interests
And some other interests of me
Notice : this article has been posted in early 2000's with updates on 2005 , 2014 and 2019 !
Music and languages:
Read this before:
When i was very young ( abt 3 years old) i had the opportunity to listen and read some records bought by my father Jim during his occupation trips as radio telegrapher on the commercial ships on 1959-63 to USA, Russia Japan and Cuba ( mostly)
I think that for this reason I have been so keen later in the DX hobby
Now , from the albums he bought I have been mostly keen in the Japanese albums which had contemporary music of the 60’s (a type near to opera) as well as folk type songs .(=enka as example )
These albums except the vinyl disk contained also a small sheet or a n album with the photo of the singer on the front side and the lyrics of the songs on the rear side printed in the Japanese language ( with kana and Chinese script) . After a while I attained to ‘decypher ‘ these scripts by listening carefully to the songs , but still not knowing what the songs said
This can surely arouse my interest in languages and music !
Languages
( a simplified list of languages I know at most)
Japanese : it is noticed above which was the fist language I learned myself - just characters
German At first , I started learning the German language in low school and for 2 years ( when I was only 6 years old) on the German school and continued learning German also in high school with the help of a teacher
The same period I have found the newly published guides ( in Greek ) for Arabic , Russian and others ( Bulgarian , Italian Spanish etc) from a local publisher who was also specialised in tourist editions
French: Learnt in high school . This time , on high school I started being more interested in the SW radio A little later on 76 and with the help pf my teacher I have made a reception report for the French redaction of CRI who responded tome by sending their edition of ‘Apprenons le chinois’ . That times I have used the SILVER 4 band radio cassette recorder
At same time I continued learning German via a teacher( 72-76) . However I stopped learning this lang due to very difficult conditions in the examinations on the 5 th and 6th class in the high school
I have also read in many other books that days and kept a small file with the scripts I found. This notice book includes part of the cuneiform script , part of the ancient Cypriot , the Amharic ( more recently) , the Georgian and others as well as samples from other languages from Nigeria as example û Fulfude Hausa etc - ( after a trip to there). Unfortunately several of these books havebeen lost in the dust ...
Chinese: BY visiting each year the international fair in our city hold each year on September , I have found once a student of Greek literature who was the chain person for the trade fair between Greeks and Chinese people .An interpreter. Very soon we became good friends and he teached me a little Chinese as well as the correct writing . He was for a further two years in our city , and he was also able to listen to R Beijing's transmissions with the help of a small radio cassette recorder with SW bands
Later on , I have found a nice line of books related to Chinese language as dictionaries with the use of German and English.Someof them were made via the radio station and the natoanal publisher in China Guoji Shudian on pre mid 80s
Below you will find a lot of books I collected for Chinese
English: I have learned English on 80 after leaving the high school and being student in a free studies school learning Marketing. The 3 years on this school have made me being fond of English. I continued 1 years more in the British council but again stopped due to the difficulty of continuously listening to English
English was the best way for me to communicate over the world . Having also a friend with an international bookstore helped me finding very interesting books in languages . This way and also with the use of international correspondence I have made a very good collection of several books and methods on many other languages.
