Monthly Archives: July 2012

30 Jul

eaves

Who taught: Jason

eaves

eaves

Last year, I bought a house. My first house that I have ever owned in my whole life.

It is hard to believe that I have been living in the house for more than a year. Time does fly. I plan to live there for the next three years and think about moving. Anyway, it is an old house. How old? It is almost 100 years old. Pretty crazy, huh? When I first bought it, I noticed that there are things that I need to fix or update. One of them was painting the exterior. Some of the paint were coming off and that would cause an issue to the wood.

This summer, I hired a guy, Jason, to repaint it. When he first visited my house to discuss the price, we walked around the house to see where exactly that he needs to paint. Well, I basically told him, “That part, this part!,” pointing them. Then, he said, “Oh… you want all of the eaves to be painted.” Honestly, I did not know what eaves are but definitely could see that it is the word to mean the lower edges of the roof.

Well, I do have an excuse to not to know that word. As I told you, this is my first house ever owned. Why would I need to know those words, right? So many words around the house. I think I will write a series for those. So, stay tuned.

Do you have  your house? How are your eaves? Hope they are in good condition!

24 Jul

kinks

Who taught: Amber

kinks

kinks

Hello, my friends! It’s been a while. My excuse is that I have been pretty busy with my course that I am teaching this summer. But, I have never forgotten you at all.

As a software engineer, I have developed many applications in which I had so much fun. But, sometimes, it brings a lot of headaches. When there is an issue, we usually say that it has a bug. But, when we talk to our clients, we also use another word, glitch. It is a euphemism in comparison to a bug.

For that reason, I can confess that I have used this word, glitch, pretty often.

I told you that I am teaching a course this summer. Last semester, the school decided to upgrade its course registration system to a new one. And, as soon as the course started, I got some emails from some students that they cannot register for my course for some reason.

So, I sent an email to Amber, asking what is going on with the system. In her reply, she said , “The school is fixing the new system. There are still kinks.”

Great! I was happy to hear that they are working on it. But, that wasn’t it. I noticed a new word here, kinks. I have never seen that word before. From the context, I can easily understand but what is the exact meaning of it?

Literal definition is a twist or curl. For example, you could have kinks in your hair. Or in wires or ropes. Normally, it would not be good to have those kinks in your hair or rope unless that is what you want, right?

So, due to this kind of reason, kinks mean flaws or imperfection. I think it is basically the same to glitch. What do you think my native English speaking friends? Is my feeling correct?

Also, you can say “iron some kinks” to mean “fix some issues or problems.” That makes very sense because kinks are curves and we do need to iron to remove them.

I actually like this expression and feel like I will use this a lot in the future. Oops! Does it mean that I will have many kinks in my future. Hope not! Let’s not jinx! 🙂

09 Jul

three sheets to the wind

Who taught: Phil, Kelly, Kaley, Rachel and Shawn

Sometimes, life is so funny. We plan things and try to prepare for the future ahead. Yet, we do not know what is ahead. Every day is full of surprises.

Really should enjoy a new day given to me. Nothing to complain about at all! Carpe diem!

Last week, Jerome and Patricia threw a party to celebrate the acquisition of the company that I used to work. I used to work at the company for three years before I joined Carnegie Mellon University. It was so fun to work with smart people there. I got to solve a lot of interesting problems which eventually made a lot of clients happy. No wonder why another company wants to buy this great company.

It was so nice seeing all the people including current and former employees at the party. There were great foods, drinks and music.

I walked around, talking to as many people as possible and at some point I sit down with Phil, Kelly, Kaley, Rachel and Shawn. And, Phil told me something which I had no clue at all. I had to say to him, “what did you say?,” many times.

He said, “Hey Terry, Are you three sheets to the wind?”

Let me challenge you, my non-native English speaking friends! Can you guess what it means? Even after I got the words that Phil said, I still was not able to understand. Worse, I could not even guess.

Well, my friends told me that it simply means “are you drunk?” Of course, I was not. But, the question is why does it mean drunk? Well, no one knew why.

Once you use a language as your mother tongue, you use a lot of expressions without even thinking about why, right? In my opinion, it is because people learn those expressions by just hearing and trying to use later. That’s actually amazing. So, these days, I try really hard to learn English as if I am a new born child. You know what I mean? Just listen and use them.

Well, about 30 minutes later, I had to sit again. (You know, I am getting old.) I sit next to Kaley and she actually googled for its origin and showed it to me.

Not surprisingly, the expression is from sailing. There are a lot of expressions that originated from sailing and this is one of them. Here is a very good one for you.

Sheets actually refer to the ropes that are used to secure a ship’s sail. If the 3 ropes used were loose in the wind, the sail would flop around, causing the ship to wobble around, much like a drunk.

As soon as I saw this origin, this expression totally made sense to me. What a perfect one to describe “drunk!” Wouldn’t you agree, my friends?

So, next time if you have a drink with your friends, you should try to say, “are you three sheets to the wind?” instead of saying “are you drunk?” They will love you. 🙂