Skylab

Traveling the world with it’s music

Archive for category Preparation

Farewell All

May 11

Posted by Skylab in Preparation | 9 Comments

Tomorrow is the day. I had planned this  day since August 2008 and I can remember at the time thinking to myself I had a long way to go. Each day felt like an eternity. Now that it’s coming up tomorrow, I feel like it came up too quick. Getting ready was a bit of a battle at times but somehow it all worked out. To anyone reading this planning their own trip, don’t give up. The pieces all fall into place the way its suppose to.  As a matter of fact, it’s as if my journey started the second I decided to take one. Selling it all, paying off debt, changing of my address, canceling services, creating websites, different lifestyle, and so much more had to be done before I left. I have my backpack all set and ready to go. And yes I’m still nervous.

Family
For the last week I been living in PA to spend some time with my family. It doesn’t get better then this. Totally spoiled. My brother and I hang out as often as possible. It’s great how much he looks up to me and what I’m doing. He told me yesterday I better get him something from every country. I’ve taught my entire family how to use Skype so I expect all of you to use it! My Skype name is vSkylabv :)

Going Away Party
I had a blast at my going away party. It was at Ultrabar in Teaneck. I’m extremely grateful for the amount of good friends I have. Although the camera had been lost, I’ll always remember that night. Danced, drank, and had a great time. Bottle service and the works. Thank you to everyone who came and to everyone who set it up. It was truly amazing.

What I’m Taking
As many of you know, I’m backpacking. One backpack and two feet. Not much else besides the contents inside the backpack.

Pretrip Backpack

Click on the image to see everything labeled

Vasque Hiking Boots
New Balance Walking Shoes
Flipflops
Swimtrunks
Jeans
Cargo Shorts
2x Quick dry towels
Journal Book
Copies of Documents
Long Sleeve shirt
x5 Short Sleeve shirts
Polo Shirt
4 Underwears
7 Pairs of socks
2 books of pictures
Axe shower gell packets
Face cleaner pads
Instant cold pack
Tide laundry cleaner
First aid (bandaids, tylenol, alcohol pads)
Dial soup
String
Toothbrush
Power converters
Eye glasses case
Ipod with charger
Brushups
Mini Flashlight
Axe body spray
Facewash
Gold Bond Powder
Shampoo and Conditioner
Blistex
Doxycycline
Axe deodorant
Pens
Rubberbands
Playing cards
Toothpaste
Cortaid
Laptop case
Watch
Umbrella
Sanyo Xacti video camera with charger
Samsung TL100 with case and USB charger
Headphones
Webcam
Mini Mouse
Asus EEE PC Netbook Laptop
Bag for toiletry
Eaglecreek Backpack w/ Day pack
Water resident jacket

Well this is my last entry before I head out. Next time you hear from me, I’ll be in Beijing, China.

Thank you SSSOOO much everyone for all the support you have given me!!

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Farewell UPS

Apr 28

Posted by Skylab in Preparation, United States | 1 Comment

I started July 17th 2007 at UPS. For the first six months, I was a consultant just trying to work my way up to get hired after six months. On the sixth month, I got hired and even got a higher position. I was estatic at the time since it was a huge pay raise for me. The pay raise resulted in many good things happening including getting my own apartment and being able to afford my trip. Then in August 2008 it hit me that I wanted more out of life so I began my budget hungry ways saving for the ultimate life experience backpacking the world. Now I’m down to my last two days working at UPS. I remember saying to myself a few months ago how I still have to wait so long but now it seems like it came up so fast.

  • I’ll always remember the Ultimate Frisbee days. Every week (Usually Wednesdays or Thursdays) after work. Intense work out with plenty of injuries. I looked forward to every game.
  • Golds Gym in Paramus. It was a ritual every lunch period for one hour to work out. The peanut butter buster protein shakes were out of this world. I had never been healthier in my life.
  • Before I had joined Golds Gym, bunch of us would go out to lunch to new exciting places. The foods we ate and the people we met during lunch made the experience unforgetable.
  • The people. That is the number one thing I will never forget. Some are long time time friends now and others I may never see again but one thing is for sure, it was great meeting every single person here.