The usage of linguistic terms and script as the means of correct way of speaking also arouse my interest in it . A good grammatical method of German helped me too much in linguistic script
Bulgarian Due to an interest in business relation with Bulgaria I have made some ( little) courses in Bulgarian Only 13 courses ( on 93-94) with the help of a bulgarian-greek teacher living in Thessaloniki
Malay On 89 and after a trip to Spore , HK and Thailand I had a very special interest on Malay music and language. This arouse me also the interest in learning it , first by finding a small dictionary of Malay (GEM-Collins ) which had also the basic info on their grammar and syntax . This made after 90-91. Later I found some important methods on BM and BI ( see below for more)
Once, I have measured the books ,methods and dictionaries There is a total of 170 books incl the books of English lang used in the schools . Some of them to mention below and is merely a sample
Reference books : My best reference book is from the Routledge pubs ô the languages of the worldö ( by Kenneth Katzner??) showing the scripts ( and translation to English) of the 230 most important languages of today including batak (Indonesia) , Hottentots ( S Africa) Yao (china) . From same series I have the book ô the most important languages of SE Asia containing the Bamar ,Chinese, Japanese, Malay. Tai Khmer and others (abt 12 main langs and their] derivatives )
At once I had a small 1000 word dictionary for the most important 26 languages of the world . It included most of the European languages with polish , Bulgarian, Russian , Swahili , Japanese Greek
English at first with Webster's unabridged dictionary, the Longman’s , the oxford English Greek , a small also dict of slang , a computer based Eng- Greek dictionary and many others
German with Wahrig's German dictionary . It seems however that after 20 years of non usage German is a little extinct for me ( ie nearly useless)
Fro French only one book ( Divry's Greek French) and a smaller pocket
For Chinese
Oxford’s chin- eng /eng-chin dict with pinyin
Guiji Shudian (GS) Chinese Eng and Eng-Chin with pinyin, bought directly from the Chinese Bookstore
Zhongguo tajudian ( biggest chin dict) containing 60000 chars
Tuttles smaller pocket dicts ( chnûeng and eng-chn ) wade system
A smaller Chinese dict ( 5000 chars ) wade system
A Mongol ûChinese dict bought from GS ( also a map of China in pinyin )
Japanese :
Kenkyusha’s Japanese /English
Kenkyusha’s English /Japanese
201 irregular verbs
advanced method in writing ( with meanings ) for 1000 characters
Malay :
The GEM Collins dictionary. A second copy has been sold to a to be tourist early 00's
EPS ( Spore) Malay/Indon method with tape and 3 books ( learning Malay- grammar û advanced writing-)
Europhone method (UK) for indon (with two tapes). tyeh same as above person has bought this method
A german method of Indon and one for Javanese
Mc Millans small dictionnary
Dewan bahasa english û malay- big fat
Kamus bahasa baku ( malay û chinese- English û Malay)
Kamus harian federal
Kamus lengkap ( the later 3 bought from EPS)
Echols Indonesian English (this is possibly the best source 1200 pages )
a secind older edition has been given as gift to the library
Now for other methods and dictionaries:
From the German publisher Langensheidt I still keep a nice line of dictionaries as Greek , Raetoromanish , most other Euro langs including also Bulgarian and Finnish and somewhere a Hebrew method Ther is alsoa microbook for Latin
From the Collins GEM I have ( and use sometimes ) the Spanish , Portuguese, Russian Greek ( mostly the first two)
From Recos editions ( local publisher ) a line of methods for romanian arabic bulgarian russian etc
A series of hindic languages( methods) incl Asamese , Punjabi, Hindi( in German) , Hindustani, Gujarati Tai Tibetan
Also some African dictionaries as Xhosa (lost) , Yoruba , Hausa (= booght in NIgeria)
The Pilipino languages : pilipino , ilocano , visayan , illongo (local editions)
A Maori dictionary ,a Hawaii and a Tok pisin
Most of the above books exclding the French and German are contained in a very small box
Music
Music is probably my biggest interest , together with languages . My biggest help was with the SW which opened me the horizons of listening to many kinds of music around the globe
Will keep also a time list of my musical interests
Since 62 and then : as noticed above my first acquaintance was with the Japanese music ,however I also like to listen to the Greek ‘new wave’ music little later from 65 and then . The Japanese songs having in mind were more analytical :
contemporary Japanese music ( somehow as operas ) with my favorite singer being Yamanaka Miyuki(woman)
popular Japanese music with most favorite the Tokyo Anna and sayonara
traditional songs ( one soft record and a pamphlet having 6 ‘red’ records with Ainu songs )
( a total of 16 records all on 45 rpm and one on 33rpm )
Also I had a little less interest in the other albums my father left from his over-the-world trips with the Cuban cha-cha songs ( a nice series of albums on 33 rpm) and another series of Russian albums ( bigger interest was on a 33 rpm album with world hits )
On 67-68 I started learning guitar and playing songs from different kinds mostly from Greek More on this on special paragraph below That time I have started having interest in classical music.
With the use of the SW radio SILVER I liked very much to listen to Arabic at first music and shortly later Indian music (70-72) which still is one of may favorite music style.
The same period the electronic music group Kraftwerk was a hit in Greece . I was also a fan of them abd bought their album RadioActivity and later still kept my interests in electronic music through JeanMichel Jarre by buying many albums of him but did not the same for the Greek composer Vangelis
That time I also liked to listen to some interesting langs from various stations with langs that are still unknown to me
On abt 75-76 I had the interest in Chinese music . and recorded some tapes with mostly Chinese operas and folklores from the various freqs of R Beijing . One of my top freq s for that time was the 7935 (CPBS1) and a few from the 6.5 Mhz band Usage of SILVER radio , gave too good audio quality ( a semi HIFI ) on some of these transmissions that today[2004] HF150 could love .
