| abstract
| - Uli has an intriguing genesis and history since its beginning. The sim itself is a masterpiece of Linden terraforming. It features a lake at one of the end, from which one of the most wonderful waterfalls in SL flows into a river. This river widens into a lake with a very large island in the middle, and then goes on to meet the sea. All around the river area, pretty high mountains encircle the river, making for one of the most fantastic views in SL. People would expect that, like on the rest of SL, residents in Uli would terraform everything flat and start putting up shops, malls, clubs and casinos. However, interestingly enough, this did not happen. A core group of residents - Lily Lightcloud, Keith Extraordinaire and Ky Callaghan, to name but a few - have managed to get a big chunk of the best land in Uli, and they engage on an ongoing war - a gardening war! However, each "side" cheats on the others, since they usually help each other in a very friendly neighbourhood. Featured themes are bushes and trees, as well as waterfalls - Uli is The Waterfall Sim by excellence! Buildings range from the ultra-modern glass structures by Keith Extraordinaire - with a house almost covered by waterfalls - or a curious reconstruction of Escher's architecture, passing through typical American-style rural houses (Lily Lightcloud) or country-style English homes (the Anansis). All these builds are surrounded by gardens, lakes, small rivers and waterfalls, and there is an active exchange of new textures for landscaping/gardening items, which have made Uli one of the most beautiful sims to visit. Interestingly enough, new residents have "fitted in" this environment, even the smaller plots. Gradually, the most ugly buildings that Uli once featured disappeared one by one, and a general consensus among the neighbours has "forbidden" the building of shops, malls, casinos, or any sort of high-lagging events. There is an open-air Art Gallery and a Pavillion where some discussion events were hosted in the past, but it's not usual. There is also a small shop selling designer clothes. The lake up in the mountains has once hosted a few meetings of teenagers who met at the bottom of the lake. In the mythical history of Uli, an "earthquake" (a sim which broke completely) has changed a lot of the land in early 2004. Due to the new terraforming rules, it wasn't possible to "revert" the land to the original state. Additionally, many plots were mixed up and there was a source of trouble for the original owners, as suddenly their own land disappeared, was now in the possession of a neighbour, or was changed back into Governor Linden land. From the outlook of Uli nowadays, however, it certainly seems that all issues were sorted out by the residents among themselves, since Uli is beautiful as ever, and the residents there still wage their gardening wars. Residents are mostly artists, both in SL and RL. Most of them stay in Uli to relax by building lovely places - and then go elsewhere as contract builders to do more shops or malls or clubs. Neighbors are pretty open and friendly, organizing spontaneous (unorganized and unannounced) parties or meetings, chatting around sitting on the grass and watching the eagle flying around the "small volcano" in the middle of the lake island in the centre of Uli. This has often attracted people all over SL to get together simply for talking. It's hard to buy land in Uli - anyone who moves in, doesn't move out. The older residents have sold almost all their land owned elsewhere to enlarge their own places and make sure that no high-lag, ugly structures appear in Uli. Renting land there is sometimes an option. The Uli residents also have a group which is rarely used.
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