friday 5

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

Don’t ask me where I got these translations. You probably don’t want to know.

Gezellig is the ultimate Dutch concept—it’s less of a word and more of a whole mood! While there isn’t a single English word that captures it, its closest translation is cozy, but with a massive social upgrade.

It goes way beyond physical warmth. A soft blanket by yourself is cozy, but a room filled with close friends, warm lighting, shared laughter, and good food is gezellig.

It describes a feeling of togetherness, comfort, and belonging. You can have a gezellig conversation, a gezellig night out, or even visit a gezellig little coffee shop.

If an atmosphere feels cold, unwelcoming, or full of awkward tension, the Dutch immediately label it the opposite: ongezellig.

1. When did you last have a gezellig conversation or night out?
2. What is usually your contribution to (ie: what do you add to the feeling in) a gezellig gathering?
3. What are some ongezellig spaces you’ve known?
4. What do you know about the Netherlands?
5. Another Dutch word, uitwaaien, means literally “to blow out.” It’s heading out into the wind—usually walking along a beach, a dike, or through a park—specifically to clear your head, refresh your spirit, and let the breeze blow away your stress. When did you recently feel the need to uitwaaien, and where did you go?

Thanks for participating, and have a lekker weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these question to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

I was in a large work-related meeting Thursday morning, and our CEO talked about how another presenter said the usual job interview questions and resume review don’t usually give good insight on candidates. This presenter said companies get better results with the first two questions I’m asking this week. Our CEO offered the third. I like how they get to core values and emotional energy outside the usual rehearsed responses. Along these lines, I came up with the last two questions. What do you think of them? 🙂

I think we’ve asked forms of these questions, usually in narrower contexts, but I’m intrigued by the broader asks in these cases. Feel free to respond as you would in a job interview or just as you, today.

1. What do you brag about?
2. What do you complain about?
3. What makes you laugh?
4. What have you recently changed your mind about?
5. What non-work-related subject do you geek-out over?

Thanks for participating, and have a what-are-your-strengths-and-challenges weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

1. What’s the longest book you’ve read?
2. What’s the funniest book you’ve read?
3. What’s the saddest book you’ve read?
4. What’s the most useful book you’ve read?
5. What are you reading now or next?

Thanks for participating, and have a page-turner of a weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

1. What takes a licking but keeps on ticking?
2. What are two great tastes that taste great together?
3. When have you recently reached out and touched someone?
4. Besides your keys, wallet, and phone, what do you never leave home without?
5. What might you do this weekend to double your pleasure and double your fun?

Thanks for participating, and have a spicy meatball of a weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

1. Which movie theater were you (or are you) especially fond of?
2. What memories do you have of going to the video store?
3. What memories do you have of going to the movies with friends?
4. What memories do you have of going to the movies with family?
5. What are the most unusual places where you’ve attended a movie?

Thanks for participating, and have a cinematic weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

This week’s 5 is inspired by the party game Scattergories, in which players have to think of items, all beginning with the same letter, in several categories. For example, if the die is rolled and shows the letter G, players might have to name a fruit, a bird, a river, and a movie star, all beginning with G. Valid answers might be grapefruit, goonie, Genessee, and Greta Garbo.

First, go to this nifty online random-letter generator. Set the “number of random letter sequences to generate” to 1. Set the “length of each random letter sequence” to 1. Leave the “letters to choose from” how it is and click the button. You’ll get a rather non-dramatic one letter. Use this letter to begin all your answers to the 5 questions below. If you’d like to avoid difficult letters, feel free to change the “letters to choose from” list. I’ll only judge you a little bit.  

🙃

Alternately, if you find this boring, you could set the “length of each random letter sequence” to 5, thereby giving you five letters, a different one for each question.

This is our sixteenth year doing this! If you find this particularly fun (I do!) and haven’t done this before, here are the questions for parts 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15. Go crazy and do those too.

Please answer these questions with an answer whose initial is the letter you rolled!

1. Who was especially influential in shaping your values?
2. Who inspired (or inspires) you in your work?
3. What have you had a little too much of lately?
4. What have you brought home recently?
5. How’s your weekend shaping up?

Thanks for participating, and have a NNVGM* weekend!

(this word generated by the random letter generator)

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

Up a little late. I fell asleep while composing this!

1. What’s your favorite novel, TV series, or film about someone leaving the big city or a big career and returning to their small hometown?
2. What’s your favorite novel, TV series, or film about two characters (friends, strangers, coworkers, enemies, or something else) pretending to be in a romantic relationship?
3. What’s your favorite novel, TV series, or film about someone who stumbles through a hidden portal into a magical or alien world?
4. What’s your favorite novel, TV series, or film about characters racing against others to get somewhere, find something, or contact someone?
5. What’s your favorite novel, TV series, or film about rivals, enemies, or adversaries becoming lovers, partners, or friends?

Thanks for participating! And sorry in advance if these seem extra difficult. I enjoyed thinking of my own answers, but I also ran through a lot of tropes I didn’t like because they were too difficult for me to think of good answers for. I may have rejected five that you’d have loved in favor of five I enjoyed. 🙂

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

1. Declare the causes which impel them to the separation. What have you separated yourself from this year, and what were the causes?
2. We hold these truths to be self-evident. What truths about daily interaction with people would seem to be self-evident but apparently aren’t?
3. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. Which recently learned facts would you like to submit to us, your candid world?
4. Opposing, with manly firmness. Lately, what do you oppose with manly, womanly, or otherwise humanly firmness?
5. Ought to be free and independent states. What puts you in a free and independent state of mind?

Thank you for participating, and have a free, independent, self-evidently true weekend!

EDIT: Ummm I titled this with the wrong date. I’ve fixed the title, but I’m not changing the URL because Syl already responded and I don’t want to break her link. 🙂 In case you were wondering why the URL says July 4.

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

Actual questions asked in person-on-the-street interviews!

1. What is one lie you tell yourself every day?
2. What is your weirdest habit?
3. What is a controversial opinion you have about a very mundane thing?*
4. What is the worst advice you actually followed?
5. What is a risk you’re glad you took?

* I’m not telling you not to answer this with your toilet paper under/over opinion, but don’t you think it’s a very tired topic? 🙂

Thanks for participating, and have a beautiful, safe weekend!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

Getting these questions up a little late this week. Sorry! My focus has been utter garbage lately. One of last week’s questions was inspired by my severe lack of focus.

1. What’s your favorite cured or preserved food?
2. What’s your favorite cooked dough with filling?
3. What’s your favorite add-water-to-this-powder beverage?
4. What’s your favorite I-don’t-want-to-dirty-any-dishes meal?
5. What’s your favorite food movie?

Thanks for participating, and have a delicious weekend! And interpret question 5 any way you want!