At same time I had the interest in the Greek ‘folk-ish songs’ a mixture of Arabic and Turkish into Greek but also was keen of other popular singers of that period as Mitropanos and other playing a the clear ‘Greek’ popular music
On 82 û83 after a gift of a friend with two albums of Iron Maiden , I was a fan of them and later still kept my interest on the Heavy metal for about 7 years and collected a huge quantity of albums from many groups Here is a small list of my top HM performers (with some short comments) :
Maiden ( having most of their albums till 89) They were my first HM group and collected all of their albums till 87 including bootlegs and singles My best albums were ‘killers , number of , ‘
Scorpions û my nicest song from them is Holiday
Slayer ( having two albums of them and liked on how hard they are)
The great Kat (!) with the impressive style of the violinist Katty Thomas playing guitar in X-speed
Riot ( fire down under was their bast album)
Kiss ( a little )
KIX ( do they continue? I like the atomic bomb , contrary mary )
Metalica ( kill em all is my best as I did not liked their ballads )
Earthshaker ( the Japanese semi ballad hard rock group )
Loudness
I kept a very broad line of HM albums. But for other reasons I sold all this collection on 2003 but kept a backup into MP3 format . I bought a DVD player with that money
Same period was full of business trips to UK for satellite antennas attending to trade fairs. While in London I have been in Wembley and bought many tapes with Indian music. For Indian music/movies pleas read below
After 88-9 I reverted back to Greek pop music with top pop singers of that period still being on top today. But after a trip in Spore on mid89 my interest arouse on Malay music.
Malay : Theme has been moved here . It is my interest after 1989
Dangdut: There ia also a special web page for it . This is a interest after 2000 , with a first inspiration on 1997 after having a video tape with about 4 hours of dangdut video clips of a total 8 hrs of video clip[s
My interests in music however are not only on the above. From my trips I made on many countries as well as from SW and satellite and radio wise facilities I still have the following interests:
Surely , classical music , having a special collection with a broad line of CD’s can be the best of best music. Bach and Mozart are my best. This is a 90 disk collection including two collection sets of 70 CDs ( 50 with classical and 20 with operas )
Possibly the best sounded today pop songs ( very easy listening) are the Chinese pop songs .They can be described as the ‘perfect songs’ .
I have some little interest in German ‘ompah-ompah’ (polka style?) Bavarian music , though I can still listen to them without problem
I also like to listen from local stations with older Italian pop songs
Same happens with the pop (easy listening) songs from Serbia. I have a good collection from my top Serbian singer Neda Ukraden
Only some little interest in pop songs from Turkey, though no interest in folk songs
I still prefer to listen to older Chinese operas recorded since the 70s from the SW
Impressive style , but mostly as background music are the uighur and kazakh folks songs
Nice to listen and to dance are the songs from Serbia, Bulgaria , FYROM and Romania
Also nice to listen and to dance are the songs from Latin America including jazz , samba , bolero and others
Nearly the same can be said with styles from african countries , but hausa style was the most un-interesting
My musical collection nowadays except heavy metal includes nearly all the above styles of music with abt 80 albums of HM , >50( over ) albums on malay (originals) , >20 hrs on indian , >80 albums (CD+ tapes and records) of all kind of greek music , abt 80 albums of clasical , 16 hrs on chinese,17 albums on Japanese and various tapes from other kinds of music ( more than 60). ON 2003 I sold all my HM collection and bought my DVD . I just kept a backup in MP3
Authoring and writing . -NEW
In general as you can see in this page i was witing too many articles im my web pages . This started arond 1995 when i started writing radio articles in the geocities page relayed now in this sub-site. I hosted an article for my best man an later ge tinto the services of Google using three blogposts and this dedicated website to radio tech .Notice that i wlays was som much writing since 80s . I ahve made 3 dissertations for the schoolo of Marketing and on mid 80s I wrote a book for installing satelite antennas on 1986 Installation part was arond 8 pags wile all remain 130 pages was the history of the satelite TV channels of the time!
