an Evening to Remember

I've been quite busy rl these past few days but I did manage to complete a couple of fitted gowns. 

FOREVER SUMMER Pink Sequin Batik halterneck Gown

FOREVER SUMMER Gold Sequin Batik halterneck Gown

What else is Moon wearing:
Hair: >TRUTH< Eden -  black & whites
Skin: [ PXL ] FAITH Glitter VIP Gift
eyes: Mayfly - Luminous - Mesh Eyes (Arctic Glacier)
Jewellery: Lazuri Enchanted Diamond - Necklace Set
nails: [FEMALE  [MANDALA]NAIL PALETTE 1 Medium]
shoes: Maitreya Gold Liaison - Color Pack #2

I also almost forgot that today, the 20th of January is Moon's RezDay. I've never taken her RezDay seriously because I always measured my time here on SL as my original avatar Carter but I have to hand it to this avatar that I've stayed in SL this long, have moved from being a mediocre role-player to exploring regular sims to building houses to tailoring! I do miss puppeteering a blonde avatar, but I'm actually happier now than I've ever been 5 years ago. A lot of things have happened in and out of SL and although I wished they would move faster, being OLD, I have learned that patience has it's rewards and if it's meant to be, it will be, but of course you gotta wish it hard enough.
So, I would like to wish my alter-ego Moon a big thank you for holding up my sanity when times are tough and I felt like giving up.
Ok that's like giving myself a pat on the back :)

Club Under Construction

It was time to upgrade Chip's One Night Stand Club.

It's still the same squarish design because I wanted to save on prims. I only have 692 prims on the parcel and I wanted to leave 200 prims free for musicians' instruments and their tip jars and such.

The interior layout hasn't changed either, but I have re-textured everything and made the dressing-room smaller since nobody stayed in there longer than 10 mins.

I've also changed the furnitures and upgraded the couple dances and the bar.

I spent a whole lot of hard earned lindens and it was worth it except....
this annoying fact and I have to get this off my chest.

Have you ever bought something and was so excited to use it and then found out that there was a flaw in it? Well that happened to me when I bought a sofa set. The items were supposed to be copiable, no mod and no transfer but one of them was not copiable. It just makes sense that if every item in the box was copiable except that one, it has to be an error. I can understand making that mistake when you have so many things to set permissions to. So I imed the owner and pointed out the error and asked for a copiable one. She didn't reply. After a couple of hours, I send a notecard and still no reply. I would have thought she would be happy that somebody detected an error and she would be able to correct it for future customers.

It's been 24 hours now. The thing is, earlier that day, when I tried to buy that sofa set, and I could not, I imed her and she replied immediately.

It sure makes me wonder if after getting my lindens, I no longer have the courtesy of customer service.

In the end, I found out how this error occurred because I am a builder, but I cannot imagine how frustrating others who has no inkling would find all this.

Retail Therapy for the broken

It feels good to shop when you're down.

Mimikri has a new creation called Babe and No Future. I chose No Future. Although the name is appropriate for today's blog, I plaid and red have always been favourites.

on Moon:
hair: [Shag] - Bombshell - Dark browns
skin: *Glance Skins - Anais - August - SKIN PACK
jewellery: : Amorous : Simplicity
minidress: Mimikri - No Future Tartan Dress red
shrug: Mimikri - No Future Shrug black
bag: AZOURY - Heima Purse (Caramel) (at the L'accessoires)
boots: N-core EUPHORIA "Noir Intense"

The shrug comes with buttons on the sleeves too:

Dressing up my avatar fills up my time and takes some of the pain away.

Love Donna Flora Charity Event

Truth is, I have a difficult time expressing my feelings about illness and death because for a long time, I have had to suppress the overwhelming sense of helplessness, anger and sadness. My father had been a renal failure patient all of my grown-up life and I wasn't even sure he would see all his 3 grandchildren. And when he died, I stopped having anymore eventhough my wish was to have 5 broods. And there was also my own sense of failure, that I did not live up to his expectations.

I steer away from sadness as much as I can because I hate all these feelings coming to me.

I used to have a friend in SL who doesn't even want to know anything about anybody's sickness because to him, SL was a place for him to be happy. I guess once you have been in SL as long as I have, you cannot help knowing people who are ill, people who are flawed in one ways or the other because I myself come here to heal some parts of me that cannot be healed.

It is a heavier burden to bear than to see and if we can make a person feel they are loved and appreciated by such events, than half of the job is already done. Syabas!

dress: [CIA Designs] Floral Summer dress from Love Donna Flora event

Is it time to grow up yet?

