Monthly Archives: April 2010

08 Apr

Your eyes are bigger than your stomach

Who taught : Brian, Scott, Carol

In the last post, I talked about a big social issue in Korea. Now, let’s talk about America’s. What do you think is one of the serious issues in America? I would say it is “obesity.” The other day, I was watching a new TV show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. In the show, Jamie Oliver who is from UK visited an elementary school in West Virginia. In the school kitchen, employees were preparing breakfast for students. You know what the menu was? It was instant Pizza. And there was another box full of chicken nuggets. They were for lunch. Unbelievable!! I was not able to believe what I was watching. I have to say this show is one of the best shows in a sense that it could help to change children’s diet and, if it could really make children stay fit and healthy, this would contribute to saving a lot of health care cost nationwide in the future.

Speaking of food, I learned two good expressions regarding eating or biting.

1. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach : When Carol told me this one, my interpretation was, “Well eyes cannot be bigger than stomach at all… So, maybe it means something nonsense??” Well, this time I was kind of close. Don’t you agree? This expression means…. Actually, instead of trying to define, let me give you a context. You and your family went to a seafood buffet and you started to pile up a lot of food in you plate. I mean really really high. Then, your wife would say to you, “Oh honey! Your eyes are bigger than your stomach! Can you finish it? You might throw a lot of them out.” I believe we all have the same experience, right? The thing is I always have really small portion and Jessy complains a lot like, “Your stomach must be smaller than your eyes!” πŸ™‚ My feeling with this expression is that it can only be used in relation with food. Can I also use this expression if someone being too greedier than what he/she can afford?

2. Don’t bite off more than you can chew : I think this expression is more suitable to describe the situation that someone being too aggressive. Is this originated from eating apple or something? That is what I feel when I hear this one. Anyways, you would also hear this one often in business conversations. For example, if someone is trying to agree to do something more than he/she can handle, then you can say, “Let’s not bite off more than we can chew! We gotta be realistic.” Actually, today, Scott used this expression in relation with some sort of our sales. So, if you can use this kind of expression in a proper business context, people might think you are pretty good at English and you are hip.

07 Apr

keep up with the Joneses

Who taught: Jake

One of the big issues in Korea is education. Most parents are having a hard time and work hard to meet the cost that they spend on their children’s education. Even many of new married couples postpone to have a baby mostly because of the huge cost of education which will be incurred by having a child. Based on the CIA world factbook, South Korea ranked in 219th out of 223 countries in children per women rate (1.21). Are you curious about United States’ rank? It is 126th (2.05). Surprise, isn’t it?

Why there is that much cost? It is because of private education system. Almost all of the children go to at least two private institutes after their regular school hours to learn so many stuff, such as music instruments, languages, Taekwondo, etc. This situation is getting worse as they become teenagers. Parents need to hire private tutors for their children, mostly for mathematics, English, science, etc. Well, maybe you could say I would not do the same thing for my children? It is hard because if your children do not do the same thing with what other children do, they cannot make friends. Well, I think there is another reason. Parents do not want to fall behind what others do for their children. They would like to give their children at least the same opportunities that other children get.

There is an expression for this case in English. “Keep up with the Joneses!” Here…. the Joneses is an abstract word for representing the neighbors. For example, if your neighbors or friends bought a new luxurious German sedan like bimmer(BMW), then you feel like you should buy Mercedes. Well, if you actually bought a Mercedes for that reason, you are really keeping up with the Joneses. There is another similar expression that you can use. “Peer pressure!” I guess most parents feel peer pressure and, to keep up with the Joneses, spend a lot of money for their children’s education. Speaking of comparison of you and your neighbors, there is also very good one you can use. This expression is really common and you would hear this many times in America. I actually heard this expression today over lunch from my friends. “Grass is greener!” The full one is “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence!” I guess you can get what it means by reading it. Yup, it means “for some reason, everything your neighbor has looks a lot better than what you have.” I know! We all do not want to admit it but it always sounds true. Even you have the same thing your friends have, you always feel like the ones your friends have better than yours. What a life! But, if we can learn how to be satisfied with what we have, we will be a lot more happier than now. Let’s pray, shall we? What? You do not want to pray. Hmm.. I really suggest you to go to church this Sunday.

06 Apr

calling people’s name at work

“μ •μœ‘λΆ€ κΉ€κ³Όμž₯λ‹˜! μ „ν™”μ™”μŠ΅λ‹ˆλ‹€. 3번 라인으둜 λ°›μœΌμ‹œκΈ° λ°”λžλ‹ˆλ‹€!” (Jeong Yook Bu Kim GwaJang Nim! JeonHwa Wat Seup Ni Da. Sam Bun La In Eu Ro Bat Eu Shi Gi Ba Rap Ni Da.) Hew… This is the longest one ever. Can you even try to say this Korean? πŸ™‚ In English -> “Manager Kim of the meat department! You have a phone call! Please take line no 3!”