The remain here is multirevised text from my history page:
A interesting book with remixed Malay tales on 2014 inspired me to make some remixes of classical tales and make newer ideas and short stories as time passed. One of the first incepted stories was already posted in its very early [primitive ] form in my blogspot site. New affiliated self ending stories were added later (15-16) with the same characters of the startup story, collected under the title '7 angels landed in earth' The format of the next sub-stories changed into 'soap opera' style untill I stoped it prematurely on 4/18 due to a tablet's new bug. 1 milion words of text is the suspended text, waiting for new updates . This mysterious bug was a dll type program that stoped operating, required users' inreventios but was recursivley shown again every 7 secs preventing me to continue writing Fortunately after one sucesful reset instance without mesages I keep the tablet continuously in hibernation expecting it when it will stop operating.At the same time i m dong other interesting tablet works bevause the story texts are very lengthy with rather diffcult way to chop them for comencing it further because im ferinf for a possible tablet 'freeze' As in April 19 the battery lasts around 2.5 hours . When i bought it 6 years ago the bettery lasted around 8-9 hours
This text is writen in "Greeklish" that is Greek with [Eng]lish characters . A program will be used to convert it into Greek with tones
Many other short stories were incepted the same period wit the startup story of '7 angels' since June 14, collected in a book that cant be edited further . Two versions of it are available: in Greek and in my bad English .Greek version includes some malay children stories , used for my daughter's elementary school competition. English version has also a few more short adult stories .
These two books include the early version of the story '7 angels'
A few stories from the book are already availabe in my web page in blogspot under the tag ...'bullshit' !
More stories were aslso incepted since 17-19, all of them noticed with plots in a series of notepad lists . These are more than 75. Around 20 of them are plot strucuterd while all others are just excerpts. Some of complete plots are the story 'restart' or 'killing me angry' or 'in another instance'. If sometime later will be writen in full, they will be around 350 pages each . Many of the remain are also movie stories
On end of Dec 2014 a new e-book related to Malaysia radio and music under the title "25 years of Malaysia a research " was formed and published on end of Jan 2015 and commercually posted on Scribd for 7 months . This includes a complete series of postings in Geo and Multiply which suspended on 2013.This content was then enhanced updated in a resulted double content for a total 120 pages.More than 300 hours were spent to the reseach and editing for a total 1.5 month of work It was then revised several times (16-19) with the changes on the programs i listened.It is very possibly to add more ready content later.
Subpart: India music and movies
It is another part that I have not stated beforeà Well , I started listening to Indian music , via shortwaves on mid 70s . There was also the possibility to find Indian music from the local market. That time the audio quality of the pirate cassettes (but also of the original cassettes!) was really bad made on bulk tapes. At early 80s my parents were on a Greek products trade show in Sharjah demonstrating our company’s products . They have bought me the new appeared SONY 7600 D radio together with several video tapes with Arabic music and Indian movie Pukar and Indian video clips . But the format was BETA ideal for our video player SONY BETAMAX we used until 1990 . Pukar was referring to an rebellion against the Portuguese
The next was to watch especially Indian video clips from my company’s experimental 3 m satellite TV dishes in the factory. It was the period of 1984-6 mostly from Doordarshan relays on INSAT . As far as I remember these Indian programs were aired on 1400 GMT and for abt 1 hour. Also during my trips to UK on 85-89 I have bought several music tapes from local Indian stores.
During 1992-3 when I was running the TV Pieria channel in Katerini ( near Mt Olympus) , I had the ability to watch again via my 3 m satellite antenna the new Asianet ( if I remember correctly) TV channel at 1400 GMT the daily featured Indian movie> That way I have recorded several movies in VHS that are still playable, but on 2014 have been ripped into DVDs
A very vacant period has been passed until I have added a small satellite TV system into my house. I could watch several Indian TV programs via several European satellites but on 2004 most of them are encrypted.
