I’m almost a week late in keeping up with Strawberry Singh’s Monday Meme, but life was tossing me around a little and  I just didn’t get in world.  On a bright note, I have finally been reunited with my wayward laptop, all repaired and ready to let me explore again, and, more importantly, take pics. Yay! Of course the first thing I did was grab Flat Ebbe from the marketplace.

Since he’s had an entire week to hang around with lots of bloggers I thought he might be tired by now, and I didn’t have a good plan for sims to tour, so we just stuck close to home at Kannonji Zen Retreat. We started off just chilling by the pond so he could unwind after all that traveling.

He still seemed to be feeling a bit stiff, so I suggested taking a few moments out of his time to have a quiet sit at the main zendo. There wasn’t a scheduled meditation going on when we stopped by, but it’s still a great place to find some peace and rest.

I’d originally hoped to check in on Flat Ebbe from some fun location via SL Go, but unfortunately despite trying at least a half dozen different places in town I can’t find any free WiFi that has a high enough download speed. These are all national bookstores, or restaurant chains, so I don’t know if it’s part of a general policy or just bad luck in my city, but in every case but one the On Live app advised that the speeds were too low and it refused to even connect my account. The one time the speeds were sufficient there was apparently some sort of firewall in place to stop On Live. Oh well. I still think it’s a pretty cool service, even if I can only use it in my house.

Ms. Berry also asked us to include three things we’d like to communicate to Ebbe, so we sat at the coffee bar for a few moments before he set off on more adventures around the grid and I tried to think of what I’d like to tell him. I’ve read through what others have said and really I think I just want to echo some of the suggestions:

1. Please work on the public relations issue. I couldn’t agree more with all of those who wish SL wasn’t regarded by the media as that virtual porn game. It’s also so frustrating that people who use SL are so often portrayed as stereotypical friendless losers who need a “second” life because they don’t have a “first” life.
2. Tier prices. While I probably won’t be in a position to own land again anytime soon it would be nice to see some reworking of the tier structure to lower the fees and make land ownership more attractive.
3. Keep talking! I love that you’re being so communicative with the users, and I hope you keep it up! 😀

Many thanks to Berry for our meme and for Flat Ebbe! I’ve been following his comments, from the keynote speech to his twitter feed and so far I’m feeling pretty optimistic about the future of Second Life. I’m eager to see what happens next!