Welcome

My friends call me Jiji. It was my late great grandma's idea, she renamed me when I was a few weeks old. Apparently I was too cute (according to her, that's what the adjective "jijan" means).

I was born on the 27th of May, 1979, in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Click here to learn something more of that place very few of you seem to have ever heard of.

I have no brothers and sisters and I'm said to not only physically resemble my father which is a pity.

Well, since 1999 the first part of this sentense is a lie. I have a sister! She was born on October 12, 1999. Her name is Mina, and as you can see, she's a wonderful, healthy, fat little baby. (Not a baby at all anymore, but I can't make myself change that pic.) Congrats, mom!

My mother is the most remarkable woman I have ever met, and I've met many. Her name is Irena and she teaches English at Sofia University. That's her with Svilen, my stepfather.

My father's name is Kroum. He's a physicist, a crusader against Global Warming, an Antarctic explorer (oh boy, oh boy) and also the living answer to the question why some men must be shot. There he is. Isn't he impressive.

My parents have been separated for about 23 years now, so I have several families - my father's living with his girlfriend Emilia, and my mom - with her boyfriend Svilen whom I usually call my "pastrok" which in Bulgarian means "second father." If it hadn't been for him my pages would have hardly been created - back in 1996 I spent months in his house blowing up one computer after another while experimenting with coding software.

I used to live in my grandparents' house with my computer and my CD player. Now I live in Montreal, Canada but the computer and the CD player keep being an essential part of my life. (And now - 2007 - I'm back to Europe.)

I have a Newfoundland dog I named after my favorite composer, Vangelis. Take a look at my beast, he's gorgeous.

1. Computers in general and websites in particular.
2. Writing. And reading.
3. One of the best way to keep your past alive - tattoos. The usual questions are "Does it hurt?" and "How many do you have?" No answer to 1. Go and check yourselves. As to 2 - well, for quite a while nothing worth commemorating has happened, so let's say enough.

1. The Runaway Train Depot which recently got deleted by accident (not by me - as usual a free host is to blame).
2. The Voight Domain, my personal favorite. Dedicated to Jon Voight.
3. Animasia
4.Work in progress - the official site of Adelphi Publishing, Bulgaria (my company) and an online magazine about Bulgaria as a tourist destination. Links coming up.

About Wuthering - well, let me say that this is what happens when you can't say "no." I'm not what you'd call a fan of Ms. Jolie. She is of course as much a feast to my eyes as to those of anybody not visually impaired, but that's hardly significant. You see, I've only seen 4.5 of her movies (since the other day that's 6.5). I've appreciated her talent, which is impressive. However, having done so, I felt no urge to see the remaining 15 or so movies she's starred in. In 1997, I was asked to add a small page about her to my Voight site so Jon Voight's fans would have the chance to learn a little about his daughter. Who, at the time, was only known to several thousand (internet-aware) people, half of whom mailed me. I couldn't refuse. Then all of a sudden she got famous. Her fanbase grew. People started sending me pictures, sounds and drawings to add to her section. I did. And before I knew it, it turned into a full-fledged website. Which has indeed been getting me lots of useful publicity, and just as much hard work to do. I attempted dumping it a couple of times because my Voight site was being negatively affected by all the attention this one needed. It didn't work. On the one hand, I was begged to continue by so many people I didn't have the heart to say no. And on the other hand, I kept feeling guilty about it. I was being depended on, I had no right to leave. So I haven't. And I suspect I won't.

I spend most of my time reading and some of my favorite writers are Nikos Kazandzakis, Mikhail Bulgakov, Anton Donchev, Roger Zelazny, Stephen King, C. S. Lewis, Astrid Lindgren, Gerald Durrell, Emily Bronte, Carson McCullers, and Howard Lovecraft.

Four of the books I've read more than 27 times each are "Captain Mihalis," "Wuthering Heights," "IT" and the "My Family and Other Animals" trilogy. "The Master and Margarita" is slowly coming to the top with, for now, 9 times.

I like listening to Ryuichi Sakamoto, The Future Sound of London, The Doors, FSB, Diana Express, Mikhail Belchev, Mitko Shterev and Iliya Angelov. The last five are Bulgarian performers. In the MP3 section there are a few songs you can download if you're open to the idea of trying music that's not necessarily North American and definitely not MTV stuff.

