Oxbridge Opening is Nigh

The Guv announced that, Linden Willing, Caledon Oxbridge will be open for business on Monday. Rather than noobies leaving the warm bosom of the arrival island and coming straight to the wanton hell of the Mainland, some lucky fraction will arrive here, and be immediately immersed in neo-Victorian wonderfulness. (I know, not a word. Get over it.) I was new not so long ago, and I remember vividly needing help with even the most basic things. It's a difficult time - unless one arrives with friends, and therefore all learn together, after about a week of aimless wandering and frustrating attempts to look a little more polished, the whole SL experience starts to pall, or at least it did for me.

I look at the spires of Oxbridge from the train track to Greystoke:

We'll see how things work out, of course, but I'm less concerned than some (judging by comments on ISC chat) that we shall be overrun by coarse noobies with exposed genitalia. People will come, some will stay because they like it, and others will leave - perhaps later to return, perhaps not. Should I see exposed genitalia, I shall avert my eyes and move on, whilst offering a polite observation that some things are better left to the imagination.

The city of spires:


(Entirely OOC remark here, but it seems to fit it: some fraction of newcomers to a place or situation have absolutely no ability or willingness to look around them and take cues from the old-timers. In my typist's world, the Washington, D.C. Metro system prohibits eating and drinking on the trains. One can sit in a car and have no one eating or drinking, and someone will come in and start slurping from a soda bottle, and will not think it strange that he is the only one thirsty at that moment. The commuter trains generally have a "quiet car," where cell phone use is prohibited. Again, a newcomer will arrive, ignore the sign that designates the car as a cell phone-free zone, and start gabbing, apparently believing that it is just his good fortune to find an enclosed area of, say, 50 individuals and no one else is interested in polluting the air with an inane conversation. The utter cluelessness of a small fraction of the population never ceases to amaze me.)

Of course, some are preparing for an influx of newcomers in different ways. His Grace Cymru, Viderian Vollmar, is building a battleship to ward off any attempts to take his lands. See how the unfinished ship dwarfs the Hangover One, at left.