morning.

After a while I finally gave in and got my shoes done for the first time ever by a real shoe polisher. The guy who did my shoes was hilarious. He thought I was 15 years old so he asked me why I was leaving town. I told him what E3 was all about, I would be working all 3 days. He was the type of guy where if you talked to him, he made sure people clear across the whole airport knew exactly what you were saying because he repeated it with a tone of astonishment. By the time I got done with my shoes looking extremely grand and shiny, just about everyone in there knew my real age, what city I was flying to, and what I was going to do the rest of the weekend. But I didn't mind he was fun to talk to. It was like he put on a show. I guess that was part of his job by drawing attention from the crowds.

Our plane ended up being delayed about 35 minutes but what made things worse was when we finally got there, the traffic was horrible. The Taxicab had to go through a detour because the freeway was under construction so you know how that goes...

I was relieved by the time I got there. Jacob went up to his room and we ran into Jon 'Jeh' MacLellan from Xtreme Network at the hotel. He was waiting for his room when we arrived but it wasn't ready for an hour or so. By the time I went to go get my room I recognized a guy passing by, it was my buddy Brian Kemp from Eidos. Brian used to work for Mplayer so that's how I originally met him online. I also used to beta test the games on Mplayer with him. The last time I had seen him was at last year's E3.

One thing that many people should be aware of about Los Angeles is how unpredictable cabs can be. Once Jacob and Jon took off, I took at cab to the Century City Mall. After I was done with some shopping, I called the cab like everyone usually does, right? Well because I was on a cell phone, they couldn't detect (finds the location you are at) where I was exactly. After my fourth call, not one cab came to pick me up after almost an hour and a half of waiting outside. Each time they said it would take 20 minutes so I was trying extremely hard to be patient.

I gave up and was ready to just walk back to the hotel. I didn't want to wear myself out because I knew for a fact I'd be doing that all three entire days at E3. I walked inside the nearest building near the mall to ask them if they knew a more reliable taxi cab place. They named the exact place I was calling that whole time so I was sort of uneasy about the idea but the cab came with in the next 10 minutes. I learned my lesson there. Don't call a cab from a cell phone, always walk into a building nearby to have them call since the cab places can detect where the building is located.

Later on that evening there was a nice dinner with the Mplayer crew. Nathan 'Prime' Fahrenthold and Tim 'Cajunlanding' Weaver noticed one out of the six E3 Ticket winners that won Mplayer's online competition was sitting on the other side so we invited him to eat with us. What was pretty funny is when I shook his hand to greet him... I asked him his nickname and he said it was Cooties... I wiped the hand I was shaking with him on my jeans and said, "Are you serious?"  hehe :)

Now was a great time to catch up on some rest before a long day at E3 on Thursday.

The First Day at E3! ->