Changing Room – Free Women’s Item @ Noob Island

Some things never change. Real life or Second life, women just love shopping and what’s more if it’s free! It was virtual a paradise.

There were other avatars in the mammoth hall where the walls were plastered with all the free products right up to the wall. Everything from clothes, shoes, accessories and even skins and hair, it’s all in there for major improvement works which is really handy for the dowdy, virtual me. It’s time to get ride of that dull grey suit, slouchy shoes and that free exhibition t-shirt!

I was like a kid in the candy store. Suddenly, I wanted to be a part of this virtual reality. I wanted to be different because being different is the way to “fit in”. Although there was no direct pressure from the existing SL citizens (so far) to morph into their likeliness, but it was tempting because I was standing out like a very sore thumb in my dowdy suit and dull face devoid of any form of make-up.

And I gave in to my inner monsters, by living up one of my by now retired alter ego, the conservative party babe, who’s cool and sexy as hell, like an angel-gone-bad. After many hours twiddling and fiddling on my mouse, ladies and gentlemen, I present, the NEW Paige Quihoxil!

Not sure if this has got anything to do with my new rack, maybe it’s the wings, but I met Sayuri Reikaz (she’s got a neat pair of wings too) immediately after my transformation, and she became my very first SL friend.

Perhaps, another real life fact that is applicable in virtual reality is that people are naturally drawn to people who are attractive or like themselves. Interesting.

And while I am writing about my adventures, Paige is meditating on a beach by the crackling fire where coconuts fall of the trees periodically.

I am not sure if I will continue living out my alter ego in SL after this, the thought that I may not be seeing Paige Quihoxil again for a while makes me a little sad.

Bye Paige Quihoxil, it’s been a wonderful and inspiring journey.

Free Women’s Mansion Home for Ladies @ Noob Island

The home was FABULOUS. It’s like a holiday beach resort, and alcohol’s free-flow here. Enough said. I love this home!

Then on one of my rather random visits back home, I met MizzTierra Bernades, a fellow resident and I assumed she lives in the mansion too. She has long flowy black hair, nice healthy tan and showed off her killer-body clad in this tiny bikini. She invited me to join her around the house and have fun together, and I thought why not? It's one of those really RARE occassions to actually bump into someone who's friendly enough to talk.

A bubble bath, a croissant, a couple of coffee later, I removed my angel wings, celtic tattoos and my street gear and changed into my tartan bikini called "Warm Lust", which gave me a rather sallow skin tone and a little puffy too. Alas, and that was my only piece! Oh whatever.

As I was sitting by the pier and admiring the beautiful sparking sea, Nikka Jameson appeared. MizzTierra jumped up from her floating bed by the pier and flew to her side. Moments later, MizzTierra came back to me with Nikka tagging behind. We were promptly introduced and MizzTierra suggested that we should go check out the "best bed" in the house.

The bed was infact another floating bed, which I realised on previous occassions that there are special animation balls embedded on this bed. In short, it's like a sex bed, and it's not hard to guess with position names like "in his arms".

So all 3 of us got onto the bed, and there we met Jayde who's apparently another resident of the mansion. She's kinda quiet, other than the first "hello" and a ":)", she disappeared without a word halfway through the chill session.

Wow... 4!! That's the most number of residents I ever manage to meet with in a single place!

I was just minding my own business quite literally "chilling", and thinking about how I should word my SL journal when MizzTierra suddenly asked if I liked Nikka (who was by now lying on her side looking in my direction). That question caught me off guard, with me caight dead in some seriously sallow and ugly skin in my not very flattering bikini, I wasn't ready to answer that.

So I gave her a politically correct answer, something that was a little vague, hoping she'll go one step further with this topic so that I can be sure, if she was referring to "that".

Nikka left after a while, and before she left, she gave me 3 kisses. "***" that was what her kisses looked like.

But that didn't stop MizzTierra from pursuing the same question again, and again...

Now I was a little baffled, because Mizz Tierra and I were mere acquaintances, and somehow she has assumed that I am a lesbian? Or maybe there's something I didn't know about this beautiful mansion? Is this a Lesbian house?

Wabi’s Moon

I remembered that “land” ownership was one of the unique aspects of SL (think Anshe Chung). I can be a property owner (albeit virtual) by purchasing a piece of land using Linden Dollars (L$), on which I can create my own landscape, buildings etc.

