For Wren

I heard the sad news today that someone I had met in SL had died suddenly.

I didn't know this person very well but she was a fun and happy person to be around.

I wanted to write something in memory of her and to send my deepest sympathy to her partner and her family.

This is part of the poem from Four Weddings and a Funeral, it is sad beautiful and very poignant.

 She was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

 

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H. Auden

God bless Wren

Love & Other Assorted Foolery

Valentines Day is upon us and the world is awash with hearts and love is in the air and all that. I found this poem and just thought it was really funny.

Since My Valentine Got A Computer

Since my Valentine got a computer
My love life has taken a hit.
Nothing I say is important
Unless it’s a byte or a bit. Before she got her new laptop,
Everything was just fine;
Now she says we can’t talk
Unless we both go online. "But honey," I said, "I’m attached to you;
Love is what I feel."
"That keyword isn’t relevant,"
She said, with eyes of steel. She clicked the keyboard furiously;
The screen was all she could see,
And then to my horror and shame,
She started describing me: "Your motherboard needs upgrading;
Your OS needs help, too.
And you definitely need a big heatsink
To cool your CPU." "Don’t flame me, my sweet," I pleaded.
"Not on Valentine’s Day."
"Fix the bugs, and I’ll see," she said,
While looking at me with dismay. "What ever you want, my darling;
Whatever you need; you call it.
I’ll upload or download anything,
And then I’ll go install it." (Her hostile CD keeps replaying,
And though I don’t want to fight her,
Is this what I want for a Valentine?
I’ve been burned; can I rewrite her?) "Are you all hard drive now," I asked
"Is there no software in you?
Don’t you remember the good times?
Let our memories see us through." "LOL," she said to me, chuckling.
"You’re nothing but adware.
"I’ve got four gigs of memory;
I’ve got no problem there." "Please, honey, we can save it," I said.
"Our love means more than that."
"That’s not in my cache; we’re going to crash,"
She said, as she turned me down flat. (This woman has really changed;
Do I really want to chase her?
More and more I’m thinking
It might be nice to erase her.) "Aw, honey, don’t talk like that," I said.
"Can’t we just plug and play?
I hereby accept default,
And I’m yours, my love, come what may. My goal is to make you happy;
I want to be your portal,
But your sudden, distant coldness
Would test the strongest mortal. If we need a brand new interface,
So we can FTP,
I’m your go along, get along guy,
And I want you to stay with me." "If you want to get into my favorites," she said,
And you want to get past my encryption,
If you want to get through my firewall,
Here is my only prescription." "First, put up your own Web site,
And e-mail me when it’s done.
I’ll check your page rank with Google,
And tell you if you’re the one." My life has become a real trial,
Since my Valentine got a computer.
If I want her to care about me again,
I guess I’ll have to reboot her. By Joanna Fuchs

If you are in love or falling in love enjoy! If you are not in love or are anti love this year, eat chocolate and buy a pack of sharp pins.

Window Dressing

As you may or may not know I am an avid profile reader. Some people make their profile window a pure work of art with symbols and hearts and all manner of twiddly fancy ASCII art.

In the last couple of days I have been IM'd by a couple of different fellas who's profiles are like works of art every symbol that can possibly be imported into SL is there,outpourings of love for their SO, poems, lyrics, YouTube links, you name it and they have it.

The ironic thing is both of these budding profile Picasso's have hit on me with the finesse of a steam roller on steroids. When I enquired about their profile sweeties I saw no outpourings of  love entwined with hearts or flowers

One fella told me that his GF was 'cool' with him having other women in SL and another said oh it's not a real partnership we are just friends..hmm OK!..of course I totally believed both of them :-/

Which brings me to my observation, is some of this stuff  purely for show? to show the world? their partner? themselves? how loved up or taken they are?

I am beginning to think more and more that it's sometimes just window dressing.

Do we need the validation of seeing how much another person wants to write about us in their profiles?

I hope some of those artistically decorated profiles are genuine..but I am seriously beginning to have my doubts.

The Name Game

Now we have the ability to change our SL names, have I changed mine? I did drop the Romano for a week I thought I could be one of those cool one name girls but it didn't feel right to me.

I no longer know who from my friends list is logging in and out. I see blahblah is online who??? has someone sneaked onto my friends list? I have to look on the profile of blahblah to see who it actually is.

It's pretty cute to see paired up avis take the same last name and I can hazard a guess who that person is when they log in

Some people are changing their names to something totally random .Maybe I should try something more random, DeathbyChocolate Candylips maybe ?? -has a certain ring to it no?

Do we need change of name cards in SL- like we have change of address cards in RL.

Sorry for the gap in posts here I promise I will try to post more regularly.

Happy New Year

New years day and my thoughts turn to resolutions and goals for 2011.

The RL ones are still being formulated so here are the highlights of the things in SL I would like to change and/or improve in 2011.

• Blog more
• Comment more on the many many blogs I love and read daily
• Spend less time alone in SL (e.g actually leave my skybox)
• Find new places to go
• Be more organised in my inventory
• Be more sociable
• Stop living in the SL past.

