Clarification: This post is primarily intended for non-native English speakers, but I hope it will be interesting for others as well.
Be cautious with idioms! I’m joking, of course, but you do need to be careful with them, especially if English isn’t your first language. Even native speakers can run into issues when traveling to another English-speaking country where idioms might have different meanings, leading to confusion.
However, if English is not your mother tongue, keep one thing in mind:
Yes, idioms are cool—they add color to your speech and make it sound more fluent. They’re a sign of language mastery. But as a famous movie character once said, “Shit happens.” So, make sure you know what you’re saying, and it’s a good idea to practice idioms before using them in everyday conversation.
Of course, knowing many idioms helps you understand others better. But idioms often sound strange, seem unrelated to the topic, and can be tricky to trace back to their origins. That’s why it’s easy to misstep when using them.
Here in Bulgaria, we have a peculiar idiom: “Nobody shaves me for a plum.” It means no one pays attention to me. (Yes, I just used an English idiom there, but I believe it fits well and isn’t out of place.) As odd as it sounds, this expression has its origins in a time long past, when bartering was common, and plums were extremely cheap. So, if you went to a barber and tried to pay with plums, he wouldn’t give you the time of day.
Years ago, I worked at an Institute of Physics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. There was a Russian professor—a very clever lady—who had lived in Bulgaria for many years and spoke Bulgarian fluently.
One day, she was presenting a report on her recent achievements, but the auditorium was too noisy. People were talking, and not many were paying attention to her. She grew increasingly nervous, stopping and starting several times as she tried to regain the audience’s focus. Finally, in a moment of frustration, she burst out, shouting: “Everyone is talking to each other, and nobody shaves my plum!”
Yeah, she got the idiom slightly wrong. No big deal, right? But there was a small problem. Idioms themselves are harmless, but there’s also slang, in which completely innocent words can take on different meanings. And in the most widespread simpleton slang, the word “plum” refers to a part of the female body—specifically, genitalia. Err, the basic one. You can imagine that she suddenly had everyone’s full attention.
Idioms can help you sound more fluent, and it’s good to use them. However, make sure that you’re saying exactly what you intend to say
At first glance, these two tragedies may appear vastly different. One involved a submersible, while the other centered around a spacecraft. Furthermore, one was a state mission, while the other was privately funded. However, the underlying reason behind both disasters remains the same: the arrogance of those in positions of power and their disregard for the advice of experts.
Hi dear readers.
In my quest to reach a wider audience, I have transferred my section “In English” to vocal.media
From now on, you can find all my articles on that platform.
I abandoned the section called “In English” for a long time soon after I had started it. The reason I decided to write a new post in English is a little song which YouTube reminded me of these days, and all the memories it has brought up from the depths of my mind, which in turn set off a chain reaction of thoughts.
It’s the song “A little bit of peace” (“Ein bisschen Frieden”), which won the Eurovision a long time ago in 1982. I was doing my military service that year. Military duty was obligatory in Bulgaria those days. The song fascinated us a lot and I will not deny that the pretty lady who had performed it definitely mattered in that case. But it was the lyrics that made the song much more than just a pleasant melody performed by a beautiful and clearly very talented girl. The song is a plea for at least a bit of peace. We were enlisted soldiers who didn’t wish to be sent to war, and who yearned to go “back to Civilization”, as we used to say, as soon as possible. Of course, most of us didn’t know German, but there was a guy from a German language school who had translated the lyrics for us.
Here I have to clarify that the Eurovision was not broadcast in most of the countries of the Eastern bloc, including Bulgaria. Sometimes the people in charge decided to allow the population to watch the winner, and obviously this song was politically correct and we were allowed to watch the clip and listen to it on the radio. Let me not forget to specify that Eurovision was treated as “bad”. Here in the Eastern bloc we had “Intervision”, an alternative to the Eurovision network which was “good”.
The exact reason why I am writing this post is actually an interview with Nicole, which YouTube generously provided me with after I’d liked the song. There she said she was thunderstruck because the Israeli jury awarded maximum points to her song. This speaks to the complexes that many Germans still undeservedly have. Undeservedly, not only because today’s people are not responsible for the actions of their ancestors. Contemporary events show how almost a whole nation could be blinded after long years of targeted propaganda. But let’s return to the past.
In my youth, there was almost a total information blackout. We knew about the West, and we knew that it was “bad”. These were inhumane regimes (according to what we were learning), their people misanthropic and greedy profiteers. Also, there were oppressed people who fought for freedom… This was the picture we had received from the propaganda. It was impossible to travel to countries in the west. Only some thoroughly investigated people were allowed to travel there, after serious briefings. They were carefully instructed what they should say to others when they came back.
