Who taught: Jean

Ever since I started this blog, many of my friends have given me a lot of new expressions that I can use for this blog. “Thank you so much, All! I love you! I am so glad I have you!”

One day, when I was brewing my coffee, Jean came to me, asking me a question. “Terry, what do you think about blow my mind and slip my mind? Can you say about your interpretations?”

“Hmm, I think blow my mind means something making me surprised and slip my mind means something making me sad.”, I said. “Blow my mind” was a little bit obvious but “slip my mind” was a little harder to guess but I thought if anything makes my mind slip, it might be something related with sadness. Jean had to go into a meeting so that she could not explain to me at the moment. A few hours later, Jean came to my desk and explained to me about the expressions.

“Blow my mind” means something makes you really surprised. I would say something really amazing. For example, hmm…. it would be something like watching Shawn White’s snowboarding. His snowboarding performance in the Olympics was really really amazing. It totally blew my mind.

On the other hand, “slip my mind” means the expression you can use when you forgot. Let’s say you are supposed to go grocery shopping to buy bread before you get home but you did not do it (?????). Then you got back to home and your wife asks you where the bread is. Then you can say, “Opps! I am sorry! It totally slipped my mind. Can you buy it tomorrow? Thanks!” Haha! See, learning new expressions are good because you can use it in a lot of situations! Is it a good usage??

Who taught: Patrick

Different expression with the same meaning: pinch a loaf

When I was young, whenever I told my parents, “I want to go to bathroom”, they asked me a question, “big one or small one”,  Here, the small one means “pee” and the big one is “you know the other one.” The reason why they use this expression, I think, is because we, as Korean people, use a lot of words borrowed from Chinese. When we say, “So Byun (??)” and “Dae Byun (??)”, it literally means small excreta or big excreta. So, instead of saying too explicit expressions, people might have decided to abstract them by saying small one or big one. But still almost all of Korean people understand what it means when you use it in a proper context.

Here in America, Patrick told me when he was young whenever he wanted to go to bathroom, his mother asked him, “number one or number two”. As you know, deuce means two. So, people use this expression (“drop a deuce”) when there is time that they need to go to bathroom. Well, I say “drop a deuce” in English means you want to “do big one” in Korean.

Again, it is very interesting and funny how all of the expressions are originated and used in real communications.

Now I wonder where the number one or number two is originated. Does anybody know where it is originated?

Good Morning, everyone! It has been a while for me to add a new one.

I was on trips from the last Friday. Now I have some free time before meetings.

After I posted “pick your brain” article, Phil and Andrew added comments. And I had to ask a few friends to find out what “eat your head” and “eat you out” mean.

Well, it looks like both of them have very interesting (?) meanings. Especially, “eat your head” would have a meaing if a lady uses it to a guy whereas “eat you out” is a guy’s expression. Is it correct? Well, I do not think it is appropriate to write details down here.

So, my suggestion is to find it out from the Internet or ask your friends. I mean, close friends not random friends.

My friend, Andrew, told me “Urban dictionary is your friend!” I guess I should use the same thing to you.  “Urban dictionary is also your friend!”

Who taught: Shawn

Hello, there! OK, let me guess! You just got to the office and turned your computer on. And the first thing you do is open your web browser and type “http://englishfromfriends.com”, right? Nice job! You curiosity about a new article makes you do it, right? Now you are addicted to my blog!! Oh, by the way, as an applications engineer, I want to ask you one simple thing. If you are using IE 6, now close the browser and please upgrade it or install the firefox and come back to my blog.

Today, I would like to talk about how interesting an expression or phrase is created and people use and understand them in English. For example, “pick your brain!” The three words are combined together and becomes to have totally new meaning. This is really interesting. If I hear the expression for the first time, I would never understand what it means because literally it is like, “What? are you gonna drop my brain somewhere and pick it up later? What are you smoking crack?” The funniest part is when I or any other non-native English speakers try to use it in a wrong way, then it could sound totally crazy and stupid. For example, one of my friends in my company has a meeting with a client and one of the participants from the client side who is not an American used the following sentence. “Phil, I would like to eat your head on Monday.” It turns out that he was trying to use “pick your brain” but he used “eat your head” instead. I guess “eat your head” would have no special meaning and American people would possibly understand it literally. I mean like really somebody eats other person’s head. Pretty crazy and creepy, huh!

So, to me, it is really interesting and fun to learn the new slangs or phrases because it makes me think how languages are different.

“Pick you brain” means like “I want to learn from you.” By the way, does “eat your head” have any special meaning?

Where: swimming pool

I know this is so embarrassing story but I would like to share this with you so that you do not make the same mistake. About 13 years ago, I went to Canada to study English. I stayed in Vancouver for about 6 months. Other than going to an ESL institute during daytime, there was nothing really I can do. So I decided to become a member of YWCA (YMCA??) swimming pool. From then, I went to there almost everyday. Of course, I always wore the swimming suit I brought from Korea. It was speedo. You know, it is the one which is triangle shape, tight and black. Especially, mine was really small and tight because it is for competitive swimmers. I did not really notice about what other people were wearing. So, I kept wearing it for about a few weeks. In the swimming pool, there was also a small spa. So, in the middle of swimming, if I got too cold, I used to go into the spa to warm me up. There, I met an old guy and we had good talks for a few days. And, one day just like the other days, I was swimming, wearing speedo, and I bumped into the same guy in the spa. This time, in the middle of our talk, he sneakingly came closer to me and started to touch my shoulder and move his hand down, touching my upper body. I was so surprised and moved back from him. Till that moment, I had no idea what was going on. And, he asked me, “Do you have a girlfriend or something?” I showed him my ring which I got from my girlfriend. Then he moved back and went away. I had never seen him again in the swimming pool. I was so curious what just happened that I told the story to my friend, Paul. He told me the old guy must be a gay and wearing speedo is something gay people would do. Well, I did not know that!!! I was innocent. In Korea, everybody wears speedo. It is kind of funny if you wear trunk in the swimming pool in Korea. I think there should be some sort of notice in swimming pools. Guess what I am wearing now?? It is a trunk swimming suit. (No offense to gay people! I just want to talk about different culture.) Oh, when I was going to go on a vacation with Patrick to the place where there is a spa. He specifically talked to me, “T-bone, no speedo! OK?” because he knew this story. haha

So the takeaways here are 1) speedo is a pronoun for the type of swimming suit with very tight and triangle shape and 2) do not wear speedo in swimming pools in America or Canada.