Tag Archives: beth

01 May

rediscovering a word series 3: sexy

Who taught: Patrick, Rachel, Andrew, Beth, Mark, Jake and Carol

Let me start with a challenge for you! From today and from this moment, watch TV shows or movies that are in English. I know you want to watch shows and movies that are in your mother tongue. Do you know why? It is because you are comfortable. Of course, it is. You have a choice. One asks you to stay in your comfort zone which is easy and a lot of people do and the other takes your strong will to get out of the comfort zone. Trust me on this. If you make a decision and be persistent, your English will get better. Additionally, make watching them be one of your everyday routines just like you go to a bathroom every morning. Oh, you go in the evening? Whatever way it is. It has to be a routine. If not, chances are you will fall back into your comfort zone again.

Hope you take my challenge and make a good progress soon! So, had you watch American TV shows, one of the words you would hear a lot would be “sexy.” I swear that people on TV use it so often that I strongly believed that I could use this anytime to any person.

So, a few days ago, when I met my friends, I used it. Of course, I hesitated but thought it should be OK. Oops! I was very very wrong.

Here is what happened. Stella, Patrick’s daughter, was having fun in a chair and her hair became out of control. Suddenly, I remembered an expression, “sexy bed-hair.” You know… when you wake up in the morning, you hair is totally unorganized and messy but, to your significant other, it SHOULD look sexy, right? I will leave it up to your imagination what would happen after that look. 🙂

Well, I said, “Stella got sexy bed-hair.” As soon as I said, “Oh no…. Terry.. Sexy?”

So far, it sounds like I am innocent. Don’t you think? The issue was Stella is only one year old.

My friends told me that people do not use “sexy” to a little kid. My non-native English speaker friends, be careful! Just because you hear a specific word very often on TV, it does not mean that you can use it all the time. There are times that you cannot use them which is not easy to learn. I guess you gotta just experience just like me. Poor Terry.

Patrick and Rachel, Stella is so cute and I love you guys.

By the way, are there any other times that I should not say sexy? #confused.

01 Jun

pull an Andrew

Who taught : Beth, Andrew and Brian

A few weeks ago, Andrew, Beth and I were in a party together. Near to Andrew, there were a small desk where people can put their bottles or glasses. There was a beer bottle on top of the table and the table was not very stable. While Andrew was trying to explain something, he accidentally hit the table and the beer bottle fell on the ground and, as you can imagine, it broke. I helped out to clean the pieces of broken bottle. Ironically, a few minutes later, I hit the same table and another bottle almost dropped. “Oh, Terry, you almost pull an Andrew,” Beth said. I was a little confused about the expression. I mean I could feel that it means something I did the same thing Andrew did because that is exactly what happened. But, I was not 100% sure about the expression. Beth, then, told me that the expression is something you can use when someone did the same thing other people have done. “But, it has negative connotation,” Andrew added.

After having this conversation, I was curious about the origin of the expression but failed to find any information about it. But, I was able to find very interesting one related with the word, “pull.” What if Beth did not use article there? Like, “Terry, you almost pull Andrew.” It has a total different meaning. Could you give it a try? Here is the definition of the expression, “pull someone.”

Pull someone is used to describe the successful act of attracting a person to such an extent that you would be able to snog or perhaps bone them if you so desired. (Source : Urban Dictionary)

Well, by reading this definition, I bet you would also have a question mark in your mind about “bone someone.” Well, it means having sex with someone and it is a term used by guys. I do not think ladies can use this term if you know what I mean. 🙂

Bush mosaic of dead soldiers

Speaking of beer bottle, I have another expression I learned from Brian today. “Hey, Terry, can you guess what dead soldier means?” When he asked this question, I had no idea about it. “What? Dead soldier? Does it have any meaning?” “Yeah, it means empty beer bottle,” Brian told. Sigh, how could I know that meaning? Next time I go to a bar with friends, I will use the expression, like “Hey, all, you gotta leave dead soldiers! So, finish all your bottle!” Why do I have a George Bush’s photo here? When I searched for “dead soldier”, I found this picture as one of the image search results. I was very curious why this picture is one of them. Well, if you look at it very closely, it is a mosaic of small pictures and they are the pictures of dead soldiers in Iraq.