Go Shorty, it's your re-birthday...

"This is the best day of my life."

That's what I told the Chief Operations Officer Paul Finer of ACTV in my exit interview when I got laid off on June 19, 2003. My Re-Birthday.

My job at ACTV for 3 1/2 years started out as an exciting and hip dot com job, but gradually degenerated to a regular boring corporate job. By my third year, I had survived about six layoffs, and I was getting tired - and lonely too as my colleagues were getting laid off periodically on a whim like a UFO abduction.

I wanted to get laid off and see the world. It seemed that everyone that got laid off was having a better life after ACTV. It never happened for a whole year.

Meanwhile, I read Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist on New Year's 2002/2003, and I vowed that I would leave ACTV by the end of the year, whether they liked it or not. I envisioned myself quitting in grand style like Jerry Maguire, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving 2003. To prepare for my big scene, I started saving money like crazy, which included moving back home to my folks house. (They had me at "hello.")

It's funny how life throws you a curveball because I actually got laid off five months earlier than I anticipated to be unemployed. No worries; I got a decent severance package which brought me to my target save amount. I didn't even have to yell "Show me the money" into a telephone neither.

So, I am off to see the world for 14-16 months, starting in October. And it's funny how things just fall into place, because coincidentally, I landed at gig being the weekly travelogue columnist at the Lycos Network, in Asia, based on my work at BootsnAll.com. (See the right column for those.)

A new weekly travelogue column. Over a year around the world. It's like a whole new life for me after 28 years of going through the rigamarole of society's daily routines. But now I have been unplugged from The Matrix.

Go shorty, it's my birthday, I'm gonna party like it's my re-birthday...

Bye Bye Lycos!

Well, that was short-lived. After just three weeks of my break out into the travelogue column scene at Lycos-Asia, it is no more.

After submitting a brand new story about the aboriginal tour of Uluru in Australia (my third for the weekly column) and not seeing it online the following Monday, I figured something was up. I emailed my producer Carol in Singapore and she tried as best as she could to avoid the subject. (She simply logged off MSN Messenger.) Finally after a day, she replied and told me, "Something's up at Lycos. You'll find out tomorrow."

The next day I was part of a mass e-mail from her which announced her retrenchment - or in American layman's terms, her "being let go," her "lay off," her "pink slip." She and a whole group from Lycos Asia in Singapore got the boot, which in turn, got me the boot. (Carol was the sole producer/creator of the travelogue column.)

Right now, I seriously doubt anyone will take over for her, or if the column will continue to exist. I suppose there's still room for a little wishful thinking, but I'm not really counting on it. It's not so much a downer anyway, because A) it didn't pay me; B) I don't have to rush out content in haste every week; and C) I got my byline from them anyway. In the end, "Lycos" gets added to my CV, on my list of publications, which is a good thing...

Carol may move or switch jobs by the time I make it to Singapore, so the question is, where can I crash when I get there!? Hmmm....

Wheels In Motion

AirTreks received my payment today for the first half of my flights, and the tickets are in the works. I should have them in a couple of weeks. I was only able to book the first half now, as airline ticket inventory only goes so far into the future. The other half I'll book on the way. Perhaps by the halfway point my itinerary will be completely different, and I'll just go where the wind takes me. Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, my application for extra pages to my passport's visa section is on its way out. And the good folks at BootsnAll have posted my RTW profile, complete with a pretty cool portrait my brother Mark shot for me:

http://www.BootsnAll.com/rtw/profile/etrinidad.shtml

I'm pretty shocked when reviewing the profiles of the other RTWers. A lot of them are skipping out on Africa and just doing the SE Asia/Oz/NZ thing. My first trip to Africa is what infected me with the Travel Bug in the first place! Oh well, their loss...

To Plan or Not to Plan

So everyone lately has been asking me, "How's the planning going?" Well, the short answer is that there isn't much planning at all...

When I first had the idea of this trip, I planned like a madman. I had an Excel document, and worked out a budget per week and a target city to be in every Sunday, and all that stuff. I even started reading Lonely Planet's South America On A Shoestring to figure out the more detailed day-to-day itinerary.

Then I read Doug Lansky's Rough Guides book, First Time Around the World, and in it, he warns about overplanning. Overplanning sets up too high an expectation, and you'll only end up feeling down when stuff doesn't go according to plan...which often happens in developing countries. Other season travelers have seconded this notion, by word of mouth and in books; Rolf Potts, author of Vagabonding, even suggests to just buy flights along the way as it hits your mood.

No guide should be treated like a bible, so I'm compromising. While my flights are more or less set in stone, there are at least 3 months in between them for the wind to take me wherever. I anticipate getting into random adventures as I just roam on and off the backpacker trail, always working towards my next airport departure city.

I realized that when I was planning out a day-to-day itinerary, each page was short enough that I could just read as I travel along...no sense in cramming it all up front and locking myself to a routine. Routines and schedules are what I'm leaving behind in the USA in the first place.

So the answer to "How's the planning going?" is, it's not really going at all. My plane tickets are booked and are en route to me, my passport's away to get extra visa pages in it, and my travel vaccination appointment has been made. My first country Ecuador doesn't require a visa, so I don't have to worry about that. Subsequent visas I'll worry about in the neighboring country before I enter it. I suppose the week before I leave, I'll look up a hostel in Quito and book it.

I've quoted him before, and I'll quote him again:

"I don't know, I'm making this up as I go."
- Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark