Second Life

My fascination with www has taken me to various sites - good and bad, nice and ugly, and so on and so forth. I had chronicled in some detail about the various email ids I've had over the last few years. Along with this, I've also enrolled myself into various sites concerning mainly gaming, and earlier in life, on dating, friendship, and epals. While I've stopped visiting most of the sites within days of visiting them first, there are a few who've caught my imagination and have managed to pull me to them again and again.

Of such sites, the most recent one has been Second Life. I read about this first in the Times of India about 4-5 months back and didn't have the faintest clue about what they were talking about. In fact, I promptly forgot about it, and all the subsequent reports on Second Life was met with just the cursory curiosity from me. I never felt like checking it out, to see how it would look, or even more importantly, what it was all about. Then, about a month back, I read about Vancouver Police Department starting their force, and that got me thinking. If a police department felt it big enough to have spent some energy in developing something at a time when they should be looking after the law and order situation, I thought I too should be checking it out.

Once I had set my mind, there wasn't any stopping me. In typical fashion with things related to the internet, I plunged headlong into it without much of a research. I found the site out and saw that it was offering both free as well as paid services. Without even glancing at the price, which I saw was in dollars from the corner of my eyes, I proceeded to select the free option. Once that was done, I had to create a profile for myself, or rather, for my Second Life. I thought long and hard about the virtual Hari, conjuring up visions of creating something that I'm not - dashing, handsome hunk with muscles bulging enough to tear the sleeves, and chest expanding wide enough to split the seams, but finally settled to something closer to the real one; just a boy next door with slightly nerdy looks. This done, I gave this character a fancy name, and that was beginning of my virtual life.

The first tendency in the virtual world for me was to hide myself. Here I was, totally nude, and having absolutely no idea on what I was doing there. I checked out my mobility, and found to great satisfaction that even though I didn't have a stitch of clothing on me, that didn't stop me from moving here and there. It took me close to an hour to figure out I didn't have to have money to get clothes; all it needed was the choosing of appropriate option with the help of my mouse. I just put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and started to feel much better. After all, I wasn't in display in all glory for the entire (virtual) world to see.

Having finally covered my nakedness, the next problem that I faced was to get out of the place that I was in. I kept walking from one end to the other, through land and water, and a few times even tried the flight option, but I wasn't getting anywhere. Then, as it so very often happens with computers and software, it was by accident that I found a solution. I was fiddling with various options in my system when I chanced upon the search option where I could search for places. Once I found a place I liked, all I needed was for myself to be "teleported" to that location. This didn't work the initial couple of times since my net connection was playing its usual game of hide and seek with me. But soon, I managed to escape from the island that I was trapped in.

I am slightly more knowledgeable about the virtual world, though I'm still amazed at the kind of movements some of the others have been displaying. I don't know whether one gets additional movements or gestures once you pay up. I have just, a couple of days back, made my first friend and am still wandering around penniless, but at least I'm clothed and I do know how to get to a place. I'll keep posting about how I progress through the various hurdles in this virtual world. In the meantime, if any of you out there know more about it, please do educate me on the intricacies of this Second Life.