Today is my birthday.
First thing I notice is, nothing has changed much over the year. I still try to please people, adapt myself to whatever that pleases them and then feel miserable for doing so. In my real life, I have minimized doing this so why am I bringing my bad habit into SL? It's important for people who are special to me to like me, but should they also not like me for whatever I am and how I project my avatar? It's alright to compromise a little, but to do it till I loose all zest for slife, is it worth it? Do I have to be boringly normal in SL too? Like right now I just want to dress my avatar like an elven with pale skin and otherworldly look. In rl I can't project my artsy self but in SL, anything goes and when I think about it, being an elf is not so way out there. It's just the pointy ears.
If I can love them for what they are, warts and all, why can they not do that for me?

Today I want to be a mer-elf. Is there such a thing? It's SL and I can have my avatar looking anyway I want to. It is my fantasy.

skin: Essences Noodles Pastel subscriber gift
hair:.Liquence F2 in Natural fades
Illusions High Elf Ears
Zaara Nizam Head jewel/ Pearl Choker
*EC* Lumina Mermaid - Aerie Edition
Boudoir Water Nymph shell bra
pose by wetcat seadepth

Black Joy

Moon is wearing Finesmith's jewelry and gown July Group Gift called Black Joy.

And how appropriate too because even in joy, I can feel the black clouds rolling in. Maybe because after many disappointments, I don't expect anything to be happily ever after for me. I can't really explain it but it's just one of those crazy feelings I get sometimes.

Without dream there is no hope and without hope there is no future.

Your hilarity is my Grief

Today I personally experienced griefing in SL. My friends have their club on my parcel and it's for live music. They've told me about griefers coming and being disruptive and today while there was a show going on, they came in drove and crashed the sim. These are not fans.
After the sim crashed, we came back and the show continued.
I just don't get how people think it's funny when they cause angst to their victims.
These musicians do not get a lot of money performing. Music and art is in their blood. They perform to the public because they love what they are doing and they give us joy in return.
Everybody wants to be happy. Everybody deserves to be happy.
But not at the expense of other people's happiness.

Year 6

Tomorrow will be my 6th year in SL.

Though the bad times and the good times, I have not been away from this virtual world more than a few days. It's like an extension of my life, although only my family knows about it because I don't know if my real life friends would understand why I would want to spent all my hours in a virtual world and I don't feel like I should explain to them or defend myself.

It started because I was bored and I wanted to pretend to be someone else and for the first 4 years, I spent my time in roleplay sims. I now think it was a waste of time because although it was supposed to be roleplay, people being people, takes things too seriously, myself included.

I'm happier now that I don't have to 'act'. I have time to learn to build and this creativity is one of the most satisfying thing that has come out of my virtual world experience.

I'm helping my very close friend with his club and that's something I never imagined I would experience.

One thing I learned about this virtual world, people are the same as in real life. If you are not careful, you will be used and abused and stepped on and stabbed in the back. And because of all these negativity, people are now not as open or friendly as they once were.... myself included.

And yes, SL can just be as lonely as the real world.

Feeling blue

This is the front part of the house I am building. This house would probably be on the prim heavy side because I added more details than I normally do because colonial style homes tend to have more architectural details.
I've been feeling down these past few days. I feel abandoned. Which is why this house looks like it's a little run down.

I still have a lot to do. Of course, if my mood changed, I might put pretty little flowers on the wall instead of that washed out paint job.

The feeling of loneliness, and the fear of not having anyone to care or love you, the feeling of rejection, is actually the feeling of being abandoned. The feeling of abandonment becomes inevitable when we lose those, who have been very close to us.
Read more at Buzzle: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/abandonment-issues-symptoms.html

I think loosing the men in my life has affected me more than I realised.

desolation

I am so used to waiting, I sometimes cannot differentiate between being taken advantage of and actually being patient.

Week2 Better than chocolate

My take on week 2, 50 shades of sexy challenge, Better than chocolate.

We were so close and yet we never touch. I heard this phrase on TV once and it has stuck in my head forever. It was from a movie I have not seen yet but they were showing ad clips and that phrase rings so true for me with the people I have met in sl.

Rezz Day!

Today is Moon's 4th rezz day. Personally, I have been in SL since Carter's birth, more than 5 years ago but this year is special for me. Moon has morphed into my real life opinions instead of just an avatar for roleplay as Carter used to be. I could not delete Carter because the first will always be special and I use her when I don't want to talk to anyone. I admit, I am not a social butterfly even if I love dressing up.
Anyway...
I am happy I carried on using this avatar after my roleplay character when sour. Firstly, it's so expensive to start a new avatar and secondly, experiences, good and bad makes a person and I found out for myself that the motto rl is rl and sl is sl is such a fake. Even in roleplay areas there are cliques outside of the acting and I could never be part of that no matter how I tried because I was always and forever an outsider.
Do I care? I used to but not so much now because I am at peace with myself. I am who I am and that is fine with me. So, enough of acting for me. I will project myself onto my avatar and hang around people who will accept me for who and what I am even if I do not hang out with them 24/7 and kiss their asses.

