Culture Anyone?(spam only on topic...please)

[slade]

Well I got to thinking, yes I do that from time to time, and I was thinking about my culture and then I was thinking of a culture that I would like to know or experience. I started thinking on my culture because I really dont practice it or participate in any of my culture's customs....I have quite a few cultures. I think it might be harder in America because it feels like its everyones culture all wrapped into one......

So I would like to ask everyone if they could tells us more about their culture/history and what culture they would like to study or experience....maybe this format may work..

1:Name...last Name(option)
2oes your name mean anything or is it just a name?
3:Ethnicity...not race there is a difference....
4:Location of birth...and time spent there in the country
5:Current location....and time spent at current location
6:Your Culture/History...or culture you indentify yourself with
7:Culture you may be interested in?
8:Questions,comments,critisism, tomatoes?

1: Oscar De Anda
2: Its just a name for me....my last name is Spanish I think
3: Spanish,Italian,Salvadorian,and Mexican
4:USA...California..LA
5:USA....California....The Valley
6:its a lot Ill get back to you on that
7: I would like to learn about Japanese culture right now...maybe others after I read them

Its not perfect but I ll try to add more once I hear your comments or advice
thanks.....

[C Elegans]

1. Jacqueline. I'm not giving my last name on a public message board, but suffice to say, it's a typical Scandinavian name and it doesn't mean anything special.

2. Jacqueline is a French name, it means "protector". It's the feminine form of Jacques

3. Swedish. (I'm adopted from South Korea in case you have seen me in the photo thread. I have lived in Sweden all my life and my parents are Swedish.)

4. Unknown, perhaps Seoul in South Korea.

5. Stockholm, Sweden.

6. I identify myself as European. I don't feel particularly Swedish since I don't feel I have more in common with Swedes than other Europeans, but I certainly notice I'm European when I travel in other parts of the world. On the other hand, sociological studies show urban dwellers all over the world have more in common than they have with the rural population in their own countries, and highly educated people from all over the world have more in common with each other than they have with people with low education from the same culture. This I have noticed very clearly - I certainly have much more in common with highly educated people or intellectual people from Asia, Africa, Oceania or the US than I have with a majority of the rural population in Europe.

7. I'm interested in many cultures, especially native cultures. Right now I'm most interested in West and Central Africa. Africa is the continent where humankind is most diversified, both genetically and culturally. I'm currently trying to learn more about the Dogon people in West Africa, a people I hope to visit later this year. To people who like mystical stuff, the Dogon people is perhaps best known for the French reports that the Dogon already hundreds of years ago knew about Sirius B and other stars not visible without a telescope. To people interested in art, the Dogon are well known for their fantastic masks, ritual dances and architecture. To people interested in anthropology, the Dogon people are known for being a very rich culture with a family system, a religion and a social structure that are very different from the Western world and particularly interesting because they have lived isolated for a long time and thus remained removed from the Islamic and European influence in the region.

8. Good topic for a thread

[Hill-Shatar]

1:Name...last Name(option)
2: Does your name mean anything or is it just a name?
3:Ethnicity...not race there is a difference....
4:Location of birth
5:Current location
6:Your Culture/History...or culture you indentify yourself with
7:Culture you may be interested in?
8:Questions,comments,critisism, tomatoes?

1. My last name is pretty obvious... Hill. Althougyh I go under my name for publishing papers.

2. My name means, hill. my first name means Lord of the Forest, and is Old english and scottish in origin. However, since I already have my last name on here, I dont think I will put up my first.

3. Scottish, Irish and English. Before my Canadian heritage.

4. St Josephs hospital, London, Ontario. @ CE: Do you have your old name? Look for a person from Siuth Korea and ask where your family base is from and where the family histories and clans originate and migrate from.

I could offer some help. Some of my friends at work are South Koreans. They know much more about the subject than I do... personally I would rather leave my past be...

5. NW Calgary, in Canada.

6. Mainly those old scotty traditions... we are not overly religious, but astill celebrate christman, ect. I don't really follow any culture than mostly what pops up in any major city.

7. Those cultures based in the orient. However, my interest spreads far and wide. you can never truly understand a culture. I love to see the wide spread of cultures currently based just in my lab. Yes, you scientists, corny, yet funny.

I have been to many, many, many, many, many, many (well you get the point) places in the last few years, both when I was in Robotics and now in Microbiology. All cultures have a uniqueness I find appealing... some more tha others. However, I dont know if you would want a synopsis on each culture Ive seen... it could span several posts.

