Musings on my 3rd rezday

I don't know what exactly made me sign up on that 9th of October back in 2006. I knew of Second Life before, in fact followed coverage of it loosely on BoingBoing.net - I even downloaded the client a few times but never took the final step to register. Back then a credit card was mandatory even for free accounts, and while I had a CC (not typical in my spot of the world) I was reluctant to use it.

But on that day, I made all these steps, registered my account, gave my credit card details, chose my name and logged in, stumbled my way over orientation island, talked to the parrot, made my first clumsy moves with camera control to see the back of that test-panel, lifted a stone and practised my object moving skill and finally climbed to the temple, leaped into the air, and flew into my new life.

My first months in SL were not the best. In retrospect I consider them lost time. I met the wrong people, hung out in the wrong places, and spent an incredibly silly amount of time with camping. When I look at "people my age" (read: signed up in fall 2006) many have more or less directly shaped this world for themselves. I was on the brink of leaving when I found my first real friends, people who made me stay, who are intelligent, creative and who give soul to this place. I am blessed with the ongoing friendship of some of them. Cake Kidd, Caterin Semyorka (though she is barely on anymore), lorinz Gloucester.

My Second Life got some structure when I founded Babel Translations in summer 2007. Babel posed a great and exciting challenge, Babel provided wonderful successes, Babel provided financial independence. And in the process of building Babel, new friends came. Tina Lynch and Gina Glimmer, who became a friend, a soul mate, finally in January 2008 my partner - and a while later my lover.

Real drama and artificial drama found me in 2008. My beloved Gina was forced to leave SL. A friend turned enemy over false claims - I got blackmailed and threatened in the process. But also good things happened. I found one of my closest friends and now my SL-sister Trinity Dechou, who helped me through the loss of Gina, and with who I forged a strong band of friendship. I found a new love, and while it ultimately did not last, I enjoyed the time with her very much. I renewed the friendship with London Spengler. I met one of the most amazing talents in SL - Ivanova Shostakovich - and founded GREENE concept with her. I came across Rika Watanabe's blog and when I met her in-world for the first time it "clicked" and we formed a strong friendship as well and find exceptional fun in working on projects with each other. And two other close friendships formed in 2008 - with the wonderful Quaintly Tuqiri and with the equally wonderful Zippora Zabelin.

This year - 2009 - started with a bang. Having been partnered for only a few weeks after having been together for almost 9 months, my partner broke up with me. While I was confused and also hurt at that time, it was the beginning of a new chapter in my SL. Being dragged to an event by my friend Nadine Nozaki to "get some brooding thoughts out of my mind" I discovered the Blacklist, a club which showed me the whole beauty of Second Life and the liberties to be whoever we want to be there. The Blacklist has become my favourite hangout where I can be found typically several times a week. I made friends there too, especially Lectra Forte, but also Hyang Zhao, Shye Kidd, Jo Soosung, Yoshimi Yoshikawa and many others.

In many aspects 2009 was the best year so far. I found love from unexpected and unusual sides, finally admitting the mutual feelings with London, but also - carefully and constantly surprised - finding out that I can love more than one person at once. While being with London - and actually encouraged by her - I finally allowed romantic feelings for another person who I unfortunately still can not name publicly. And finally there is Nissa Nightfire. I met Nissa the year before doing PR for my former partner when I contacted her as fashion blogger. We had occasional contact, but in 2009 the contact intensified, and we became friends. And the contact intensified more, and over the course of months, of slowly getting to know each other, we became lovers - something neither of us expected, but something that is thrilling each day anew.

By the time of posting this, there will be a party at the Blacklist to honor me. Nissa secretly planned the party, and from what I have seen during this day, she must have worked her lovely butt off with everything she arranged. As a thank you for organizing that, I spent quite some time and thought on an outfit I hope no one ever expected from me - King Peter I. of Beachwood.

I am blessed to have great friends! Blessed to have their affection, blessed to have their respect. Blessed that they opened their hearts and souls to me. Blessed to have two wonderful lovers. Blessed to have a great sister. There are so many of you not explicitely mentioned, but all of you make my life special, make my SL rich.

Thank you, thank you everybody I met over the past three years who I can call friend.

Thank you!

Love Tuesdays: Trinity Dechou

Some of the most amazing people I met in SL, I met by pure chance. Here is the story of my SL sister Trinity Dechou.

I don't know if rezzed.net, founded by SL entrepreneur Luc Aubret, ever was a success for him, or at least broke even. It started with the aim to become a social network for SL avatars, just like Facebook or Myspace or LinkedIn are in the atomic world. Having read a report about it somewhere I signed up, created my profile, and checked who else was there. To be honest, not a lot of people I knew where there, but the site also showed recent signups and there was that matrix like chick who even called herself Trinity. She was as new as I was, probably found rezzed.net the same way I did, so I commented with a "Welcome" on her profile, and she commented back. That was in early 2008.

