Over the past two years I have been working on an engineering project which I entered into the Scifest competition in Ireland. With my smart circuit control system, I won the regional competition as well as the All-Ireland final. The prize for this competition was an expenses paid trip to the International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, Arizona (Look at the pictures in my previous posts!). As Intel sponsored this trip, the information and preparation day was held at Intel. This was were the Project Director got to see my work. He was impressed by my use of the Arduino Micro-controller and therefore offered me the place at Intel this summer! The system which his team are developing has some similarities to the Arduino, so he thought that I would find the opportunity extremely interesting.

The best thing about the whole job is that all expenses are paid. Transport, food and accommodation are all catered for, and I also receive an additional €150 per week! In return I get to do some fun stuff and get to learn more about the software and the hardware involved…

Town Jail

A majority of the buildings are reconstructions, but the town is built on the original site of a mining settlement. It was quite successful for around 5 years, but then the mines were flooded (in the desert!) and the town quickly dissolved after that.

Western Style

I went on a short “Mine Tour” while I was there. It was quite interesting to hear how the people lived and worked there, and the guide was extremely funny. There were  couple of steps down into the mine, which led to an old wooden mineshaft lift. It felt as if we were going down into the ground, but of course that was not the case! Health and safety wouldn’t allow it. The deception was so well done that I only found out about it, when we got outside (only one flight of stairs up; it seems that the lift never went down at all!).

One big Cactus!

For the second night we decided to go to a Japanese Restaurant. My sister lives in London, so she knew that the restaurant chain made good food. But she had never gone to the exact restaurant which we had booked…

The first thing that I noticed when we arrived at the restaurant was that it was tiny! There was no way that a group of ten people would fit comfortably into such a small space. But we had booked, and they had said that they had enough room. The real surprise was that they brought us down to a private room in the basement! Japanese people seem to like ‘karaoke’ (I am pretty sure that it is even a word from Japanese origin). This room was definitely their karaoke room.

It was still quite a squeeze, but we enjoyed the happy surprise. There was even a button we could press to call for service! We all ordered some type of Bento Box, as well as a number of starters to share. It was quite nice!

Bento Boxes