Who taught: Jake and Carol

Seoul (Source: Wikipedia)

There is a street near my company where most of employees of my company park their cars. In my case, I walk from my house to the company and, sometimes, I meet my friends as I walk through the street. Last week, I met Jake and Carol on the street. We walked together to the office and we talked about Carol’s house improvement projects. She bought a house and Jake and Carol are working on a lot of different parts of the house. This is one thing I found very interesting living in America. In Korea, people do not want to buy a house which requires a lot of works. Instead, they buy a house which is perfectly fine as it is. In America, many people buy a house which might require some works and they actually work on those things by themselves. It is called DIY (Do It Yourself!). You can buy a lot of things such as paint, hardwood floors and even doors from places like Home Depot or Lowe’s. Literally, they have almost everything you need for your house.

Anyway, one of the projects they are working on is seeding lawns in their backyard. I saw some of the pictures she posted on Facebook and it was growing very slowly. We talked about that it would take a while to be looking good. During the conversation, I said, “It will take a while and needs patience, right?” And Jake said, “Exactly, it is like watching the grass grow.” At that moment, I did not know the expression and I just thought that the grass indeed grows slowly and he was agreeing with me. But then Jake asked me, “Oh! Do you know the expression?” “No!”, said I.

Jake said, “It means something is boring!” Carol added, “There is another one! It is like watching paint dry.” So, we were basically taking about the origin of the expression and it itself really explains the meaning of the expression. How funny it is!

We do not have this kind of expression in Korea! Do you know why? It is because there is no space for lawns in Korean houses, especially in Seoul. The city is almost like 10 times bigger than New York city and there are 12 million people living in the city. The population of South Korea is 48 million. So 1/4 of Korean population live in Seoul. According to Wikipedia, it is no 8 in the world largest cities, bigger than any cities in the U.S.