thejester1962

Biography

Hi, everybody! My name is Frank, and I'm a 48-year-old academic from Amsterdam (NL). I attended mostly Montessori primary and secondary schools and considered becoming a professional volleyball player when I was selected for the Dutch national junior squad. Growing up in the tourist city of Amsterdam, I became quite a polyglot - at one time or another I have studied Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Old, Middle, and present-day English, Cornish, Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese, Sundanese, a smattering of Papiamentu, and of course my mother tongue, Dutch. Having studied English Linguistics and Literature at the University of Amsterdam (BA, 1984), I was awarded a scholarship to conduct research into Comparative and American Literature at the University of Exeter in Devon, England, under Dr Mick Gidley and Professor Michael Wood. After taking my MA degree (1988, cum laude) and my post-graduate Teacher's Certificate, I went to Indonesia under the auspices of VSO/The British Council, where I've taught English at Teacher Training Colleges and a private university for fifteen years. In between my Indonesian jobs I taught at Peter Stuyvesant College (Junior and Senior High) on Curacao (Netherlands Antilles) for three years. I'm also an editor and translator (Indonesian-Dutch-English)and enjoy writing comic short stories and learning foreign languages. I'm happily married to a Javanese lady, and we have two delightfully naughty and creative children, Bella (13) and Alex (almost 8). I'm left-handed and like to make people laugh. It's one of the tragedies of modern 21st century life that monarchs and politicians no longer heed the humorous advice of their court jesters!