CURRENT MISSION

make friends, learn about other people

ABOUT ME

I have spent most of my life working - doing and teaching anthropology. I have done all my research and most of my writing about Tamil people, culture and language. This is probably the most interesting thing about me. Except my two grown children, who are way more interesting than me, and whom I adore, although they are far away.
I am fairly quiet and these days spend most of my time alone in my house. I have multiple sclerosis, just diagnosed this year (2007) and that is one of the things that keeps me in. The other thing is that I am inherently lazy. But I can still walk small distances, and swim in the ocean (yay!) for hours (double yay!!). I think I can probably still ride a horse. Used to spend all my spare hours on horseback when I was in my teens.
I expect to retire someday, and then want to spend time traveling. There are many places I want to go.

PHILOSOPHY

Enjoy every moment of being alive - or as many as possible, anyway.
Aim to become a boddhisattva.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I have just now joined the CS2 project, after having learned about it on TV. I will do what I can to build the community.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

None so far

Interests

It would be hard to name a thing I am not interested in. Where to start? Okay - I am *not* terribly interested in gardening, although I enjoy other people's gardens, and even my own one, which is totally wild and beautiful, especially in the summer.

Other than that, reading and writing. It's just what I do.

Any kind of good music, music that engages my mind. Movies. Good food (more interested in eating it than in making it, although I know how to make good food, and sometimes still do). Babies and little children are the most interesting people in the world to me. One can learn so much from them. Animals - horses, dogs, cats, birds, snakes, spiders, ants - only ones that won't bite me, though.

• animals
• cats
• dogs
• horses
• birds
• culture
• writing
• dining
• gardening
• movies
• reading
• tv
• traveling
• music
• equestrian
• swimming
• anthropology

Music, Movies, and Books

World music. Zawinul. Any good novel. Margaret Atwood. New Zealand movies are amazingly good! Or any movie with Tom Hanks, or Johnny Depp, or Uma Thurman, or ... any really good actor. Shrek is fun; Shrek 2 was on TV tonight, so it comes quickly to mind.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

From an outsider's point of view, probably the most amazing thing I have done is lived and worked among the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. I lived in Batticaloa district for about eight months, ten years ago, and maintain my interest in the people of Batticaloa, and what is going on in Sri Lanka generally.
But from my own point of view, my most amazing experience has been living with my own two children for about twenty years.

Teach, Learn, Share

Hey, well, I know a lot about anthropology, which is about "different cultures" and more broadly and deeply about the human condition. It seems to me that couchsurfing is more than anything else an anthropological effort.

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