8. You shouold not have made me thinki when I was sick. You evil, evil person.

[slade]

Originally Posted by Hill-Shatar

I have been to many, many, many, many, many, many (well you get the point) places in the last few years, both when I was in Robotics and now in Microbiology. All cultures have a uniqueness I find appealing... some more tha others. However, I dont know if you would want a synopsis on each culture Ive seen... it could span several posts.

You could put a synopsis of each culture that you have seen if you want...but,so that its not overload try to put in a couple at a given time or anytime you have free time, I think some people would like to hear your experiences of other cultures....

[Hill-Shatar]

Personally, I enjoyed parts of the Orient. Ok, Thailand was full of hooker sand had quite the nightlife, but anyways...

A while ago I wen to China for a visit... and ended up going to the mountainous north. I have to admit, the great wall was impressive. It shows how much the Chinese persevered to make such a monument to protect the north... something so few cultures can say. They even have the dead filling parts of the wall.

I found the place crowded... many people moving around in so many dirrections in Shang-Hai that you can esily get confused. Fortunately, westerners tend to stand out, as I was taller than the maojority of the people there.

China is a place attempting to catch up with the rest of the world. It had built up to fast and too quickly... many streets are too small or haphazardly placed, and some of the buildings look like they are going to break down at any moment.

I however, did not spend much time in Shang-Hai. I dont know how many people here have actually watched dont forget your passport, but I did what he did.

There are several beautriful villages in the mo0untains. One I particularily liked was in a valley with a large lake. A mountain appear to huddle in the backgpround, and the place was so traditional. woman walked around in Ornamental dresses, entertaining passingbyers with amazing feats of dancing and beautiful footwork. Music was exquisite, and unique./ It seems like you never hear the same song twice.

I walked along the beautiful docks, but they were not really docks. They had actually duck into the shore, made a deep channel, large enough for a boat to maneuver in. They said that they have been doing it even when they were still under constant threat of the Mongolians. This impressed me, that a people could mainatina their culture, maintain their values and advance so far in beauty that they could last through such things, even with a country and large as theirs, with little transportation until a few years ago.

I went to this amazing mountain, where there was a temple at the top, and hundreds of miles of stone path winding through this beautiful rainforest, with strwasm trickling everywhere. Sometimes you could fiund snactuaries of peace with small springs or oponds with small waterfalls, encased with trees of all sorts of foilage and colour. so,etimes you could sit for hours and no one could come by. That the monks could maintain something this lartge, and keep the forest there, among all the years and invasions, is a miracle. What it must have taken for them to make these paths.

I also went and saw some red panda bears, almost extinct but now extremely well protected. I fear that China is still lossing its heritage. So much as already been lost by moderization... so little is left. what was once precious, like the panda, is almost no more.

However, sometimes you can feel the enrgy from it coursing through the air...

Well, this is my first synopisis. Its a little vague and short... oh well... it would take me much more posts to do it.

[C Elegans]

Originally Posted by Hill-Shatar

@ CE: Do you have your old name? Look for a person from Siuth Korea and ask where your family base is from and where the family histories and clans originate and migrate from.

I could offer some help. Some of my friends at work are South Koreans. They know much more about the subject than I do... personally I would rather leave my past be...

Thanks Hill, but to tell you the truth, I am completely uninterested in my Korean genetic background. I came to Sweden as a 8.5-months old infant, and my Swedish parents are my parents, my relatives my relatives. I wouldn't have any more in common with my biological parents than with any stranger on this earth.

[Hill-Shatar]

I was almost sure that you would deny the offer, since I would. It is no major deal. Its nice to know that you fit in with your new relatives so well... so few adoptions actually hold. Oh well, your the amazing CE, you can do almost anything.

[slade]

Oh I see..*referring to CE* thats one of the reasons why I added location of birth and current location...I knew some way it plays a role in our culture maybe I should add how long they spent at the location of birth and current location....

IMO... it feels like someone who lets say came from Mexico(using it only because its so close) at the age of one or less "may" be less into their culture than someone who came at 10 to 18....,the country they go to plays a role too I assume....these ages are in theory ofcourse.

[dragon wench]

1:Name...last Name(option)
2oes your name mean anything or is it just a name?
3:Ethnicity...not race there is a difference....
4:Location of birth...and time spent there in the country
5:Current location....and time spent at current location
6:Your Culture/History...or culture you indentify yourself with
7:Culture you may be interested in?
8:Questions,comments,critisism, tomatoes?

