Week 5 - SLanksgiving

Yesterday was Thanksgiving.  As a Brit neither living in nor Born in the USA (there, that should stick a piece of Springsteen in everyones' heads for the rest of the day) this would normally pass me by without much in the way of notice or mention - nearly to the same extent as Canadian Thanksgiving, what's that aboot, eh?

OK, I'm sorry.... I know..... I've let you all down but worst of all I've let myself down.  Let's all just pretend that attempt at Canada-speak never happened and move on, ok?  Good.

Since arriving here in Second Life however, things have changed.  I've found myself very quickly mixing with awesome folks from all over the globe.  Yes, I've met lots of fellow Brits but also some very fine residents of Portugal, Australia, Korea, Scotland (they like to be considered separate y'know) and of course no small number from the Land of the Free & The Home of The Brave.  This meant that the subject of the impending Thanksgiving celebrations was very much the subject of conversation both in the run up to Thursday and on the day itself, putting the holiday very much front and centre (as opposed to center) of my awareness this week.

Now, whilst I may have found myself without the urge to stuff my face full of turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie before plonking myself in front of the TV to watch the NFL (although now I think of it, that sounds kinda good) this did all get me thinking that I have plenty to be thankful for after just a month or so here in Second Life.  Which brings me to the main thrust of the blog this week.  Some much deserved thanks to just a few of the wonderful souls I've met thus far here in SL and who have kept me coming back for more.

In no particular order then.....

Thom & Meri - Thanks for giving us all the Greatest Indie Club In All Of SL (TM), AAi.  That place where awesome people and awesome tunes collide.  My home away from RL, metaphorical security blanket and setting for some of the strangest, most surprising and hilarious evenings these past few weeks.  If you've done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off by trying to spend a couple of hours at an AAi set without laughing out loud, singing along or tapping your foot.  Expect the unexpected from time to time too.....

Shauna - Thanks for the amazing Moonletters district on the Penny Lane sim.  Whilst AAi has pretty much become my second home in SL I have to say I've been made to feel just as welcome by Shauna and the residents over at Moonletters too, plus the website is fantastic.  Great sim, great residents and a great cinema, plus I get to sit on the balcony which is awesome!

Graz - Thanks for not only managing the Greatest Indie Club In All Of SL (TM), AAi but also for regularly cracking me up with a myriad of accessories (daleks, pogo sticks, facelights etc) and for always putting on an awesome set every Wednesday.  Also, thanks for being understanding enough to not summarily boot me out of your lovely home that time I accidentally sat on Josie's head.

Josie - Thanks for nagging (sorry, "encouraging") me to actually keep writing these blog posts, getting me to expand my horizons a little by spending some time over at Dugi's Soul Mods and showing me quite possibly the most jaw-droppingly pretty sim I've yet seen (not to mention possibly the most jaw-droppingly pretty black dress too!)  Also thanks for not laughing too much at my many, many, many instances of noobtastic behaviour.  I would however like to also take this moment to make it very clear that I'm NOT thanking Josie for trying to popularise a certain gesture in my name.  It's NOT my gesture and you & Meri can both stop encouraging it ;)

Jellie - speaking of gestures, big thanks to Jellie for populating my gesture folder with an unfeasibly large collection of brilliantly fun and amusing gestures.  Also, thanks for being the one to finally get me sorted with an AO - not walking like a noob anymore rules!!  Extra thanks for letting us all touch your butt so we could dance in unison at Meri's Pig & Whistle set.

Nomad - Thursday night DJ at AAi and from memory (which I'll admit isn't 100% reliable) the man who was spinning the tunes on my very first night in SL.  Thanks for the awesome tunes, particularly the covers.  Any man who will shamelessly play Nelly the Elephant back to back with Rolf Harris just to amuse a few of his regulars at an impromptu, unscheduled set must surely be applauded.  Also responsible for another awesome night of sychro dancing on the beach (see also "touching Jellie's butt" above)

Claire - Thanks for Mod Night at AAi, which of late I've come to refer to as "Lucky Tuesdays".  Never can a DJ have had a more challenging start to their AAi career bearing in mind that on week 1 the entire club went offline so everyone had to be redirected to Thom & Meri's place as an impromptu back-up venue.  Not to be deterred, a fantastic time was had by all and Tuesday nights at AAi have now already become pretty much unmissable.

