My blog about the humour

According to this blog post I have one story to tell, for which I’m not very proud of, but it has taught me a lesson about the appropriate humour.

Once, when I was a professional basketball player, on a trip to the competition, I had to share a hotel room with the African American player I played with.

So, we had different talk about our life and staff almost every night. One moment we started to talk funny stories to each other.

He told some anecdotes and I answered with the same.

My first and the last anecdote in that night sounded something like that:

In the train sitting a Nigger and a Jew.

And a Jew asks a Nigger are you a Jew?

No, I’m not. I’m Nigger!

But maybe your mother or father was a Jew?

No. I’m pure Nigger!

Ok. But maybe is there some of the Jew’s blood running in your blood?

No. I’m Nigger!!!
So, this questioning continues for a while, and the Nigger loses his mind:

Yes, Yes, I´m a Jew! Are you satisfied?

 Ok, answers a Jew. But why are you looking like a Nigger then?

It was very funny for me, but Edwards didn’t take it that way. He looked me with his big white eyes, which wanted to get out of the skull, and asked: “Do you know that you can get killed for that N word in states?” So it was my time to stare him as a lunatic. “Why” I asked. And he explained his point of view, and so did I. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t explain him, that the N word has no bad meaning in our culture. He just said that the white man can’t call the black man a Nigger if he wants to live. That’s that.

I was 22 at the time, and had my first lesson of different approach for humour and the treatment of definitions between different cultures.

By the way, we stayed friends.

Petrones Estonia

At first I have to say that I didn’t like the book at all. I didn’t like it because it was full of clichés, and not the good ones either.  I don’t see Estonians and the Estonia the way Petrone does.

Though, I found myself thinking why. Why I found myself thinking that Petrones stereotypes and conclusions are really bad and childish. It was simply because, how he described sauna? Finnish sauna night. Of course I know that the New York is multi-cultural city. But to be surprised about the sauna night is little bit … .

He was a New York guy and almost every gym in New York has a sauna or saunas. So why it happened to surprise him?  Is this really how you need to see, and can see Estonia or any country?  Through the sauna and naked man sitting next to each other and skinny dipping? It’s very simple minded point of view of something that important as culture.

Also I can’t accept the way he describes and sees Estonians and Epp’s family.

If they don’t hug, it’s weird and not common. Again, Why? I know a lot of Estonians who hug and kiss when they see each other, and I also know New Yorkers who do not.

Or how he describes his trips from Tallinn to Tartu. No villages no nothing. Only wasteland. Hey man! Take a bus trip from New York to Montreal on route 87 or just go to Texas.

My thoughts are that Petrone hasn’t got the idea of Estonia and Estonians the time he wrote that book. It’s too superficial and subjective. I thing that the foreign culture cannot be taken that lightly by one person.

Ok. So I’m done with the Petrones Estonia, and I don’t agree with his thoughts.  Yes, Estonians like to take sauna. So what? Americans like to take sauna also - and skinny dipping. Yes, every Estonian don’t hug every time. But does every New Yorker or American hug each other, when they see? I don’t think so. So, Petrone, my suggession for you is, to go deeper next time. 

Though there was one important thing about reading the Petrones. And it was, that I started thinking about My Estonia. What is my point of view? And I’m going to thank Petrones book for that. It is very long time, since I had some thoughts about My Estonia.

Fuck this world, I'm going to wonderland!

I saw just yesterday poster stating the above. Coming from a 5-year old child. It made me think and gave me the message to define integration for myself.

I strongly believe that programs of integration, emphasis on the word programs, anywhere in the world are destined to fail, because successful integration starts from home. It starts from our upbringing and thinking model. If it is nonexistent, there is no point talking about integration, but about family values instead. People without a proper upbringing are not able to handle communication with fellow natives. I go even further. There are more and more people who have difficulties relating to their own family. Being so, all formal attempts to manage integration process is not understandable. These are fantasies. Delusion, derived from stupidity.

In my opinion integration is foremost respect.  Respect towards yourself and people around you. Regardless the gender, race or skincolor. Acceptance with the thought that everyone, who is not I, is different.

Attitude described above, towards society and everything around you, becomes part of your, mine and our children’s bloodstream only by home remedies. Later blood transfers are artificial and non-changing to your actual blood type, as system recognizes only blood type matching to your own.

Therefore, to improve integration by formal meaning and actual being, we need healthy families, whose bloodstream consists of respect-, caring- and loveable blood particles.

Respect your child and make sure that he/she respects everything that surrounds him/her. Even when there is something hard to understand or not to like. In that case, if we are lucky, after hundred years we are able to see in addition to the sun and the moon the rainbow in our collective sky.

Let’s start from home. Positive integration reflects on a child who is able to offer a seat to elderly person and takes off his/hers hat when entering the room. Child, who has been raised up in a home where words like “I love you” and “ I understand you” are not feared.