In a seminar, the speaker wasn’t impressed by the programming capability of some developers. He referred to them as “not the sharpest pencil the pack“.

On a romantic comedy movie “A Lot Like Love”, Oliver (played by Aston Kutcher) bumped into a pretty girl Emily (by Amanda Peet) on the airplane to New York. When asked about his future plan, Oliver said: “I’m trying to have my ducks in a row — job, house, car, and a beautiful wife …”

On the “Big bang theory”, Raj starts to work for Sheldon. To spice up a conversation, Raj tries to make some jokes. But Sheldon doesn’t like it and thinks that’s a waste of time. Raj rubs his hands and says: “OK. Let’s buckle down and work”.

A guy was disappointed by the Manchester United defeat to Liverpool today. He said: “I’m going home now to drown my sorrows“.

On the Armoured, one guy speaks of how his parents worked hard to support the family: “They busted their humps to make a living.”

As the European and USA universities are feeling the pinch from the government funding cut, Brazil is steadily increasing the investment on education and research. From the economist, “Brazil is no longer a scientific also-ran“. This phrase came from horse racing, and it refers to a horse that didn’t make it to the first three winning positions. The names of those horses are usually published alongside the winners, but in a block under the heading “Also Ran”.

Armoured (2009) is a rather boring movie. It is abut a group of security guards conspiring to jack a shield-armoured trunk loaded with 42 million dollars cash. But the plan goes wrong from moment one guard kills a homeless who witnesses the robbery. The rest movie is about them trying to cover it up and the whole thing getting more messed. After the homeless is killed, one guard shouts: “There is no way turning back. The cat’s out of the bag now.” By comparison, Takers (2010) is a much more entertaining movie on the similar theme of trunk robbery.

On Two and a Half Men, Alan accidentally burned down his girlfriend Lindsay’s house . He tried to comfort her: “It’s not that bad. At least people are safe. And we still have each other”. Lindsay turned face and said: “You make my skin crawl.” This is another expression of giving someone “goose bumps“.

On a TV program, an international affair expert commented on the current tense situation between North and South Korea: “They are playing chicken.”  This is dangerous as playing chicken will eventually escalate to war! As I searched for this phrase, I found a related phrase called “play chicken in traffic“, which refers to several dangerous games on the road to test who is the most courageous. In one game, two cars speed toward each other and the one who first swerves is the looser. See this for more detail.

This is a newly invented Chinglish word, but is getting increasingly popular across Internet in China. This word is derived from “geili”, which is used in the dialect in the northern part of China and literally means to “give power”. Some “smart” person invented the “gelivable” adjective that combines the Chinese native “geili” and also the English “-able” suffix in a strange way. Suddenly, the word appears everywhere on Chinese websites.

I don’t think native English speakers can understand this. Even for me, it took me a while to figure out what’s going on. Whoever came up with this word has reasons to brag about his/her mastering Chinese and English. But, to me, the word looks rather silly – or maybe, that’s exactly why it becomes the vogue.