I've put this house up as a freebie in my Simple Things Mainstore and the marketplace. It's something that didn't go according to plan because while I was building the house, some things in my life didn't go the way I had hoped it would and the house turned out having this dark vibe. Well, to me it did and it reminded me of Jane Eyre... hence the name.
Nonetheless, I felt it is would be waste to trash the house because it would still be great in a roleplay sim.

A handful of Hearts

No new stuffs today. After my earlier post, this is what I came up with.

a Victim of bullying

Today I want to write a post that is very personal to me. About bullies and their victims. I don't know why people bully others and what it is that makes people become victims. I think maybe it is just the timing when these things occur. Sometimes you escape from the vicious circle, sometimes you get trapped in it.

When I was 8 years old, there is this girl who was bigger than me and she was my friend or so I thought because being a shy, quiet girl, anyone speaking to me I assumed liked me and was my friend. We hanged out together a lot in school. One day, I was playing with her pen and I accidentally dropped it and I was certain it wasn't broken but she insisted it was and demanded that I pay for it. RM$50 for it. Back then, RM$50 was probably like RM$200. A whole lot of money. I realised later when I was older that that freaking pen was probably only a few dollars. She would harass me everyday. Until one day I did the worst thing a child would do. Steal money from their parent. I avoided her after that and would go home as fast as I could once school was over. Fortunately, we moved away soon after that. It helps being an army brat. You don't stick around too long.

As a parent I try to protect my children as best I could. I had no idea my youngest child was also bullied. She was small for her age. And a little slow in understanding what was going on in school compared to her elder siblings. I only saw this aspect so I send her for tuition and it had helped her a lot in her studies. As the years pass, she became a straight A student and went on to be a prefect in secondary school. This was when the bullying became worst. From no other person than the head prefect. By then my daughter has turned out into a very pretty girl. Beauty with brains. I think you know where this is leading. The head prefect was not and she would try to force my daughter to do things and my daughter would stand up for herself and for others who were bullied. It got really bad when the prefect found my daughter's blog and showed it to her mother and that mother in turn showed it to the principal. Unfortunately,  my daughter had bitched about the prefect in her blog and her words were not exactly lady-like. Also unfortunate, those people were connected.

My daughter got suspended from school and that was went she went into depression and we had to seek medical help. We moved her to another school and thank God the administrations and teachers there were very supportive of her. By the time she left school a year later, she was their top student.

3 years later, my daughter has a semester left of college and she's still a top student and she achieved her ambition to be on the cover of a fashion magazine. She told me she wanted to stick her face in theirs. Hah what better way!

And the bully? Who cares!

What I'm saying is, victims of bullies need to have the support of their communities apart from their parents, families and friends. Children can be mean but when you're a young child, it can be very difficult to get over the scars. Too bad parents do not remind their children to be kind to others often enough because this is where it all starts in my opinion.

So to all bullies out there. Your parents did not do a good job raising you and I hope you will do a better job raising your own.

The show of life and final colour challenge

I feel sad that the colour challenge has come to an end, but all good things must come to an end one day and this has been a good project for me to participate.

I finally accepted mesh and although I miss my amazon blonde Moon, I'm happy with shorty brunette Moon.

This has not been a good year for me in SL or in RL but like all things, the show(of life) must go on. I'm grateful that I have not burdened anyone in my process to heal myself of the sadness that has happened to me and in the process, I found a creative outlet in architecture albeit not in a professional way. I'm happy with what I have done so far.

At the end of the day, I realised that I came to this world alone and I will leave it alone too and people are just spices in my life and if they leave, that's alright with me. They have already enhanced my life.

i am done

sometimes do you ever just want to curl up and ...

If you can say no

The hardest thing is to say no to people's requests but if you can, what does it make you? I'm finding it easier and easier to say no nowadays. I wonder if that is one of the signs of old age. Just like it's getting more and more difficult for me to keep quiet around irritating people. I read somewhere that women becomes more and more strict when they get older while men becomes more and more mellow. It has something to do with our hormones.

I completed my house. It's similar to my other modern houses but this one was in my head when I woke up last Sunday and instead of having breakfast, I am one of those people who can eat first thing when they wake up(I hear we are an endengered specie haha) anyway, instead of breakfast, I started building and 3 days later, it's in the Marketplace and at my little mainstore.