With the ‘keen-ness’ in the Indonesian music (dangdut) and after reading about ‘Kuch kuch hota hai ‘ a movie that was very popular in most of the South Asian countries also for this music ( ie from Afghanistan , Pakistan , Malaysia Indonesia ec) my interest in Indian movies raised again. ON 2003+ there are many Indian people living in Greece several of them are selling also movies and cassettes. I bought about 20 movies from them, many of them have better stories than their American counterparts..(though i read soemehere that Bollywood is now becoming Hollywood ... too bad )
Amongst the movie we seen with my wife are
. Devdas ( Ash /Sharukh a story similar to Romeo and Juliet) my best movie so far
. Kuch kuch hota hai (Sharukh/ something’ s happening ) a romantic movie
. Silsila ( Amitabh /passion/affair ) old drama with oneof my best songs ever
. Kabhi khushi kabhi gham (Amitabh/Sharukh/Kajol happiness and tears ) multi awarded movie
. Pukar (Amitabh /warrior? ) old adventure
and to add the movie Pinjar hat was my most facorite story.. felt that i lost after photographing it.
ON ca 2006 and then with the relative demise of the national newspapers one newspaper added 3 series of Bollywood movies each series consisting of 6 movies On of them cinsisted of the folweing : Kuch KUch , Kanbhi Khusi , Veer zaara , Hum TUm , Kal Ho naa ho.
Computers and internet
Still a very big story around it
It started before 1980 when the company bought a CP/M based system with tailor made programs. I was especially keen to 'hack' the contents of the files and the structure . I also was keen to learn some programming in BASIC. from seminars made from the company we bought the computer
On 1982 I bought the SPECTRUM computer and used it together with a TV . Much later on 87-89 i have bought two interfaces and programs used for utility DX ing mainly for viewing the news from some RTTY news stations with top stations being Tanjug and Xinhua . The SPECTRUM went out on 92 after a disaster in its video modulator , which none could replace it.
The company on 87-88 has changed its computer to the newly made PCs , with an XT at first . This was also the time i was keen about it and continued my interest in 'hacking' the operation of some programs
On 88-89 and with the startup on the satellite TV business and later with our narrow casting systems (transmitting over a predetermined area ) in areas such as Langadas , Chalkidiki ( TV Afitos )and Katerini i have bought AMIGA s for making programming , titling , over titling ( for station's logo over the transmitted signal) , and non program advertising( it has been used together with a Genlock Ö) . Much of the advertising has been made also by me as well as by another person more dedicated to it (as well as for video mixing)
After I stopped narrow casting the AMIGA has been left to my hands mostly for word processing and very rarely for its multimedia use. This has been made until 93 when i bought a PC based system
Late 93 i have bought a PC for personal and company use. I started with a 386 SX later made as DX.
Little later (94)with the help of a good friend i have been connected to a local BBS system and changed later (mid 94 ) to another (PlatoBBS) which was the first one having email facility. On 95 Plato was changed to a small internet only facility where i was a free user. Little latter ( mid95) i changed my internet account to my today's at Compulink.gr after a help with another very good friend who was one of the first users at this company
I kept much of interest in this new facility to me by using most of the company's facilities on email, gopher , ftp and others. ON 96 i made my personal web page which still is in existence though non up dated as .on 1998 i have opened an account on Geocities which was updated relatively regularly .
ON end of April 2004 my ISP Compulink has been terminated prematurely after broke without further notice.I changed to the national telephonic company’s part OTENET on dialup till 2006 then with DSL and on late 2012 into Forthnet with 24 MB
Over the years i have made sevral internal modifications of the system until on 2012 have bought a new one with Windows 7 .Mhy most major problem ws on late 2012 with a so called 'police virus' that blocked system entering requireing money to be unblocked . forutnately the technician could relatively easily restore the system and remove the ransom-ware and after then i used only for special tasks
A wifi tablet made me lessen the time using the computer by motyl replacing it in the simple tasks : mail, internet, news
Soem of my most favourite program s are as follows:
Pegasus as mailer > Now is usd as backup for some little backup as most mail is read online
word perfect as txt writer . But later usd better with Word ans stoped in version 2003
FrontPage 200 ther oler times for making webpages but later used komposer
Firefox chrome and opera as browsers . In the office I use chrome
Winfax older times for faxes . The DSL lines prohibit using fax this way
VOA CAP for radio propagaton the odler times >NEC 4Win for amtennas bot also ionoprobe for propagation
MMJB older times as audio player. now i use Screamer as radio player
mp3 trim for trimming mp3s (purchased on early 00s )
mp3surgeon for mp3 processing
and these are the accessories usd
hard disks 2 inside and 2 (200 nd 700 )as external
Soundblaster older times but now with the built in
the latest screen is 23" Found them with ver good prices on 2009
HP1012 as printer
an Intuos pen used sparingly
ON 2012 i replaced the PC with a new keeng the old HD with Windows 7 that was incomaptibel with some previously used programs and prepheerals . As for ecample the printer was used with imitation software ,a mini audio recorder could not connext as well as the photo scanner evenmore problem was the inability to connect the programs for making some recodings if reqiured. pegasus was still used for short time untill i was conected with my yahoo account. I got id of several radio programs, but the well paid mo3 programs were kept until today (mp3 trim adn mpsurgeon )
Most thins were OK until on 2014 i chnged itnto using a tablet with a external keyboard...i then spant most times using it for mrore than 10 hous per day sometimesfor making the most basic things , writing , websearching etc and using only my PC for the heaviest works: DTP , external printouts,conversions and some processing.
