Who taught: Carol

A few days ago, Carol sent me an email asking “Do you know what six of one, half dozen of another means?” I was in the mode of thinking… thinking …. about what it would mean. Hmm.. I thought it might be something like getting a few here and a few there to make something complete. So maybe getting help from other people to finish something? But I was totally wrong. She explained to me. “Yay! I found something you do not know! Six = half of a dozen. So it means that the two options of a choice are about the same.”

She also gave me a good example of the usage.
If someone says: “We could get lunch from silk elephant, which would be quick but expensive. Or we could go to the bagel factory where the food is cheaper but they take a long time. What do you think, Carol?” And I could say “Eh, I don’t care which, to me it’s six of one, half dozen of another.”

By the way, silk elephant and bagel factory are the restaurants around my company and they are all good.

Now the question is why it is six and dozen. What if I use “five of one, half ten of another!” Is it wrong?

PS: Thanks! Carol. I have a long way to go. So please enlighten me more with good or useful (??) expressions! I wish I could use these kind of ones at the right time without hesitation or thinking.

Who taught: Patrick.

Ever since smart phones including iPhone came out, there are so many people using text message service instead of calling people. Also, so many people use instant messengers. In addition to it, there is twitter or facebook. This would make people use a lot of abbreviated expressions. BRT, BRB and TTYL  are good examples. One time I had a talk with Patrick using IM (instant messenger). I cannot remember what we were talking about. But, he typed “TMI” to me. I was trying to figure out what it means but could not. He told me it is “Too Much Information!”

BRT means “Be Right There!” Whenever my boss says using IM, “Terry, could you come to my office to discuss about …..?”, then my answer is always “BRT!”

BRB means “Be Right Back!”

TTYL means “Talk To You Later!”

I think English is one of the best languages that can be easily abbreviated whereas I think Korean is kind of hard to make those expressions. I am pretty sure there will be a lot more than I have here. Another thing I am curious about is how about other languages like Spanish, Indian, French, Italian, or Japanese? They should also have these kind of expressions. It would be very interesting if somebody research about it and compare them to see if there are any kind of specific differences between the languages.

Could you give me some other examples?

Oh, can you guess what “WTF” stands for? I would not write it down here. Look it up by yourself! You would hear this one many times in the US.