Author Archives: Terry

05 Oct

cougar

Who taught : Jake and friends

Cougar (itpleasesme.com)

A few weeks ago, I was having lunch together with my friends. During lunch, we had a few different talks and one of my friends talked about a guy who is dating a lady. Pretty typical until that moment. But then, she mentioned that the guy is young like 25 and the lady is old like 37. As soon as she said that, all of the other friends asked the same question to her, “Is she a cougar?”

Well, I was the only one who did not understand what that means. As you know, cougar is an animal. I think it is Puma but not sure. They look pretty much the same.

I will give you the best example for you. Do you know Demi Moore? She is 47 years old. Now, do you know whom she is married to? He is Ashton Kutcher and he is 32 years old. The age difference is 15 years. It is quite big, isn’t it? So, in this situation, people call Demi Moore cougar. Interesting thing is she said, “I am a Puma not a Cougar,” when she had an interview with CBS. What is the difference? No idea!

There are a few questions I have related with this expression.

1. If a lady is a cougar, does she have to be hot?

The answer is NO but she should be a little bit attractive, though, to be qualified for being a Cougar.

2. How much age difference should be there?

I guess it should be pretty significant because small difference is not really interesting at all. Maybe more than 10 years? What do you think?

3. Why cougar?

I have no idea about this but Jake told me people used cougar because the mental image of her is hunting the boys.

Speaking of cougar, there is a TV show, called Cougar Town, and its story is totally about a lot of cougars. I mean ladies of hunting young guys if you know what I mean. 🙂

One last question! Is this expression offensive or not?

03 Oct

what is your brownie point?

Who taught: Alex, Sangeetha and Ari

Brownie Uniform (source:http: liendoanaulac.org)

Have you ever eaten a brownie? It is so good. Oh, you do not know what it is? It is a small square cake, mostly made with chocolate. No wonder why it is good, huh? I had never eaten a single brownie before I moved to the U.S. I mean… I think I saw it in Korea but was not really interested in trying it. But, here in the U.S., any party you go, there are bunch of desserts and brownie is definitely one of them.

But, did you know that brownie has a different meaning? It means a junior girl scout. I was not a boy scout when I was young. My parents could not afford it. 🙂 But, apparently, there are bunch of levels in girl or boy scout and one of the levels they have is brownie. Usually, girls whose age is from 6 to 8 are in the brownie level and they wear brownie uniform. As you can imagine, the color of the uniform is brown.

Moving on, have you heard an expression called brownie point? Can you give it a try to find what it means? If you think it as a girl scout point, it is pretty easy to find out. Yes, it means the point girl scouts from the brownie level receive by doing some specific tasks. As they get the points, they can get badges to wear on their uniform. I guess, the more badges, the better.

But, you can use this expression for any situation where a person does a good work or deed. The best example you can find is from the relationship between husband and wife.

Say that you are a husband and your wife is out of town….. and you did  a load of laundry. And when she is back, she would be so happy, right? Now, you just got a brownie point. Last Saturday, Alex used this expression when I had lunch with him, Sangeetha and Ari. At the moment, I was able to figure out what it means but the etymology I thought of was not correct. I thought this expression is originated from brownnose. To some extent, brownie point and brownnose are related with each other because if you brownnose, you sort of get additional brownie point. But the etymologies of two expressions are totally different, which is very interesting. Checking out etymology of an expression is so much fun and better to remember. So, when you hear some new expressions, you may want to try to find their origins. It is really fun and you learn so much more.

Let me ask you a question! What is your secret way of getting brownie points?

Comes from the points Girl Scouts at the Brownie level (ages 6-8) receive for doing specific tasks that when accumulated earn them badges (a sign of recognition) to wear on their Brownie Uniform.

30 Sep

Let’s boogie

Who taught : Pat and Alex

Korean ladder game (source: Daniel's facebook)

How many times have you had to decide who is going to do what in your life? So many times, right? For example, who will be making a presentation for your team project? There is a great solution for this!

Let me introduce one of the greatest games you can enjoy to decide who will be “it.” It is called the ladder game. In Korea, people play this game to decide who is going to pay how much for food or snack. Especially, when it is summer, people in offices play this game to decide who will pay for ice creams and who will go and get the ice creams.

Here is the rule.

Preconditions : There has to be multiple people. The more, the better. And, people should agree to pay money or do anything came out of the game. There is no way back.

1. Grab a paper. It should be big enough to draw bunch of lines.

2. Draw vertical lines as many as players. (The lines should be quite long enough to be able to enjoy the game.)

3. At the top of the lines, put numbers, starting from 1, of course.

4. At the bottom of the lines, put different amount of money that the players should pay. (Here, you can also select one line as an indicator for a delivery guy.)

5. Now, you draw bunch of horizontal lines randomly here and there, connecting the vertical lines. (The most important thing here is you should draw a lot to make the game really interesting and make it hard to find out what number will end up landing in what amount.)

6. Cover the whole drawings and players randomly choose numbers corresponding to the numbers written at the top.

7. Now, number by number, we follow the lines from the top to the bottom to find out who is paying how much and who is doing the delivery.

It is really really popular in Korea and I can guarantee that it is really fun to play. People are so excited about it. I think this is the game that exists only in Korea but not sure. Can anyone from other countries tell me if you have this or a similar game?

Today, I went to Denny and Patrick’s farewell party. It was their last day at the company that I used to work. It was great seeing all of my friends again. After the party, I went into the office to help Pat out to move his box over to his car. As we started to walk out of the office, holding the box, he suddenly said, “All right! The last day! Let’s boogie!” I did not get it. So, I said, “Hey! What did you say? Boogie?” Alex said, “Terry! You do not know what that is?”