Cam - he barely ever comes to SL anymore, but he logged on the other night to come say hi during Graz's Jukebox Fury set over at AAi so thanks :)

Dorian, Liat, Slon & Fakey at the Jewell Theater - thanks for making me feel welcome and giving great noob advice in my first week, not to mention explaining the whole bunny thing.  Also thanks for the totally awesome Halloween costume!

Pixie - well where do I start?  Thanks for being my SL guru, noob-wrangler, fashion stylist, personal shopper, interior designer (I still love that table and bonsai whatever you say), awesome DJ, tour guide, surf instructor, cab driver, movie buddy, hat buddy, hockey goalie, dance partner, V2 sister and all round amazing gal.  Your warmth and kindness is matched only by your awesome taste in music (and noobs)!

Min - whilst everyone I've mentioned so far is truly awesome and has made me feel amazingly welcome here in SL I will reserve a special thank you for Min.  Min was the reason I first heard of SL and its pretty certain that I wouldn't even be here if it hadn't been for her.  She also bought me this awesome cow chair, seen here being enjoyed by Pixie and myself.

Thanks everyone, for being you and making me welcome.

Week 4 - Location, Location, Location

So after a few short weeks here in Second Life it suddenly occurred to me.   I'm homeless!

Admittedly this isn't really such a big deal in a virtual world where you simply vanish when you log off and can carry an unlimited quantity of crap about your person within your inventory. Indeed, it seems entirely possible to enjoy the SL experience without ever needing to get yourself a home.  If push came to shove I could always sleep behind the camel over at AAi in an emergency, right?  Nevertheless, for some reason my lack of a place to call home was starting to bother me.

For starters, I wasn't too happy about simply showing up at the last place I'd been when I logged off.  In fact, the more I thought about this the more it seemed like some terrible faux-pas waiting to happen - I'm sure nobody wants some noob dropping in uninvited at an inopportune moment just because he'd happened to stop by the previous day.  Also, where's a guy meant to change his clothes? Yes I know this last issue hadn't actually been a problem for me thus far on the basis that I'd been knocking about in the same freebie clothes for weeks now, but at some point these were issues I felt would need to be addressed.

The current entry level offer for land ownership in SL seems to be the Linden Homes program - a not so thinly veiled attempt to boost the number of users signing up for premium accounts.  Frankly Linden Homes didn't appear massively attractive to me, but then if you happen to like high density pre-fab housing you may well think differently.  There also appears to be a well developed rental market all over the grid, indeed a high proportion of people I'd met in my first few weeks were all renting space over in the previously mentioned Moonletters sim.  I suspected that rental was probably going to be the better option simply on the basis that a lot of people who had been around SL far longer than I (yes, I realise this pretty much includes everyone) seemed to have gone with that option.  Somehow though this felt like I'd be passing up the chance to experience owning my own little corner of SL and getting to determine for myself whether the Linden Homes thing was worth it or not.  It might even give me something to write about in this weeks blog!  So I took the plunge, upgraded myself to a Premium Account and made my choice.

A somewhat unexpected sight was to greet me on teleporting over to the home I'd just acquired for myself though.  It appeared that I had become the owner of a property which came complete with its own all-in wrestling ring!

Had I been left with a bunch of wrestlers as squatters in my new home?  Were they going to burst in at any moment and attempt to twist me into all manner of painful positions?  Ah, I can almost hear Mericat Ireland uttering the immortal words "some people pay good money for that y'know".

Surely there was some mistake here?  I elected to adopt my standard approach to anything which goes wrong - turn it off and start again.  So I hit "teleport home" and lo and behold the wrestling ring was gone - this time I'd arrived at my actual home.  Phew!  Clearly just some kind of clerical error at the estate agents or something, although I will admit that I felt a faint tinge of disappointment at maybe having missed an opportunity to make a surprise challenge for the Second Life Heavyweight Championship.

Of course no sooner had I moved in to my somewhat spartan virtual abode I got an avalanche of invites (ok, two) to the far more spacious homes of a couple of friends, each of whom appeared to own their own entire island!  Keeping up with the Joneses (or in this case perhaps more accurately the Josies) is clearly just as relevant here in SL as in RL.

Other than my first foray into the virtual property market this week, my Second Life as usual revolved around music, kicking off with Meri's set at the Pig & Whistle - a staple of Monday evenings already.  These events also serve as an opportunity for the more experienced SLers (again, pretty much everyone) to continue their contributions to my learning curve, each in their own inimitable way.  Already my repertoire of amusing gestures has swelled considerably under the expert tutelage of Jellie Arrowmint, although her contributions to my headgear has perhaps veered more towards the....unusual.

