Al was looking for love. His RL is a bit stressful with twins who are both autistic. He would search high and low, and he met women and got hopeful and then crushed when they left him. But finally he met Vickie. A sweet American lady, and they fell in love. Yesterday they got married. They had a big wedding and fantastic party. It was great and I am so happy for my little brother and his beautiful wife.

We met up at an amazingly beautiful SIM, Gora had found. First we thought it was an art SIM – it was Italian and none of us are any good at that, so we couldn’t read the notecard. But as we went through the levels of the SIM, we realized it was a political comment to the situation facing Italy and Europe as a whole. One level showed a fascist meeting, the next level showed the boat refugees and then you land on the ground and you see this massive wave of people hammering into the coast of beautiful antique scenery. We loved it. You can find it here, for as long as they keep it going.

When we had seen everything, Gora asked what we were doing next, and I suggested a nice shop.

In fact the “deviant girls’ main shop” is not really a nice shop, but it is fun, and the SIM it is located on is a very nice SIM. We did some window shopping, and then went round the SIM exploring every inch of it. One of the things we love to do, is click everything and sit everywhere, and there are lots of fun things to do on this SIM. We played cards. We got sprayed by the lawn sprinkle. Gora climbed a tree to a tree house and had a nap with a beaver, and I served coffee.

At the end of play we sat down by the rainbow and talked about Easter and crashing computers and gadgets and making video. Stuff that interests us. We also went for a dance which was nice, but then Gora spotted a chapel on the top of the hill, so we flew up and had a look.

I remember seeing these chapels on hill tops in Southern France, but I don’t think they would have Madonnas like this one in Southern France. But then again, you never know.

The night ended very peacefully in a lot of flowers where we talked about cars and fixing cars and selling cars and oldtimer cars.

I think we have a unique friendship, Gora and I. It suits me. Not too much talk about feelings and relationships and all the shit. She is a very private person, and she doesn’t really want to know, and that suits me just fine.

I meet up with Michaell and we dance while we chat. I think it makes us closer in some way, because the mind sees an embrace and sends the feeling of that embrace to the body in some way. I think there is research done that shows this, but I am not sure (and it is a bitch to try and find it via Google…)

When I hang out with Gora we go places. We explore the virtual world. It gives us a shared experience and we are very close because of these shared experiences. Some times when we are out there in the virtual world, we get tired and we sit down, and we talk about all things. I made a Flickr set with snapshots of me and Gora. You can see it here.

Charmaine and I often start off in the IM box (personal chat for those that don’t know), but then we meet up. She often shows me her projects. She has a big place, and she likes to develop it, and show me what she has done since I was there last. So we experience things together, and then we sit down somewhere and chat face to face so to speak, and we relate on another level, I think.

It is the same with Drezz. He was away from SL for a long time because his computer broke and then he couldn’t afford to get a new one. But when he came back we had to meet up in pixels in order to rekindle our relationship. He is a colleague DJ on Taniz, and we try very hard to go to each other’s DJ sets to show support, but also to chat “in person”

But then there is Stefan!!!! He is such a beautiful person in the real world, but in Second Life he drives me mad. I think one of the reasons is that he never wants to meet up in pixels. I have some rare moments where he does invite me to join him or I get him to come to me, and when we do meet up in pixels, I go away with a warm feeling. But mostly we only chat in IM, and it is not the same. I often log out of SL with a sense of not being connected to him.

I guess it takes all sorts. Communication is what it is all about really. The fact that we can relate to each other in chat and then put a face (be it only a virtual face) to the other person makes for stronger relationships. It is vital, I think – and virtual.

So this morning – a morning btw where I am considering going to a WordPress Meetup with Geekgirls in Copenhagen – I am thinking about what I want with my blog. I think I still want to point to music that I like, but I don’t want to do the playlists any more. They are boring to make and they look boring too…

So what else? Most of my spare time I spend in Second Life. I like Second Life. I know about it. So why not write about it. My history, my experience, my ups and downs with it. So here goes with a bit of how I came to where I am today in world.

My history

Internet has been a part of my life for almost 20 years. It has evolved a great deal since the beginning with the analogue modems and slow connections to now where it is high speed, 3D and always online. 10 years ago I started chatting online. It was fun and I got to talk to people I would not have talked to otherwise. I made new friends, some I met in the real world, some stayed online friends. Some I still connect with today, and some are long gone.

4 years ago I heard about Second Life on The Chillcast, and in March 2007 I created my first avatar.

The first couple of months in SL I spend finding my bearings. Navigating a virtual world is not so easy, and finding people to talk to was not easy either. Once I had learnt to walk, fly and teleport the world was my ouster. I found that a way to meet people was to go dancing and attending live music performances.

When Lovespirals released their album Motherless Child they performed a concert in Second Life.

That was magic. Even if it did mean that I had to get up in the middle of the night to attend. 7 PM SLT (Secondlife Time) is 4 AM my time… But it was worth it, and I was kinda high from the experience. I got to go to a concert I would never had been able to attend in real life (they have their life in Southern California), and I got to talk to the performers after the concert. I even befriended Anji Bee. That was grand. After this music started playing a bigger role in my Second Life.

But I would still feel a bit lonely some times. There are a lot of stuff you can do in SL as a couple, so I tried to get my husband involved. He logged in a couple of times, but even with my guidance he never got the bug, so eventually I took over his avatar, which meant that I could log in with both avatars and see what all the couple stuff was about without involving strangers.

Sometimes that is preferable LOL!!!

I found a nice place to hangout beginning of 2008. The Lost Garden of Apollo. I would do Tai Chi with a bunch of others and listen to the music and chat to the others. It is funny to look at these pictures again. A lot of SL stays the same, but the graphics keep evolving. These old snapshots seem so flat now.

The first 15 months I spend exploring the many worlds of Second Life. There was so many places to see, but not really many people. In summer 2008 I stumbled upon a club, The Wandering Star. The music was really good, and the people there were so nice and I felt welcome and I soon found some good friends there.

For a long time The Wandering Star was my home and the people there were friends and some of them like my family. I started DJing at the Wandering Star. I met up with some of the people from the Wandering Star in Hamburg in the summer of 2009. It was a magic time, and it showed me how close you can grow to someone in a virtual world. But things got a bit tense between the club owner and me and I had to leave the Wandering Star.

So you can make great friends, and you can also fall out… Just like in the real world.

But leaving The Wandering Star didn’t stop me from loving and having fun in SL. I made other friends, started DJing in other places, and made a myself a second life.

I joined Michaell on his platform

Eventually we moved indoors.

I got my own beach for a while on Taniz where I DJ. It was fun, but it seemed silly to share the skybox with Michaell and have a beach on my own, so I left the beach and Michaell and I got a beach together.

You can see how much the graphics of SL has changed since the beginning. I love how it looks. How it feels. I love the people I meet there. The good friends I make:

Michaell

Gora – my German twin

Charmaine

Drezz

You get friends from all over the world, and if you want, you have contacts all over. I hope that I get a chance to go and visit Michaell in San Fransisco at some time in the future. Maybe I will visit Gora in Germany. I would love to go and see Drezz in Cornwall and who knows I might also meet Charmaine, who lives only a bike ride away from me :-)

What is next?

I hope to post stories from SL. I read somewhere that blogging is mostly about being true to yourself. Let your persona shine through. That should be interesting as I write this as an avatar in a virtual world. But on the other hand, most of what I do and what I say in SL is true to my real person and who I am in the real world. So I hope I won’t do too bad.

I love spinning my tunes, and I love Taniz, but when Drezz gets back, I’ll hand the Thursday Taniz gig right back to him.