From the context, it sounded like, “Let’s get out of here!” Well, I was right. Boogie is originally a type of music and it became to the word people use when they dance to Boogie music. Then, for some reason, people decided to use this word to mean walking. Not sure how it became to mean this. Does anyone know?

But, it sounds very interesting and kind of pleasant. So, next time, try to say “Let’s boogie!” instead of saying “Let’s go!”

28 Sep

It is all greek to me

All Greek to me (source:www.fantasticfiction.co.uk)

Back in my previous work, I had to do a lot of conference calls with clients. There were also many chances for me to conduct customized trainings to clients. Most of the stuff I talked about was, of course, related with how the search engine works or how to configure or customize search applications. Fot that purpose, I had to talk a lot about a few programming languages. Most of the people who have computer science background were totally fine with those stuff. But, there were also many times that the people in the client’s side have no CS background. I found that it was very challenging.

One day, I was having a conference call in which I basically did two hours training using web meeting. There were around 4 or 5 people from the client. And, many of them did not have any CS background. I tried really hard to convey the knowledge effectively but it was still challenging.

So…. at one point, one of the people from the client asked me a question. I tried to give some examples to help her to understand better. And, she was able to understand it. Then, she said, “Thank you for explaining it again, giving me a good example! Now, I can understand. Before, it was all Greek to me.”

Hearing her saying, I knew what she meant. But, I thought it is an expression she made up and I moved on to the next slide. About 30 minutes later, I talked about something and she did not understand again and asked me another question. At the end of my answer, I remembered the expression she used and thought it would be good to use a similar expression but a little bit differently to her. So, I said, “Is it clearer now? Hope it is not all Latin to you anymore.”

Interestingly, they did understand what I meant and moved on and the meeting was done. Then, a few weeks later from the meeting, I heard another person, saying the same expression she used, “It is all Greek to me.” Then, I realized that it must be one of the expressions in English people use a lot. So, I searched the expression. And……. There it is. It is an expression American people use. Duh! I hit my forehead, talking to me, ‘they must have thought that I am so weird using Latin instead of Greek.’

What do you think? Is this expression weird? “It is all Latin to me!”

Here is the definition of the expression.

I do not undertand any of it. It does not make sense to me.

So…. when are you going to use this expression? You can totally use this one when doctors explain what is going on with your body. Don’t you agree?

What if you understand things someone says? You can say, “I get it!” or “I get that!” You can use this one when I explain how to develop applications. 🙂

My question is why it is Greek, not Latin or Hebrew or even like Korean?

26 Sep

English pronunciation

Who taught : Andrew, Jake, James and Carl

There is a new tv show started last week. It is called, “Outsourced.” I love it. It shows a lot of cultural differences between America and India. You should really try to watch it and let’s talk about it later.

Do you know what file type I hate most? It is zip file.

Do you know why? Well… it is so hard to pronounce. A few months ago, I was having a meeting with a client and there were James, one of my old coworkers, and Carl, my old boss. After the meeting, I went into Carl’s room to have another meeting and, at the end of the meeting, he taught me how to pronounce zip correctly. And, interestingly, when James and I had brunch together last Saturday, he mentioned about his feeling about my pronunciation of zip file. It is actually kind of frustrating to have the feeling that I would never be able to have a correct pronunciation for some of the alphabets or words.

There are a few other alphabets or words that are hard to pronounce correctly. (Here, I mean really correctly like Americans, not like mimicking the sound!)

1. v and th

A lot of Koreans, or Asians, pronounce this incorrectly so that many American people think we are saying “b” instead. For example, when you are looking for a “vase” but if you pronounce it incorrectly, then it becomes “base.” The other example is any word having “th.” More specifically, if you trying to say that you are “thinking” now but, if you say it incorrectly, then it becomes to mean that you are “sinking” now. Then your American friends would be like, “to where are you sinking down?”

2. wood

This one looks pretty easy to pronounce but it, in fact, is very hard to pronounce correctly. Jessy has a friend who came to the U.S. around 20 years ago when she was around 25 years old. She has children who of course are native English speakers. One time, she had a conversation with her children and she said “wood.” As soon as she said that word, her children said to her, “Mom, that is not correct. Say it again!” So, she tried again and again but still the pronunciation was not correct. You know what happened eventually. Her children said, “Mom! You are never gonna be able to pronounce it correctly at all.”

How frustrating it is! Remember! She has been living in the U.S. for 20 years. 20 years!

3. Square or Squirrel

Well, I had a very similar experience with what Jessy’s friend had. I live in a neighborhood, called Squirrel Hill, in Pittsburgh. One time, I was talking about this neighborhood to Andrew and Jake. As soon as I said it, they were like, “Terry! What? Say it again!” So, I kind of realized that I spoke it incorrectly and tried really really hard to pronounce it correctly. Then, they said, “That is pretty good. Before, it was not correct.”

Then, a few days ago, I was talking about something and I said “Square Root” to Andrew and Jake. Then, they were like, “Hey! Terry! Say it again?” Yeah, they challenged me again. So, I tried again. Andrew and Jake! How was I? Do you think I need more practices? I guess so, right?

So, as a non-native English speaker, what is the hardest word or alphabet for you to pronounce? I think mine is “Z” alphabet and any word having it like Zoo or Zip. The real hope I have now is I wish I can speak those ones really good so that no one can recognize me as a non-native English speaker. There must be some ways to practice. Does anybody know how to practice to pronounce those alphabets correctly?