Monthly Archives: May 2010

23 May

Monday! Monday!

Bread and Butter. Yummy!

Tomorrow is Monday. Yay! Haha… I know! I know! You are not really excited about Monday. But, let’s be positive, shall we? It is a new day and you are still alive and have a job to support your family. And, most of all, you are healthy enough to be at work. But don’t forget to have breakfast? There is a study that says skipping breakfast can reduce productivity rate by 50 – 75%. What do you usually eat for breakfast? I usually eat fruit, bread, and egg (sunny side up), of course, with a cup of coffee. I actually am not sure about what other American people eat for breakfast? Pretty sure they drink coffee. Maybe, bagel or soup? What do you have, my friends? Oh, maybe cereal, right?

Before I come to the U.S., I did not like bread a lot and always ate rice with soup every morning. But, now that I am here in the U.S., I do not eat rice as much as I used to eat. Instead, I eat bunch of different types of bread. Maybe, on average, I would have bread two times a day. You know, like bagel, peanut butter jelly, sandwich, sub, burger and pizza. Well, you name it. There are so many foods in which you can find bread. Now, no wonder why there is an expression, “breadwinner”? You might be able to infer the meaning of it from the context. That is right! It means the member of a household who earns all or most of the income. Even though it seems very obvious, I was still very curious about the origin of the expression and I found one very interesting one. It says, “Back in the day, those who did not work participated in contests where the prize was always bread.” Sounds reasonable but not sure this is true or not. What do you think? Well, are you a breadwinner or the breadwinner in your family?

Similar to this, “bread and butter” means basically your main source of income. For example, “tips are the bread and butter for waitresses or waiters in restaurants.” A lot of people from other countries where people do not pay tips have hard time to adjust themselves to this tip system. But, here is the information for you. At the moment, $7.25 per hour is the minimum wage in the U.S. But it is $2.13 for the tipped employees. So, if you do not pay tips to them, basically they cannot make their ends meet. So, please do not feel get ripped by paying tips. In general, percentage of the tips expected to be payed are different during the day. For dinner, it is usually 20% whereas 15-18% would be enough for lunch or brunch.

20 May

too many irons in the fire

Who taught: Zac

Today, it was crazy busy. There were three long conference calls with three different customers and I had to work on a project with very tight schedule. Having said that, there is a good expression you can use to describe the busy situation instead of saying just “so busy!”

Too many irons in the fire

A few weeks ago, I was with Zac in his car. He knows my blog and tries to think of new expressions that I can learn and write about. One of them was “too many irons in the fire.” Interestingly, Carl, my boss, used this expression when I was in his office talking about resource allocation for bunch of projects. During the meeting, he said, “Terry, looks like your name is all over the places. Well, I know you’ve got too many irons in the fire. Oh, do you know this expression?” “Yeah, I learned it from my friend but good to hear it being used by someone.”, I said.

Basically, it means you have a lot of projects going on at the same time. Think about its etymology! Simply, you can imagine  a picture of a blacksmith working on several pieces of irons at the same time. Well, it is a good thing to have a lot of work to do in this economy. I really thank God for that.

Well, once again, I am so tired now that today’s post will be very short. But, I hope you’ve got the proper number of irons in the fire.

19 May

shoe in phrases

Who taught: Carl, Andrew and Jake

Gabby Reece with her family

Today, I stumbled upon an interesting post, Gabby Reece‘s bucket list. She listed 10 things she wants to do before she dies. I really like one of them, “Live in The Now!” In the post, she said,

There are guys who work-work-work and have no time to enjoy it. I don’t get it. What I’m snobby about is my time. Life is happening right now: I tell my friends, if you’re unhappy, change it or stop talking about it.

Well, I guess she is right. If you are unhappy now and working too much now because you think you will be happy later, when do you think you would be happy? So, hope you are all enjoying your now!

Last week, I went to Louisville, KY for business trip with my boss, Carl. At the airport, we were talking about having children. He said, “Well, it is interesting, being a parent. You know, when you are young, you made bunch of mistakes which makes your parents unhappy or concerned. I understand what they felt before since the shoe is on the other foot.” Another good example of proper usage of this expression would be “teachers being in classroom as students.” I think teachers should have a lot more chances to be in classroom as students so that they should think about their own teaching methodology to make their classes much more fun. What do you think? Don’t you agree?

Today, I had dinner together with my friends, Patrick, Jake, Andrew and Alex. I brought the shoe expression up. And we talked about the other useful expressions with “shoe” in it.

waiting for the other shoe to drop

This expression is something you can use to describe the situation that you know something is going to happen due to the event which already happened. I found really reasonable origin of this expression, a story happened in an inn, and I think this would really help your understanding of the expression.

