A positive introduction
Settle down, grab your favorite alcoholic beverage and read on … it’s my first blog post. I’m Jeff Murray, Director of Game Development here at Fuel HQ.
Now, Ottawa may not be the capital of game production (yet) but as I stood out on my porch last Friday evening, looking up at the stars and hearing music from our community festival, I couldn’t help but feel - well - like I was home. For a second, everything disappeared and I was just lost in beautiful sky and the sound of the crowd wooping and cheering to a local band. This festival goes on every year, once a year, and is an opportunity for the community of Westboro, where our offices are, to let their hair down and experience everything all of the local businesses and artists have to offer - bouncy castles for the kids and all.
Having moved here from England, and having lived in a lot of different places from slum to luxury and from cities to Nowheresville, I can’t say that I have ever felt as happy or as comfortable as I do here in Ottawa. This city has so much to offer - if you like the nightlife, you can head downtown and enjoy trendy bars, restraunts and nightclubs. If you like the outdoors, everything you need is within driving distance … skiing, hiking, kayakking, mountain biking trails - anything you could wish for. Just down the road you’ve got Montreal, Quebec or Toronto in case you want to get away to a bigger city.
I’ll be honest with you. I followed Fuel Industries for several years before I came to work for them. Starting out as a Shockwave developer, I saw the best and most polished work coming from their studio and could only imagine how cool it would be to work with such incredible talent. Fast forward to 2005 when I was offered a job at Fuel. All I knew about Ottawa was what I could find on the Ottawa tourist board website - those tulips looked nice and all, but the only way to find out if it was for me would be to visit.
Arriving at Fuel, I was slightly jetlagged and had no idea what to expect. Back then, we were just 34 people and the office was … modest to say the least. Unlike our new swanky super-studio, from the outside Fuel looked like an abandoned warehouse. When my wife and I looked at the building I can only imagine that she had something similar to me going through her mind: “what the hell have I done?”
Inside, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. I had to look back to make sure I’d come through the same door and that I hadn’t blanked out or been abducted by aliens. There was an atmosphere in there, of fun and total creativity, with style and sophistication keeping in line with the ‘Fuel polish’ we have on our projects. For me, walking into this kind of environment, was like I’d just handed over the golden ticket and was making my way to the room of ever-lasting gob-stoppers. After shaking the hands of everyone there, it soon came time to make my way to my first meeting. I arrived in the boardroom (shaking) and the staff greeted me with applause and wooping for actually making it out here! To say I was overwhelmed was an understatement. It was that moment I knew I’d made the right decision to work here. To be surrounded by so much talent, positivity and energy would no doubt do wonders for the narcisist in me!
It was actually a little longer before I settled into Canada itself. For the first six months, I would keep stopping and looking around like a tourist - I’d keep saying to myself ‘I’m in Canada and I’m not on vacation!!’. It felt that way because everything was visually so different to me. From the size of the cars to the architecture and street signs - it was all alien. Over time, these ‘moments of realization’ got less and less and I began to accept my surroundings. Now everything just looks normal, as if I’d been here my entire life.
So all of this ran through my mind as I watched the beautiful night sky. The song ended and everyone cheered as I made my way back inside the house. Sitting down to write this, I hit the keys like a madman hoping to convey some of the enthusiasm I felt and the love I have for this city and the incredible company I work for. That positive feeling inside me has been built up and encouraged over time by Fuel and by this city - a huge change from the negativity I’ve experienced in so many other places I’ve lived and worked. In Steve Ballmer’s words - ‘I love this company’. In the words of my own ‘Fuel Christmas Party’ speech (slurred and shouted so loud that it’s quite possible no-one even understood it)… Fuel rocks!
So does Ottawa. If you ever get the chance, just come and see what this incredible city has to offer.
And no, it wasn’t sponsored by the tourist board … them’s all my words.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.
June 12th
2007 at 8:23 pm
Yay another expat! Been there, done that, bought the street map several times. It’s a great feeling and I still love living here after 9 years. Rock on!
