Warm Winter Nights

I have been giving classes in Academia Portucalis since 2007 and, teaching not being a RL activity, I took it as challenge when invited.

My stage fright was not easy to overcome, but blushing on this side of the screen and using written text made it easier and step by step the fright was gone and I am already able to speak in front of an audience without mumbling.

I have been teaching there mostly common Second Life things, like avatar make overs, land and group management, general Q&A sessions. The last mini-course I gave there was about windlight and photography.

And now comes the true reason for this post. I was really overwhelmed with the results obtained. Not only the students kept making clever questions, but did in fact pay a lot of attention to the classes. When asked to do some pictures as homework the results were really amazing. Never knew that teaching could be so rewarding and I am really proud of them.

There is an exhibit of their first works going on in Owl’s Bay Art Gallery which you can see until the end of May. Please drop by any time and check their works (teleport in front of landing point).

Could not end this post without thanking Marga Ferrer and M2Life Paravane for the great work they are doing at the Academia and for making the Portuguese community a bit richer in knowledge within this Second Life of ours.

Leave you a couple of pictures from the classes and the exhibition.

Taken by Marga Ferrer during the class

In Second Life like iRL things sometimes don’t go as we wished they would.

After more than one year in Portucalis building dreams, mine and others, together with a wonderful group of friends, I see myself forced to leave.

Lots of things have been happening iRL that have unfortunately reflected in my second life.

Again the relationships between people are the issue. I have seen it before and even helped (or tried to) some friends getting over it, but never thought that my best friend in no matter what world would put me against a wall and tried to force me to choose between her and another of my friends.

How can someone just erase feelings? Impossible! At least for me. So I maintained my position of not choosing which led to my best friend’s backing up and putting an end to our long lasting friendship in a stubborn position if “you are not with me, you are against me”.

Both lives have been affected. My RL is poorer now, in spite of all the very very good friends I have. Loosing someone always hurts. My SL was also affected and what was once a place I called home, has become some where I feel I’m persona non grata. Besides, the business partnership ended and all of a sudden I see myself with monthly tiers I just can’t afford. I tried during the past months to search for ways to keep my little corner in Portucalis, even thought of getting some of the abandoned land for myself, but I realised that would affect badly my RL (thanks God for the holidays that put my mind back on track) and just had to put an end to those crazy thoughts. No way a place that should be my playground is going to affect my daily survival in the atomic world.

So guys I am leaving Portucalis but I am not leaving friends and feelings. It is just a piece of virtual land where I was once happy.

Time to start overwith friends all around me and a smile on my face, taking with me the good memories and leaving the bad ones behind.

Soon I will be posting about the new place and hope you stop by to say hello.

Yesterday I was cleaning inventory in my little corner when Ofland dropped by and we started chatting. All of a sudden the sky was dark and this big metalic dragon landed near us. I just love when Kyrion drops by like that! After some chatting Ky was kind enough to let us ride him and we went to take a look at the works going on in Portucalis.

I must confess that the first time I rode a dragon I was kind of reluctant to do it. It just didn’t feel right to ride another “person” but once I did it, I tell you guys that if you never did it, you will enjoy it for sure.

Ky, thank you so much for all the fun. It was a wonderful alternative to cleaning inventory (told you in my previous post I never manage to do it hehe)

Leave you here some photos of the ride and you can see the others here.

Riding at the sunset

Have you ever seen an art exhibit riding a dragon?

You don’t want to feel that!

I met Rann and his girlfriend Lizie through a friend. His Scottish accent (yes even in writing) and easy talk immediately captivated me.

We talked for a while and he showed me some of his RL paintings. I was completely hooked and knew I just had to have his paintings in Galeria LX walls. He was kind enough to accept and now I am proud to invite for the opening on August 7th at 02:00 PM PDT / 22:00 GMT (Galeria LX, Portucalis (111, 81, 22) ).

Leave you here the press release for the exhibition and a photo of the invitation.

Hope to see you there.

SPIRIT OF SCOTLAND BY RANNOCH LATER

Rannoch comes from the Highlands of Scotland.

His native land has been the inspiration for most of his work and this often reflects in the subject.

It all started one very cold winter while he was stranded by deep snow in his caravan (Trailer) on the side of a Scottish Loch. He was fixing his Motorcycle at the time, so had some tins of spray paint left all over the place. Just decided to brighten the place up with it, and… the end result was what you will see at the exhibition. He discovered he was into painting.

He was stranded for over a week, and had nothing to paint on so the furniture, what wasn’t burned, got it. Most of the Originals of these prints were done on recycled domestic furniture with tins of Graffiti paint, and some Ink.

The rest was done on Roof tiles that were under his caravan. You could say this is his old home on display.

Among his works are Logos and Album covers for the music industry, as well as corporate logos and design boards, and several commissions, but mostly he enjoys painting for his own fun.

