I haven’t written here a lot, because I did things. Vaccinations, I had 3 rabies shots, plus one for the yellow fever, one for hep-A and Typhoïd, and one for Dyphtery, Tetanus and Polio. I also had my visas cared for me by Action-Visas, a visa agency whose buisness is to go queue at the ambassies for me. They are all super nice and give to charity. So I got my Russian, Mongol and Chinese visas! Yeah! By the way, prepare your documents in advance. I was forced to apply for my visas in Urgency mode because I was a bit late. And the costs were a tad higher, like 30 to 50€ per visas.

I also emptied my flat. All of my life is now in boxes or in my travel bags, except for a few comic books I left to Caroline, a high school friend, who’s inheriting the flat. Speaking of bags, I received mine, it’s a MEI Voyageur, and I have to say I’m really really happy with it. I haven’t traveled a lot yet, but the buying process was really smooth, the customer care was great and, well, the urgency mode worked well too, I received it just in time for the trip! So now my life’s in that bag, and another smaller bag for my computer, cameras and films and precious things. And it isn’t heavy at all! Well, a little bit heavy.

Okay so I’m rambling about all the things, but it’s because of the excitation before the trip. It’s tomorrow, you know… And speaking of which, the microsponsoring project is alive and well, I have had 140 microsponsors, that’s between 1/3 and half of the days that are financed. Thank you so much dear readers, family, friends and/or (ex-)colleagues! Thanks to you I may be able to survive around the world!

Yeah, I gave back my keys yesterday, all was well except that I didn’t have a place to sleep so I went to my sister’s in urgency mode, she’s a photographer, and I finally found a charitable soul with a pneumatic bed : my cousin and his wife. Before I go, I’m cleaning the dishes but don’t tell him, it’s a surprise. Shush! Let’s hope he won’t read this blog, my twitter or my Facebook before I give him his keys back.

By the way, it got me thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if that was my real first day of travel? you know, just before taking my plane, I’m not sleeping at home, everything’s in a tiny bag and such? And there’s also the bug in my blog’s countdown code, it displays the start of my travel today instead of tomorrow (I’m bad at PHP).

And last thing, I put all my CDs and hard drives in a box and I can’t access it now. And my iPod is filled with my “things to listen to while in the parisian métro”, so if you feel I could discover some new sounds, please give me the names! And some samples of course, but no full albums in MP3 that would be illegal and illegalness isn’t really cool I guess, I’m totally for giving money to artists. Yeah. My email: octolan@gmail.com.

Ok. Shower, dishes and zou!

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When I looked for ways to finance my travel around the world, I tried to find how to give to my family, friends, colleagues and/or readers a solution to help me.

I found a solution while discussing with Antoine : I have to get them to microsponsor my project. Instead of looking for hypothetical “regular” sponsors, I’d like to go to people I know and who care about me, and include them into my adventure. They don’t have big money like a big sponsor, but they are a lot and they want to help me… So why couldn’t they participate?

What I’m proposing to my microsponsors is to travel with me. After financing one day of my trip (with a 15€ personnal donation), microsponsors will tell me things to do depending on where I am : special food to eat, a place to visit, a video message to record… and I’ll try to do my best to address these wishes. And there’s more! I’ll send to my microsponsors a postcard from where I am: the postcard can be a sketch, an instant photograph, some little souvenirs… it’ll be a personalised artwork, from me to the microsponsor. Before being sent, the postcards will be photographed and published on this blog, with a Creative Commons license. Then, the recipents will be invited to send me a picture of them with the postcard and post it on a Flickr or Facebook group…

And today, it’s the big launch. Well, in french only for now, but I’ll translate in about two weeks. If you know a bit of French, you should be able to register without a problem. The system is quite basic, I’m doing everything from a base developed by Samuel Martin and Stéphane Deschamps. After the registration, I’m doing the payment validations, the mails, etc. You might expect to wait a couple of days for a confirmation email…

Oh, and I discovered PayPal fees… for a 15€ donation, PayPal takes 75c… This could be quite heavy if I get lots of donation. Don’t hesitate to give more to compensate! (ok, that was shameless.)

What day will you choose?

To help you decide, please consult my plans, I put some dates to help you target a country and a date… but nothing’s written in stone. I’ll tell you if I change my plans :)

Go to the Microsponsoring »

The microsponsoring platform has been designed by Samuel Martin and Stéphane Deschamps. May they be thanked again and again, and may they know happiness and felicity in the coming eons even after the return and rise of the Mighty Cthulhu, which could come soon. If you’re still reading this, go microsponsor me already!

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