Tag Archives: sujata

28 Aug

pack rat

Who taught : Sujata

pack rat

pack rat

While working at a government agency in Korea, I used to write a lot of reports. I mean really really a lot. Almost every process requires one or more reports in Korea. One big difference here in the U.S. is that there are so many things that can be done simply by sending emails. So much easier but that does not mean that you do not need to worry about how and what to write.

I am still working on it but it has gotten better. My colleague professor, Sujata, and I communicate a lot through emails. Yesterday, she sent me an email and she said, “I am quite a pack-rat.” Even with the context, I was not able to understand what “pack-rat” means. So, I had to look it up.

Here is the first definition that I found.

Any of various small North American rodents of the genus Neotoma that collect in or around their nests a great variety of small objects. Also called trade rat, wood rat.

With this definition, can you guess what Sujata actually meant? I believe you could. When this expression is used to describe a person, that means that person collects a lot of small and miscellaneous things, like keeping emails all the time.

Well, I am a pack rat too because I rarely delete my emails that I received or sent. How about you?

There is a similar one, hoarder. So…. I am not sure which one is worse, hoarder or pack rat. I think hoarder is worse. Can you enlighten me, my American friends?

P.S.: Today’s post is my 300th post. Some of my friends have suggested me to publish a book out of the posts that I have written so far. I thought I do not have enough posts but 300? That’s quite a lot. What do you think? Do you think I should go for it?

11 Nov

get hold of

Who taught: Tami and Sujata

Pittsburgh Winter (source: http://dashdingo.org/)

Sometimes, I hear the same expression from a few people around me in a short period of time. That happened last week. My colleague, Sujata finally switched to a Mac from her old PC. While I was talking to her the other day, I asked her, “Hey, How’s your Mac? Are you getting comfortable with it?”

She said, “Yeah. It is getting better but I think I still need some time to get hold of it fully.”

Last week, Tami and I were having a conversation with students from other schools. We were talking about the Pittsburgh weather which is pretty bad in winter as you can see from the picture. As she was explaining the winter weather, she said, “It usually takes some time to get hold of it, especially for international students.”

At that point, I was like, “Huh! Same expression!” So, I thought that I should really remember and try to use it later.

I believe you would get what it means through these two examples, right? The word, ‘hold’, means to retain or control. Basically, ‘get hold of something or someone’ means the same thing.

One good usage is that, if someone is impatient and you want him or her to calm down, you could say, “Hey! Get hold of yourself!”

There is an issue though. When I was researching about this expression, I found this expression interesting. The reason is that ‘get’ is a verb and I am pretty sure ‘hold’ here is a noun. Then, where is an article. Shouldn’t I put ‘a’ before ‘hold’ all the time? Like, “get a hold of yourself or get a hold of it.”

There seems a little bit of debates going on even among native English speakers about including ‘a’ or not. I am not sure which one is correct. What do you think, my friends? Which one sounds correct to you?