He also makes Swords and daggers, again this is all done with things he finds and recycles.

RL exhibitions:

Smith Gallery, (Stirling), part of “Brave Art” exhibition 1997

Trading post, Royal Mile (Edinburgh)

Royal College of Phisicians , Queen Street (Edinburgh) (part exh)

Lethbridge , (Ontario).(part exh)

Now Galeria LX is proud to present his works for the first time at Galeria LX in Portucalis. Galeria LX, Portucalis (111, 81, 22)

Please join us there for a night embedded with the Spirit of Scotland.

Like I told in my previous post I went to SLang Island to speak a bit about Portucalis and our activities.

I was really really nervous cause I have stage fear and knowing so many people were there listening, or better reading, what I had to say was kind of scary.

I am writing this just to thank all of my friends from Portucalis who were there with all their support, asking questions and complementing what I was saying.

The conference took place on the exact day that Portucalis made its first rezz year and all those familiar faces in front of me, the congratulations IMs and e-mails, everything that was written in Portuguese blogs just filled my heart with joy.

Portucalis was built for friends. Each and everything we do there is not only because it really is a lot of fun for us, but also because we want to see our friends happy, make them feel at home and that those 2 small islands also belong to them.

Many of those friends have crossed the border of virtual to real and many more are yet to cross it. And I don’t mean just Portuguese. Friendship is really what makes Portucalis that special place and we never could have made it without all your love and care.

Can’t say it enough: thank you all for being there always in whatever world. You all left your fingerprint in my heart and that will never go away.

May the Goddess bless you all!

(Thank you Marga for the pics bellow)

I already posted about SLang Magazine and Slang Island. This time I would like to inform you that Uzi Boa, the SLang Team and my good friend Ibrahim Bates have been organizing the Portuguese week in SLang Island with several events going on starting today.

So if you want to know what we Portuguese are doing in Second Life take a look at the events schedule here and drop by to have fun and collect some info and freebies from the kiosks existing there.

(Oh, yours trully will be speaking about Portucalis on the 9th at 02:00 PM PDT *winks)

A bit tired of having a lot of people putting their noses to my front door (and zooming in when I didn’t answer) I finally decided to take my home up to the sky.

The house was taken away from the beach and replaced by a nice waterfall that my good friend June Jurak sent me as a gift and a big tree.

After a whole morning TPing all over SL I could finally find a house that suited me, lovely, low prim and not expensive hehehe.

Me and Max have been decorating it and it was finished a few days ago. I love details so I’m a bit of a prim eater but this time I behaved (cough cough) and managed to leave about 250 prims free – ok, ok not much if you consider that I own a 6140sqm land. But previously I had 100 free so I DID behave hehehe

One of the things I like about the house are the doors. The script sends me an e-mail whenever someone not in the allow list tries to open the doors.

Who on earth wants to get into my bedroom at 3:00 AM???? I’m not there guys! If you want to use it just ask… the furniture is copy so I can place it wherever you want

Tomorrow, May 13th at 02:00PM PDT a new exhibition will open to the public at Galeria LX

“Breaking Taboos” was the title given the authors – Imso Obscure and Elora Lungu. Both of the artists are making photography for some time and this is their first public exhibit.

Hope you can drop by to support these two wonderful people that I have the pleasure to call friends in all the worlds.

At 03:00 PM you can also enjoy the warm singing of Pa Decosta for a half an hour gig he kindly accepted to do for us.

Most of my friends know that I love piano. Not that I can really play it, I did have some lessons in another life but was too young to know that you have to do the same exercises over and over again before you can actually play anything, so I got fed up and dropped it.

But there are few things that please me most than to listen to some piano piece. I just forget everything around and stay there completed focused on the hands moving over the ebony and ivory, identifying every note, decoding every message and feeling a peace not easily reached any other way.

TP, my lil bro, just appeared the other day at his bar in Paradisus-Portucalis with his new toy… guess what? A piano! A gorgeous piano with place for two people playing together.

SL was a mess that day (what else is new?) and we couldn’t teleport anywhere and no one seemed to be able to reach us in Portucalis (thankx LoL for SIM restarts), so we just sat  there and played for more than an hour to the few friends gathered around us.

I hadn’t such a lovely night in a long time. We will repeat that for sure and this time in a proper place and – if the Linden Gods allow it – in a better SL day. Thank you bro.

Naked Souls is the exhibition which will open Monday 7th at 2:00PM PDT in Galeria LX.

Telemaco Pennell is a good friend that has devoted his time inworld  to photography and exploring the endless options of windlight. All his photos have no post-processing being taken just with the tools given by you know who *winks.

This exhibition was a challenge that Telem gladly embraced and the results are simply amazing. come and see for yourselves and enjoy afterwards (3:00 PM) a gig by Therese Nightfire up on the Gallery’s terrace.