While everyone else is getting excited about the new mainland, I have been exploring the ends of Second Life's flat earth. In searching for the eastern most sim, I found the honeycomb continent of Serena. Unlike Paulson, the ear shaped mini continent located northwest of Gaeta, I did not name Serena. All the sims on this honeycombed group of touching but not contiguous islands start with the name Serena. Note: there is a group of eight islands a bit to the southeast of Serena, but they are inaccessible to the travelling public.
On September 19 Serena looked like
http://tacheiru.us/flyingfrogs/serena.png
Here are two shots of the info-hub, the island in the center of the main honey comb. I call the smaller honeycomb to the west of the main one West Serena for want of a better name.
http://tacheiru.us/flyingfrogs/serena3.png
http://tacheiru.us/flyingfrogs/serena4.png
The Serena info-hub has low paying camping that is infested with bots. I fully expected Serena to take a hit along with the rest of the real life economy. I went back there on October 22 and made another snap shot of the map and....
http://tacheiru.us/flyingfrogs/serena1b.png
Serena had grown. Those east most islands were not there a month ago. When I landed on one of them Serena Arcati, the land had a claim date of October 19.
It feels very strange to reach the end of the world.
It feels even stranger to see that someone or some group is investing thousands of real world dollars in virtual real estate and then hoping to rent it off for $271/month or so to other people. All this is happening while far more reasonably priced mainland parcels go begging. Human beings are not rational when making economic decisions. There must be plenty of rich people with money to burn. I'm boggled.