AAi's newest DJ, the one and only Pixie Arcana, added a few more new locations to my Landmarks folder not least of which was the FAB club where she played yet another fantastic set - this gal sure knows how to pick a good tune.  The two real big positives for me in this first month of Second Living (don't like that phrase, don't think I'll use it again) have been the twin joys of meeting people who are just so incredibly friendly & welcoming as well as getting to hang out with a bunch of people that have the same outlook, tastes and passion for music as I do.  

Outside of the music scene, this week was also my first experience of the Second Life Theme Park.  Proving that my inability to drive a scooter around the Moonletters sim recently was not just some aberration, I managed to not once but twice (at two different locations mind you) drive go-karts so badly as to end up at the bottom of the sea with no way to escape other than ditching the vehicle and flying back to dry land.  Not content with such mundane modes of transport, Josielo Ceriano  then blew everyone's mind by introducing the superbly bizarre "Sperm-mobile".  If I'm honest though, I think Graz's scooter proved the classier ride.

Week 3 - Trick or Treat

So there was me thinking Halloween would be some kind of a big deal in SL.  One of Min's good friends had been astonishingly kind enough (on first meeting me mind you) to present me with an awesome "costume" which I could wear so, for a change, I might actually look half decent compared to the still uber-noobish look I was otherwise sporting.  What I hadn't accounted for was that the AAI crowd are mostly Brits and we don't really do Halloween on quite the same scale.  As a result, it was pretty much business as usual at the club that Sunday night with Thom spinning the tunes and Pixie somewhat undermining the evil malevolence of my costume by......well, see for yourself!  I get no respect I tells ya!

As you may have guessed, much of my time in SL is still being spent with the great people and great tunes at AAI but the kindly and warm hearted Pixie Arcana took pity on me this last week and decided to expand my horizons (not like that you filthy minded people) by showing me around some other SL sights and sims.  She owed me for pulling that stunt with my Halloween costume mind you, so it was the least she could do.  Not to mention she blew the cover on this blog so people might actually read it!

So it was that I got a guided tour of the rather fine Penny Lane sim, home of the Moonletters.com folks.  I'd certainly recommend that you stop by for a visit but if you see either Pixie or myself anywhere nearby on a scooter its probably advisable to seek cover immediately since our control of the vehicles is erratic at best.

Particularly impressive was the Moonletters Theatre, a virtual cinema where I was treated to a screening of a great little short called "Validation".  Do yourself a favour and go take a look, its something of a little gem (much like Pixie herself).  

I was also introduced to the Global Online Hockey Association (GOHA) after happening to mention that, as a Brit, I can rarely get a decent fix of ice hockey back in RL - I suspect watching The Mighty Ducks on DVD doesn't count.  Turns out there's a Second Life hockey league so I'll be looking to take in a game at some point which I'm very much looking forward to.  I also tried my hand at shooting some pucks on the virtual ice myself and, although I clearly sucked, I wasn't quite as bad as I might have feared.  In fact I was so busy scoring on that poor goalie that I forgot to even take any pics.  It's all in the hips yknow ;)

So I'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you to a great DJ, a fantastic tour guide, half-decent goalie and just generally a pretty awesome friend to have here in SL.  Ladies and Gentlemen, please give it up for Ms Pixie Arcana (I did warn you I was gonna be unspeakably nice about you this week Pix!)

Back in the world of AAI, I was delighted to be able to invite Min and her chums from the Jewell Theater to experience the awesomeness and borderline chaos that is Wednesday night there (great double set from the aforementioned Pixie Arcana and Graz Firecaster, not to be missed!).  As a noob, the introductions to new people and new experiences have of course tended to flow the other way since everyone invariably knows way more than me.  It was therefore a rare treat indeed to be responsible for somebody else's first taste of AAI, knowing that the guys and gals would be just as welcoming as they had been for me.  Sure enough Min had a fantastic time as we all danced the evening away to Graz's finest selections and I got to bask in that warm glow which comes with knowing you've done a nice thing.  As an added bonus, and as some indication of the type of thing which passes for normal behaviour at AAI, I got to pretend to be in a band with the lovely Josie "Guitar Hero" Ceriano and Colin "better than Ringo" the Camel.  Ah, I always did just want to be a rockstar!

AAI - Awesomeness And Insanity!