Christmas in the UK Part 1: Meeting Reggie

No photos for this post I’m afraid, as I accidentally left my camera on the plane back from San Francisco. Doh! So if “a picture paints a thousand words” then I’ll have to compensate appropriately in reverse. In other words this post could become something of an essay! Enough preamble though, let’s dive right in…

With a tangent! So before our Christmas vacation had even properly begun I received the welcome but entirely random surprise of a geek celebrity encounter. We’d decided to pay Ryn’s brother Art and his family a visit on route to the UK, and had just collected our luggage at Newark Airport when we boarded a shuttle train to pick up our hire car. Ryn’s bag was visibly bulging with Christmas presents as we rushed aboard one of the train’s cosy four seat carriages. Already aboard were a middle aged couple who beamed at us as we boarded. The man joked “presents for me! You shouldn’t have!”. His face looked instantly familiar, and seconds later I realized the man standing before us was none other than Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo of America.



As everyone I’ve mentioned this to over Christmas has said, I probably should have opened with some winning gambit about being the lead designer on Guitar Hero and reached for my Harmonix business card. Yet instead the Nintendo fanboy inside me won the day as I congratulated him on the launch of the Wii. We conversed politely, and he asked if I’d managed to find a Wii in time for Christmas. I told him the truth – that I’d had to resort to ebay to get mine. Ryn (oblivious to who this jolly dude was) recounted the story of our unsuccessful wait in line on a cold December morning outside Circuit City. Neatly sidestepping this potentially awkward moment, his wife asked us about our Christmas plans, and as we conversed I noticed she was warring a Princess Peach T-shirt, and he a Zelda T-shirt! They looked every inch the die hard Nintendo fans on their way home for a family Christmas. To me at least, this was heart-warming and convinced me they really were Nintendo geeks through and through.

As I childishly re-ran the encounter over and over in my mind, we picked up our hire car and made our way over to Art and Jin’s house. They have a wonderful home in the suburbs of Queens. With two daughters, one eleven months old the other two and a half years old, plus a close extended family, there’s rarely a quiet moment in their household. Presents were exchanged, games were played, and festive cheer drunk. The Tickle Me Elmo and My Little Pony Castle we got for the kids went down particularly well, met with many joyful giggles (and the kids liked them too, hoho!). Before we knew it the next evening had rolled around and we’d bid them all a happy Christmas and were back at Newark Airport ready to board our red eye flight to Manchester.

To be continued…