During the easter weekend, Jessy and I went to Washington, DC to enjoy the annual cherry blossom festival.Β  First thing we did was going to a big Korean market, almost like Costco size, over there to eat some authentic Korean food. While we were having lunch, there were several announcements about phone calls and asking someone to take them by using a specific line. Of course, they spoke in Korean. Hearing them, I suddenly realized one thing about cultural differences between Korea and America. In Korea, when you need to call someone at work, you usually go by their last name plus their job title. As you may noticed from the announcement above, the announcer said, “Manager Kim!” Especially, if someone is higher than you, you never call their names at all. If you do, you might be fired. Always, last name + job title. Or, if you want to use their name, then full name + job title. Whereas, in my company here in America, I call my boss by his first name. I remember that, when I first met him, I called him “Mr. Kelly” but he insisted me to call him by his first name. I even use the first name to call my CEO and President. Maybe, this is very unique in my company since my company is not big. (Is it true? Or most American companies have the same norms?) So. I realized a big effect on decision making process due to this cultural difference. First, calling my boss by his first name makes me feel really comfortable and more closer to him so that I can speak my opinions out in meetings. This of course makes the organization more open to diverse opinions. At the same time, this may cause some decisions to be made slower, I guess. In case of Korea, I felt like there were some sort of limits I have in terms of speaking out my thoughts based on my job title. But, this sometimes leads to a faster decision making process. I do not think one thing is better than the other but it is just different and I felt so weird to hear calling someone by their title and last name for the first time after staying in America for four years. I am also very curious whether there are any differences in different countries. Could you tell your story if you have any differences in your country?

Speaking of work, there are two interesting acronyms you might be interested in.

1. PTO : Paid Time Off (Instead of saying vacation, these days, most of the American companies use this term.)

2. STD : Along with the PTO, there is another one, STD (Short Term Disability). When you are really really sick and cannot make it to the work for a specific period of time, you are under the STD. Funny thing is if you use this acronym in America, most people, I would say 9 out of 10 (maybe 10 out of 10), will think the other STD, Sexually Transmitted Diseases. So, be careful! πŸ™‚

05 Apr

You can say that but not quite right!

“Double Zero Seven”

If I say it to you, would you be able to understand what I am saying?

The other day, I had a dinner together with Andrew, Beth, Ari, Juan, Mar annnnnd…… Maia. For some reason, we talked about Yuna Kim, the best female figure skater in the world at the moment, who is from South Korea. I talked, “She looks very flirting especially when she uses musics from double zero seven.” Everybody was looking at me puzzled, “What is double zero seven?” “You know the movie with James Bond. Double zero seven. Don’t you know that?” As soon as I said, they were all like, “Oh you mean, double O seven!” My reaction was, “What? It is the same thing, isn’t it?” “Well, it is! But, we do not say ‘double zero seven!’ It should be ‘double O seven!'” I talked about this to Jake and Jean. And Jean told me, “Maybe it is because in the movie they keep saying, ‘double O seven’ and people are so used to saying in that way.” Funny thing is I, as a Korean, learned to use ‘zero’ not to use alphabet ‘O’ to pronounce number 0. So, every time someone ask me my phone number, I always say like, “four zero zero……blah blah zero.” I wonder how many non-native English speakers ever learned to speak number 0 using alphabet O. To be honest, saying ‘ZERO’ is not easy. I think ‘Z’ is one of the hardest English alphabets to pronounce. It is really hard for me to pronounce correctly to distinguish Zac from Jack. (Zac! Have you noticed that I have hard time for this??) Maybe, you should better to practice to use alphabet ‘O’ to speak number 0 instead of using ‘ZERO.’ I mean it is really easy to pronounce and short and, most of all, people do understand what ‘double O seven’ means πŸ™‚

02 Apr

I really appreciate it

“Who dropped the ball?”

You do not want to hear this question from your boss. Can you guess what this means? All of it sudden, what the heck is the ball here? But you will hear this expression many times at work, especially if you are involved in project managements. Basically, you do not want to drop the ball because if you do, it means you are responsible for something but you make a mistake. I found from the Internet that this expression is originated from FOOTBALL (I mean American football. At this moment, I have to say one thing here. Go Steelers!). In America, football is a huge thing. It is more than you can imagine. It is almost like a war here but it is really fun. (Even fans are ready to throw down to go for mano-a-mano.) So, in football, dropping the ball is really something you do not want to see from you team. It does not matter what position the player is. (quarterback, running back, tight end and wide receiver) You gotta hold on the ball! If you drop it, it is all your fault (maybe except quarterback if it was due to the linebackers’ mistake?? What do you think??) and all of the blames will be on you. So, you gotta check all of the work items, schedules and billable hours continuously to make sure you are not the one who drops the ball. When your boss asks you the question, what you want to say is “The customer is the one who dropped the ball. I already passed the ball to them but they never responded.” I mean if it is true. You cannot make a story up. It will bring more issues.

The same ball is also used in another expression at work, “the ball is in your court.” Let’s say you developed a new feature that a customer asked and then asked the customer to test it, passing the feature to the customer. Then, from that moment, the ball is in their court. “OK, now, the ball is in the customer’s court.” Until they come back to you with bunch of bugs or issues πŸ™‚ Sigh! The life of engineers… There are always bugs.

Speaking of work, there is one more thing I kind of learned or maybe felt from my office.

So, if you are on the phone call with your customer and they understand the situation and be cool with the issues they have. Then you should say something to them, like “Thank you so much for your understanding!” But I heard many people saying, “I really appreciate it!” or “I really appreciate your understanding!” instead of saying “Thank you!” You know what I felt??? I felt that appreciate one is more polite than just thank one. Am I right? If so, is it considered as overreaction if you say “I really appreciate it!” all the time even with small things?

Curious Terry is becoming like Curious George πŸ™‚

PS: There is actually another expression with the ball. Do you know what “the balls” mean? I will let you look it up. Your homework!