Comments on: What are you saying to the all right happening craic?

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:16:36 +0000

Thanks for commenting Anna! I just read the posts about it on your blog. I do hope you were suitably rewarded in some form to counterbalance all of the trauma it has caused!

By: Anna

Anna — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:43:26 +0000

No, they didn’t make fun of us. Even now I get a very amused respect for having been on Small Talk… I was incredibly ashamed for about a decade though

Anna, former Small Talk victim.

By: Clive

Clive — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 08:28:02 +0000

Granted that the simple “hello” sounds pretty dated now, I think the meaningless “Yo!” may be the best answer to your problem. Well, it’s my problem too – if someone asks me how I am, I reflect for a moment and then tell them (the reflection is necessary since I don’t keep an up-to-the-minute personal wellbeing counter on my person).

“Yo” is hip, trendy and slightly cool and says exactly what its ancestor, “hello”, used to: hey, I see you’re here and so am I. No need for complex answers or philosophical reflections…

By: Angry Steve

Angry Steve — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:32:28 +0000

I prefer just not speaking to people.

It’s easier in the long run.

By: Will P

Will P — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:02:54 +0000

Well, she has an excuse of not being a native speaker… the woman I knew was from the same village as me. Actually, given that most people in siad village speak in an incoherent unintelligible grunt (where ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ becomes ‘Ooartanwasswannt?’), my ex-workmate had the same excuse.

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:11:06 +0000

I once knew somebody from Germany who used to say “What do you know?” all the time when she meant “What do you think?”

By: Will P

Will P — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:13:54 +0000

Someone I used to work with would always ask “What do you know?”, which I think (note ‘think’, I’m not sure) was her way of asking how I was and if anything had happened to me since the last time we’d spoken.

I never quite plucked up the courage to answer, “I know how to conduct a civil conversation clearly and make a genuine enquiry as to the other party’s welfare without resorting to rubbishy ambiguous questions.”

By: James O'Malley

James O'Malley — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:07:19 +0000

Great post! As you note, I know exactly how you feel!

Maybe we should strive to ask more concise questions in future: “How do you judge your emotional state at this point in time?” “What notable events have occurred with regard to your existence and its interactions with society at large have occurred since the last time we communicated?” and so on.