Juha Last reading

The last reading of the ‘Tales of Juha’ was clearly my least favorite of the book.  Juha in my opinion is a witty and funny guy.  Though Juha is a flexible character of Arabian folk tales, I did not see him playing different roles in today’s reading.  There were a couple of reasons as to why I didn’t find this reading particularly funny.

It was too monotonous. Many of the stories today were repetitive. They were repetitive in the themes and the characters.  For example, there were stories one after the other wherein Juha used the jingling of coins to pay someone who accused him/claimant of indirectly using services.  It was funny, maybe very slightly, the first time I read it but the same story being repeated over and over only threw me off.

It wasn’t that funny. All of the previous stories were funny in that they exploited the incongruity theory and superiority theory well. The last couple of chapters did not clearly implement any of the theories as described by Morreall. The only story that was funny in my opinion was that of Juha getting milk in a miserly city.  I found it funny because it was completely outrageous.  I would have expected Juha to have been the trickster here but he was at the other end of the joke.

These last couple of chapters could have been funny if not for these two reasons that I’ve mentioned above. Overall, Juha was an enjoyable character and definitely made this  course a lot more fun by adding a global perspective to the study of humor.

Norelly and Denily - Two Venezuelans at TCU

November 6^th Meeting:

It was a long day for me.  I woke up early, sat through two long content heavy science classes and conducted experiments in the research lab for two hours. The time was only 2 PM and I was worn out already.  I needed to distract myself from everything academics and I felt then that my appointment with Norelly couldn’t have come at a better time.  I then packed my bag and walked 1287 steps from Winton Scott Hall to the Campus Recreation Center where Norelly said she would meet me.

As I walked to the table where we regularly met, I saw not one but two people sitting and talking to each other.  I inched closer to the table and found without a doubt Norelly but also another unrecognizable person.  Norelly then introduced me to her friend, Denily, who is also with the Intensive English Program.  As a matter of fact, Denily is Michael Zeiser’s conversational partner.  Denily comes from Venezuela too and she is one of Norelly’s best friends here at TCU.  Norelly told me Denily had a few questions to ask me. I had no clue as to what the questions were pertaining to but I told her that I was willing to have them answered for her.  She nodded thankfully but didn’t ask me anything for quite a while.

Since it was Super Tuesday, I thought it would be a good idea to ask both of them about who they thought would win the race.  They both looked at each other and laughed blankly.  Norelly and Denily told me then that they didn’t know too much about American politics to predict anything.  They then asked me a few things in order to understand the whole process better.  They asked me about things like Swing States, policy differences, the House and the Senate.  Explaining all of the above seemed quite funny to me as I’m not native to the process and system myself.

Soon after I finished talking about the health care policies, Norelly pointed out to Denily and told her to ask the questions she had for me regarding my career.  Denily wanted to know what I was planning to do after college.  I told her about my future plans of going to either med school, dental school or graduate school.  They were astounded after hearing from me how long med programs would take to complete.  They burst out in laughter after I added the fact that every medical student starts off his/her career with nearly $300,000 in debt. It was an awkward moment for me.  I was sitting in the rec center with two people laughing at a state of living that I probably might recognize myself with in the future. I just let it pass.

Denily then remembered what she wanted to ask me.  She had to write about three Asian religions for one of her IEP assignments. She wanted to write about Christianity, Catholicism in particular, Islam and Hinduism.  She was catholic and she had friends who were Muslims.  This made her find someone who was a Hindu.  Norelly told Denily that I might be a Hindu as I’m from India.  So Denily asked me questions about Hindu scriptures and the Hindu gods. I explained the Hindu trinity of Brahma (the god of creation), Vishnu (the god of protection) and Siva (the god of destruction). Denily crossed her eyes when she found out that lord Siva was the god of destruction.  She asked me the reason behind a god for destruction and I answered her back saying that he destroyed evil only.  She smiled and I was happy that she wasn’t afraid of one of my gods anymore. She also asked about the different sects within Hinduism and I went on to explain the two major sects in Hinduism. To make things easy for her I explained that it was similar to the Catholic and Protestant denominations but not identical.

