Since I am just an
average person (depends of course on the part of humankind you have in mind...), I can
hardly imagine you might be interested in knowing anything about me, but since I am at
this, I may just as well continue. Probably noone will ever read this, so it won't be of
any great consequence...
I'll skip the process of conception, as I was not consciously present at the moment, nor in the following couple of months. I was there however when I was born on February 15, 1948 at 14:15 local time. Winter had just begun (my mother tells me and I have no reason to doubt her word, so I suggest you also accept it). I went to kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, then studied languages, especially Spanish (I also lived in Barcelona/Spain for one year) and English, also lived in France for some time. I even spent two years of law studies, but decided that -no matter how interesting- law was not my cup of tea.
At present I am employed as a translator at a semi-official agency, concerned with a certain sector of Social Security. And sometimes I am also active as a free-lance translator.
As for my private life, I will keep it private. I will however tell you that I am a married man, with four daughters more or less in the house (three of them -adults- have moved out, but live nearby) - and a son and a daughter in beautiful Barcelona/Spain, and that I live in a quiet village not too far away from Amsterdam, but most of all very close to the beach and adjoining dunes and woods.
One of my main hobbies is listening to short wave radio. As such I am a member of the Benelux DX- Club. And I am a fan of Radio Caroline, the famous off-shore station, which has recently returned to the air-waves: it can be listened to via satellite, the Internet, and in part of the Netherlands via cable. In the weekends they can be heard on local VHF in the Italian/French Riviera (via Radio Breeze on 88.4 MHz). For more information please check the Radio Caroline site.
Then languages still have my special interest. It is not hard to understand that international radio helps me maintain them at a high level. And of course I read a book every now and then. Sometimes I even translate one, just for fun, with the intention of publishing it. If you are interested, just check here.
And on the background of whatever I am doing there is always music. I love most kinds (from jazz to ethnic music, from classical (especially baroque) to pop (especially from the period between 1955/1975). Since in this part of the world there is no radio-station (except Radio Caroline) that satisfies my musical needs (nor any other needs for that matter, but that can hardly be expected from a radio-station), I collect music, preferably on vinyl, and I have even been thinking of founding a Web-station to webcast my favourite music... Recently I have added some music-related pages to my site: Some pages list song titles by subject, others -a recent addition- constitute the Record Collectors' Guide.
For some time I have fostered some hopes that I might be what the world of cinema was looking for, but I never got the success I hoped for (not really...). Still I played (microscopic) roles in a couple of movies. My cinematographical activities have been put together in a special page.
Guess this should be enough to satisfy your curiosity for the time being. If there should be anything else you might want to know, or if you just would want to contact me for any other reason, you may of course send me an E-mail...
Since this page is about explaining you about myself, I think I should also tell you my favourite WWW-sites. If you are interested, just have a look!
As for what I look like, just have a look at the picture above. It is not extremely recent (made in 1988), but I have not changed much since then: Just different glasses and my hair is getting grey and thinner.
From here you can return to my homepage