This little house has a sun roof in the kitchen! I love big huge windows and most of my houses have these big huge windows. And french doors! Well double doors actually but french doors sounds fancier.

As usual, I use my old furnitures to decorate the house and these furnitures are so versatile, I hate parting with them.

Things that irritate me in SL

Just like other people in SL, I do have pet peeves.

1. Top on my list would be when I go into a shop to get a freebie and it turned out to be a dollarbie! Why can't store owners differentiate between these 2? I can imagine somebody new who doesn't have a linden to their name going to that shop and realises they still have to PAY!

2. Next would be people who ask for lindens. If you can't afford your SL lifestyle, please change it. What makes them think that I am a bank that they can ask for interest free loans?

3. Next would be demos I have to pay. I think that is so cheap and very unclassy at all. Tells a lot about the person.... like fussy, calculative, unsportsmanlike.... I can go on being negative about them.

4. Shops that are too freaking big! I hate it when I have to wait for hours for things to rez just to buy or look at something. I don't think it matters to shoppers if a shop is small, as long as it's well organized. Maybe it's just me. I'm old. To me, having a darn big shop doesn't tell me that they're successful business persons. This is SL, it's all virtual and if you have the money in RL you can just dump it in to make your business LOOK successful. Of course if they're selling builds and foliages, that's a different story. Getting lost in garden shops is one of my best pasttimes, rl and sl.

5. Prices. I hate it when items that says they're silks or diamonds or gold or any of the expensive real life materials becomes pricey in SL too. It's virtual! Why does a SL diamond ring cost more than a SL glass ring?  I can't even feel it or touch it and I gotta pay for just the word?

Hmmm so far everything is about money, but then, isn't that what it is all about nowadays? On to number,

6. Next would be people who gets all bent out of shape when my avatar do things like shoot other avatars and they start regalling me about what happen to some people they know in real life. Excuse me, this is a Virtual World and playing with guns is like when we were kids and playing cops and robbers. Anyway, if you hate it so much, just mute us!

7. People who have all these attachments on them that asks in open chat to label them and gets mad when someone does. WHAT IS THAT? If you don't like strangers typing all sort of nonsense, DO NOT WEAR them in public.

8. Security Orbs and ban lines. I especially hate those when I'm sailing or flying and it takes more than the freaking 3 seconds they let me pass. Excuse me. I had no idea your parcel is FORT KNOX!

I'm sure I have more but at the moment I have cooled down and the things I've typed seemed trivial!

Honesty is such a lonely word

It's so true.
I thought I finally found someone whom I could be completely honest with and not be judged but I was wrong. For most people they would rather be the one saying all the so-called truth but when I hit them back with honesty, they can't handle it.
What is so wrong about saying something like "If I knew you'd react this way to my answer, I would have lied." I am only being honest. Which is why most of the time, I would rather just not explain anything. Let them think the worst why should I care?
If I wasn't bursting with new ideas for my builds, I would have gone for an extended break. I had to get this off my chest and this also serves as a remembrance for me about the pot calling the kettle black. I live by the motto if you can't accept certain things, you don't do it yourself which is why silence is always, always the best policy. Obviously most people only say that to others and not stand by their own words.

Time Flies

Doesn't it? Already it's the middle of the year. I admire people who doesn't wait, who just up and leave to do what they want. Who cares about cultures, traditions or even religions. Really, when you think about time, why should you wait and wait and wait for that someone to change and then realised you have grown old waiting when you could have been doing something else. I think the worst thing you could do to yourself is wait for someone because the most important person in your life is you.

My SL dad got married last weekend. A few days before, he got married in real life. I'm so happy for both of them.

This was my bridesmaid outfit. It had that fairy feel to it so when I got home from the wedding, I put on my wings and took this picture.

A lucky chair item from Snowpaw. Dancing girl in a sari skirt for Bollywood.

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I wore this hair with that outfit but I sure didn't feel like me! I didn't leave my house btw.

I had to modify the bam! hair to fit the hat. This is more me.

Mesh outfit from the recent Greatest Love Hunt. I still have a lot of boxes to unpack. There just doesn't seemed to be enough time:(

Wearing a Shiki outfit from the July Gypset Market. I almost forgot about this event with so many events going on around the Grid and all the things I want to do that has nothing to do with them like exploring and having fun! I am so happy with this hair gift from Analog dog. With all the colours inside, I am having fun trying them. I've always been partial to blonde. That yellow colour always cheers me up, that's why. In this picture I'm wearing the colour wonder. A colour most asians would probably know when they try to dye their hair blonde using on the shelf product. LOL. Ah and don't forget to dye the eyebrows too!