Category Archives: From media

10 Nov

what smile?

Hello, my friends! It is another day given to us. Hope you all enjoy today! You know what is one of the best ways to enjoy your day? It is smiling.

There are so many studies about the relationship between smile and health. I found 10 reasons to smile on the Internet. Out of 10, I really like these two.

1. Smiling is contagious.

2. Smiling lifts the face and makes you look younger.

Now, don’t you want to smile? To be able to smile, you should really try to think about the things that make you smile instead of the things that make you worry or stressful.

We all now know smiling is good. Well…. not really! It really depends on what kind of smile you have.

A few months ago, Jessy and I were surfing the web and found a video in which one guy just watching a camera with serious face and, all of a sudden, he makes a very strange smile. I am not sure why he is continuously making that look but this video got more than 200,000 hits. But then I noticed the title of the video, pedo smile. I had no idea what pedo smile is.

Of course, I researched about it as I have always done. Curious Terry… 🙂 Pedo is a short version of pedophile. Here is the definition of the word, pedophile.

an adult who is sexually attracted to children

I am pretty sure you get the idea of what “PEDO SMILE” means. This seems like a subjective term but I am sure we all can agree that the smile this guy has is pedo smile.

Today’s lesson! “Smile is good as long as it is not pedo.”

My American friends, are there any other smiles we should be away from? What do you call them, if there is any?

08 Nov

Big vs. bad

Big mouth. I mean literally. (source: www.ebaumsworld.com)

In the U.S., every year, there is a day we can have additional one more hour. It was yesterday. One hour is so much appreciated, especially on Sunday. We can sleep a little more. 🙂  How nice! But, this one hour is the hour we lost in Spring. Do you know what this system is called? It is day-light saving time. When I was young, we used to have the same system in Korea. I am not sure why but the Korean government named this system in English. Do you know what they called it? It was not day-light saving time. It was summer time. When I first got here in the U.S., I used to use “summer time,” meaning day-light saving time. But, many of my American friends did not quite get what I meant by summer time. So… is summer time really incorrect?

Now, let’s talk about big vs bad! If you see someone who really really loves to talk, you know, boast about himself/herself and talk about other people, usually bad things, what would you call him/her? Let me give you a hint? What part of body is he/she using when he/she talks? Haha.. I know… It is too easy for you. You can call him/her “big mouth.” I mean, if someone just cannot stop talking about all the people, then you can even call him/her “gigantic mouth.”

How about badmouth? When would you use it? Pretty easy, right? Well, when I first heard the expression, I thought it means smelly mouth. You know if someone did not brush his/her teeth and tries to talk, you can smell. But, badmouth has nothing to do with smell. In fact, it means criticizing. For example, if you do not like a TV show, you can badmouth it. I like these mouth expressions because they are very intuitive and easy to use although you do not want to be the subject of these expressions. 🙂 It would be a lot easier to learn English if the expressions are all like these, right? I am sure so many people out there would agree with me.

But once again, if something is too easy, then it is not really fun anymore. You should really enjoy challenges.

28 Oct

shove it

shove it (source: www.celebpub.com)

A few days ago, Jessy and I were watching TV and heard one expression that we all do not understand. (Not a surprise! 🙂 ) By just hearing it, it sounded not really good at all. I think it was the NBC nightly news with Brian Williams. FYI, news is one of the things I really try to watch every day because they speak English very clearly and also I can learn a lot of political aspects of the United States. Anyway, one of the news that Brian mentioned was about a politician who tried to get an endorsement from Barack Obama, the president of the United States for his campaign. But, he was not able to get it.

He then got angry and told the president, “Shove it!” That was one of the news. Jessy and I started to look up the word, shove, to make sure what that means. The word, shove, means “push roughly.” For example, you are in a hurry and try to go though a big crowd to get to a place. What you are going to try is pushing people roughly so that you can get through them. In doing so, you are shoving. Then, what can “shove it” mean? Now, let’s imagine that you have something in front of you which is “it.” What will happen if you push it roughly? It will be moving away from you, right?

