The rowing captain sent us an email:

1. apparently the delivery men just cocked up — mess up, f**k up [urban dict]
2. I can dish it (rowing kit) out at the boathouse tomorrow — To dispense freely [dict]
3. Sleep well, eat well, wrap up well, row well … — to dress warmly [usingenglish]

Dictionaries, though useful, may be misleading sometimes. From the dictionary, “sketchy” could mean “Resembling a sketch; giving only major points or parts”. So I used this word in my paper: “this is a sketchy proof …”. However, two English speakers pointed out that “sketchy” has a negative connotation (see this), and their interprettation of the sentence is “this is a dodgy proof”! A similar example in Chinese is on the use of the word “xiao-jie” (i.e., Miss). It is so often abused to refer to prostitutes that its connotation is now quite negative.

I'm Chinese and have studied English for many years. I got good IELTS
and GRE (verb/writing) scores, higher than many English-native
counterparts. But I am not a good English speaker/listener. I have
tried various efforts, but failed; my laziness is to blame. A friend
suggests me to expose my English on the blog and let people criticize
it. It sounds crazy, but who knows it may turn out to be the very
right way.