Tag Archives: carol

08 Jun

hug the toilet

Who taught: Carol

Hug the toilet (source : http://www.funnymediablog.com/)

I am sorry if you read this post in the morning. Try not to imagine too much as you read it through. ๐Ÿ™‚

Let me start with a simple survey here!

How many of you have experiences of drinking too much and throwing up as a result? All of you maybe?

Now, if the answer is yes, how many of you have gone into a bathroom to find a toilet to vomit? Probably many of you, right?

I guess I do not need to explain this expression, hug the toilet, by now. Let me have you feel this expression even better. When you need to vomit by becoming intoxicated, you would love to find a toilet and as you vomit, you have to be very close to the toilet. In doing so, you have to kind of hug it just like you hug your girl friend or boy friend. Can you feel it? As I said, you have to feel an expression to be able to not only understand and use it properly.

A few weeks ago, Carol twitted me, saying, “Hey, do you know what ‘hug the toilet’ means?” For some reason, my first guess was exactly correct. I guess it is because I had an experience of hugging the toilet. I had only one, though. And, it was due to the fact that I was forced to drink by my bosses in the Army. I hated that feeling and I felt I am like a trash. And, after that, I have never even thought about drinking. Now, I have a question to Carol. Why did you ask that question? Did you hug the toilet the night before that day? ๐Ÿ™‚

My friends! Hope you do not have many experiences of toilet hugging! If you have too many, you might want to think about how to quit or reduce drinking.

Don’t hug the toilet but hug your juliet!

11 May

neighbor vs neighborhood

Who taught: Jake

 

Neighborhood (source: http://www.websiteneighbors.com/)

Yesterday evening, there was a farewell party for Carol because it was her last day at her current work. She will be starting her new chapter in her life as a Rails developer of a new startup. (For those of you who are not familiar with Rails, simply speaking, it is a programming language that is used to create a new web site or application such as Twitter.)

 

You know what is the most fun part of being a software developer or engineer? You get to see a cool or ugly stuff right away in front of your eyes. Anything you develop does not tell a lie. If there is any problem in your code, it complains. If everything is fine, even though this does not guarantee it is perfect, it at least shows a happy face. There is no poker face in your code. Not everything in life is in this way.

Anyway, Carol! Good luck and congratulations again!

As I was talking to Jake in the party, we talked about my new house. And, Kara was with us while we were talking about the house. She actually lives in the same neighborhood where my new house is.

Did you notice that I used ‘neighborhood’ here? When I write, I can find a correct word but, yesterday, I said, “Kara! Finally, we live in the same neighbor.”

As Jake heard this, he said, “Terry. You should say ‘neighborhood’ instead of neighbor. Neighbor means a person or people who live right next to your house. It could be on your righthand side or lefthand side. Or, front or back. They are your neighbors.”

So, that means I cannot have a lot of neighbors unless they have a huge family with a huge house. ๐Ÿ™‚ This is another case where I can write correctly but I make mistakes all the time when I speak. I just forget to add “hood” at the end.

Why? I think it is because of culture. In Korea, when I say a Korean word, “์ด์›ƒ(Yi-Ut),” it could cover many people who live in the same neighborhood. Korean people have a tendency to maintain very tight relationships with their neighbors. There is a Korean saying in this context, “์ด์›ƒ์‚ฌ์ดŒ(Yi-Ut-Sa-Chon).” Literal translation into English is “neighbor cousin,” meaning neighbors are like cousins or even closer than your cousins.

So, here is my conclusion that I would like to think of when it comes to the comparison of neighbor and neighborhood. I will think of a person or people when I think of the word, neighbor, whereas I will think of area or land when I need to think of neighborhood.

Better way to remember these two words correctly is asking these questions to myself all the time to train my brain.

Where is your neighborhood? vs. Who are your neighbors? Can you feel it?

12 Apr

torso

Who taught: Carol

Torso (source: http://philippefaraut.com/)

You might think that I do not study English hard enough when you hear this story. But, look, you cannot know all of the words in English, right?

About a year ago, I was invited to a meeting where about 7 people of the company that I used to work brainstormed and discussed a new design of a few features for a software.

Before we got into a real discussion, Carol suggested to play a game to have our brains relaxed and ready to be creative. So, here is the rules of the game.

1. Fold a paper horizontally three times so that there are three sections on the paper.

2. The first person who only sees the top folded section of the paper draws a head of a person who he/she thinks of. (There is only one restriction here which is that this person should be one of the people who are in the meeting.) After drawing, the first section should be hidden so that the second and following folded section should be on top and the person who just drew should pass the paper to a person who is sitting next to him/her. This way the person who gets the paper has no idea whose head is drawn.

3. The second person who gets the paper draws torso and arms of a person who he/she thinks of that it should be. (It is, of course, highly possible that torso and arms are of a different person from a person for the head.) And once again, flip the paper so that the third and following empty section shows up on top and pass it to a person who is sitting next to him/her.

4. Now the third person draws legs of a person who he/she thinks of that it should be. And.. This person passes the paper to a person who is sitting next to him/her again.

5. This last person now unfolds the paper so that everybody can see the whole body of a person that is drawn by three different people.

This whole step happens for everyone in a group at the same time so that there are as many people drawn on papers as the number of people in a group.

As you can imagine, most of the people on papers are all funny looking as they all have different head, torso, arms and legs. They are not really correctly lined up. So, a person’s head is not really on top of the center of torso.