I didn't mention his name above because he definitely deserves this novel here - if you ever happen to come across the name of VANGELIS, stop and try to remember it. Once "Alexander" is out, you probably will as he wrote the soudtrack, and his soundtracks are usually memorable.

The point of this here composition, however, is that his music is something I've been literally addicted to since the age of 6. At first I didn't know his name but I was sure the melodies that had impressed me so much (Bulgarian National TV used them as backgrounds all the time) must have been composed by the same person. Every day I would sit in our living room, turn the TV on, spend hours hoping that they would play "my stuff," and once they did, well, there was no way to get me out of there.

Now, the music itself was... Trying to describe it would get me nowhere. Just give it a shot. I spent a long time hearing only bits and pieces every now and then, I dreamed about a VCR or some other device that could help me "have" this music. And of course I was dying to know who was doing this to me. It was very irritating because I WANTED to know who the composer was but there was no way to find out. Nobody knew anything, in fact, people had no clue why I was so sure all those bits and pieces were written by the same person. Well, that was easy. I mean, it was all there. Nobody else made me feel like that.

Eventually I ended up completely fixated on it. I didn't know who he was so I had created a particularly mysterious image in my mind. I actually used to think about "Him" every time somebody mentioned God.

You see, whoever he was, I thought of his work as totally out of this world. He was superior to anything and anybody, had to be. I was very close to worshipping him, I knew no name, I wasn't even sure he was still alive so it was a very convenient idea. Most importantly, I was 6. The notion of God is not really something you understand clearly at that age.

In any case, it was then when I assumed Vangelis had a beard. For some reason I've always believed God has a beard. (Shame on me but I never doubted the fact V. was male either.) It took me 2 years to find out what his name was, and anthoher 6 to finally see what he looked like (he does have a beard).

Speaking of which, there's this picture I found in Rolling Stone that I'd like you to take a look at. His appearance is almost as... hmmm, remarkable as his music. They kind of... match. Click here.

If you get curious (I strongly hope you will), please visit the mp3 section. I don't have a site about him anymore (well, I do but it's old - 1999 - and in serious need of... a lot of things, though the info and pics are still there) because it would be pointless. There are Vangelis fans out there who have done a much better job than I ever could. In our very own mp3 section, however, I'll be adding some carefully selected MP3s. You'll see I told you the truth about his music being... the things I said it was.

Other actors I like are John Cleese, Ian McKellen, Ian Holm, Daniel Auteil, Nikolai Binev, Kiril Variiski, Jon Savage, Christopher Walken, Colm Feore, Larry Fishburne, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and William Shockley.

My most, most, most favorite movie is "Runaway Train". After that there come our very own (Bulgarian) "Time of Violence" and "Ivan and Alexandra," Roman Polansky's "Bitter Moon," Andrei Tarkovski's "Stalker," Nikita Mihalkov's "Burned by the Sun," "Boyz in the Hood," "Arizona Dream," "Funnyman" which is probably one of the most bizzare (UK) horror movies around, and Terminator 2. Since winter '01 I've also been strongly... fascinated with Lord of The Rings. I never though a movie based on a book like this could possibly do it justice but I guess I was wrong.

The first movie I saw Jon Voight in was Runaway Train, I was 8 at the time. I paid no attention to the name of the actor, I was impressed by the character. How impressed - hm. Let me just say that the movie has an ending I took very seriously. Witnesses share I was too heart-broken to get myself up from the floor and stop yelling at the TV screen. Anyway, 10 years after I got over it I accidentally saw Anaconda. I fell in lust for Sarone, in two words.

As a teenager, I used to fall in lust quite often. For (obviously) older men, 5 of them a week at least. Now that I've... hm, matured, the latter part no longer holds. The former (age-related one) definitely does and probably will be until I get too old for there to be men older enough than me.

In the case of Voight it took me about two weeks to get bored. It might sound like too short a time to you but it wasn't. In relative terms, he scored much higher than most. Some time later I saw Runaway Train again. What finally made me realize Sarone and Manny were played by the same person was the fact I somehow recognized Voight's nose. It was somewhat disturbing to find out I paid so much attention to people's noses even when I was 8. Anyway. I had found healthier grounds to admire the guy (the healthier grounds being his acting, not his nose) so this time it didn't go away. Every time I notice someone else's good acting (or nose) and start contemplating the idea of pushing Jon Voight down my list of favorite people, I watch Runaway Train and he's automatically back to #2. #1 would be Vangelis.