1. Sonja

2. I believe it is associated with Wisdom, and is closely related to the name "Sophia."

3. born to a Dutch/German mother, British (from the NorthEast of that country) father.

4. Hamburg, Germany. I lived there until the approximate age of 4

5. Vancouver, Canada, about 4 years (before that, Victoria, Canada for around 10 years, on and off)

6. Hard to answer this one..... I guess it's a mix really. I identify to some degree with the West Coast culture (having lived in the region for so long it eventually rubs off), but I also identify with Central Cdn culture, and my European heritage (most notably the Dutch and British)

7. Cultures I'm interested in? Where to begin? But for starters to a potentially long list, I'd love to learn more about Icelandic culture

[C Elegans]

Originally Posted by Hill-Shatar

I was almost sure that you would deny the offer, since I would. It is no major deal. Its nice to know that you fit in with your new relatives so well... so few adoptions actually hold. Oh well, your the amazing CE, you can do almost anything.

There are thousands of adopted people in Sweden only from South Korea, even more thousands from other countries. I think Sweden is the country in the world which has most foreign adoptions, so it's absolutely no big deal and a majority of adopted people are like me, totally uninterested since your "adoption parents" are your real parents. It may be different if you are older, let's say over 3-4 years old, when you get adopted, because then you have memories, you have formed attachment to people in your country of birth, and have learned the language. If you are adopted as an infant, it's not really any different from growing up with your biological parents - you know nothing else.

Originally Posted by Slade

thats one of the reasons why I added location of birth and current location...I knew some way it plays a role in our culture maybe I should add how long they spent at the location of birth and current location....

Location of birth can say very little about a person sometimes. I had a schoolmate who was Swedish but born in the Middle East, and his sister was born in Etiopia...their father was a diplomat.

[Hill-Shatar]

@ Ce totally agree. I would say more, but you would find my grammar insulting and find a loop in my words that makes you think that I mean something totally different, and this thread will become all philisophic and be no fun for the others.

Which would be most fortunate. Unfortunately, now I have to set an example...

[Chimaera182]

1: Ian
2: Ian is Irish (everyone's always telling me it's something, but my dad says it's Irish, and since he's the one who named me, that's what I'm sticking with) for John or Eric.
3: American.
4: Orlando, Florida, USA. All 23 years in Florida.
5: Boca Raton, Florida, USA. 4 years and counting.
6: I don't identify myself with any particular culture, but almost undoubtedly I'm closest to that lovable white American culture.
7: I'm not interested in individual cultures so much as humanity as a whole. So let's just go with all cultures.

[Phreddie]

sort of off topic but not really, To all Americans out there (as in UNted States not mexico canadia and drugland) : I have just realized that America has more of a coalition of Cults than a culture, that is why i now propoze that the INS adopt a new mottq, as follow:


"America, we put the cult in culture!"

[fable]

I know you meant that humorously, Phreddie, but it is an untrue slam against the US. If you consider that there are 300 million people in the US, and that they represent over a dozen separate cultures, all forced to live together, then the so-called cults in number and power are inconsequential. Except, of course, to the BBC, which likes to point out how potty Americans are, how vulgar Australians are, how snobbish the French are, etc.

Cults have a very specific definition. If we use it, we find that there are major cults throughout the world.

1: Barry
2: It means various things in various languages.
3: Ukrainian grandparents, raised in the US.
4: NYC.
5: New Jersey, 6 years. We will be moving in 1-2 years.
6: Urban. Definitely not American.
7: Too many to name. If I were 30 years younger, I'd study to be a cultural anthropologist.

[CM]

1: Faisal
2: In Arabic it means "Double edged sword" - Now isn't that just a grand name to make friends with But a more direct meaning is "Decisive". The double edge sword imagery is attached due to literature and folklore (i am not sure about the second part)
3: Pakistani i guess is an ethnicity - if not then the generic south asian.
4: New York, USA. Time spent in the US would be like 4 years including summers.
5: New York, USA.
6: I identify honestly with Islamic country as not much with Pakistani culture, because i lived abroad so much. Interestingly most Europeans say I should be defined as an American Muslim by my dress sense, attitude and generally sunny disposition.
7: Hmmm....most of it is with regard to historical culture that no longer exist. How the early Muslims lived, the Persians, the Mongols, the Mughal Empire. The Indonesian and the Malays. I will be very honest I am not interested in African culture because it is so wide and diverse, I just have a headache thinking all the stuff that there is and how 99% of it has been lost due to colonialism.
8: Nope.