Monthly Archives: July 2010

11 Jul

dry county

Who taught: Phil and Kelly

Mountain pie

This afternoon, Jessy and I got back from camping with my friends, Phil and Kelly. We went to one of the Pennsylvania state parks. We were going to be there Friday night but, due to the heavy thunderstorm, we instead left Saturday morning. It was really fun! We definitely would like to try longer one next time. One of the surprising stories of our camping happened Saturday night. We left some of our food on the tables and some animals came and had their own feast while we were sleeping. They ate all of our breads, beef jerky, chocolate and marshmellow. We think it was raccoons. But who knows? It could be bears. This would never happen in Korea. So, one lesson for you if you are going to camp in America. “Never leave your food outside! Safest place would be in your car!” Anyways, it was a lot of fun. Especially, Jessy and I finally get to eat mountain pies and s’mores. Furthermore, Kelly told us a few scary stories, sitting around camp fire. I sill think about them, especially black little dog story, and feel scary.

Another thing which I found very interesting is no alcoholic beverages are allowed in all of the state parks in Pennsylvania. I was curious and of course asked Phil and Kelly. “So, I do not understand why they do not allow alcoholic beverages here. Is Pennsylvania most conservative state in America?” And They said, “No.. not really! You can find so many dry counties in many states.” “Wait! What is dry county?” I asked. Phil said, “It is a county where you cannot buy or sell any alcoholic beverages at all.” I was not able to believe it. “What? Really?” (For your information, all of the states in America have counties and counties comprise cities, townships and municipalities.) In fact, I looked into this a little bit more. There are three different types.

1. dry county (dry city, dry town, etc.) : bans both the sale and possession of alcohol.

2. wet county : permits both the sale and possession of alcohol.

3. damp county : permits possession of alcohol but bans the sale of it.

And, believe it or not, there are so many dry counties in America. You can find the list of them here. So, apparently, Pennsylvania is not the most conservative state in terms of alcoholic beverage consumption or sales. Honestly, I cannot imagine that people cannot even see any of the alcoholic beverages in their neighborhood. What do you think? Do you want to live there? Another question is what if you break that law? Is there any severe consequence for that?

08 Jul

the question

Whose story: Ashka

Proposal

Once again, Article is one of the hardest things in English. Here is a good example for you! The question! Do you know what it is?

Yesterday, my friend, Ashka, sent me a story about her experience which happened in her conversation with her friend who is in France. In her talk with her, she said, “Ray popped the question.” Her French friend did not understand it, which is not a surprise at all. It would be hard to understand by just this simple sentence here. If there is a little more context, it would be a little bit easier for non-native English speakers to understand. Pop the question means to ask someone to marry. Thus, the question would mean the official proposal of marriage. Were you even able to guess? I bet you were not.

FYI, there is even an USA Today news article with this expression, 10 great places to pop the question. Suppose that you say “pop a question” instead of “pop the question”! Then it has a total different meaning. It would mean just like coming up with any question you want to ask.

Since I mentioned Ashka, I have a very inspiring story about her. She came to U.S. from Poland when she was around 19. She went to a college here in U.S. Back then, she was not able to speak English at all. I mean really at all. So, she had really hard time to pronounce correctly and understand all of the slangs her American friends use. (I will tell you what! Americans use a lot of slangs, especially in informal conversations, such as lunch time talks. It is so hard to understand them if you do not know what they mean.) She told me that her friends corrected her pronunciation and taught a lot of slangs. So, what she did was setting the highest goal. You know what it was. She decided to study and practice English a lot so that no Americans ever notice that she is from other countries. You know what? Her English now is flawless and I believe no one would think that she is from another country. At least I thought that she is born in America. Ashka, you are amazing! You are my inspiration! You should share your secret studying methodologies here. And, once again, many many congratulations for your engagement!

Here is today’s lesson for me and you!

Set the highest goal and never give up at all! Never!

07 Jul

How do you think?

Who taught : Carl and Andrew

Jessy and Me

So, this is my 100th post! Yay! I am pretty excited about it. It has been 4 months and 7 days since I wrote my first post. To commemorate this milestone, I would like to share one of my personal stories. It is about my wife, Jessy. First of all, I am not telling any lie here. Jessy and I went to the same university in Korea. We both majored law. And, back then, she was one of the most famous girls in the school. (I am not saying she is not any more. πŸ™‚ ) Many times, a lot of guys waited for her outside of classrooms where she took classes to see her. How about me? I was just a normal guy whom no girls showed any interests in. Then, I am sure you would have a question you would ask. How the heck was I able to woo her? (The word, “woo”, here is a good expression you can use when anyone is trying to make a girl or a guy fall for him/her.) Well, I actually do not know. The only thing I know is that she was the one who hit on me. She actually told me, “First time I saw you, I just felt that you are the one for me.” What did I do? Well, I think I just did not pay attention to her a lot. Do you know why? I had to study hard to recover my bad GPA. πŸ™‚

So, college students out there! Believe it or not, here is today’s lesson for you.

