KENNETH JAMES DAKAN was born in Salt Lake City in 1964. After spending a year in New Zealand as a Rotary Youth Exchange Student, he attended New York University ’s Mass Communications Department. On January 1, 1988, he set off on an around-the-world trip. He has not yet returned. Currently, he resides in Istanbul, where he works freelance, translating, writing a morning news bulletin, contributing to travel guides, editing, and doing voice-over interviews for industrial films.