Where: St. Patrick’s day party at Shawn’s house

OK, this is another poor innocent Terry story. Yesterday, I was invited to the Shawn’s St. Patrick’s day party. And, traditionally, people wear green color clothing on the St. Patrick’s day. But, I do not have any green color clothes. So, I decided to buy one this time. Suddenly, I realized that there is a store on Walnut St where I saw bunch of interesting t-shirts. Most of them have very funny phrases with drawings. Going into the store, I found a few green t-shirts and one of them has a sentence, “Things I can put into my nose! dime, chalk…… ” with nose drawing. Wanting to buy it, I asked them medium size  but they did not have in stock. Well, there is another one I did not really like but they did have a medium size in stock. So, I bought it. While I am paying the money, the male clerk in the store told me, “It is very funny shirts, isn’t it?” And, I am like, “What? Not really, dude? I think the other one is really funny.”

Now, time for party!! Yay!! So, I went to Shawn’s house, looking forward to Guinness ice cream. There were some people, some of them are also my friends and some of them are I did not know before. I was wearing jacket on top of the t-shirts. So none of them were able to see the drawing and the phrase on my shirts. But, as more people coming into the house, it got hotter so that I took my jacket off. As soon as I took it off and turned around, all of the people started laughing. I had no idea what is going on. “What? What is wrong? Why are you laughing?” “What? You do not know why?”, they asked me. “I do not know, guys! What is it?” It was because………. on my t-shirts, there was a Nintendo drawing but also, at the bottom of the drawing, there was a phrase. It says “blow me!”

Then, they started to explain about “blow job” and also sometimes, people say “blow me!” as it is when someone says bad thing to you. It is pretty similar to “f..k you!” Now, I realized why that guy at the store told me that the shirts is funny. Sigh…!!!!

I would not explain to you about “blow job” here but you can easily find out what it means through the Internet.

So, once again, poor innocent Terry, made a big impression to all of friends there. I guess they would never forget me.

The big lesson here is “Do not buy t-shirts if you do not know what the phrase on the shirts means!! Never, ever!!”

PS: Shawn, I need Guinness ice cream! I will wait for the next year’s party.

Who taught: Pete

Yesterday, I was waiting for Andrew to leave the office together because I need to get my stuff from his car. I left my bag into his car the other day. Well, anyways, but he was in the meeting and I had to wait for him. Pete was passing by me and tell me another expression. “Let’s get the show on the road!” My guess was it sounds like it means something like make something or someone public and known to many other people. Well, it actually means like “let’s get started!” or like “let’s go!”

I was so tempted to use it to Andrew but I did not want to interrupt his meeting.

Patrick uses the other expression, “All right, let’s do the shit!” Is it the same thing?

After writing bunch of these articles with many expressions, I am getting more curious. What would American people think if I use these kind of expressions too much. Would it be weird? Frankly, it would sound weird to me if non-native Korean speaker, staying in Korea, speak all different kind of Korean slangs. Well, it might be OK if he/she speaks really good Korean. I donno. Just short thought about my using slangs. What do you think?

Who taught: Carol

A few days ago, Carol sent me an email asking “Do you know what six of one, half dozen of another means?” I was in the mode of thinking… thinking …. about what it would mean. Hmm.. I thought it might be something like getting a few here and a few there to make something complete. So maybe getting help from other people to finish something? But I was totally wrong. She explained to me. “Yay! I found something you do not know! Six = half of a dozen. So it means that the two options of a choice are about the same.”

She also gave me a good example of the usage.
If someone says: “We could get lunch from silk elephant, which would be quick but expensive. Or we could go to the bagel factory where the food is cheaper but they take a long time. What do you think, Carol?” And I could say “Eh, I don’t care which, to me it’s six of one, half dozen of another.”

By the way, silk elephant and bagel factory are the restaurants around my company and they are all good.

Now the question is why it is six and dozen. What if I use “five of one, half ten of another!” Is it wrong?

PS: Thanks! Carol. I have a long way to go. So please enlighten me more with good or useful (??) expressions! I wish I could use these kind of ones at the right time without hesitation or thinking.

Who taught: Patrick.

Ever since smart phones including iPhone came out, there are so many people using text message service instead of calling people. Also, so many people use instant messengers. In addition to it, there is twitter or facebook. This would make people use a lot of abbreviated expressions. BRT, BRB and TTYL  are good examples. One time I had a talk with Patrick using IM (instant messenger). I cannot remember what we were talking about. But, he typed “TMI” to me. I was trying to figure out what it means but could not. He told me it is “Too Much Information!”

BRT means “Be Right There!” Whenever my boss says using IM, “Terry, could you come to my office to discuss about …..?”, then my answer is always “BRT!”

BRB means “Be Right Back!”

TTYL means “Talk To You Later!”

I think English is one of the best languages that can be easily abbreviated whereas I think Korean is kind of hard to make those expressions. I am pretty sure there will be a lot more than I have here. Another thing I am curious about is how about other languages like Spanish, Indian, French, Italian, or Japanese? They should also have these kind of expressions. It would be very interesting if somebody research about it and compare them to see if there are any kind of specific differences between the languages.

Could you give me some other examples?

Oh, can you guess what “WTF” stands for? I would not write it down here. Look it up by yourself! You would hear this one many times in the US.

Who taught: Not sure! forgot

If you look up an English dictionary, it would say that yellow fever is a serious infectious disease that people can catch in tropical countries. But, in reality, it has also a different meaning. As I told you, I am from South Korea. And, of course, I am Asian. Well, as you also know, Asian people has darker skin color than white people. And usually, it is kind yellowish. So, yellow color sort of indicates Asian people. Thus, yellow fever, in many case, means a strong preferences toward Asian descent. So, for example, if any male really wants to go out with Asian girls or if any female wants to go out with Asian guys, then people would say that person has a dose of yellow fever.

Ever since I got here into America, there have been three times that a women approached me saying, “I like your glasses.” I have never experienced it when I was in Korea and funny thing is I was wearing different glasses. So I was curious about why would these women do say it to me. Today, I asked it to my friends, Patrick and Jake, about the reason. They told me they might be interested in me. Then, I told them, “Aha, yellow fever!” They said, “yes, it is!”

But I am not sure whether the expression, “yellow fever”, has too much sexual meaning. If that is the case, I think I should not use the expression. What do you think? Is it fine to use it or not?

Man, it is so hard to learn these stuff and use in a proper context.

Wait, are you curious how I responded to those ladies? I just told them “Thanks!” and moved away from them. Well, I did not know what they wanted from me and did not know what to say.