Associating Idioms

Associating similar things will increase the possibility of long memorization, so here I am going to associate similar Idioms. This way your use of idioms will be more vivid, especially if you are using it in writing.

Before heading ahead, I want to clear that these similar looking Idioms are not exactly interchangeable, but they are very close to each other.

a cinch - Be piece of cake - a snap - as easy as pie
very easy
Q. How was your test?
A. It was a cinch. /or/ It was a piece of cake for me. /or/ It was as easy a pie /or/ It was a snap to finish it.

bushed - beat - pooped
very tired; exhausted
I am going to hit the sack. I am really bushed.
It was a long day. I am beat.
Working all night, i am pooped.

cost an arm and a leg - a bundle
Very expensive
This laptop cost me a bundle.
This laptop really cost an arm and a leg, its not worth purchasing.

down in the dumps - feel blue
depressed
I failed to persuade that bull headed customer, i feel down in dumps /or/ I feel blue.

hit the hay - hit the sack
go to sleep
I am bushed. I am going to hit the hay /or/ I am going to hit the sack.

know something backward and forward - know inside out
know something thoroughly
I am working here from last five years now, i know inside out of this management.

on dot - on time
As scheduled
I am burning my midnight oil, I want to finish this project on time.
Better we should get going, Ralph will start the presentation on the dot.

you don't say (something hard to believe) - you 've to be kidding (You are not serious)
(although there these idioms don't share exact meaning, but are close)
A. Did you know Sumanth quit the job?
B. You don't say! /or/ you've to be kidding !

To weather the storm - to fuel the fire
to worsen the problem
In this market slump, attack on Indian financial capital will fuel the fire.
Mumbai attack will weather the storm of financial slow down.

Idioms & Phrases

1- A little bird told me:
When someone says "a little bird told me" it means they don't want you to know who told them.

2- Apple of someone's eye:
Someone's favorite person (and sometimes thing). ex. "Sarah was the apple of Tom's eye for quite a long time. He was very much in love with her."

3- (To) add fuel to the fire:
To make a bad problem even worse.

4- (From) all walks of life:
(From) all social, economic, and ethnic groups. ex. "People from all walks of life voted for him, but he still lost the presidential election."

5- At all hours (of the night):
Very late at night, throughout the night. ex. "Her boyfriend would call her at all hours of the night."

6-At each other's throats:
Fighting or arguing heavily. ex. "They were at each other's throats. The arguments never stopped."

7- (To) beg to differ:
A polite way of saying "to disagree", most often heard in the phrase "I beg to differ!"

8- Big fish in a little sea:
A person who's famous/ well-known but only in an unimportant place (city or area).

9- (To) burst into tears:
To start crying suddenly.

10- (To) bite one's tongue:
To struggle not to say something that you want to say. ex. "I wanted to tell her everything, but I had to bite my tongue because I had promised Bill I would not (tell her)."

Value of Innovation

From my experience I see there are two kind of employees in any organization. One kind who are involved in regular activities as solving bunch of outstanding items, developing features, working on bugs, documenting the needful.

Another kind of employees who are known to be innovators, they are found indulged in looking forward in terms of putting thoughts assimilating new technology, ideas etc. Both are important for the real success of any enterprise.

Hacking the hecklers

Mistakes are no longer mistakes

Mistakes are no longer mistakes when you learned out of them and took appropriate action to avoid them in future.

WAT-Wednesday: Sun Microsystem Startups

I attended WAT-Wednesday Sun Microsystem Startups program hosted at Le Meridian Hotel, Bangalore.

mchek.com Airtel's innovation: Pay your bill on your mobile

It was our second presentation together. We discussed about following points:
1- What is mchek?
2- How easy is to make payment online using your mobile phone?
3- How secure is your credit card information?
4- PIN based payment with your confirmation.
5- Its not good option if you need pay mere couple of bills in a month.
6- Reliability,Operability, how many customers are using mchek feature of Airtel.
7- Partners, merchants those associated with mchek.
8- Shopping, mobile bill payment, movie ticket booking, insurance payment and many other stuffs.