I am giving myself a deadline, If I haven't improved or broadened my SL experience by March, to leave SL for at least six months and then see if

A) Things have improved
B)  I want to come back at all

I love SL but it's not ringing my bells lately I don't know if that's just circumstances or three years is my cut off point, we will see in March.

Thank you to the people who read this blog I have enjoyed writing it very much it is very therapeutic and I hope my posts have entertained you a teeny bit.

I wish you a Happy and Peaceful New Year

Asia x

Let old aquaintance.............

The year end approaches and for me a time to reflect on the past year and to look forward to the new year with optimism and a positive attitude (hopefully)

2010 hasn't been the best year I ever had, there were two bereavements to deal with and my mother was diagnosed with a serious illness.

Which really puts into perspective how petty and really unimportant SL mini dramas and annoyances are.

We lose ourselves in the make believe world of SL, things that are really nothing become something and we forget how to be grown ups and become parodies of ourselves.

Until quite recently I have managed to avoid the drama llama culture of SL, I thought I was immune to it and could spot a 'situtation' and nip in in the bud before it manifested into the D word.

I was wrong and ended up smack bang in the middle of drama central. I would like to say I rose above it, but alas I did not. I wont go into the gory details here but suffice to say it's an old story and one that thrives in SL.

This was a post that I had to write today.When you wake up at 4am thinking about a situation which is happening in a CARTOON WORLD  then Oh My Gosh! it's really really time to draw a line under it.

Happy New Year.

Faster than a speeding bullet (and more deadly)

I recently split with my partner greenie, a lot of awful things were said and me being me shot off like a speeding bullet crossed with a hurricane and deleted every mention of him I could lay my trembling little fingers on.

In hindsight this was wrong and a very hurtful thing to do to someone I care about.

This is not a ploy to make amends as I fear that ship has long sailed it is a public apology to greenfly. I was wrong honey I should not have gone off half cocked deleting things does not delete you from my head or my heart.

I really do wish you well and hope that one day we can be friends again.

3 years and counting.

That's Asia looking fabulous in December 2007 at PhatCats

Today 24th November 2010 is my third rez day.

I have been reflecting about my time in Second Life, no great insights or wise words I am sorry to say. So instead I am going to write a mini Asia bio.

Asia is technically my alt. My first avatar crashed into SL in July 2007. I made Asia, because at the time I was being semi hassled (babies first stalker :p) by some random bloke and I also thought I was an expert avatar maker at this point (ah the young... so confident so..... FULL OF IT) and I wanted to try to make another avi. The idea was that I would delete my first avatar and just bring Asia to SL.

I thought the name Asia Romano was just cute now I get asked, Are you Asian? nope!, Are you Italian? again nope!

This idea went the same way as most of my brilliant and cunning plans-nowhere! I periodically dusted Ms Romano off and let her out of her darkened room for a while but I remained tied into my first avatar (not telling you her name).

Close friends knew Asia was not my main girl, and had both my main and Asia in their friends list.

In September 2009 I had a parting of the ways with my then SL partner and I didn't come to SL for a while, when I returned I found I was not comfortable with my main (still not giving you a name) so I pulled Asia out again, gave her a tic bath, cut her toenails and reintroduced her to the big wide world.

As the months went by I tried a couple of times (yesterday being the last time) to bring my original girl into SL and it doesn't feel right anymore. I will never delete Ms July 2007 but at this point I can't ever see me going back to her either.

Asia is me now and long may she remain so, I like her she is a sassy girl.

A couple of lines to say Thank you to the people who have been with me for parts of my SL journey in no particular order: (real names used in some cases to protect the innocent lol)

• Greenie (my honey bunny)
  
• Spirit
• Barney
  
• Flicky
• Liam
• Mich
• Dylan
• Steve
• Rob
  
• Night
• Lee

I feel like I am giving an acceptance speech for an Oscar :)

30 days of truth (Day 01)

While prowling round the interwebnet I stumbled across chloe's blog . I don't know if this is meant to be a blogger challenge but it piqued my interest, so if it wasn't apologies Chloe, and if it was yay!! count me in.

The challenge(assuming it is) is to write something everyday for 30 days, below are the topics:

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

Something I hate about myself.

I really hate my total lack of self confidence. This has impacted massively on my life.

As a younger woman say in my late teen to early twenties I had so much confidence I could have bottled it and sold it to other people, I was fearless, nothing phased me or intimidated me, no situation had my palms sweating or me looking for excuses to not go/try/accept.

Then somewhere along the middle twenties I noticed feelings of self doubt creeping in I began to worry about not being good enough or clever enough to the point where I would not even put myself into situations where I felt judged or measured.

I have tried a couple of things to try and rid myself of this, I have taken confidence building classes, I have read books both of which gave me some useful self help techniques but I still battle everyday with feelings of inadequacy and low self worth.

In more rational moments I know I am quite an intelligent and a capable woman and when I take a step back to look at the situation I can see how ludicrous it is.

So whoever stole my mojo, can I have it back please.

Nod and smile

I am not the most outspoken person you are ever going to meet, I sometimes say very little.

