Safari: Vive la différence

      Our first destination was Conference region on FrancoGrid, to meet some of the FrancoGrid regulars, including the democratically elected Grid President Nino Whitman, and the technical guru Ssm Binder, as well as Ange Menges, Cendres Magic, Archael Magic,  and Cherry Manga who all wanted to tell us something of the grid's story, and its future. 

Francogrid Conference

About thirty of us gathered inside the fabulous spherical building where the grid holds its annual meetings.
          Francogrid is a non-profit grid. There is no 'owner' as you find on other grids. It is run according to European law for non-profits; decisions are made by the Administrative Council, and residents who have paid the membership fee are consulted about changes and new ideas, for example, they can vote on the look and style of the new Welcome regions that will be coming soon. 

You do not need to speak French to be part of the grid; the website is bilingual, translators are available, and everyone goes out of their way to speak some English. And of course, it does us all good to at least try to communicate in another language. While most residents are Francophone, 'foreigners' like Lucy Afarensis, Snowbody, and me, are made very welcome!

Cendres Magic: bienvenue / welcome

Thirza Ember: so... who here is the oldest Francogrid resident?

Film Noir

       Two destinations that delight this week. Grid addresses at the end of the post as usual.
        If you have not visited Avacon Grid yet, put it on your 'Must See' list.

         Not only is Avacon closely associated with the organization and prep work that goes into the annual Opensim Community Convention (held over on OSCC Grid), it is also home to some interesting regions, including the Building Tutorial region Primland, you may remember it being originally on Fleep Grid; some nice work-in-progress Library regions belonging to Rockcliffe University, and of course Nebadon Izumi's regions bursting with interesting free stuff, called Oni Kenkon Creations.

Safari Goes Down Under

 After Neverworld, this week our next stop was on the other side of the planet.  In these troubling times, I always find some comfort in being with Australians living, as they do, where Tomorrow has already safely arrived. This time, we were on U4Ria.

Uriah Heep: ok any of the teleporters can take you to a destination

Arrival on u4ria

Juliette SurrealDreaming: i made it!  lol thanks
Sunbeam Magic: and with your clothes on too Juliette
Uriah Heep: covers my eyes
Juliette SurrealDreaming: omg did i not have them earlier?
Sunbeam Magic: you did not lol
Juliette SurrealDreaming: giggles, free show!!! :-P

Safari and the Gum Trees

 Australia was again our destination for the final stop this week. Our hostess Gen, lives in Australia where it's the middle of the night when we do Safari, so she asked if we'd mind showing ourselves around. As always, you'll find the HG Address at the end of the blog post.

           This time Kitely grid, and the fabulous Australian Home Land, by the beautiful Genavieve Paige. The experience of this region is breathtaking, make sure you have sound on, and have your environment set to the region windlight to get the full effect.

Genavieve Paige

Thirza Ember: The Murray River is huge, more than 2500 km long, it is Australia's longest single river. It begins in the Australian Alps and winds its way out to the sea not far from Adelaide , so it has lots of environments, from the beaches to the wetlands, and she has tried to include it all on her region.

A Quick Bit of Luster

 Our first stop of three this week on Safari - lil bit of lag, it can't be denied, but fun nonetheless. That's one of the advantages of multiple destinations each time. If one place has issues, or maybe isn't to your taste, another will be fine. 

Plenty of tasteful stuff on Neverworld though...

Neverworld Welcome 

Our first stop, however, was set to be on Neverworld grid, founded by Govega Sachertorte. We were invited by Locked Semaphore, and Pasha Theas was also there to welcome us to what was due to be a whistlestop tour of six different regions. Yes, I know what you're thinking, very ambitious...

           Neverworld is a grid of about three hundred regions, with about 200 in traffic monthly, between residents and visitors (pretty nice numbers) and the six regions being showcased were well chosen t demonstrate the range of activities available, from the airport, Banning International (great name) to the dark labyrinth of Ludicus...

Ludicus

..... to the romance of Luster, and so on. 

Here on Neverworld you will find fashion, freebies, rentals, sailing, and social events, as well as free parcels if you just want to try the grid out.  My favorite part in all of it is the Greeter, with his corny Pirate jokes. Unmissable.

Neverworld Greeter

There was something happening with teleports however right when we all tried to go there (an hour later, of course, teleporting was fine, that's just the way opensim works out sometimes) so our tour didn't go quite as expected. Better luck for sure on our next visit.

Check out the next post for our continued trip...

Luster

Walk-through Safari

             Each Safari trip lasts about three hours. Sometimes, that's divided into three one-hour visits, and sometimes into two ninety minute encounters. This week was of the ninety-minute-times-two variety, and for good reason! Our destinations were on OSgrid, Metropolis and Mobius grids (huh? three grids for two destinations? You'll see.) and all the HG Addresses are at the end of the post, as usual.

Safari goes from the Foxx to the Absurdists

"In the simplest terms, Absurdism is the belief that universe is 

too vast and unknowable for for human beings to ever know anything for certain. 

Because of that, we do not possess the ability to say or know for certain 

what, if anything, has meaning of value objectively. 

This causes us to comprehend the absurd nature of our existence: 

we cannot exist without meaning but we are incapable of determining meaning."

from http://the-absurdist.com

The Absurdists were Post WWII writers, like Albert Camus, who you perhaps haven't heard of, or like the book Catch 22, which you have heard of. So now you've Googled that, you'll agree that nothing really fits the hypergrid paradigm better than 'you have to be crazy to work here'. Yesterday proved we're crazy like a fox, in this case, Foxx Bode.

The planned destination was on Foxx's Red Dragon Club X, built when Foxx first discovered opensim back in the year dot. Sadly, this didn't work out, so we decamped to the Safari clubhouse on Teravus Plaza. But do take the time to go and see Foxx's historic OSgrid build, HG Addresses are at the bottom of this post, as usual.