After my very brief attempt to build something on Governor Linden’s island, I find the idea of building anything on my own in SL highly disturbing and impossible. I clicked on an advertising billboard that teleported me to Wabi’s Moon, where I will get to see beautiful, ready-built homes and environments (no building and hours of labour on the mouse, yeah!).

The house was nice, and the environment was cool too. But that wasn’t the highlight of my trip to Wabi’s (who’s actually Wabisabi Matahari and he / she was represented by a pretty hot-looking female avatar).

Other than scuba diving and whale-watching, I was pleasantly surprised to find a “Star Trek Museum of Culture” on the island, and I was equally amused with the sparring virtual Winyan Warriors.

At this point, my Second Life was interrupted by my other life, upon my return to the screen again I find myself in a totally different place where I was bumped into, and ran over by some sort of vehicle – a couple of times too.

Slightly confused and bewildered, I replied to Wabisabi IM only to find out that she booted me out. Apparently I was inactive and I wasn’t responding to her IMs hence, the booting, and she’s got no idea where she had booted me to. That wasn’t very cool, but she was quite apologetic about the boot, she may have suspected that I am a bot.

Since we’re already in conversation, I thought I could enquire about the affordability of a virtual home, which Wabisabi reveals that she sells her houses from L$4000 + a monthly L$7000, which works out to approximately S$ 560 for the first year, and S$ 540 for every year after. Are you willing to pay S$5,500 to own a virtual bungalow for 10 years? And the answer is nope, not for me for sure.

Perhaps to make up for the “boot”, Wabisabi also let me in on the availability of free homes in SL (naturally, the word “free” got me a little excited).

Second Life Library @ Info Island International

Just when I though how brainless and pointless this whole “adventure” is, I chanced upon the Library which was showing a multimedia exhibition on Human Trafficking. I was teleported into different virtual s

cenarios where stories and information unfurls, the “talking badge” that I was wearing enable me to hear audio streaming (music, voices and sound effects) when I come into contact with scripted objects. Although I do have to say that Abbey Zenith’s (the creator) exhibit guide was a tad bit eerie-looking.

“Walking” around in SL strains my eyes and especially so if I am on “mouselook”, it gives me a throbbing headache too. So as much as possible, my preferred mode of transport was flight, yeah, flying.

As I flew over Info Island, I also noticed that there are other interesting architectures, such as the Asian-styled “Dragon Garden” (龙园) where I got an “oracle of the day” from Elle Mexicola’s Oracle (like a fortune strip, only that it’s digital).

From there, I bumped into a couple other “worlds” doing very much nothing other than adopting a

voyeuristic attitude to observe what is happening around me in this world. Sad to say, SL has one of the most enchanting sea views around and for the first time, I wished I really live in here.

Getting around “Me”

Hardware and technical issues aside, fiddling and acclimatizing to the virtual world were unnervingly tough, in fact quite confusing even with the tutorials, it was certainly harder than it looks.

The first contention of my journey has got to do with the virtual me, or better known as my avatar, my virtual manifestation. Not only do I have to choose from a list of queer second names, I also have to decide if I want to be me or one of my many alter egos in SL, which proved to be quite a dilemma. Ultimately I opted to be the boring old me by the funky name of Paige Quihoxil (conveniently named after my daughter).

Sad to say my birth into SL was unglamorous and unexciting, as I came into being in a boring grey pants suit. Heck, I don’t even wear grey in real life! And here’s the double jeopardy, I was blonde! That got me pretty upset!

Plans to nip-tuck myself quickly went underway, and after much fiddling with the control window, Paige Quihoxil finally emerged, not the least bit like me and I still can’t get rid of my blonde head of hair which really upset me.

Only then did I realize that it was important to me that I want to be known as an Asian, although my high school teachers will scoff (and probably spat) at that aspect, but I’m probably secretly adored being Asian and I am proud of it. (Self-reflection on personal values)

When I realize that there was pretty much nothing I can do about my un-Asian self, I continued on my journey in this mystic world, which is made up of many other little worlds of make-believe (and binary codes).

Travelling was easy peasy in SL, the residents here teleport around to different islands. I mean, how cool is that?!