In both RL & SL this has been misconstrued as being stuck-up, distant, anti social etc, none of which is true, the simple fact of the matter is I find it really difficult meeting new people, I am not one of those people who can converse with complete strangers easily. In RL situations I do a lot of smiling and nodding along with the conversation simply because I don't feel that I can contribute with confidence. In SL situations I fall back on the :) and the yeah, it's not because I am not interested in what the person is saying it is because I don't feel confident enough to chip in. I am an expert in type-backspace-type-backspace, shall I shan't I hit send?

If I admit to being shy/uncomfortable in these situations the standard response is yeah right you are so not shy (er yeah I am)

I have recently been introduced to my SL partners nearest and dearest, who are lovely people and who I really do want to get to know and therein lies the rub, how do I gauge this ? do I pounce on their IM window and say' hey how are you?' the second they log in (and appear to be stalker gal-needy much!) or do I stay in my comfort zone and come across as little miss aloof?

My total fear and it borders on phobia if I am being honest is to be seen or thought of as pushy and in peoples faces.

So there it is kiddies,I am not stuck up I just am a little bit uncertain and timid with new relationships, friends and acquaintances, give me time and I will talk/type your ears off.

To and Fro

growing closer, pulling back
happy fearful, high and low
truth and doubt, here and now
always more, moving on
special moments, fateful days
will it wont it, to and fro
stepping on, stepping out
start and stall high and low
love you honey-Yes I know

It's a small world..........after all

First let me get that annoying song out of my head.

In RL I live quite a small life, work, home, family, blah blah and I kind of realised I also live a small live in SL too.

This is a rather unsettling thought, as I remember logging into SL and realising the scope of the place and how I could be looking at or doing something different most days.

Fast forward almost Three years and my Second life is as predictable as the First one.

I don't know how to end this post so I wont.

Back to RL I go.

Show & Tell

Today girls and boys we are going to talk about feelings.

What is another word for feelings Amber?

..Err is it emotions, Miss Romano?

Well done Amber that's right.

Sometimes children, it can be difficult to show our emotions to other people.

How could we let someone know how we feel without saying the actual words children?

Miss Miss?

Yes Blue?

Maybe we could draw or make them a picture ?

That is an excellent answer Blue,yes children we could let people know what we are feeling by using a picture to show them.

Pick up your crayons or paste and pictures girls and boys and please make me a picture to let me know how you are feeling this afternoon.

.....and Amber you don't need to hold two crayons at once now do you? you

can only use one at a time.

Sorryyyy Miss Romano :)

The late Asia Romano!

I stayed up until stupid o'clock in SL last night/this morning, it's a very long time since I did that and it kinda reminded me of my noobie days.

This morning when the alarm leaped to life my arm moved at ninja speed to turn it off, but noooo! unbeknown to me the alarm clock had cunningly moved it's snooze button sometime during the wee hours of the a.m.

Was the late night worth all this bed-head eye-bag angst?? You know I suspect it was.

First Impressions

Have you ever been avi watching and spotted someone you thought hmm I don't like her or him for some reason? then your brain kicks in and you know that is totally crazy, you can't dislike someone you don't know right?

Recently this happened to me, I had seen this avi around for a while watched them, sl brain saying nope I don't like them, they are full of it etc.

Then out of the blue I got into a conversation with this person and for about five minutes I thought see you were wrong they are indeed an OK person, fast forward ten minutes into the IM and you realise that they are indeed (for me) an unlikeable person.

Five minutes into any conversation I am not telling someone how popular I am, or how fabulous I am or how the world loves me in general.

I wonder if their vanity will make them assume this is about them? or maybe they are so totally wonderful in every way they would NEVER associate this with themselves-I await the outcome.

In this case my first impression was unfortunately right-go figure!

Procastination

Stands up, Hello my name is Asia and I am a serial procrastinator.

I have such fabulous plans in my head, I am going to be an avid blogger, I am going to be a photographer, I am going to be a designer, I am going to get a sl job, I am going to be a stylist.....pretty sparkly ideas that make me fizz with anticipation yep I am motivated I am logging in now I'M READY.

But like cheap champagne I lose the fizz, little by little my pretty ideas and dreams float away, some random fashion notice catches my eye and off I go, all thoughts of the all conquering Asia lost to the ether.

So hello my name is Asia Romano and today I will stand idly by in a club or paddle through some lag fest of a sale.

I will take over the world later, maybe in a couple of hours, or tomorrow at the latest.

Blatantly stealing the sentiment of some actress in a big frock BUT

"Tomorrow is another day"

ps I do know it was Vivian Leigh btw :)

Sister Act

For a long time I did not understand or want to be involved with the SL family thing, I didn't think that I could bond with someone enough to call them 'family' how wrong was I?

I am not blessed with a real life sister and so have nothing to base what sisterly love and loyalty is all about.

I feel I have come close with my second life sister Spirit. She is simply one of the kindest people I have ever met.

Friends

Lately it has become increasingly apparent that I spend more and more time alone in Second Life. I have 20+ friends on my list, I know this is not a massive amount, the question being can I 'class' them as friends? when:

1. I never spend anytime with them
2. I don't talk to them (or them to me) very often.
3. I have no idea what is happening in their (sl) lives