Hey guys! How are things? Are you ready for spring? Enjoying your day? I hope you do, it's Sunday anyway. It took me a while to figure out what I want to write about next. There are so many things that are worth attention, sometimes I have a feeling that there are even too many things that I would like to tell you about. So today I made my choice and will tell you about the sense of humor! As Mr. Hawking, the famous physicist that spent most of life in a wheelchairб used to say: Keeping an active mind has been vital to my survival, as has been maintaining a sense of humor. What's so special about this human quality? In Ukraine, we like to say that the sense of humor is something that helps us survive. Just think about it, let's take only the 20th century: 1914 - World War I, 1917 - Revolution and we became the part of Soviet Union, 1939-1945 - World War II, I will omit artificial famines and other calamities created by soviet government during its almost 75-year existence, 1991 - the soviet union collapsed and we became independent, but I mean completely independent, which meant the state authorities had to figure out a lot of things about management of the country. While they were doing it we had literally nothing anywhere, I mean empty stores, no salaries, at some point we had no running water in homes and the electricity was switched off every day for a couple of hours, especially in winter. So it was really "fun" stuff. And yet I can't say that "these were the most horrible years in my life" because they weren't. And partially because we had each other and could laugh at some things making our days brighter.
I can tell you for sure that Ukrainian sense of humor is somewhat different from let's say American sense of humor. The main and the biggest difference is jokes: Ukrainians like to tell anecdotes. You will often see people telling anecdotes to each other at a dinner or party or during a coffee break at work. You will say: Ha! Americans tell each other jokes too! Yes, they do. We have a guy at work that would walk in the door and say to me: Do you know that six is afraid because seven ate nine? And of course, it will take me a while to figure out what he means and not because I'm dumb, but because it's 4 o'clock in the morning, I haven't had my coffee yet and in addition to everything my native language is not English. So, yeah, it's funny of course, but not at once. At the same time if one of my ex-colleagues would enter the office in the morning (in Ukraine, I mean) most likely they would tell me something like this: An airplane crashed in the middle of a desert and only one guy survived. So he is walking through the desert in hope to find some people and suddenly sees a bottle laying around. He picks up the bottle, opens it with the hope that there is some water in it. But instead of water a djinn gets out of the bottle and says: You wish is my command, my lord! And the guy says: I want to go home! The Djinn takes him by the hand and starts walking with him in some direction. The guy is puzzled and speaks to him again: You didn't understand me correctly, Djinn, I want to go home and do it quickly! The Djinn still holds him by the hand and says: Well, then we will have to run! Are you laughing there??? I hope you do! It's a funny little anecdote, isn't it? We have much longer ones and sometimes they are so funny that it's even hard to keep the poker face while telling them. My mom and I have a couple of favorite ones that are very long and when we were telling them each other for the first time we were laughing to tears. Now we just use separate phrases from them to cheer up each other. Ukrainian anecdotes very often reflect our traditions, but they also reflect modern problems: Ukrainians like to joke about politics and politicians, other public and famous people, show-biz people and other "funny" guys. Some of our jokes are definitely bitter and some are pretty self-critical. We even have a city in Ukraine that is considered as the capital of humor. The city is Odesa, in the south of Ukraine, on the Black Sea shore. Every year they hold a big festival of humor and a great number of stand-up artists come to perform on this day.
The 1st of April is also a pretty popular entertainment day in Ukraine. This is mostly a day of different hoaxes and now with the development of the Internet people just get online on social networks and make jokes and hoaxes. In my childhood, it was more entertaining since there was no Facebook or Twitter. Even my parents liked to hoax me. Once they tied a banana to my pot growing liana while I was taking my dog for a walk. When I was back both my parents looked very serious and told me that something pretty unusual had happened to my plant. I didn't believe them since I was aware that it was the 1st of April and I was sure that nothing could happen to my liana. But when I walked into my room a perfect yellow banana was hanging from my liana. For a moment I was speechless and puzzled until I noticed a vivid red thread holding banana on the liana stem. They were very proud of themselves! ))
Though the real festival of hoaxes is the St. Andrew's Day, which Ukrainians celebrate in December. Main traditions on this day are connected with fortune telling: young girls try to figure out the name of their future husband in many weird and funny ways, while young men go out late in the evening and do different naughty things. The most popular naughtiness is to take off the gates or wickets and hide them somewhere around the corner, to pile something or lean something against the house entrance door, to hide a yard bench or some other yard decorations. Once we found a broken metal bucket tied to the bumper of our car: good that my father walked around the car first thing in the morning, otherwise we would produce a lot of noise ))) The most ballsy hoaxers used to mount a wooden cart or wooden sled on top of a barn back in old times. The main condition for all those hoaxes is that they can be done only to homes of the families who have daughters that are not married yet. Otherwise, it's not legit! It was pretty funny the next day to go to school and to listen to all the stories about how the guys were almost caught by someone's father or how they were running away from a not very happy dog. Of course, this tradition is not very popular in big cities (I guess people would just call the police), but in a small town like the one I grew up in where people know each other, it's still a quite popular thing.
And to finish my blog today and make you smile one more time (I hope) I will leave here one more anecdote:
A young man and an elderly woman are sitting next to each other on a train. The man is very hungry and when the woman opens her bag and takes out a big tasty looking sandwich he gets even more hungry and dares to ask her for a favor: Can you please give me a piece of your sandwich, ma'am? She looks at him and responds: Here is a two-liter bottle of water. Drink it first and then I will give you a piece of my sandwich. When he finished the water, she looks at him and asks: Are you ready for the sandwich? No, he replies, my stomach is full of water! You see, she says, you were not hungry! You were thirsty!