A guest who checked into an inn one night was warned to be quiet because the guest in the room next to his was a light sleeper. As he undressed for bed, he dropped one shoe, which, sure enough, awakened the other guest. He managed to get the other shoe off in silence, and got into bed. An hour later, he heard a pounding on the wall and a shout: “When are you going to drop the other shoe?” Thus the term “waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
One takeaway from today’s post! If you hear any new expression, try to find out the origin of it, it really helps you to remember the expression and use it later. And, don’t forget! Live in The Now!
18 May

Knock down vs knock up

Who taught : Brian, Jerome and Kara

Do you know how many words exist in English? The answer is, I think, nobody knows the exact number. But, based on Wikipedia, the Oxford English Dictionary includes over 600,000 words. Among those, how many do you know? 1,000 or 2,000? Isn’t it crazy? 600,000 words.

OK, let’s talk about today’s expressions. There are expressions which are combination of verb and adverb. Today, I would like to talk about some of the ones that you need to be really careful and good to know for your future conversations.

1. Knock down vs knock up

In general, knock down means “hit someone or something.” There are some other meanings but I do not want to confuse you here. So, let’s just stick to this meaning here. But, when it comes to knock up, it has totally different meaning. Can you guess what it means? I do not think you can simply guess it. It means “to get someone pregnant.” So, if you hear someone saying, “Man, I don’t know what to do. I knocked her up. She told me yesterday.” Then that guy is in trouble unless he is married to the lady.

2. Pass away vs pass out

I guess you might know what “pass away” means. Didn’t I mention it in one of my old posts? It means, “die.” And, once again, it is a euphemism for “die.” So, if your friend’s parents died, it is better for you to say, “his father passed away.”

On the other hand, “pass out” is an expression you can use a lot if you like drinking. Have you experienced a total drunken and not remembering anything next day? That is the time you can use “pass out.” “Dude, yesterday, I totally passed out.” Speaking of which, there is also another expression you can use for describing the passing out situation. “I got totally wasted.” It has the same meaning. Maybe, “get wasted” is more derogatory one? Am I right?

3. Whack vs whack off

Whack is a verb and it means “hit strongly” or “assassinate.” For example, “My wife was so mad yesterday because she found I was cheating on her that she whacked me with a golf club.” Sounds like I am talking about someone we all know. What? you do not know whom I am talking about? Come on! It is Tiger Woods.

OK, how about “whack off”? Before I get to the meaning of it, I need to warn you. If you are younger than 18, please stop reading and close your browser now! Hey! I warned you. If you are still reading, it is your responsibility now. 🙂 It means “masturbate.” There is also an expression with the same meaning, “jack off.” I am not giving you any example for this. I am pretty sure you will figure it out. 🙂

4. drop a deuce vs chuck a deuce

chuck a deuce (two fingers)

Well, this one is different combination but it would be useful if you know the different meaning of them. “Drop a deuce” means “defecate.” whereas “chuck a deuce” means “a sort of gesture of saying hello to your friends.” FYI, I am adding a picture of it here.

So, what do you think? The more I write posts, the more I feel English is hard to master. But everything is possible. Good luck! My friends out there! Hoping my blog could help you out a little! See you tomorrow!

17 May

shiny vs bright

Who taught: Bunch of my friends at work

Having lunch on the rooftop terrace (Miss you! Ari)

Every Friday, my company provides free lunch. We also have rooftop terrace where people can take a break or have lunch together. Last Friday, the weather was so nice that a lot of people went up to the roof to have lunch together. I, of course, joined them and by the time I got up, there were already many people. As I was approaching to the people, I must have made smiling face. Andrew asked me, “Hey, T-Bone, why are you smiling?” “Because it is so shiny!”, I said. Well, at that moment, everybody started to laugh. I had no idea why. Pete said, “all of your friends here laughing at you. What is going on?” “I know, what the heck? Why are you laughing?”, I answered. Then, people explained to me why. “Terry, shiny is not correct there. You should say like, ‘It is so bright’ or ‘too much sunshine.'” I had to ask again, “Why not?” “Well, shiny should have some objects to go with. And, weather is not an object.” Honestly, I always thought I can use shiny to describe a day with a lot of sunshine. But, apparently, I am wrong.
So, to sum it up, you can use SHINY when you describe an object. It always goes with some kind of reflection coming from any object. For example, if your friends bought a new car, you can say, “Your car is so shiny.”
When it comes to describing weather, it should be like, “It is so bright that I cannot open my eyes.”
I guess this is one of the hard things about SPEAKING English. You have to be fast in choosing proper words and it is hard to be correct all the time.

Now that I am thinking about the situation again, I should have responded to my friends, “Well, I meant you guys are so shiny that makes me smile.” What do you think? 🙂