SFO touchdown

A virtual life certainly has its advantages over real life in some ways. Like travelling. Yesterday was a long and tiresome day. I'd rather TP-ed into SFO than spend hours in planes trains and automobiles.

First up was an hour traindrive to Schiphol airport, which became a two hour drive as the train broke down. Then the flight was delayed by about 1 our as well. Instead of waking up at 5.30 am I could have slept to about 7!

Then 11 hours of non-stop and non-smoking flying, check out accompanied by several forms for the Department of Homeland Security, fingerprinting and photography. Finally outside...



The weather's nice though. A lot better than I'd expected. SFO airport a lot smaller than I'd expected. Lots of grey concrete as well.



It was about midnight (according to my bio-clock, so about 3pm local time.) when we finally got into our car and drove south on the 101 to San Jose past the IBM, Microsoft offices, Stanford Bridge University and turned to the 237 for Milpitas. First stop was Denny's for a mixed lunch/midnight snack and then our hotel.

After a hot bath I hit the sack at 7pm (about 4 in the morning), totally knackered after a 22 hour day.

My Virtual T-Ford

Second Life is the medium of the future, or at least of the 21st century. It is a place where one can walk, fly and teleport from place to place. Traditional transportation like cars and planes have become obsolete in this world.

Amazingly, cars have become a status symbol in this world in a very short time. I must admit, I've seen some cool designs -most of them about L$ 3.000 (about 10 Euro -no BPM). Way out of my hobby budget. So I settled for a classic, a T-Ford built by Aimee Weber.

SL gives you a warm welcome

When I joined Second Life somewhere in 2006 there was a basic introduction island - a tutorial. After you'd mastered the basics of SL (walking, flying, teleportation and changing your appearance) you were set loose in the wild wild world. At that time the point of entry was the sim called Luna, just south of the urban sims Grigano, Barcola and Sistiana (collectively known as Nova Albion).

Nowadays there's a new version of baby-island and probably a new 'drop-zone', but Luna wasn't the first drop-zone. Before Luna there was Ahern and the adjacent sims. They can easily be spotted, east of Nova Albion on the mainland. On the map a large X on the border of 4 sims marks the old point of entry. This point of entry reminds me somewhat of the London Market Gardens. Ahern is beyond the meet and greet now and has degraded to a pick-up zone and looney-showcase. If you avoid the looney days, SL might just give you a warm welcome here.