RL Sponsors

Having seen the initial success of the Surfline SL collaboration and PADI’s amazing work in SL, we are evaluating a similar partnership with ocean focused Real Life (RL) sponsors, either surfing product, windsurfing product, scuba product, fishing product or general ocean activities product suppliers that would be interested in sponsoring Bishara Resorts, and in return having the dominant product placements within our island group.  Furthermore, the sponsor would be able to place virtual versions of their real life products in Bishara and Second Life in general for showcasing / marketing as well as general purpose testing.  We are casting our lines out wide to find people who could help with high level introductions to companies that may fit this profile, and who would enhance the overall resort environment, look and enjoyment.  If you have anyone who could help sponsor or you believe your own company would be interested, please drop a notecard to VW Sands or Dumisani Ah at your earliest convenience.

New Bishara market Surf Sail and Diving store area open now!

Hi everyone, please drop a notecard with VW Sands or myself if you are interested in having a spot in the Bishara Market on Bishara Beach.  If you make surf / sail / dive equipment or clothing this is for you.  Majini Island feeds up to 10,000 true visitors to the beaches regularly, often higher than that, so the region is well served by your potential customer base.  Rates will be given once we understand the demand for space and once we have configured the layout to allow as many as possible to sell here without overwhelming one another.  We love making rentals from people, but not at the expense of the island layout, so space will remain limited.  Please don’t delay, get those notecards submitted asap.

Scuba on Bishara Resorts!

Hey everyone, we have been working hard on preparing the diving spots of the resort and have some surprises coming up!  You can see a little of what we are preparing for you by taking a sub from the Bishara Dive Shop and diving down through the cavern in the Eastern wall of Munch Bay.

The diving subs are also how we hope to create more fun for you all, as the Splash Aquatic vehicles are easy to operate and low on lag.  You can get a sub at two sub stations at the moment, either using the one at the dive shop on Bishara, or by taking one at the Mandhari entrance.  Simply touch the sub station to rezz your own sub 😉  Have fun with that! (Bahati residents, yours will be rezzed today).

New islands have landed! WOOOTTTTT!!!

We have finally placed two of four new Open Space sims right next to Majini and Mandhari islands. Watch this space as we expand your surfing, sailing and diving experiences massively! The two islands are Pepo Island, meaning Island of Wind or Windy Island, and the other is called Wimbi Island, the Island of waves or the Wave Island. Hehehe, quite prophetic, I can promise you that. Anyone interested in new residential and commercial land MUST drop me an IM within the next 10 days as we are ordering several new full sims by the 16th of May. IM Dumisani Ah or VW Sands 😉

Surf

Aloha Bishara!

Just a quick update to get me warmed up and see if I can learn to post here 🙂

As you all know, Dumi and I have been working very hard as of late in an effort to give Bishara and the surrounding sims a much needed face-lift and the results speak for themselves! Queen is putting the finishing touches on the new art gallery, the new Surf Center is packed with great new boards, the new Bishara Dive Shop is stocked with some really great dive gear and the sim(s) is/are looking really great.

As I try to confine my madness to the surf program (although it has leaked out some) I would like to give you all a quick update on the post-Havoc situation. The day after the H4 server code was implemented, I shut down the Epic as it was (and still is) nearly unridable. Pipe waves seem to behave somewhat better and though far from trouble free, a triple set with fluffs is running on Majini. The isues with the big wave have been recognized and are being looked at by Sidewinder in close communication with Heather Goodliffe. It´s a wait and see if some fix is implemented with the 1.21 server code later next week.

In the meantime, all of the surfboard vendors have been updated to issue a “Havoc compatible” surfboards upon purchase so rest easy knowing that at least the boards have been updated to float properly, although the new camera scripts may take some getting used to.

Dumi was gracious enough to order 10 new Majini boards and the vendors are rezzed on the main beach! Some killer new desings, 5 “modern” boards and 5 Woodies all 100% Pure Juice! Textured by Schrotti, the new Majini boards are awesome.

Majini hosted the first post-havoc contest last saturday, the VSA Surf-Jam 3 and considering the somewhat quirky conditions caused in the H4 environment it was once again a blast!

We have a major Windsurfing comp coming up in less than 2 weeks which will be run on the Epic, for better or worse, lets hope that LL gets a fix implemented. Safe to say that when and if LL get the issues with the Epic sorted we will be back in full swing.