Photography and video
My family has a great relation with photography. My mother when she was young worked into her brother’s photo developing center in Katerini on 50s and 60s . The elder brother was the manager of the office and the younger brother was at the start a photographer. Later the younger brother has kept and grown the office as the Greatest office of the city with the oldest tradition. Later my mother continued the tradition and developed gray pictures into color.
I kept this interest with me and my first photo camera was during 1975 with zoom to 200 and marco.
several cameras and photo cameras ahve passed through my hands as :
Sony BETAMAX camera
A russian camera with 16 mm film
soem others including two pocket cameras
NIkon D50 DSL R
AIWA mini DV the current video camera
Olympus digital camera
Canon powershot mini camera 2 models . The first were broke from hard us after 6000 photos adn the second today seldom usd in favour of the second smartphne in mylife
Nowwdays 2019 all above stoped being usd in favour of our smartphones!! ONly D50 is somtimes usd for special cases or more semipro cases.
Guitar play and electronic piano
As referred above , I started learning guitar when I was very young , about 7 years old learnt guitar for the next 2 years with a guitar teacher. He was impressed on how easily I could play songs directly to guitar , either as cords (?) or in riffs ( solo playing) and teached me on classic guitar playing as well as playing well known ballads such as ôromance d amor’ and ‘requerdos de l alabra’ . This was probably the spirit in listening to classical music. Later when I was a fan of heavy metal (HM) li liked to much to accompany the riffs of songs from Maiden.
I used 3 guitars two of them are classic ( the other is of my bro in law ) and one electric (broken somtime ).
However I always had the interest in playing one fingered piano at any cases it could happen.
As my wife was a piano player , she nearly left it and I play it .
Many times at home we sing and play Malay ballads
One hobby that was forgotten ...
Cooking and international tastes
This is my latest interest comparing to the above. My first experience on asian tastes was on eighties during a visit on a Japanese restaurant in Athens , and after visiting many Chinese restaurants in UK and Athens too during 80s. Today [2004]in Thessaloniki we very often visit some of the Chinese restaurants as well as the Mexican
Our best tastes ( for me and my wife) are:
Chinese ( for me) MY best is the hot and sour soup
Mexican ( for both) Our favorite Mexican restaurant has been closed
Brazilian ( for my wife) Unfortunately the Brazilian restaurant closed
Malay and Indonesian : There is a indo tavern in our city and sometimes we visit them untill it closed on 2016
Indian , much less. There is also one HIndi tavern in our town on 2005 starteed around 90s and another who started in one of the best squares of the town with a bit less material thn the older.
adn some sushi that is now quite easy to be found in the city with relatively good prices.One of them is quite old , since 2006 that started ofering chinese kitchen on demand
We do also cooking at home , mostly Chinese Indon and Mexican . Recently (2002 )we bought a wok suitable for electric cookers, although still having a normal fire wok used in the country house.It has later been repalced with a very fat thing with ceramic protection. Exept my old bilbiography I also used the simple recipes from rasamalaysia who ofgers vey tasty vesions of usually dificult recipes.
We also have a broad range of recipe books with Greek , international ,Chinese ( many) , Indonesian, Malay(many with several of them posted as reviews in my sister page in blogspot ) , tai and in printed form recipes from newsgroups with separate printouts for Mexican , Malay and others
Movies in general
Greek movies is the favorite movies of my wife . She likes mostly the movies of 50-70 which is the golden period of Greek cinema.
