Big Sink, Moa 01 October 20, 2009

Baker Bloch starts exploring what’s now called Big Sink in ernest, beginning with the edge closest to his home in Aotearoa. The sim to the west of Aotearoa, Moa, is the home of the westernmost part of Big Sink. On the ridge between it and the much smaller Aotearoa sink is found this faintly mysterious shop called Yukon Yuniverse. It’s one of the closest non-Baker structures to the cottage on my land, perhaps the closest — less than 100 meters. The faintly mysterious part is the absence of a real door, and, related to this, the fact that the shop has such a huge front with a sign perched near the top of the 20 meter high structure, a simple box. The only way you can get into the shop is to walk through the front glass window panes, which are set to phantom. Anyone who’s been in SL long enough would know to try entry this way, but still it seems a little odd — no door. Inside are 4 identical pictures symmetrically hung in a straight line on the back wall, each offering a different item from the picture (2 tables, a chair, a sofa). The furniture, etc., in the story is actually really nice looking for such low prim products. Might have to splurge and buy some for the house or somewhere… Baker Bloch always likes to support the local merchants when possible.

I don’t know — maybe the shop’s not odd at all, SL-speaking.

Then it’s on to another very nearby parcel to my Aotearoa gallery, this time about 100 meters directly west of the cottage, and on the south side of the Big Sink in Moa. Another slightly curious thing: the birch tree pictured here takes up only 4 of the 137 used prims of the small, 256 sq meter parcel; the wall behind it takes up another 5. Yet this leaves 128 prims still to be accounted for. Baker checks under the ground using disable camera constraints option: nothing there. He flies as high as possible. No sign of a skybox. Well, I’ll just have to send high flier Hucka D. up there sometime to see if he can find anything. Again, probably nothing, but just thought I’d note, especially since it is practically right next door to my land.

Standing in the same spot, Baker then turns in his tracks to see what appears to be another avatar standing in a window of a nearby pyramid shaped building, partically blocked from view by the corner of the building — or is the avatar spying on him from this half-hidden position? Turns out there’s no mystery here: the “avatar” is just a 1 prim cut out of such propped up in the corner. Still it kind of spooked the admittedly easy-to-spook Baker Bloch at the time.

Then it’s further down in the Moa portion of Big Sink to find another one of those curious, unfinished parcels, claimed in early 2007, quite a long time ago. Perhaps claimed by someone who has long since left SL. Perhaps he planned to build a store here, but never got around to it. RL called. Hmmm… 65 prims used this time, a number that has come up recently in the blog in other contexts. Again… probably nothing. A note: this is one of the few structures of any kind in the actual bottomland of Big Sink in the Moa sim. In checking, Baker Bloch is now counting 2 others, one a rental advertisement (by my former Noru landlady, just to note) and another a workshop of some kind with a few, mostly half finished objects within. The bottomland, thus, remains basically bare in Moa.

Just above the canoe-tent parcel, we have these adjacent 512 and 1024 parcels owned by the group called Therapy Group, and promoting yoga, SL style. Below Baker sits on one of the several benches lining the walkway to the 1 room yoga practice building. Looks like the palm trees are themselves engaged in some kind of synchronized yoga position (!)

The interior.

Perhaps curious flying animals dot the sky above the Moa version Big Sink, including a cow and a unicorn — no the latter is a horse with a lance stuck to one side of it. Or maybe just a really poorly formed unicorn… probably the former. Anyway, as Baker Bloch is attempting to ride it now, he unsurprisingly gets on of those “only the owner can ride this” messages. Same for the cow. Unsurprisingly again, Baker finds both animals have the same owner, one Antoyo Seetan, perhaps a Russian (both animals are owned by his Second Russia group).

Now I’m being detail oriented here because I’m trying not to overlook *anything* that might give us additional clues about the nature of Big Sink. I consider it sacred ground. Could be wrong. Eventually, slowly, we’re going to reach the center of the sink in Pudding Hill, where Hucka D. supposedly lived with The Bakers in that alternate reality he mentioned in a recent post or two. Now mind you it’s not going to be very exciting there because it’s an empty lot. But just standing on that central point, imagining what it might have been like in this variant reality, could lead to further insights and revelations.

So below we have another curious object, once again owned by the Therapy Group and on the smaller of their two adjacent parcels already visited. This is an object called, in its description, “Broken Billboard”. Indeed the “broken” part seems to be that the same texture has been applied to all surfaces, erasing, in effect, any original, unique textures that would make it, in effect, “unbroken”.

Instead we have a single picture texture, shown close up below. Palm trees again…

Baker Bloch is speculating that it may be from the same location as that pictured within the yoga room just to the east. Unfortunately, no clue can be found from researching Therapy Group itself, whose SL description and info, again perhaps curiously, perhaps not, remains totally empty. No members listed, no group charter — nothing.