Every year on November 21st, a very small number of people celebrate World Hello Day. On World Hello Day, what people are supposed to do is to say hello to ten random strangers. Apparently, it’s supposed to tell world leaders that they should use communication to settle their problems, but more directly, I imagine that the people who have had a stranger say hello to them will feel a little happy about it.
Anyway, last year on November 21st I participated in the Hello Day activities. Unfortunately, as I said earlier, very few people have heard of this particular event; in fact, I only knew about it due to being told by my good friend David Tubb. I was with David and another friend of mine (who specifically asked me not to write this on my blog, so I won’t use their real name) and the three of us were just wandering around the university. When David told my other friend and I about Hello Day, the pair of us set up a little rivalry and the first of us to say hello to ten people ‘won’. Of course, we didn’t actually ‘win’ anything, we’d didn’t bet money or any other physical prize, so the only actual prize was smugness. We were doing fairly well, each of us helloing the odd person we passed and we were roughly at five all. Then, while David had to pay a little visit to the Steward’s Lodge, we waited outside for him. It seemed the pair of us both noticed that the bus stop was full of people at the same time.
We ran over to it as quickly as we could and arrived at the same time, each of us shouting ‘Hello!’ as loudly as we could. However, these people didn’t seem to be aware of Hello Day. Indeed, the combination of the looks on their faces and the very awkward silence suggested that they were thinking “Who are these two drunken fools?”
And that was my first experience of Hello Day. I suppose the moral of this story is that you should always remember that not many people take part in World Hello Day.
Anyway, last year on November 21st I participated in the Hello Day activities. Unfortunately, as I said earlier, very few people have heard of this particular event; in fact, I only knew about it due to being told by my good friend David Tubb. I was with David and another friend of mine (who specifically asked me not to write this on my blog, so I won’t use their real name) and the three of us were just wandering around the university. When David told my other friend and I about Hello Day, the pair of us set up a little rivalry and the first of us to say hello to ten people ‘won’. Of course, we didn’t actually ‘win’ anything, we’d didn’t bet money or any other physical prize, so the only actual prize was smugness. We were doing fairly well, each of us helloing the odd person we passed and we were roughly at five all. Then, while David had to pay a little visit to the Steward’s Lodge, we waited outside for him. It seemed the pair of us both noticed that the bus stop was full of people at the same time.
We ran over to it as quickly as we could and arrived at the same time, each of us shouting ‘Hello!’ as loudly as we could. However, these people didn’t seem to be aware of Hello Day. Indeed, the combination of the looks on their faces and the very awkward silence suggested that they were thinking “Who are these two drunken fools?”
And that was my first experience of Hello Day. I suppose the moral of this story is that you should always remember that not many people take part in World Hello Day.
