Who taught : Carl and Andrew

Jessy and Me

So, this is my 100th post! Yay! I am pretty excited about it. It has been 4 months and 7 days since I wrote my first post. To commemorate this milestone, I would like to share one of my personal stories. It is about my wife, Jessy. First of all, I am not telling any lie here. Jessy and I went to the same university in Korea. We both majored law. And, back then, she was one of the most famous girls in the school. (I am not saying she is not any more. 🙂 ) Many times, a lot of guys waited for her outside of classrooms where she took classes to see her. How about me? I was just a normal guy whom no girls showed any interests in. Then, I am sure you would have a question you would ask. How the heck was I able to woo her? (The word, “woo”, here is a good expression you can use when anyone is trying to make a girl or a guy fall for him/her.) Well, I actually do not know. The only thing I know is that she was the one who hit on me. She actually told me, “First time I saw you, I just felt that you are the one for me.” What did I do? Well, I think I just did not pay attention to her a lot. Do you know why? I had to study hard to recover my bad GPA. 🙂

So, college students out there! Believe it or not, here is today’s lesson for you.

Girls dig a guy who is enthusiastic about what he does! If you do your best at what you are supposed to do, you are charm enough to woo the best girl!

Now, let’s get to today’s expression, shall we? About three years ago when I first started my work, I was pretty nervous about having conference calls. And, one day, I was in a conference call with a few people from a client and my boss, Carl. They asked me a few questions and I provided a few suggestions. Following the suggestions, I said, “So… how do you think?” Why I use “how” instead of “what”? Probably, it is because I was translating Korean into English. In Korean, we say, “어떻게 생각하세요? (Eu-Dduk-Ke Saeng-Gak-Ha-Se-Yo ?)” and literal translation of “어떻게(Eu-Dduk-Ke)” is “how” not “what.” After the meeting, Carl grabbed me and said, “Terry, you should say ‘what do you think?’ If you say ‘how do you think?’, it is almost like insulting because it would mean like, ‘do you even have brain to think about?'”

Man, I was so embarrassed. On that day, I repeated ‘what do you think?’ like 100 times on my way to home. Now? I never even think ‘how do you think?’ at all.