June 13th
2007 at 8:56 am
It really is a great place to be … I have absolutely no desire to go back to the UK and I can’t imagine I ever could!!
Thanks for the comment, fellow expat
June 14th
2007 at 6:47 am
What was the most difficult part of leaving the UK and what was the hardest part of settling in? I know what you mean about not wanting to go back. I sometimes feel homesick but each time I go back to visit family, I remember why I left and thanks myself for leaving!
When I first started at my new job here, I would say “alright?” to people as I passed them in the corridor and they’d stare at me as though I had two heads. Also, I tried to order a tuna foot long at Subway as “chuna” one time and the ladies’ reply was “chicken”??
Heh heh! I know there are lots of us expats hiding in the woodwork, but it’s always interesting reading their stories and finding them living in Ottawa.
June 14th
2007 at 2:13 pm
What was the most difficult part of leaving the UK and what was the hardest part of settling in?
Well, the hardest part was saying goodbye to relatives and knowing that I may not see some of them ever again. That was very difficult.
Settling in, it really was a case of accepting my surroundings… and the new currency! It took a while to start ‘thinking in dollars’. First thing you do is convert everything into pounds and think ‘what an awesome deal!’. This doesn’t work out so well in the budgeting dept. and it wasn’t until I ’switched over’ to dollars that I actually realized how much things cost in context!
Things like coins are still a little fuzzy sometimes (why is that coin smaller than that one that’s worth more? And it looks the same, almost, too …) and I absolutely can’t STAND all the commercial breaks on tv. Now I understand why theres such a huge DVD market here and I’m quite happy to sacrifice regular ‘junk tv’ viewing for more quality DVD sittings instead.
My wife misses up-to-date soaps (!) and I miss a few of the alternative sitcoms, but they seem to be making their way over slowly on BBC Canada.
I know what you mean about not wanting to go back. I sometimes feel homesick but each time I go back to visit family, I remember why I left and thanks myself for leaving!
Absolutely. I went back to the UK in January… Arriving at Heathrow airport, it was dirty and noisy compared to Ottawa or Toronto. I went to pick up my hire car and (suprise,suprise) there was a mix up with the booking. I got another hire car (which cost more than I wanted to spend, as it turned out in the end) and pulled out of the airport. After getting stuck in traffic for an hour, it started to rain. 6 hours later (fighting through traffic most of the way up the motorway) I hit Merseyside. The area I’d lived in as a child seemed very different to how I remembered it … gone were the many beautiful old buildings to make way for supermarkets and new housing developments - existing architecture was just left to decay and rot, all boarded up. By that time, exactly why I left England wasn’t much of a mystery to me!
I still say ‘Alright?’ to people and it’s treated as a question.. funny little things like that. I’m adapting the way I speak to make life easier, though. I no longer say ‘garij’ … it’s ‘ga-raage’
Now … where did we put those PR forms? MUST get through them, MUST get through them!!
June 15th
2007 at 8:26 pm
Oh the currency - I remember! I was confused for a long time over the the dime vs 5p confusion. Is it 5? Is it 10? And for so long retailers kept reminding that a) tax was extra and b) I could claim tax back, even when I’d lived here for a year.
Merseyside is quite the slog I imagine. I’m from near Middlesbrough (yes they do still play footie, I believe they won something recently), so the drive is not quite as bad. I swear I was scared driving 80mph in the little Astra (I think?) we rented! Having driven here for three years mostly at 60km/h in a car that’s way too heavy to ever turn a corner, it was quite the experience!
The only DVDs we watch are Baby Einstein! And yes TV is somewhat like a labotamy at times, moreso with the commercials. Can’t win them all.
June 19th
2007 at 7:16 pm
Looks like my employer has blocked access to your site; the firewall is filtering you out in the “games” category. No more checking from work!
July 5th
2007 at 7:18 pm
Shhhh! You’re all too loud!
July 23rd
2007 at 7:22 pm
Hopefully, you’ll have notice a little more activity around here recently