Cool sayings from around the world (part 5)

During my travels around the world, I've discovered several interesting expressions from backpackers of various nationalities. One of my favourites is a Chinese saying involving strawberry blancmange, an industrial strength vacuum cleaner, and a Peter Stringfellow mask, but that's one that should probably go unmentioned.

However, most sayings from around the world can definitely be mentioned, and I've collected five of my favourites below for your international expressional pleasure.

1) "Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week."

This cat's going to be really busy tomorrow.
He'll probably have to drink twice as much milk!

At first glance, I assumed this Spanish saying was an amusing way of saying that they procrastinate a lot in Spain.

However, apparently it's not intended to encourage laziness, and it's actually intended to do the opposite. It's basically a way of saying, "Do it now! Get stuff done today! Otherwise if you keep putting things off you'll just be twice as busy tomorrow."

On a related note, three weeks ago it was National Procrastination Day. Time to celebrate!

2) "The refrigerator always wins against the television."

This is a Russian proverb relating to economic themed propaganda. It means people sometimes go along with obvious lies that the television tells them, as long as it doesn't affect them financially. However, once the lie reaches the point of going hungry, (or worse, causing famine and starvation), people will finally start to question the obvious lies they've been told, and then demand justice for the journalists and 'experts' that pushed the obvious lie.

Sadly, I think nowadays many people are so stupid that even once their fridges are empty, they will still believe the propaganda that led to their fridges being empty.

Hulk's large fists would be a very bad fit for most eyes.
Although I suppose they would fit well with manga characters.
Not that I condone violence against manga characters.

3) "Fits like a fist in the eye."

You can probably work out what this Finnish saying means for yourself, but if you haven't solved it yet, this is basically a very violent version of the English saying, 'It fits like a glove.'

In my experience, all of the Finnish people I've ever met have been chilled out and peaceful, so I don't know how they came up with such a violent expression!

4) "It's nice to have a house that's hollow."

This Swedish saying was posted as a reply to my previous collection of 'cool sayings from around the world' by a blogger called 'nwnj'. They posted a lovely story about how their father would say this after coming into the house on a very cold day. I'm not sure what it means exactly, but I certainly agree! I always prefer my houses hollow, as opposed to solid.

I think this is just one of those poetic sayings which sounds nice, and is also technically true. After all, coming home to a warm house on a cold day is certainly nice.

An iron. Not to be used on heads.
(Except metaphorically by Armenians.)

5) "Stop ironing my head!"

Finally, here's an Armenian saying which conjures up some bizarre images. 'Stop ironing my head!' is an amusingly creative way of saying, 'Stop annoying me!' For example, if someone was to repetitively ask you questions while you were trying to work, then you might tell them to stop ironing your head.

For some bizarre reason, if I heard someone say this, I could kind of guess what they meant, even if I had never heard the expression before!

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Another cool saying is the phrase, 'Dead Men Tell No Tales'. It's also the title of my book, 'Dead Men Tell No Tales', which is available for kindle from Amazon.

You can find more cool expressions from various countries below:
Cool sayings from around the world (part 3)
Cool sayings from around the world (part 4)