Tag Archives: facebook

18 Oct

smooch

Who taught: Kara and Jake

smooch

smooch

In everyday life here in the U.S., I hear a lot of words I had never even seen when I was studying English in Korea. I am very positive it is because my focus of the study was literary English.

So, I would say colloquial English can be a whole different animal for you to experience once you live in a English-speaking country.

Maybe it is only me. But, many of those words used colloquially sound very funny.

A few days ago, it was Jake’s birthday. Well, that’s what Facebook told me. On his timeline, Kara said, “Bday smooch!”

I thought to myself, “Hmm… smooch. that sounds funny. What does it mean?” One of the things I do when I hear or see a new word is try not to look it up before I really think about what it could mean.

My guess with regard to this word was that it is simply a way to call your close friend. You know, like “dude” or “buddy.”

Being pretty positive about my guess, I also wrote on Jake’s timeline, “Happy Bday smooch! What’s smooch?”

I know what you guys are thinking now. What a mistake! Two days ago, I caught up with my friends including Jake and he asked for me to actually smooch him. Of course, I did not. Get your mind out of the gutter! Can you guess what it means? Let me give you a hint. It is an onomatopoeic word, I believe. So, when would you hear the sound that is very similar to “smooch.” Too hard? All right, here is another hint. Think about your lips when you kiss your boy friend or girl friend very loudly with a lot of love. Now, you get it?

It simply means “a loud kiss” or “to kiss loudly.”

Let me tell you again to make sure there is no misunderstanding. I did not smooch Jake. 🙂 One suggestion for you! Why don’t you smooch your loved one today? When you do, pay attention to the sound. That may help you to remember the word.

Have fun, guys, smooching!

01 Dec

cut corners

Who taught: Eric Goldman

facebook and privacy (source: http://www.p2pnet.net/)

One of the things that I regularly do to improve my English is reading newspapers. What I mean by “read”? I mostly read aloud unless I am in a public place like an atrium or a coffee shop.

You should definitely try to read aloud as often as you can. From my experience, it gives me a chance to not only remember words better but also pronounce them correctly with proper intonation.

Two days ago, I was reading an article of the NY Times which is about Facebook’s settlement with FTC for its privacy issue. In the article, Eric Goldman who is a law professor said, “Facebook repeatedly cuts corners when it comes to its privacy promises.” Cut corners? Does not sound good but what does it exactly mean? These were the questions that came to my mind.

Painting was the first thing that I thought of as soon as I saw this expression, cut corners. Why? When I was painting the master bedroom of my house, I was so tired that I wanted to skip painting corners. People would not really pay attention to see corners, right? Besides, it gets trickier to paint corners. To sum it up, if I cut corners, I feel like I am doing a sloppy work.

Luckily, my first impression was pretty close. Here is what it means:

Do something in easiest, quickest or cheapest way. It also implies circumvention of standard procedures or something ill-advised or even illegal.

Eric is saying that Facebook has not been really careful or tried not to follow good and thorough procedures to protect users’ privacy. What do you think? I think I have to agree with him. As a Facebook user, I have felt that some of the changes or modifications they have made did not satisfy my expectation in terms of protecting my privacy.

Oh… you do not want to cut corners when you paint. Who knows? Later when you want to sell the house, you may regret.