Conclusion: We concluded incisively on behalf of following favoring points of mchek:

• Its secure, you are asked your credit card information only once while you go through registration process.
• Mchek data center is Verisign approved, it itself reveals they follow all the possible safeguards to make sure your personal information in not revealed to anybody not even you.
• mchek has got PCI DSS 1.2 and ISO 27001 certifications. mchek is first ever achieving this certificate.
• It is for you if you have to pay several bills in a month and you find its cumbersome to do them all, standing in queues, waiting for long time.
• Already more than 6 lacs customers are enjoying mchek.
  

Personality Traits: Encounter to real world

Ralf looked very persuasive asking me to join the conference. He discussed a lot about lab environment where we are at most 3-4 guys talking over some topic and facing real world. He put much emphasis on social networking as how it could give a distinguishing impact on your personality. As you attend seminars, socio technological meetings that usually happen in the town, you learn a lot in real world environment, otherwise the same time you would spend on watching movies or taking extra sleep.

DhanaX: Peer To Peer Money Lending

Presentation on DhanaX (Peer To Peer Lending)

Question: Is DhanaX good option to go for investment?

It was our first presentation at English Center. We termed it as good start.
There we talked about following:

• Overview to DhanaX
• Self Help Groups (SHGs)
  
• Non Government Organizations (NGOs)
  
• Money Lenders
• Borrowers
• Safety of money at DhanaX
• Repayment guarantee
• Tax benefits
• Donation at DhanaX

I was on pro side whereas Manu described on con side of DhanaX.
We concluded that its not good option to go for DhanaX putting
these compelling points on board:

• Its premature
• Its seems to be boasting that DhanaX is having several NGO's on boart but we found it out that currently only one NGO is associated with it.
• It is dubious, how does repayment happen and to whom lenders bank details are disclosed to for repayment.

Dreams transform into thoughts. And thoughts result in action. (Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam)

Seeing dream is phenomenal. Materialization of thought is what I call action.
We have to realize the dream first. The realization makes it become thought.
Putting efforts towards fulfilling the dreams, having vision of realized thoughts
is Action. Action gives us the result.

"whatever" What is this?

Do you use often use term "whatever" in your day to day communication. If Yes? Beware!
In my book it shows following things in you:

• You are ignorant about the subject you are talking about.
• You don't want to recall what exactly this "whatever" is.
• You really don't know the stuff to be substituted for this "whatever".
• You just want to skip and jump talking about something else because of any one of the three reasons above.

10-20-30 Rule of presentation

Hey what is this all about 10-20-30 rules? Sit tight as its very interesting topic to talk about. :-)
Lets unveil the curtain of 10-20-30 rule first.

10- Number of slides
20- Time for presentation
30- Time for Q-A

Why 10 slides only?
It all happened so. Just 10, not 11, 15 or 20. Even you got to discuss about whole world, just 10 slides not more that.

Time for presentation: Yeah its estimated to be 20 minutes only.

Its time for Q-A: Surely as interesting your topic is, you are supposed to get more questions from the audiences. That's why its time frame is alloted more that the time of core presentation.


Wasn't that cool?

Preparing for Presentation?

Here I will be putting some light on important things we should keep in mind while you are supposed to give a presentation.

Key Steps:

1. Briefly introduce yourself
2. Tell the topic, agenda, objective of this presentation.
3. Tell the audience "I need to put my cell phone on silent mode to avoid distraction, would you also like to do the same" ;-)
4. You need to confirm the way you are ready for the questions and answers. Some guys prefer to go with question answer as the presentation goes on. Or keep this for the time when your presentation ends. This will help you not get confused or slip from the track.
5. Your presentation starts: Go On...
6. Kindly intimate through verbal and non verbal expression that your presentation ends here and you ready to favor the audiences queries.

