Swimming Lessons

Swimming Lessons

The 3rd Saturday in May is "Learn to Swim Day" in the USA. On this day, parents and children should be made aware of the risks of bathing and the urgent need to learn to swim. Now there is a SecondLife with many beaches, beautiful water landscapes and lakes, but swimming can be "learned" by buying a HUD. Nevertheless we wanted to take up this topic, because we all have a real life, and our children, siblings, friends, and of course we ourselves should be able to swim. 

So on this day we celebrated our "swimming lessons" party and went to our beautiful beach. Our lessons was for adults only. We invited our friends und guests to put on a sexy bikini, or the crunchy swimsuit, and to come to our party. 

After all the unrest of the last days we were very curious how many would come and if there would be more problems. Generally the number of visitors in May was not so high, so we shouldn't expect too much. As we were in the Club Room of our friend Valantine before, we got to the beach on time at 4pm. DJ Yuimetal was already online with her stream, and Misty had prepared the contestboard. So we were ready to go.

In the beginning it was a bit empty. Of course we had used our group notes and entered the date in the SecondLife calendar. Actually it was a good topic, and we had loaded our contestboard again with 1,000L$ in splitmode. 

And we also had a lot of fun with the topic. Misty and I were lifeguard swimmers, so we were quickly drawn parallel to the Baywatch series. But then we noticed that our cup size was too small and we didn't help with silicone. In real life this might be a hindrance for lifeguards, even if it might look good for some men.  But I think they also like our bodies. Sometimes it's really hard to believe what's possible in a virtual world.

And then we were surprised, quickly the guests came. Of course we knew many, but there were also many new ones. So we could welcome 11 new members to our group during this event.

And of course many registered for the contest and quickly more than 30 participants registered. And that already after half an hour. Misty increased the jackpot to 1,500 L$. And thanks to an anonymous donation we could even add 500 L$ a little later, so that after 45 minutes already 2,000 L$ were in the jackpot. And even if not everyone could stay, new guests came, so that the group became bigger and bigger, and we counted 70 guests at the end, 61 of whom were still together in the Sunshine Realm at the end. So it was a very successful event, we had more visitors than at the events in the last 3 months, and we continued the successful January.

Of course, many people in a region always mean problems in SecondLife. Many were also with us for the first time. So we had to expect problems with the contest, even if it didn't look so bad in the beginning. The board reacted in 2 seconds. So we appealed to the guests to behave reasonably. But there was something wrong today. Apparently the clicks weren't assigned to the right people, it almost seemed like an invisible shift. So you could see that the number of votes went up and down, and we all know now that the Unvote dialogues are especially bad for the contest. So also my IM box overflowed. And our usual suspects got nervous, and put down every restraint and tortured the board with volleys of mouse clicks. And then, when they were admonished, they turned out to be too abusive. They apparently still haven't understood that we have the householder's rights and that they are our guests.

We then decided to stop the contest and start again. Many of our 60 guests wanted to register at the same time, so even this phase became critical. The board was under a heavy load, which caused some of our well-known guests to perform click series on the registration button. I can only repeat this over and over again. The board processes every click, so if someone presses the button 5 times, the board will register him and send the message 4 times that the participant is already registered. And some clicked much more as 10 times. Since SecondLife scripts are slower anyway, and even delays are built in when sending messages to prevent the mass spamming of messages by objects, all others have to wait longer because of a few idiots. 

Meanwhile we were in the time of the After-Party. DJ Polpeta took over the entertainment and played more beach party music in Ibiza style. After 10 minutes everyone was registered and we could start voting.  Of course we paid attention, there were also some warnings. But our mood was much too good to let some of us destroy it, and another 15 minutes all participants had cast their votes. And this time also the participants got the votes they wanted. So we were able to finish the contest and pay out the prizes. 

We then declared our beach a nude beach. After the successful event and the last week with the riots we all enjoyed this after-party. DJ Polpeta was good and we talked and laughed. And most of them followed our request and turned our beach into a nude beach.

We stayed together until 8pm and finished the evening before most of us disappeared into bed. It was a nice evening, and at least a big stone fell from my heart. Thanks to all friends for their support. We were able to follow up on our successful events from January. But we can still feel the uncertainty. There will still be a way to connect to the old lightheartedness of the parties at the Sunshine Realm. But we want to go this way together with our friends. 

And thanks to all the guests who visited us that evening. I am happy that we could win many new members into our group. 

As always there is a Google Images Album for this event, with many more pictures of this event. Maybe you'll stop by and browse through the album. If you want to visit us, go to the blog page "Upcoming Events", there you will find information about the next events in the Sunshine Realm. And of course you can also come and explore our Sim. You'll usually find it empty, but there are lots of nice spots to meet up with friends, dance or have a backdrop for photos. Here the landmark to the Sunshine Realm in the Grid of SecondLife.