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fyi:
 = pictures

who are you?
i am nicole, otherwise known as elocin (my backward name). i am (usually) a freelance information architect by day and a decadent freak by night- or a mopey couch potato, depending on who you ask and how close i am to taking a trip :). i was born with a restless gene, or a simple innate refusal to trap myself in the typical situation of routine and stagnation (hubby, kids, screensavers of my dog in my windowless office, minivan parked outside my suburban plastic house), which makes me an avid traveller. on october 16, 2002, i threw all caution to the wind, and despite the current political unrest in the world, quit my job, packed all of my possessions into a small storage unit in brooklyn, split with my boyfriend of five years, and left NYC to attempt a year and a half trek "around the world" (or as close as i can get to it). i picked the trip up again in october 2007. check out my main links page to get an idea of my (rather liberal and unconventional) interests in general.

what is this site all about?
i originally intended this to be a travel guide based on the places i have explored. but the fact is, when you are travelling you are hardly tempted to take the time to build a well-presented, thorough analysis of wherever you are (unless you are 'x'). somehow it has turned itself into more of a travelogue. people seem to enjoy reading my day by day experiences, mundane though i sometimes feel they are. maybe it's nice to know that things are fairly similar across the planet. but there are always little differences which fascinate me and which i like to point out for the benefit of those who can't see them for themselves. i also have attempted to be 100% honest and non-pretentious in the way i write. my audience is made up of friends, neighbors, family, and ex-coworkers as well as the stray wanderer... these are people whom (given my nomadic nature) i am unable to keep in regular contact with otherwise. it's nice to be able to keep a running conversation of sorts, and to me it's important to be true to myself so that in the long run, these people have a real idea of who i really am. thus what you see is what you get. and in as close to real time as i can get it given the technological limitations i encounter as a traveller in mostly third world countries.

how did you do this site?
i take pictures with my digital camera and download them to my laptop, occasionally cleaning them up with photoshop. for my pages i prefer to use straight html, so i have one simple template that i update every day and periodically burn to cd. i ftp my files up from internet cafes- easy to find though the connections are not always so reliable. i originally built the site in cold fusion with an admin tool that i can use from internet cafes to update it, but i am simplistic and rarely do so. i use dreamweaver to do my code (easy), and access as the database for the few database driven parts.

how do you travel?
i have travelled all of my life, though mostly domestically in the US with my family. since i have been on my own i have decided to make international travel a priority in my life. it makes me happy. therefore i had fallen into a somewhat frustrating pattern of working for a few months to save, and travelling with the money for a month or so, working some more to save, etc.... for this trip i forced myself to stay in one place for a year and a half to save, and hopefully it will balance out by allowing me to have a year and a half free! luckily i am in a very flexible and well-paying line of work, and i constantly update my skillset by reading up on the side, so i hope to eventually be able to work independently from wherever i am, and in fact it is a goal to do so. overall though, if you want something bad enough, you find a way to get it, and that's what i have done. (you can too!)