One of my favorite Japanese songs: Shimanchu nu takara by Begin

Watch out for the paddle

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My girlfriend always wears flats, even when it’s raining.

As a good boyfriend, I need to warn her when there’s water accumulated on the ground. That way she won’t step on the water and get her feet wet (and won’t complain about getting her feet wet).

“Watch out for the paddle,” I told her on a rainy day.

She laughed.

The correct word for water accumulated on the ground is puddle.

“(…) the poodle,” I joked after noticing that I had picked the wrong word from the PDL group.

The PDL group is composed by paddle, peddle, piddle, poddle, poodle and puddle.

Because in Portuguese we pronounce the vowels differently, I get those words confused when pronouncing them.

I hate phrasal verbs

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My nose was stuffed one day (i.e. I had boogers or nasal mucus in my nose).

“I am going to blow up my nose,” I told my girlfriend.

She laughed at my wrong use of a phrasal verb (Phrasal what? Phrasal verb is a verb with an adverbial or prepositional particle. For example: blow + up = blow up).

Of course I wasn’t going to put a dynamite in my nose and explode it. I was trying to tell my girlfriend I was going to blow my nose or take the stuff out of it.

I hate phrasal verbs.

My English professors back home didn’t spend too much time teaching me how to combine verbs with adverbs or prepositions. So I still struggle with them.

Take the trash off, take trash away or take the trash out? I don’t know. Just get rid of the trash, and I will be happy.

A private tutor

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A friend of mine tried to tell me and my girlfriend a joke the other day.

“What do you call a professor who doesn’t fart in public?” she asked us.

We had no idea.

“A private tutor,” she said with a big smile on her face.

Then she laughed. Then my girlfriend laughed.

I didn’t.

My friend and my girlfriend tried to explained the joke to me.

Tutor is a professor. Toot is slang for fart. Tooter, which sounds like tutor, would be the person who farts.

So a professor who cannot fart in public is a private tooter.

Then I laughed.

A 6-year-old girl taught me that word

 

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This 6-year-old girl got a sheet of white A4 paper and fold it several times. After unfolding it, she used the paper to blow some air on her face.

I knew what she had just made with the A4 paper, but I had no idea what to call that in English.

“What’s that?” I asked her in that tone that people talk to kids.

I was pretending I was just interacting with the little girl despite the fact that I was actually trying to learn English with her.

“It’s a French fan,” she said.

I got the “fan” part but not the “French.”

I usually associate French fan with geishas (Japanese women dressed in a kimono). Maybe because I’m Japanese descendent.

Therefore, geisha fan or Japanese fan would be better to describe the object (in my Japanese-descendent point of view).

A good song in Spanish: Mayonesa by Chocolate

This song reminds me of when I travelled throughout South America when I was 13 years old. “Mayonesa” was a big hit in South America in early 2002.

 

Then a few months later, Brasil came up with the Portuguese version of the song. The Brazilian version is called “Maionese.”

 

I prefer the Spanish version.

I want my eggs well done

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One day I went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast with a friend of mine and two of her friends.

I asked my friend for a suggestion of what I should order because that was the first time I had been to Cracker Barrel.

Plus, I understand probably about 30 percent of what I read in menus. Not enough to make a good choice. However, educated guesses sometimes help with the menu illiteracy problem.

After ordering whatever my friend suggested, the waitress asked me how I wanted my eggs.

I looked at my friend hoping she would get that I had no idea what to tell the waitress.

She didn’t get it.

“Hmmm, well done,” I told the waitress.

The waitress seemed not to understand what I had just said.

I don’t quite remember how I finally got out of that embarrassing moment. But I do remember I ordered scrambled eggs.

To these days, I don’t know how else I can order my eggs. So I always say I want them scrambled.

Listening to songs in English

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Understanding songs in English is tough.

Not being able to see the singer’s lips moving is one of the reasons why. Plus, the sound of the instruments mixed with the singer’s voice complicates my life even more.

That helps confirm the theory of the English-subtitle option on DVDs that I am hearing impaired.

This is what I hear when listening to the following kinds of songs:

• Hip Hop: BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, beep (that’s for the bad words), BLAH, beep, beep beep, BLAH…
• Rap: BLAH, my name is (what?), BLAH, my name is (huh?), sequence of 100 BLAHs pronounced very quickly…
• Pop: BLAH, BLAH, oh yeah, BLAH, BLAH, baby, BLAH, baby, BLAH, oh yeah, BLAH, one more time, BLAH…
• Country: BLAH, BLAH, hey, BLAH, yall, BLAH, hey yall, BLAH, BLAH, fixing to go, BLAH, BLAH…
• Rock: sound of guitars and drums, BLAH (somebody yelling), BLAH, more guitar and drums, BLAH…
• Lady Gaga: BLAH, po-po-po-ker face, BL…  then I change the radio station.

PS: I don’t have problems memorizing songs in English…

My favorite singer from New Zealand: Brooke Fraser

Shadowfeet

 

Albertine

Are you mad at me?

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I have a habit of putting a weird combination of food on my plate, my girlfriend said.

“Arthur, your habits are wearing off on me,” she said one day when we were eating at the Winthrop cafeteria.

I thought she was mad at me.

I looked at her scared that one of my habits was annoying her or making her mad.

“What did I do?” I thought.

The 10 months we’ve been dating flashed through my mind in the five seconds I was trying to understand why she could be mad at me.

My mind was working really hard in search for a memory of anything I’d done to her.

“Now, I’m eating weird things together,” she interrupted my scary thoughts.

Then I realized she wasn’t mad.

I asked her what wearing off meant. She said that because she’s been around me for a long time, she is starting to do things I do such as eating a weird combination of food.

My habits are wearing off on her doesn’t mean they annoy her. It just means that she is “importing” my habits.

PS: Can I sue my girlfriend for emotional distress? Please comment.