So, all in all – yes we have seen some problems with H4 but the collective, chilled-out attitude of our surfing community has allowed us to still have way to much fun. I really believe that once these initial issues are sorted, surfing in sl and in the Bishara estate in particular, will be better than ever. Hang in there, we are all working really hard to bring you the best surfing in sl 🙂

Sub you say?

A reference to sunken surfboards 🙂 but more importanly new underwater features! The diving areas are being worked on constantly in an effort to bring you not only awesome surfing but a diving environment to be remembered. Stay tuned for some awesome new features that will allow you to have as much fun under the surface as above it.

Mahalo,

/V

What can you find in Bishara?

On our islands you will find a lot of activities and attractions made purely for your enjoyment. Even those that may cost L$10 or L$20 to play still pay you back half your money or some great cash prizes. But the most amazing things to see are mostly underwater, and require you to either take a swim or a dive to experience them. Its here that our focus remains always, trying to build a reef environment in the islands that will allow you to experience the waters of our world as close as you can without actually being in it in RL. For many access to the oceans do not come easy or are just impossible without an extensive trip or massive arrangements, and it is my hope that Bishara can be a small window into the fantastic underwater world of earth!

We are making steady progress with our object info orbs to build out our Bikipedia 😉 As soon as they have been placed we will have a big launch with all of you invited to the party!

Who is REEF.org, Bishara’s main supported aquatic preservation organization?

REEF (the Reef Environmental Education Foundation) is an international non-profit marine conservation organization that engages scuba divers and other marine enthusiasts as ocean stewards and citizen scientists. Since 1993, the REEF Volunteer Fish Survey Project (VFSP) has enlisted more than 10,000 divers and snorkellers in marine life identification and the collection of population and distribution data in the form of fish and invertebrate surveys. REEF volunteers are active participants in marine conservation, conveying valuable underwater information to scientists and resource managers to make informed decisions for the future of ocean ecosystems. REEF membership is free-for more information and to get involved, please visit http://www.reef.org.

Bishara’s reefs – the real story…

When you arrive in Bishara and its sims or islands, it will strike you that we use an interesting blue texture for the base water texture of the land and that we spend a lot of time and effort building virtual reefs all around. In fact we support Splash and Kaikou Splash, and many other SL sea-life creators extensively for very good reasons.
Although Bishara means ‘commerce’ in Swahili (Biashara), it also means ‘blessing’ in Arabic, and it is intended to mean both these two things within SL for us for a very good reason. In the resort we are trying to excite SL residents about their ocean life and the fantastic creations that SL artists and creators are putting out into the SL community every day, and we do this because we too find such wonderful creativity in Second Life’s tools and we like you to see just what can be achieved by using them like Kaikou Splash and others do.

However we also try and excite you about these fantastic creations because they showcase in a very limited fashion what you and I can experience in RL (real life) almost every single day if we live near a body of water, or at least every time we visit the ocean or a lake or a waterside resort. Life in water is absolutely amazing and the color of our base texture, the blue you see there, comes directly from a modified picture of a reef in real life. It is our way of linking Bishara with RL almost from the word go, as you land in Bishara it is the colour that first strikes you as odd. And it reflects our passion – to showcase the beauty that the sea and water in general has in its diverse life and diverse environments.

SL cannot begin to truly reflect this beauty yet, but we feel it is one place where we can show you from the comfort of your home just how wonderful water based, or sea-life or aquatic life can be, and it is our particular interest to use Bishara Resorts as a springboard for our residents and visitors to visit real life establishments that work so much harder than us to conserve the stunning world under the waters and seas of this planet of ours. So we are rolling out over the next few months project after project to showcase this to you all and to direct you to a real life experience reflecting each new SL project we do.

Starting in November you will be able to see how scuba works by diving in Majini under the powerful Epic waves there, and to experience first hand what happens when a dive goes wrong, how the results are treated, what makes for safe scuba experiences and so on.

In November we are also launching our first attempt at a virtual fish counting experience for residents, and this will showcase the efforts made by REEF.org in real life fish counting projects around the world and their hard work at preserving our future aquatic heritage. – See my Reef.org post just above.

Month after month Bishara will be rolling out project after project that will showcase someone in RL’s efforts in as near as we can in SL, so that you as our residents and visitors can have the best virtual experience of what it takes to conserve this planet of ours and in particular the underwater world we dont always see, but that is essential to our life here on Earth.