Although not a highly cine-phile , we watched about twice a month the current movies in multiplexes [till 2013],. Several of the most important movies we seen this years are ‘Last samurai’ , Paycheck , Monster , Day After Tomorrow ,Troy , Passions of Chist , to name a few [2009].. However important movies we did not watch in the cinemas could be later rent from the nearby DVD store or seen from the satellite system.
There was a trend of TV magazines and later (after 2000)to newspapers to include music and later Movies. This was and still is on 2014 a nice source of movie collection for the now poor Geeks hit seriously by the austrity measures caused by the IMF the EEC and our very keen governors to help hem .
Several magazines , cost-free and TV magazines are our sources for watching movies and locating interesting movies in the 'mini screen'. A nationwide Greek TV channel named Star airs every night arond 2-3 movies sarting from 11at night till the early morning with more new movies on 2019 one at least very week . That made me become more fond on movie watching I set up an account on 2000's in Flixster with comments in more than 500 movies at
http://community.flixster.com/user/zlon
which later had been continued into a page in blogspot whith short reviews of not more than 100 words
Reading /books (new notice on 2014 )
Surely from the above is is clear that i am an avid reader but in specialized subjects which are:
languages (uncountable )
cooking and nutrition (over 500 leaflets and books )
photography
marketing /advertising /psychlogy (my studies and anoter interest )
radio and shortwaves (my material is more than 200 books )
little of fiction
religion
politics
intellectual property [the time pirate bay was chasd by police etc]
Malaysia history tradition politics and language
computers (though very few )
security handling (sort timed studies )
The use of the e-reader such as Me-book and the new F&U tablet opened a new era on reading without spending more paper BUt later on 2018 I stil again prefer to print some of the most interesting articles even i use the scmartphne to read some pdf...
Telenovelas and turkish series
This comes from my wife’s hobby on viewing series. I had a special web page ( incomplete) with the facts in Greece
MY first interest was the Mexican Marimar series with some others to follow
Here is a very short comment on the series we have seen , only from the Alpha TV station
Marimar /maria del barrio/ rosalinda : ( played with the top actor Thalia who is also a singer) : Maria is the better from them but Marimar is only action and Rosalinda is only a nix of other series All are fair series and kept good audiences ( 6-12% per population )
Usurpadora (LU) /Mentira /Infierno : Possibly the best of the series we ve seen and the best Mexico can produce. Infierno is a very tragic series with much of extremities, action and fantasy but Mentira is an excellent love story and LU has much of fantasy.
Angela /Por tu amor : stories with some actions and much interest ( and fair to good series ) While angela seems a realiztic series , the second seems mostly as half comic and half tragedy ( the only part of value ) under a stupid -esp for the first part- scenario.
Paquita/Perro amor /Tabu : the 3 Colombian series Paquita though seems a tragic series lacks of play . tabu is very new ( the latest) but perro amor is the most down to earth series , a good soap opera, with much of satire and ‘gags’( humor and tragic at same time)
Esmeralda /Alondra; two highly emotional, romantic series with little action of type ‘harlequin’ (?) . Esmy knocked once the presidents interview gaining a rate of 47% ( per viewers that time )I was not so fond with Alondra however
SOS mi vida anotehr of the latest series with some interest before , sarting the argentinian series ambasador Antalia Oreiro in a very funny story and crazy characters. my wife was so muc interested in this story and recirded mostof the episodes in tapes which later were transfered in DVDA As with Gumus in next she watches it ...once per year..
Gumus : turkish series aired on nearly same period, was als ofered in double DVD via a nationwide newspaper adn was a vey imressive series for my wife to whom I collected all the 50 DVDs. It is a series whre a woman was asked by a old man to help his gradson forgeting a her previously dead lover killed by chance in a oad acident. A dramatic series , that shows not only herliffe but also her in laws famil hurdles in exactly 200 episodes of 1.5 hour
the greek vesion of "Yo so y betty la fea" was the most interesting vesion of soap operas which was nearly the top series of the season 2008-2009
The most current vesions in the greek TV on 2016-19 are from 'escenas de matrimonio" and "your family or mine" aired by Alpha TV that still 5 years after have good audience . There is till the inteest of turkish movies (very cheap procduct) in TV but also reality series as Masterchef ,power of love , survivor , and other of the same
Marimar/ Esmeralda /Maria del barrio and rosalinda were the most successful series in the Greek history of telenovelas