Learning English- aim to achieve better English

黑山老妖

Went shopping today with wife and the sales assistance said these to us.
"It's all about fashion."
Reminds me of "Women are slaves of fashion". 女人是时尚的奴隶。

WTFAUS

原帖由 黑山老妖 于 2007-9-22 18:45 发表
Went shopping today with wife and the sales assistance said these to us.
"It's all about fashion."
Reminds me of "Women are slaves of fashion". 女人是时尚的奴隶。

I just hate shopping ...

shefanie

Cup of tea (means you like it )

A: could you pls help me with this bank reconciliation? It drives me nuts!
B: ho ho, that’s my cup of tea. Hand it over.
A: that’s cool. By the way, I have got two tickets for the AFL tonight. Do you want to come along?
B: no, it’s definitely not my cup of tea. But thanks anyway.  



Austeps is my cup of tea!

黑山老妖

You talk on cup of tea reminds me of the way Aussies use "tea".
In Australia, if you are at someone's home and they ask you "Do you want to have tea with us?". They are asking you do you want to have dinner with them. Tea = dinner in this situation.

yanyan

原帖由 黑山老妖 于 24/9/07 14:12 发表
You talk on cup of tea reminds me of the way Aussies use "tea".
In Australia, if you are at someone's home and they ask you "Do you want to have tea with us?". They are asking  ...

I was about to say that as well!! My aussie colleague told me once he invited some friends from the church to have TEA at his place, and those friends turned up around noon he was so embrassed and haven't prepare anything

WTFAUS

原帖由 黑山老妖 于 2007-9-24 14:12 发表
You talk on cup of tea reminds me of the way Aussies use "tea".
In Australia, if you are at someone's home and they ask you "Do you want to have tea with us?". They are asking  ...

sigh.. never heard anyone say that to me yet...

yanyan

And he told me DINNER=LUNCH..

bulaohu

don't get me started with this tea vs lunch vs luncheon vs dinner vs supper thing. 中文清楚多了。

yanyan

原帖由 bulaohu 于 24/9/07 14:37 发表
don't get me started with this tea vs lunch vs luncheon vs dinner vs supper thing. 中文清楚多了。

sounds like you had some bad experiences about that

maribel

原帖由 WTFAUS 于 2007-9-22 19:40 发表

I just hate shopping ...

Unfortunately you are one of the "slaves" of "slaves of the fashion. "

bulaohu

原帖由 yanyan 于 2007-9-24 15:20 发表

sounds like you had some bad experiences about that

not much real life experience, but if you want to dig out what exactly each word means, you will find hundreds of contradicting explanations, and it seems in every small town of GB it means something slightly different. Or every suburb of London. Sometimes I'm amazed by the ability of the European people to disagree with each other.

gougou554

learnt much from here....Thx...everybody!!

maribel

I used to say “I know xxx like the palm of my hand.”, however was corrected several times by American teachers that I'd better say "I like xxx like the back of my hand" as the previous expression had some negative meaning, not good, they said. So I stopped being inquisitive about this.

Just remembered this and am curious if anyone here knows the reason? or knows the background of the previous expression?

shefanie

does anyone know the meaning"i am in a bit of state today". Does that mean "i am in a bad mood today"?

seems people stop contributing language point now.......

patrickzhu

原帖由 shefanie 于 2007-9-26 13:31 发表
does anyone know the meaning"i am in a bit of state today". Does that mean "i am in a bad mood today"?
seems people stop contributing language point now.......

my colleague explained in most cases it means "upset and confused", even sort of "too busy, in a mess..." and sort of "keyed up"...

tiger

How is the cat in the well?

bulaohu

原帖由 yanyan 于 2007-9-22 11:57 发表

www.urbandictionary.com is quite good

Yes, it's good because it's democratic - explanations to a word get voted up or down so that you can basically trust the answers that get high approval rate. To me this is more reliable than most commercial dictionaries. And, man, don't you love to know the meanings of these everyday slang that no commercial dictionaries will ever cover.

黑山老妖

原帖由 tiger 于 2007-9-28 01:15 发表
How is the cat in the well?

Please explain.

maribel

Learned a new expression today:

When looking for a job, your agent will SHOP YOU AROUND and see where they can get the most $.

SHOP YOU AROUND: TO TALK YOU UP AND SELL YOU TO DIFFERENT EMPLOYERS.

WTFAUS

hehe job agent is like a sales person to some extent. they will help you to get the max. pay so that they can have more commissions.

黑山老妖

原帖由 WTFAUS 于 2007-9-28 12:16 发表
hehe job agent is like a sales person to some extent. they will help you to get the max. pay so that they can have more commissions.

Fully agree. And they are just working for their dough.
The alignment of interest for the agents is totally with the job seekers.

dough = income

maribel

Oh I nearly forgot.....

Sometimes you will hear people say - Looking for a greener pasture? when looking for a job, which means looking for something better.