Moving on, what if you say this one to someone who is saying something? Then, his/her remark becomes an object that is being shoved. I believe you now get the idea of this expression. It is almost like “shut up” but I think this sounds even worse. But, to be honest, I still cannot get the correct feeling of this expression.

So, I will ask my American friends to answer my question. Which one is harsher, ‘shut up’ or ‘shove it’?

09 Sep

gold digger

Have you heard this song? The title of the song is gold digger. One thing I would like to make clear to you. I hate Kanye West. Do not listen to his song at all after this post! 🙂 So, I used to listen to HipHop a lot but not really anymore. Maybe I am getting older. But the other reason I do not listen to them anymore is because of their lyrics. Some of them are just so bad. I mean really bad. Funny thing is I used to not be able to hear and understand lyrics and just enjoy rhythm and beat. I mean some of them are still hard for me to understand what they are talking about because it is so fast.

So, if you listen to hiphop without understanding the lyrics, you would probably fine with keep listening. But, if you pay attention a little bit more, you would notice that some lyrics are horrible. I remember one time when I was driving down to DC with Jessy and we were listening to HipHop and, all of a sudden, Jessy and I looked each other and said, “Did you hear what he is saying? That is insane!” Annnnnnnd, we changed the channel. So, you gotta be careful what you are listening. 🙂

Well, but there are some expressions you might be interested in from listening to music. For example, gold digger. If you listen to the song carefully, you should be able to understand what it means. In general, this is only used for women but who knows. Here is a definition on urban dictionary.

Any woman whose primary interest in a relationship is material benefits. A woman who cares more about a man’s bank account than she does about the man.

If I did not know the expression and my friends would ask me what I think this expression means, then I would say, “It sounds like someone lives life for making more and more money and only cares about money.” I guess this would be partially correct but not really, right?

Now, what about a guy who is in relationship with a gold digger. What is the expression you can use? Before I tell you this expression, I must say that I like this expression itself. Based on a web source I found, this expression was first used in 1926 and, in 1976, Jackson 5 released a single whose title is “Sugar Daddy.” That is right! Sugar Daddy is the expression you can use for a man who is in a relationship with a gold digger or relationships with gold diggers. (He could have multiple relationships at a time. Why not? 🙂 )

Why don’t we all become God Digger instead of Gold Digger because God is really the ultimate Sugar Daddy. You should at least give it a try to read the Bible to find out who He is.

11 Aug

rock-paper-scissors

rock-paper-scissors (source:wikipedia)

Do you know what is one of the most common things you can see around the world regardless of countries? It is a simple game, called rock-paper-scissors. In Korea, we call it, kauwi-bauwi-bo.

Let me do some anatomy of this expression here! We all know what rock, paper and scissors are.

One point lesson here! You should always use plural for scissors because there is no scissor. It is sometimes hard to remember to use plural form for these kinds of words, especially in speaking. The other examples that you need to use plural always are glasses and pants.

OK! Back to the anatomy! The order in Korean is different. “Kauwi” means scissors and “bauwi” means rock. And, I think, “bo” means sheet of cloth. If I translate it based on its order, it becomes “scissors-rock-cloth.”

I was very curious about its origin. Chinese people invented the first version of this game, called Chung-Gwon(蟲券) in the 17th century. And, the current version of the game was invented by Japanese people in the 19th century. And, finally, this game became so popular in the other countries in the 20th century. Interestingly, Japanese people used paper instead of cloth and that is why it became rock-paper-scissors. But, for some reason, when Korean people learned this, they replaced “paper” with “cloth” and Chinese people learned the new version of the game from Korea.

Korean people use this in so many occasions. For example, if you are at home with your family and you are about to watch a movie together but all of the people want to eat some snacks, then, they play this game to decide a person who should go to a store to buy some snacks. Or, if you are about to play a soccer game and you have 10 people, then we play this game to decide the teams (Winner team vs. Loser team). I mean each of 2 people play the game separately. So, there are 5 rock-paper-scissors games happening at the same time.

To be honest, I have not seen American people playing this game a lot. Hey, my friends! When do you play this game? And, if you are from some other countries, could you let us know whether you guys also play this game or not? Very curious!

FYI, there is a lot more information on Wikipedia.