It is not so that I do not go to work every day and it is not so that I do not walk in the streets of the capital in the afternoon, but the heat does not disturb me completely, it does not influence my mood and workability. For a lot of my fellow citizens, as they say, it is a topic of discussion.
Talks about weather assuredly are the inseparable part of “high-class conversations” in any given country. However, endless complaints in Armenia of “unbearable heat” in the summer and of “unprecedented cold” in the winter fully fit in our “grouchy” mentality and are encouraged by populists equally as much as other complaints of other topics. “What a heat it made this year, this has never happened”, “in Armenia alone it is this hot, even in Georgia after Saakashvili there is no such heat”, “they write 42, you should understand it is 57”, “they intentionally say 40 to make people work” (actually there is no law on releasing people from work in case of 40 plus degree present in Armenia), “the day before, the thermometer was showing 68 in my car.”
The dissemination of knowledge and the culture of a positive attitude towards life should contradict to the culture of complaining of everything and the lack of school or I would even say the elementary knowledge. However, when people have enough knowledge but they act just the opposite and intentionally imitate stupid people to win the sympathy of “complaining masses”, this smells with cynicism.
Suppose teenagers quarrel and one stabs the other with a knife. When it happens in Denmark or, for example, in Norway (you do not doubt it, right, that stabbing with knife is not merely an Armenian custom?), the public figures speak of upbringing, education, laws, the culture of relations and etc. When it happens in Armenia, it is said as if the teenagers stabbed each other with the knife because they do not trust the justice system of “this country”, it is a chain of “bloody vendettas” and until the regime is changed, the stabbings will continue. Developed countries think of how to overcome a negative phenomenon, here they think how to win the sympathy of the “grouchy mass” and increase the number of complaints in public atmosphere.
Forasmuch as I am for the 1st – “Norwegian” approach, I will let myself a practical advice. Instead of complaining of the heat, pour cold water (but not icy) on your body at least per hour.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