According to Swiss scientists laughing eases stress, lowers blood pressure and can boost your immune system! Let's keep laughing and smiling, maybe one day this world will turn into a better place due to our positive attitude!
Have a great time of the day and behave!
Truly yours!
Give me one more smile!Aren't those piglets funny? I took this photo some time ago. I call it Curiosity. All rights reserved.
I can tell you for sure that Ukrainian sense of humor is somewhat different from let's say American sense of humor. The main and the biggest difference is jokes: Ukrainians like to tell anecdotes. You will often see people telling anecdotes to each other at a dinner or party or during a coffee break at work. You will say: Ha! Americans tell each other jokes too! Yes, they do. We have a guy at work that would walk in the door and say to me: Do you know that six is afraid because seven ate nine? And of course, it will take me a while to figure out what he means and not because I'm dumb, but because it's 4 o'clock in the morning, I haven't had my coffee yet and in addition to everything my native language is not English. So, yeah, it's funny of course, but not at once. At the same time if one of my ex-colleagues would enter the office in the morning (in Ukraine, I mean) most likely they would tell me something like this: An airplane crashed in the middle of a desert and only one guy survived. So he is walking through the desert in hope to find some people and suddenly sees a bottle laying around. He picks up the bottle, opens it with the hope that there is some water in it. But instead of water a djinn gets out of the bottle and says: You wish is my command, my lord! And the guy says: I want to go home! The Djinn takes him by the hand and starts walking with him in some direction. The guy is puzzled and speaks to him again: You didn't understand me correctly, Djinn, I want to go home and do it quickly! The Djinn still holds him by the hand and says: Well, then we will have to run! Are you laughing there??? I hope you do! It's a funny little anecdote, isn't it? We have much longer ones and sometimes they are so funny that it's even hard to keep the poker face while telling them. My mom and I have a couple of favorite ones that are very long and when we were telling them each other for the first time we were laughing to tears. Now we just use separate phrases from them to cheer up each other. Ukrainian anecdotes very often reflect our traditions, but they also reflect modern problems: Ukrainians like to joke about politics and politicians, other public and famous people, show-biz people and other "funny" guys. Some of our jokes are definitely bitter and some are pretty self-critical. We even have a city in Ukraine that is considered as the capital of humor. The city is Odesa, in the south of Ukraine, on the Black Sea shore. Every year they hold a big festival of humor and a great number of stand-up artists come to perform on this day.
The 1st of April is also a pretty popular entertainment day in Ukraine. This is mostly a day of different hoaxes and now with the development of the Internet people just get online on social networks and make jokes and hoaxes. In my childhood, it was more entertaining since there was no Facebook or Twitter. Even my parents liked to hoax me. Once they tied a banana to my pot growing liana while I was taking my dog for a walk. When I was back both my parents looked very serious and told me that something pretty unusual had happened to my plant. I didn't believe them since I was aware that it was the 1st of April and I was sure that nothing could happen to my liana. But when I walked into my room a perfect yellow banana was hanging from my liana. For a moment I was speechless and puzzled until I noticed a vivid red thread holding banana on the liana stem. They were very proud of themselves! ))
Though the real festival of hoaxes is the St. Andrew's Day, which Ukrainians celebrate in December. Main traditions on this day are connected with fortune telling: young girls try to figure out the name of their future husband in many weird and funny ways, while young men go out late in the evening and do different naughty things. The most popular naughtiness is to take off the gates or wickets and hide them somewhere around the corner, to pile something or lean something against the house entrance door, to hide a yard bench or some other yard decorations. Once we found a broken metal bucket tied to the bumper of our car: good that my father walked around the car first thing in the morning, otherwise we would produce a lot of noise ))) The most ballsy hoaxers used to mount a wooden cart or wooden sled on top of a barn back in old times. The main condition for all those hoaxes is that they can be done only to homes of the families who have daughters that are not married yet. Otherwise, it's not legit! It was pretty funny the next day to go to school and to listen to all the stories about how the guys were almost caught by someone's father or how they were running away from a not very happy dog. Of course, this tradition is not very popular in big cities (I guess people would just call the police), but in a small town like the one I grew up in where people know each other, it's still a quite popular thing.
And to finish my blog today and make you smile one more time (I hope) I will leave here one more anecdote:
A young man and an elderly woman are sitting next to each other on a train. The man is very hungry and when the woman opens her bag and takes out a big tasty looking sandwich he gets even more hungry and dares to ask her for a favor: Can you please give me a piece of your sandwich, ma'am? She looks at him and responds: Here is a two-liter bottle of water. Drink it first and then I will give you a piece of my sandwich. When he finished the water, she looks at him and asks: Are you ready for the sandwich? No, he replies, my stomach is full of water! You see, she says, you were not hungry! You were thirsty!
According to Swiss scientists laughing eases stress, lowers blood pressure and can boost your immune system! Let's keep laughing and smiling, maybe one day this world will turn into a better place due to our positive attitude!
Have a great time of the day and behave!
Truly yours!
Give me one more smile!Aren't those piglets funny? I took this photo some time ago. I call it Curiosity. All rights reserved.
A quite pretty piece :)
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