Girls dig a guy who is enthusiastic about what he does! If you do your best at what you are supposed to do, you are charm enough to woo the best girl!

Now, let’s get to today’s expression, shall we? About three years ago when I first started my work, I was pretty nervous about having conference calls. And, one day, I was in a conference call with a few people from a client and my boss, Carl. They asked me a few questions and I provided a few suggestions. Following the suggestions, I said, “So… how do you think?” Why I use “how” instead of “what”? Probably, it is because I was translating Korean into English. In Korean, we say, “μ–΄λ–»κ²Œ μƒκ°ν•˜μ„Έμš”? (Eu-Dduk-Ke Saeng-Gak-Ha-Se-Yo ?)” and literal translation of “μ–΄λ–»κ²Œ(Eu-Dduk-Ke)” is “how” not “what.” After the meeting, Carl grabbed me and said, “Terry, you should say ‘what do you think?’ If you say ‘how do you think?’, it is almost like insulting because it would mean like, ‘do you even have brain to think about?'”

Man, I was so embarrassed. On that day, I repeated ‘what do you think?’ like 100 times on my way to home. Now? I never even think ‘how do you think?’ at all.

06 Jul

do you have massage?

Whose story: Young-a

4th of July Fireworks in Pittsburgh

Last Sunday was the Independence Day, the day Americans commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Literally, it is America’s birthday. On the day, Jessy and I went to Ari’s house where we met another Korean couple. It has been a while for us to meet Korean people in my friends’ party. They moved a few months ago from Florida to Pittsburgh. One of the interesting things they told me to us is that they love Pittsburgh so much that they decided to buy a house. Do you know why? It is because they have not seen snow for about 6 years in Florida and finally they saw snow storms in Pittsburgh last Feb. I know most of the people in PGH do not like snow storms in winter. I think this tells me a good lesson.

We should enjoy what we have now instead of complaining about it because what you have is what other people are looking for.

I feel like there should be a good expression for this. Don’t we have?

After dinner, we all went to up to a hill in Schenley park to watch fireworks. Another question here! Why do you have fireworks on July 4th? Anybody knows the origin of this tradition?

After we all sit down on the hill, my new Korean friend, Young-a, told me a funny story related with English. One of her friends works at a clothing store and, one day, a customer came into the store and said, “Hey! Do you have massage?” She thought like, “What the heck is this guy talking about? This place is for clothings.” So, she asked to the customer, “What do you mean by massage? We do not have massage service here.” Then the customer enunciated, “No! No! I mean do you have my size?” Then, she finally realized what the customer was asking. Hearing it, I kind of agree that “my size” could sound like “massage” if you speak fast. What do you think?

05 Jul

eye-candy

Who taught : Ari

When there was a team programming competition in my company, my team name was “IO Candy.” Well, IO stands for information optimization that my company’s technology is focusing on. When I heard of it, I did not really feel anything special about the name, I just thought…. you know… something sweet for information optimization.

Eye-candy

Then, a few days ago, Jessy, Alex, Ari, Juan and I went to a frozen yogurt place where we got into a discussion about different cultural aspects of different countries. When Jessy and I first got here, I was mainly in school whereas Jessy had some free time to walk around. One day, she found out that there is a park near to University of Pittsburgh and a lot of students enjoy sunshine whenever the weather is great. By enjoying, I mean some of the female students wear bikini, lying on the grass. Interestingly, Jessy did the same thing and I did not know that. Honestly, I do not like her doing it. When I talked about that story, Ari told me that I should understand it and in Germany, people even got bolder so that some of the ladies are topless in some parks when the weather is really good. I was actually shocked when I heard it. In Korea, no people would wear bikini or be topless in any park. If you would, I am pretty sure you would get arrested. Discussing about this, Ari told me there is a good expression American people use. Eye-candy!! Definition of it is “someone who is pleasing to look at!” Who would be a good example? Oh…. I know who is really pleasing to look at. I can see him all day long. It is me! Don’t you agree?

While she was telling me this expression, she said, “You know, everyone should have the right to enjoy eye-candy. Don’t you think?” Well, I guess I agree with her. But I still feel like wearing bikini in park is almost like me wearing speedo, lying on the grass. Am I being too sensitive here? After hearing this expression, I actually thought about the name of my team for the competition. It has very similar sound, isn’t it? IO-candy vs Eye-candy. So, I wonder whether my friends in my company thought about eye-candy when they heard my team name. Even more, when we, as team members, talked about our team name, did we intend to make it to be similar to eye-candy? Is it, Julie, Kara and James? Very curious!