hackathon-starter: Mongoose timeout

First of all, thanks for your brilliant effort Sahat, this repo is the most comprehensive skeleton I have ever seen for a node.js express application. I have an issue where the connection on Mongoose seems to timeout, this is what the console says

✓ Express server listening on port 3000 in development mode.
✓ MongoDB connection established!
WARN: ChatConnector: receive - emulator running without security enabled.
ChatConnector: message received.
POST /api/messages 202 51.147 ms - -
./firstRun - waterfall() step 0 of 1
whats this 1
./firstRun - session.send()
load called again
./firstRun - session.sendBatch() sending 1 messages
✗ MongoDB connection error. Please make sure MongoDB is running. [Error: connection timeout]

The timeout happens after say 5-10 mins, any suggestions? Thanks for your response in advance