So, to take one example, Angela drew my head with fancy glasses and Andrew drew a torso and arms but he drew a torso with breast, thinking that it should be a torso of a lady in the group and I cannot remember who that was. And finally, Phil drew legs. Interestingly, I was sitting right next to Phil and I got that paper and it was partially me with very good looking boobs. Thanks, Andrew! (Do you remember who did you think of when you drew that torso?)

Now what is so special about this story? Well, as Carol explained the rules, she used this word, torso. But, I, who was the only non-native English speaker in the group, did not understand what it means. So, I had to ask her what that means. She kindly explained it to me.

But, to be very honest with you, this kind of experience makes me so frustrated. Why don’t I know it? Why have I not studied this word till I am 35 years old? Asking these questions, I try to encourage myself to study more because asking these questions during meetings does not really help the flow of meetings. And.. I do not like that happens at all.

So, my friends! Good luck with your English! There are so many words that you would not expect to come up in many circumstances and, anytime that happens, you would feel a little embarrassed, if not a lot. Once again, you have to ask questions and be brave to speak out even with embarrassment.

P.S: Carol! If you think I explained the rules incorrectly, feel free to add comments. ๐Ÿ™‚

03 Mar

What starfish?

Who taught: Jake, Andrew, Carol and Mark

Chocolate Starfish (source: http://www.choconet1.com/)

You would not believe what I learned lately. This one is literally crazy. Whoever came up with this expression, he/she must have an amazing imagination. Or, maybe it is a kid. Very possible!

OK! So, I was with my friends, having dinner a few days ago. I cannot remember how we ended up talking about this expression but I do remember the expression so vividly. This is definitely one of the expressions that I would not forget at all. Anyways, Jake said, “chocolate starfish.” And.. I was totally puzzled and asked, “What? What starfish?” “Can you guess what it is, Terry?” said he.

I tried to think of the meaning of it. I knew it cannot be a kind of starfish at all because that is too easy. Besides, all of my friends started to giggle as they heard it. So, it’s gotta be something very funny. “What the… I cannot think of any. You gotta tell me.” And, Jake was like, “Think about the color of chocolate and the shape of the starfish.” Poor Terry… I tried again but no success. So, I had to cheat, looking up urban dictionary.

As the search result showed up, I had to be shocked. “Oh My …. What? Really? This is amazing.” Guess what I found? For this expression, I do not ask you to feel it because you have to feel it as I reveal what it means.

It means….. Oh man.. It is so embarrassing that I feel like I should not tell you. OK… Here we go! It means… “Asshole.” Wait!!! Here comes more specific one! It is “asshole,ย specifically when it is encrusted with fecal matter.”

I am sorry if you are reading this post while you are eating something. ๐Ÿ™‚ Now, you could understand why Jake asked me to think of the color of chocolate and the shape of starfish, right?

Let me guess! This post would be one of the favorites for you guys. Am I right? I am not sure whether I can eat chocolates for a while or not. I will think of this expression every time I see chocolate from now on.

14 Jan

ride the short bus

Who taught: Andrew, Jake, Carol and Jean

Have you ever walked any street in the United States? If you have and paid careful attention, you would have noticed that there are some differences between roads. Do you know what that is? It is the name of streets. As far as I know, there are 7 different names. They areย Ave, St, Rd, Blvd, Pl, Ln and broadway. Broadway is kind of unique in a sense that it does not have any specific name. It is just broadway. Most of cities I have visited have this road but I do not think Pittsburgh has broadway. I have never heard of it in Pittsburgh. Anyways, the most common ones are Ave (Avenue), St (Street) and Rd (Road). On these, there are usually many traffic. Blvd (Boulevard) one is tricky. It is kind of hard to pronounce correctly. Why don’t you try it now? Do you think you can speak it correctly? Good for you!

You would not see Pl and Ln very often. They are usually narrow which means not that many cars are using those. Well, when I first saw those, I had no idea what they are. I actually pronounced Pl as “pai” because I thought “l” is not lowercase L but uppercase I. But, it is lowercase l and shortened one for Place. Ln is Lane. Are there any other ones? I cannot think of any but I am sure there are more.

Short bus (source: http://conorheffernan.com/)

Two times on weekdays, you can see so many yellow vehicles running around in the United States. They are school buses. Typical school bus is always yellow and pretty big and long. Here is one interesting fact related with school bus I found on Wikipedia.

Every school day, over 480,000 school buses transport 26 million children to and from schools and school-related activities.

This is very different from Korea. Most of students in Korea either walk or use public transportation to or from schools. Well, anyways, they look very simple but they do have many safety features including something related with seats. It is called compartmentalization. Google it up! You will find it very interesting.

A few months ago, my friends and I had dinner and they used an expression, riding the short bus, which I had no idea what they are talking about. This is of course related with school bus. As I said, typical school buses are pretty long but there are short ones too. Well, before I heard of this expression, I thought those short ones are just short because there are not that many students using the bus.

Well, it turns out that those short ones are mostly used to ferry students with special needs. So, if you are in that bus, then what? Well, I do not want to go too far and leave this to your imagination. You can use this expression to your friends when they say something dumb or do stupid things. But, this expression is derogatory so that I would not encourage to use it. Once again, it is good to know so that, if someone uses this to you, you can properly respond. If you know what I mean!! ๐Ÿ™‚