Tag Archives: al

29 May

ringer

Who taught : Al

Ringer (source: http://www.life123.com/)

How was your weekend? It was a little longer weekend here in the U.S. because yesterday was Memorial Day. It is a federal holiday to remember the men and women who died while serving the country in the Armed Forces. Every year, I go to a church retreat during this holiday weekend. It was fun. This year, I sort of participated in the corn-hole tournament (FYI, if you do not know what corn-hole is, look at this post. Especially, read the comments through. 🙂 ). It was fun but it was also my first time to play the tournament. So, Bovi and I, as a team, were defeated in the semi-final. Not bad, huh?

After the tournament was done, I was having breakfast with Al and other friends. And, Al said, “So, Terry, I heard that you are pretty good at corn-hole. You were like a ringer yesterday night.”

Everything was fine for me to understand till I heard this word, ringer. What is it? I did not carry any ring and made sounds while playing corn-hole games.

Can you guess what it means? Here is a little more details about what happened for your guess! So, before a game started, I told people that I had not played for a very long time and I must be bad at it now. But, I won games to get to the semi-final.

Here is a great definition from Free Dictionary.

a contestant, esp a horse, entered in a competition under false representations of identity, record, or ability.

 

Well, I guess I did say things to falsely represent myself. The funny thing is that it sounds like a word that is not good to use often but it is not really a bad thing to say. Most of the times, when you play a sport with your friends and they might invite someone else and they say, “Hey I am not good. But I will try.” And, when the game is actually on, he or she just dominates it. They are ringers. I have seen some people like that when I play golf.

Also, there was another expression I heard during the retreat, red herring. At that time, that sounded totally new to me but I suddenly realized that it is one of the expressions I have already learned and I was correct. Look at this post to check it out. I won’t forget red herring.

08 Aug

dog days

Who taught: Al

Dog Days (source : http://literatehousewife.com/)

There are some expressions that are sort of universal. I have a hunch that today’s expression is one of them and you can easily understand what it means as you hear or speak.

A few days ago, I was watching Today show on NBC and Al, as always, was talking about the weather. On his background, there was a map of the United States. And, it marked the Southern states as “dog days,” with red color. Well, I had not heard of this expression but it totally made sense to me. Why? I don’t know. It just feels like it is universal. So familiar. Maybe, we do have a similar expression in Korea.

As I research about this expression, I realize that the origin goes far back than what I thought it would be. It was used by the Greeks and the Romans.

The name comes from the ancient belief that Sirius, also called the Dog Star, in close proximity to the sun was responsible for the hot weather.

This is very good to know and makes you sound very knowledgable, right? But, I like this version of definition that I found from Urban Dictionary.

Time in the summer where it is so hot or humid that the dogs go crazy by barking or howling.

A few days ago, it was totally dog days of summer here in PGH. It is much better now. Hope this cooler temp stays for a while!

Here is a piece of advice for you. Eat watermelons this Summer. Not only is it a great hydrator during summer fun, it also helps to reduce your chances of getting burned while you play outdoors this summer due to it’s high volume of lycopene.

10 Jan

drag your feet

Who taught: Al, Carl and Obama

refreshment room? (source: http://www.freefoto.com/)

Yesterday, at my church, Al talked about one word that I have known for a while. He was announcing an event and he said, “There will be refreshment after the event.” I am sure you know what the refreshment is here in this context. Just for those of you who might not know, it is light snack or drink provided at a public event. Al also talked about what are the things that can refresh your spirit or body. Well, yesterday, we sang songs and prayed. They were definitely very refreshing and I was so refreshed. As I think of this way, I got to really like the word, refreshment. You know what I thought about? I thought about the person who used this word to mean light snack or drink for the first time. I imagine that he/she had food like fruit and water after a long work or talk, then he/she said, “This food and drink are very refreshing. Really, these are refreshments for me. Let’s call these food refreshments from now on, shall we?” What do you think? I am very sure that is what happened and from that moment people started to call those food refreshments. I love this word a lot because we all need refreshments from time to time. Not just from food. It could be fresh air in the morning or everything depending on how you think. Hope you all find a lot of refreshments today and in your life.

A few weeks ago, I was watching news and President Obama was talking about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy. For your information, here is what DADT is.

the policy restricting the United States Military from efforts to discover or reveal the sexuality of closeted homosexual or bisexual servicemembers or applicants, while barring those who are openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual from military service. (source : Wikipedia)

More specifically, he was talking about a bill that was passed to repeal DADT. Even though the bill was passed, there are still procedures to be done to make it effective. In the interview, he said, “We will not drag our feet here.” As soon as I heard that, I remembered that Carl used the expression when he and I had meetings with customers in almost same way. Whenever I hear the word, drag, I think of computer mouse. I am sure you have a mouse and drag it every day, don’t you? Now, what if you think there is your feet on your desk and you drag your feet just like you drag your mouse. How would you feel? It feels very slow and just something that you do not want to do so that you intentionally do something very slow. Here is my famous question! CAN YOU FEEL IT? 🙂

Here is another challenge for you in 2011! Let’s not drag our feet and be proactive! You know what! If you do that, then you yourself could be refreshment to others. Excited? I am excited.