Who am I? Кој сум јас? Кой съм аз? Ko sam ja? Tko sam ja? Ποιος είμαι; Kush jam unë? Cine sunt eu? Ben kimim?

A bit about me...

Hey world! Kako si?

If you’re wondering what’s with all these languages in the title, it’s because I’m a translator working from Balkan languages into English, and these all say ‘Who am I’. I don’t work from all of them, just the Slavic ones, but I do have varying degrees of knowledge in the others. I come from a long line of polyglots, with nearly all of my ancestors knowing on average four languages each.

I also edit and proofread texts about the Balkans, ranging from articles to books about politics, history, culture and music. The thing is that thanks to how the borders all ended up in the region, my ancestors ended up by default from different countries. This means I’ve been bombarded since birth with the myriad of conflicting viewpoints from the region, and to make sense of it all, I often had to be a self-appointed mediator. All this info has to be released!

Would you guess then that I was born and educated in Australia? Yeah, I’m an Aussie… sorta. My native accent identifiably goes into Crocodile Hunter territory. To top things off, I’ve been living in London, UK, for the most part of the last 25 years. And in that time I also managed to have, and be cured of, stage 4 cancer.

I've been blogging on and off since 2009, and what a ride it's been. My earliest highlights include posting a day before the world's media had access to exclusive photos of a frail Fidel Castro visiting a science institute in Havana where a friend of a friend worked, and going viral with background pieces about the wives (and mistresses) of a number of world leaders (Desperate Dictator Housewives) and families (Keeping up with the ...). I might pop by and visit, update and repost some of my previous posts here.

In any case, expect here to find out about different aspects of the Balkans but from an insider/outsider and multi-ethnic perspective otherwise heavily lacking from most reporting about the region.

Nik FM, the ‘hotter’ radio of Transnistria, of all places.

So why 'Nickipedia'?

Well, I have my travel partners Dina Newman and

Garth Cartwright

to thank for this. Whenever we go travelling together (to places such as Georgia, Moldova and Uzbekistan), I can’t help myself but go all ‘tour guide’ mode and provide them a non-stop commentary of facts, anecdotes and info that rival that online encyclopedia that you no doubt already know of. My other nick name is 'Nick FM' in that I can talk and talk for ages, but don't think you can turn this live radio station in stereo off! As you see in the photo of me in Transnistria (Pridnestrovie), there actually is a Nik FM ("hotter radio" as the billboard claims), though I'm more of a Cuban Radio Reloj ("Radio Clock").

What is Radio Reloj, you might ask?

It's an extraordinary radio station and very much a relic from the past – a radio concept that used to be widespread throughout Latin America but now only going strong in Cuba. Incepted in 1947, basically its programming consists of one-minute features of news and interesting facts read by two presenters, just that every minute is announced. It's most distinctive feature is the sound of a ticking clock in the background. There’s an extra thrill whenever the announcer needs to speed up to get the feature in before the minute ends. On the flipside, there’s the lonely sound of the ticking clock of the feature finished short of the minute.

You can have a listen to RadioReloj here https://www.radioreloj.cu/multimedia/radio-reloj-audio-en-vivo/

Stay tuned for more... Radio Nikipedia!