Thank You
Zeenat: Wouldn’t have made it this far if it wasn’t for your training. I need to come down to ATL and visit! Our talks always made my day.
Judah: It was never the same here since they let you go. I’m glad we continued to be good friends.
Justin: You gave me tons of inspiration when I first decided this trip. And awesome motivation at the gym.
Kota: Our lunches and breaks were epic. You introduced me to so many people here.
Steve: You introduced me to the apartment complex. I got a great deal out of that thanks to you. Don’t let the PLD’s kill you man!
Jeff: Been awhile and you were only here for a short period of time but damn it was fun!
Alyssa: Although we don’t talk much anymore, my first month or two here was awesome because of you. It was basically at least a 5 hour day of Microsoft Communicator with just you. We had great convos.
My entire group: Gerri, Bob, Hiram, Debbie, Fran, Aneesah, Janet, Kevin, Aileen, Dennis, and Gail.
Other groups: Guy, Nathan, Theresa, and Niket.
And to everyone else who I may have forgotten. You all made this experience working here very interesting and entertaining.

I’ll never forget any of you :)
PS: The work itself I’ll easily forget though lol

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The Day I Became an Internet Entrepreneur

Mar 25

Posted by Skylab in Art Of Backpacking, China, India, Nightlife Vibe, Preparation | 1 Comment

Conquering the Internet

Including DJSkylab.com, I’m now the developer and administrator of three websites. Art of Backpacking started pretty randomly and has grown a lot since December of 2008. Last month Eddy G invited me to join a community forum that was hosted under Proboards. It was an idea I’ve always wanted to start but never put the energy and time into it. A community message board about all things music. As we all know, Proboards sucks big time. Eddy and I talked some more about the community and decided we could work together to make this the largest and best music resource. It took me awhile to gather some ideas and put it all together but we eventually got www.nightlifevibe.com domain and I also went ahead and bought the Bluehost server. We started out using Joomla integrated with phpBB. I found myself having to do way too much coding with this combination and it wasn’t exactly what we were looking for. Joomla and phpBB is great but it’s just not for us. After a bit of research I found that vBulletin was the way to go. There went another $180. Between purchasing the domain, host, and VB – it’s been a pretty costly website so far. After all the changes I’ve made the users go through, I’m finally happy with what we have and expect no further major changes. As of right now, we have 56 members which is pretty high considering how new we are. I’m happy with it and I see a very bright future for Nightlife Vibe. Please support us and register!

 

Laptop Hard Drive Failure

What a bunch of suck. I’m chilling in Panera and I just shutdown the computer getting ready to take the bus home. So I get home and power the computer on and surprise surprise; windows is missing. WHY? I checked the BIOS and it seems like the hard drive is completely gone. Computers run on magic and this crap just happened randomly. Thankfully everything (or almost everything) was backed up. At least I have my pictures which is very important to me. I’ve called up Asus and I will be looking forward to sending this back so I can get a new one. Maybe I should take back my good review of the laptop. This mess is making me consider not bringing a laptop while I travel and instead use Internet Café’s once a week while I travel. It’s an idea and I haven’t decided yet if this is what I want to do. Blogging most likely will be on paper first then I’ll just copy it over to the computer with pictures attached. With taking care of three websites and this being my main income while I travel, I need access to a computer pretty often which is my only concern. We’ll see how I feel by the time I leave.

 

+1 Chinese Visa, Next: India

After a long process of having to wait on several lines in the Chinese Visa office, I finally received my visa. I got an adrenaline rush seeing the stamp glued onto a page in my passport. I walked out of there (After paying the outrageous fee of $130) with the biggest smile just thinking to myself “Damn! I’m really going to do this!” India seems to make this a lot easier to apply. All I need to do is mail some information and they mail it back which is much easier then having to wait on lines and making sure you’re there before closing.