That was my religious talk for the day and Norelly gave me a packet of chocolate-hazelnut wafers that she got for me from Venezuela as a reward.  I thanked her for the kind gesture and she reminded me that I had to get her a plum from Market Square for her sometime soon.   I felt sheepish and promised to bring her one the next time they have one on display. We then discussed for a few more minutes on creative writing styles.  I explained how I wrote papers and they seemed to listen closely to me.  They told me that they’ll try it out the next time they wrote a paper.  I also asked Norelly how her typing practices were coming along and she told me that she was progressing well.  She also told me that her daughter has picked up typing along with her.

We shared a few other things about our weeks and then Norelly checked her watch before she told me she had to be elsewhere soon.  I asked her when we could meet next and she told me her availabilities.  We set up a future meeting time and stood up to pack our bags.  I shook both of their hands and waved goodbye.  I walked out that evening feeling a lot better. It surprised me as to how much knowledge I shared with Norelly and Denily in the past one hour. This surprise was filled with positivity; positivity that rejuvenated me.

Hungry Politicians

October 17^th meeting

It was a long and tiring Wednesday as I had just taken my second Organic Chemistry test and in preparation for that, I studied the whole previous night.  I woke up in the morning and studied right before I walked in to my class. Soon after I got done with the test, I felt hurt and hungry.  It was as if a truck hit me on my face. I quickly left to meet Norelly at the Rec Center.  She was waiting for me as usual after her class.  When I walked in to the rec center, the only thing that was on my mind was lunch. I told myself that I could do it and put on a smile as I approached our counter. Sure enough our conversation revolved around food that day.

Norelly smiled and asked me if I had lunch yet.  I could not decipher if she was a face reader or if she was just curious. I told her that I haven’t had my lunch and she smiled again. She smiled so often that it was hard for me to imagine her without her smile. I asked her back if she had lunch and she nodded.  She had a Venezuelan lunch she told me.  So then we took off on our journey of exploring the different food dishes of Venezuela and India. She told me how Soy is used a lot in Venezuelan dishes and that it was a high source of protein. In return, I told her how protein rich ‘Dal’ or lentils in a curry were.  All of this talk did not help settle my hunger at all.  We then spoke for a couple of more minutes on food and then I asked her whether she had always eaten healthy. This started a whole new topic of discussion.

Norelly had been working out for the past week.  When I asked her what motivated her to exercise now, she told me that she thought of herself as a ‘fat person’. She told me that she was really skinny and that she had gained a lot of weight after giving birth to her daughter, Amanda.  She wanted to look like her old self and hence started doing aerobics after her IEP class in the Rec Center. Norelly also told me that her body was hurting her really badly because of her workouts. I laughed and felt sorry for her at the same time.  I told her about how I weighed at 210 lbs when I was in grade 10 and that I went through the exact same pain when I started losing weight.  I reassured her that her body aches will go away in a few days’ time.

We spoke about American politics for a bit but she told me she didn’t have much knowledge on American politics to converse with me about it.  So I switched gears to listening mode and heard her talk about the Venezuelan government; yet again.  After a few minutes, Norelly touched upon an interesting area of Venezuelan politics and the economic system.  She told me about how exchanging currency in Venezuela is such a hard task.  Chavez’s regime did not allow Venezuelans to have dollars with them and hence Norelly found it difficult to give her family a good living here in the United States.  She told me how in the black market, $1 is worth 14 Bolivars, the national currency of Venezuela, while the international exchange rate is only about 4 Bolivars for a dollar. It was disturbing to hear about it from someone who is actually being affected by the system back in Venezuela.

Norelly then told me that she had to be elsewhere pretty soon.  We set up our next meeting time and I stood up and thanked her for her time. She told me that she’ll bring me a Venezuelan chocolate to our next meeting as she wanted me to try it.  I thanked her for her thought and then headed out to finally get lunch.