I can't recall anymore how it happened, but we pretty soon established a close communication, meeting a lot of time in-world as she was kind of lonely while her girlfriend attended classes. We "clicked" well and - while being fundamentally different on many things - we had a lot of common views as well and a similar background. Almost from the beginning our conversations left SL and I felt secure talking about my RL with her, and she in turn had the same trust in me.

Then came the day when my SL partner Gina Glimmer was forced to leave SL by her RL partner. The whole process took 3 hours from her breaking the news to me until she said goodbye - forever, as it seemed back then.

My world disintegrated around me, and I fell in a deep black hole. And Trinity was there and caught my fall. Trinity, who lost her RL partner less than a year ago, was at my side. Listened. Understood. Held my virtual hand, and dried my tears. And was there. More than anything, she was there. And understood.

During that time, a bond was forged that was extremely strong and durable. A friendship, based on trust, integrity and understanding. A friendship that clearly goes beyond friendship. A friendship, that became a special kind of love. And some time later - under tears - we became siblings in SL. Being both only-childs, at least for me, I felt for the first time what kind of love one might feel for a sister.

We still disagree on some things, sometimes even fundamentally, like the political spectrum we favour. We also say us inconvenient truths if we think it is necessary. Only the other day Trinity brought up an issue where she thougt I did wrong, and I - even though I did not see the problem as such - apologized. The friendship is strong enough to not mind little bumpers. The trust and honesty does not only mind such things, it actually needs such incidents to be fostered further.

On Saturday, my SL sister Trinity celebrated her 3rd rezday, and her SL/RL partner Aimee, her friend Voodoo and I arranged a surprise party for her. Would SL vanish tomorrow, we would still be friends. But it won't vanish too soon hopefully, and I wish Trinity a lot more SL rezdays.

Betting with Trinity regarding Linden Lab actions

Back in January Linden Lab announced to take over Xstreet SL and OnRez, and I had some heated discussions with my friend and SL sister Trinity Dechou about future developments.

While we both agreed that the major reason for the XStreet takeover was the control of the Linden Dollar exchange run on that site (and its eventual blending into the LindeX), we disagreed on sales commissions. Trinity assumed that in order to make XStreet even more attractive, the commissions will fall, while I was (and am) convinced that LL would be foolish to plug what turns out to be an addition to their portfolio of L$ sinks (upload fees, tier, partnering fees).

Another area of speculation was the limitation on group slots. Linden Lab keeps telling us that the 25 group limit is deeply coded into the structure of SL and that changing it is far from easy (which does not keep them from occasionally granting 26 groups). However systems like Subscribe-O-Matic have effectively taken away the pain of the group slot limitation and basically taken away any sense of urgency for the matter. While we both agreed that incorporating a SoM like system into SL would bring a whole bunch of benefits, Trinity could not agree to my speculation that rather than making a system of their own, following the XStreet/OnRez example LL simply buys Subscribe-O-Matic. She rather suggested LL will implement a two-tiered system of their own, with "real groups" as we have them now, and "watered down" groups used for announcements etc and no limitation to the number of them.

What happens if an anglophile and a Scottish lass strongly disagree on things? They wager! So on January 22 the following bet was placed:

Peter: I bet 100 L$ that by August 1st LL has bought Subscribe-O-Matic. And I bet 100 L$ that by August 1st we still have commission for sales on what used to be SLX.
Trinity: I bet 100$L that by August 1st LL won't have bought Subscribe-O-Matic and instead will have introduced their own two tier group system. And I also bet 100$L that by August 1st commissions on what was SLX will be gone.

As defined by the conditions of the bet, tonight at midnight SLT the time runs out. And as far as things look like, my beloved sister Trinity owes me 100 L$:

• We still have commission on XStreet, and while many changes have happened to the system - and some obvious ones (like unifying the XStreet balance and the in-world L$ balance) are down the road, there were no indications that the commission will fall. Unless this changes in the next 22 hours, it is a full win on my behalf.
• Linden Lab has not bought Subscribe-O-Matic, nor are there any indications or signals they will. So this is a full fail on my behalf, however...
• ... Linden Lab has neither introduced nor announced nor showing any hints that they will touch the group system in the foreseeable future. On the contrary, they still claim extending the 25 group limit will turn SL in a screeching snail if ever extended due to database issues. So this is a fail on Trinty's behalf too, and according to the conditions nobody wins this part of the bet.

There is still 22 hours to run, and the folks at Linden Lab are known for surprises. But I think I'll be 100 L$ richer by tomorrow.