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Less is More

Mar 4

Posted by Skylab in Art Of Backpacking, Nightlife Vibe, Preparation, United States | 1 Comment

Moved Out

Well Teresa and I moved out of my apartment from the Grand Imperial in Hackensack. I had more then enough to be able to afford it however I wanted to save more money for my trip coming up. In the process of moving out, I had thrown away or sold nearly everything I’ve owned. I’m down to a suite case and backpack. Eventually I’ll only be down to a backpack however my job requires me to wear business casual (ssucckkss) so that was extra clothes. Where am I now? Just across the street! From an ad on Craigslist, I found a one bedroom for more then half the rent I was paying before and that doesn’t even include all the utilities I use to have to pay. It’s a top floor pent house condo. There’s beautiful view of NYC out of my bedroom window. The family I’m staying with is making me feel at home pretty quickly. They have a 5 year old son which is just like taking care of Cristian all over again. As soon as I get home, “Hey Mike! Want to play Wii?” lol. Extremely nice and I’m grateful of what I have here.

CIMG0942
This is when we moved in. July 2008

 

Slick Deals on Hotel Rooms

With enough research and patience, you can get things for free. Between Teresa and me, we were able to get 7 free hotel rooms in local NJ area, NYC, Atlantic City, and Washington DC. It’s just about every single weekend till I leave in May for $0. It’s an amazing deal and I wish we did this sooner. I listed out all the free rooms on my calendar on the right.

 

Side Trips

Well I have two trips coming up before I leave. First one is Washington DC from April 3rd till April 6th. Thanks to Teresa that did all the research for this though. Next we have Atlantic City for April 18th. Since we have a free room, might as well just go. Pretty excited for both of these!

 

Business

Traffic on Art of Backpacking is picking up rapidly. Because of this, I had to purchase a new host. The cost was $100 for a full year. The only issue I had with this is that it’s a shared host and not dedicated. I guess once we become too large for the host itself, it’ll require an upgrade but we have a long way to go for that. So far djskylab.com is moved over to Bluehost. I’ll move AOB over to Bluehost as soon as I backup everything. During all of this, GoDaddy.com had a deal for a new domain that cost $1 for a year. I couldn’t say no so I registered nightlifevibe.com. Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time creating the website. I decided to use Joomla for it’s CMS but now I think I regret it and should have gone with Wordpress MU. It’s a bit late now since the community grew. I’m in partnership with Eddie G which is helping out quite a bit with the community itself. The forums are pretty entertaining. As for DJSkylab.com, new widgets were added and plenty more updates will be on the way especially now since I got more power with Bluehost.

NOTE: For my Facebook friends reading this, this is coming out of my blog from djskylab.com and is automatically feeded to facebook notes.

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Work what you love and love what you work

Jan 30

Posted by Skylab in Art Of Backpacking, Preparation | No Comments

There’s a calendar that sits to the left of me and as each day passes, a day is marked. The countdown is a similar concept as the widget on the right of this site. Whenever I’m given the task of a mindless project, I take a look at the calendar and remember why I’m here. For each hour that I am here, it equals one whole day of traveling. Heck, I’ve saved enough to leave right now if I wanted to but it won’t hurt to just work 3 more months to extend my trip for a whole year or more.

I’m also trying to apply for the STA Travel Intern Scholarship. I’ve created a video already and it just needs a few more clips to complete it. Doesn’t hurt to try right? If I do get selected, it would certainly change my “plans” a lot but for the better! Popularizing the video will be easy but showing that I have a true passion for traveling in a 3 minute video will be difficult. I’m praying for this.

Art of Backpacking is growing much faster then I thought it would. Twitter is increasing my fan base by quite a bit. Next is changing hosts and hiring a web designer. Google Adsense has paid a few dollars but not yet at the $100 mark to cash in. At the rate of its growth, I hope to gain enough revenue to continue traveling. Either way, the website is making me a better writer and entrepreneur. The blog community is wonderful and was able to get a few link exchanges. Best part about all this is the social community. I LOVE being social. (Hopefully land a few DJ gigs on the road as well)

As a side note- Vagabonding by Rolf Potts is an amazing book! Not only do I recommend this book but I demand every traveler read it. The excitement is at its maximum.

To see nothing anywhere but
what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however
distanct, but what you may
reach it and pass it,
To Look up or down no road but it
stretches and waits for you,
To know the universe itself as a
road, as many roads, as roads
for traveling souls.
- Walt Whitmz, “Song of the Open Road”

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