Things to keep in mind:

• If you got slides with you, keep succinct content. Keep the verbose content and description in your brain. Just put necessary headlines on the slides.
• Sense the nigglers and the people who are on ego trip. As you should have special treatment for them. Ask favor to answer their queries off line.
• Take a pause, that will help you take deep breath and audiences to swallow the stuffs you threw at then till that time.
• Put some hand gestures along with your verbal speech to make things interesting in your as well as audiences feelings.
• Keep eye contact not on individual, you should be pointing to everybody as you are addressing everybody not to particular in that conference room. ;)
• Feel cool.

Words

- 1- Scurrilous: Expressing unfair or false criticism which is likely to damage someone's reputation
2- Repertoire: The entire range of works (reusable java components, sql scripts) that a working guy can use.
3- Procrastinate: To keep delaying some task that must be done, often because its bit boring or unpleasant
4- Accoutrement: An accessory item of equipment or dress.
5- Garrulous: Wordy and rambling, a garrulous speech, tiresomely talkative, rambling talk
6- Succinct: precise expression
7- Tacit: Expressing without words
8- Paradigm: One that serves as a pattern or model
9- Connoisseur:

A person with expert knowledge or training, especially in the fine arts.

A person of informed and discriminating taste: a connoisseur of fine wines.

10- Incisive: Penetrating, clear, and sharp, as in operation or expression: an incisive mind;
incisive comments.

11- Crux: The basic, central, or critical point or feature: the crux of the matter; the crux of an
argument.

12- Prevaricate: To stray from or evade the truth
13- Apprehensive: Anxious or fearful about the future; uneasy
14- Instrumental: Serving as a means or agency; implemental: was instrumental in solving the crime.
15- Traitor: One who betrays one's country, a cause, or a trust, especially one who commits treason.
16- Staunch: Firm and steadfast; true. See Synonyms faithful
17- euphonic: Agreeable sound, especially in the phonetic quality of words.
18- os·ten·si·ble: Represented or appearing as such; ostensive: His ostensible purpose was charity, but his real goal was popularity.
19- bloomy: The condition of being in flower: a rose in full bloom.
Weather the storm: Promoting the bad notions or thoughts. ;-)
20- reverence: An act showing respect, especially a bow or curtsy.
21- Resurrect: To bring back to life; raise from the dead.
22- sublime: Characterized by nobility; majestic.
Of high spiritual, moral, or intellectual worth.


23- Desultory: passing or jumping from one thing to another; disconnected: desultory conversation;
occurring in a random way: a desultory thought

24- Spontaneous: Happening or arising without apparent external cause; self-generated.

25- Sultry: Very humid and hot: sultry July weather.

26- Discursive:

Covering a wide field of subjects; rambling.

Proceeding to a conclusion through reason rather than intuition.

27- Hone in (phrasal verb) :
To move or advance toward a target or goal: The missiles honed in on the military installation.

To direct one's attention; focus: The lawyer honed in on the gist of the given testimony.

28- Gist: The central idea; the essence substance

29- Convoluted: Intricate; complicated: convoluted legal language; convoluted reasoning.

30- Voracious: Having or marked by an insatiable appetite for an activity or pursuit; greedy: a voracious reader.

31- Vivid

1. very bright: a vivid blue sky

2. very clear and detailed: vivid memories

32- Sycophant: a person who uses flattery to win favour from people with power or influence.

33- Betray: to hand over or expose (one's nation, friend, etc.) treacherously to an enemy

34- ambivalence: The coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings, such as love and hate, toward a person, object, or idea.

35-frazzle: Exhaust physically or emotionally.

apprehension

apprehension
noun [U]

anxiety about the future or a fear that something unpleasant is going to happen:
It's normal to feel a little apprehension before starting a new job.
There is some apprehension in the office about who the new director will be.

Welcome

This blog is repository of our english learning and not bounded to particular format or topic. Currently only available for me and chandra.

Thanks.
MD