User:Sundar1
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User: Sundar1
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[edit] Who am I and what do I do?
I was born in Niagara Falls, Canada, lived in Toronto and London, Ontario, where my pretty big family still lives, finished school in the Palatinate in Germany and, after a painful decision with trial and error, chose to stay there. I'm a baby-boomer and consider myself to be a "post-68er", consciously and thankfully following the path paved by the 68ers. My heart has been beating on the left ever since, although I've become highly disillusioned with that generation. I support Greenpeace, Adbusters and attac. I'm a geography and mapping freak, having drawn my first street maps at the age of 11. Nevertheless I first started studies in business administration and foreign trade. But my interest in planning lead me to switch and become an urban planner which, in the meantime, I've been in several German cities and in Nepal. I'm a late-bloomer, married a wonderful Canadian teacher from Kitchener, with whom I have 3 great kids going to high school. We now live in Stuttgart, Germany. To top it off, we have a Golden Retriever named Sundar (Nepali for "beau").
[edit] Weltanschauung
Deep thinking Germans created a number of wonderful words that are hard to translate; one of them is "weltanschauung" which lit. translates into "view upon the world" and commonly translated as "ideology". But the term covers quite a lot more and may include religious beliefs. I'm an atheist and drawn to Buddhism and Zen. I believe the first world is living in frivolous, obscene abundance and mankind to be sitting on a huge ocean liner heading for an iceberg, already quite visible ahead. Even if all engines are turned into reverse and the rudder is completely turned, the iceberg will be hit. I try to contribute as little as possible to this course.
[edit] My interests
Apart from mapping and planning I do have a number of interests, which I've pursued for quite some years and which are worth mentioning.
[edit] Linguistics
It was not only growing up bilingually that made me interested in languages. Actually my mother tongue German is Palatinate; High German I acquired during my school years in Germany and actually only really mastered after having lived in the north of the country for 10 years. But, as the former German chancellor Kohl who fought his Palatinate accent in vain, thus often ridiculed, I'm always given away by a Palatinate accent. I'm proud of it. Being bilingual is a most wonderful asset and my wife and I made sure our kids benefit from it. Already as a kid I was fascinated with the relationships of English and German and aspired to know everything about it which made me dig into language history. In high school I started French which I continued at university level, adding two years of Spanish. I find it quite easy to understand spoken and written Dutch, texts in Spanish and to a lesser degree in Italian or Portuguese and the Nordic languages. I have a keen eye for the relationship of all these languages with one another. I spent 2 1/2 years in Nepal as development worker with my family , studied the language intensively for 6 months and used it more or less during our stay. I've been keeping up my knowledge in Nepali after our return. I'm very much for the preservation of languages; they are mirrors into different cultures and ways of thought.
[edit] Politics and Philosophy
In my view the main purpose in life is to make the world a better place. Thus I keep close tabs on world politics, especially, of course, German and Canadian ones. Until I started a family I was heavily involved in the peace movement of the 70s and 80s and in labour union work. I'm particularly interested in metaphysical questions of right and wrong, normalcy, justice, human rights, equality, good and bad, civilization, consciousness, freedom, poverty etc.
[edit] Geography
Of course, closely related to my interest in mapping. I known where all countries of the world are. I'm familiar at least with the major geographical, topographical, socio-economical characteristics of most countries. I can tell most large cities of the world by the lay-out or from satellite view and I have a big collection of maps.
[edit] History and Anthropology
I'm quite familiar with German and European and, somewhat less, Canadian history. I studied the history of the Jews, the state of Israel and the Middle East extensively and I've been a close follower of Middle-East-politics since the 6-day-war. I'm very interested in endangered peoples and cultures of the world, among others native Americans, Inuit, Khoisan, Maori, native Australians, South Pacific.
[edit] Family Research
With the birth of our first child I became interested in family research and dug out ancestors as deep as the 1600s. I discovered a Jewish great-great-grandmother who's uncle was the renown German Jew Leopold Zuns and who in turn was befriended to the poet Heinrich Heine. From school times Heine happened to be my favourite poet.
[edit] What I do at Wikipedia
I dropped in coincidently and found the idea most intriguing. I'm well aware of it's pros and cons. I realize it's also kind of a game, measuring ones knowledge and comparing it with others. I spend much more time reading the discussion pages than the actual articles. I did many contributions especially about countries and cities I'm familiar with (Canada, Germany, Nepal). I've greatly expanded the Nepali-German dictionary and I'm still working on it. It's very time consuming and other people also working on it seem to have dropped out. Time permitting I'd also like to start a Nepali-English dictionary. But I've also done forays into new fields, e. g. I stared the page about "boot camps". It is only now, after a difficult time with the maze of "Wikipedia ways", that I dare log in with a user-name and create a user-page. I intend to dump more of my knowledge on Wikipedia.