My father had some friends from West Germany and I knew that they were good people, however, the propaganda did its job for my mind. Despite the fact that I knew not everything they had taught us was right, when I grasped the lyrics of some of the western songs, I was surprised that people there sing about the same things as us… They have the same dreams, same longings, same problems, same hopes… I don’t know what I had expected: of course, not that they were singing about how they will slay and hang everybody, but I probably expected some misanthropic topics, some commercially oriented ones, I don’t know. But it turned out that those people were just like us!
So, art was one of the few very narrow channels through which the truth about the real situation in the West penetrated the socialist bloc.
It’s easy for us to judge and blame others but before we start to blame anyone, we must look at ourselves first. I’m not religious, but I will remind you of Matthew’s verse 7:3-5 about the sawdust in your brother’s eye and the plank in your own eye.
Nowadays there are a lot of information streams, but many people still continue to trust malicious politicians, and are susceptible to all kinds of evil propaganda. Unfortunately, free access to any and all information is not enough for many people to be properly guided. Even today, when that terrible tragedy happened in Turkiye, I read many senseless comments in social media. And we continue to fight for a piece of land at a time when the Universe has just showed us how it can destroy huge parts of it completely, alongside with many of us.
Finally let me wish everyone:
“A little bit of peace, a little bit of sun
on this earth, we all live on.
A little bit of warmth, that’s what I wish for
A little bit of happiness, a little bit of love
And that people won’t cry so often”
If I paraphrase part of the lyrics of the song a bit:
“I know that my post won’t change many things
I am just an old man, who writes what he feels”
But I’ll continue more optimistically, with John Lennon’s words:
“You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one”
When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
African proverb
We live in interesting times. Unfortunately.
Times of illness, insulation, travel restrictions, lack of normal communication and human contacts. Times of death. Times when we often find out that somebody we knew has passed away.
Times of bankruptcy and many personal tragedies.
Also these times were times of hope. Times when human mind is ahead of itself. When science was able to find solution against a completely unknown illness within just one year!
Unfortunately these new events have shown that it is impossible for humanity to unite in front of a common enemy. Immediately after the vaccines were developed blows began below the waist. A trade war broke out between pharmaceutical giants.
As a result of that war, vaccination was delayed. Many people, who hesitated whether to be vaccinated may give up. Meanwhile the virus has more time to mutate and to become resistant to the vaccines. Many people will die because they will be not vaccinated on time.
Conspiratorial minds would say, that this is on purpose to be created need of new vaccines.
I think the explanation is simple – just greed.
A greed which costs human lives.
But, “à la guerre comme à la guerre”.
In every war, people die. No matter if the war is fought with guns and bombs, or it is a different kind of war.
People are suffering when the giants fight.
People from United States
why do you support Bill Gates?
This stanza is part of a verse written by an unknown Linux-fan at the beginning of the New Millennium. At that time, of course, we hated Windows and Bill Gates. By “we”, I mean a small society of fans of this odd Operating System. A society which had included most of the individuals who were connected, in one way or another, with the then nascent Internet in Bulgaria.
Some of us hated Windows and Bill Gates because it was so modern those days, at least in our circles. Others because of the problems they had with his and his team’s products. Third, because of the way the rising corporation he founded suppressed and destroyed many successful projects of other companies.
As he moves away from those times, most of the information sinks into oblivion bit by bit, but some pieces still are floating in the vast waters of the Web.
For example, from the autobiographical book of W. E. Peterson, the creator of WordPerfect, titled Almost Perfect, you can get an idea of some of Microsoft’s less than respectable techniques for suppressing competitors.
I disliked Gates, his company and their creations because of the way they “borrowed” technologies and sold them as their own. Like the DOS story, the operating system with which Microsoft conquered the OS market and which actually was stolen. Of course, Microsoft purchased the prototype CP/M for nothing from another company, which had stolen it from Digital Research
without knowing about the background. Or did they actually know? The circumstances surrounding the death of Digital Research’s founder, Gary Kildall, which happened at a very convenient time for Microsoft, are also unclear…
Several good articles have been published about those goings-on. Here I link two of them:
I’ve hardly used Windows over the years, but I haven’t hated it in a long time. However, much of my income comes from supporting the different versions of that OS and fixing their imperfections, which, as a matter of fact, are now much fewer in number than earlier, but the way of fixing them has become more and more complicated. I have long accepted MS products as things that, with a few exceptions, I don’t like, but they exist, so why not take advantage of them whenever we can.
Bill Gates…
How would it ever occur to me that there would come a time when I would defend him…
Wait, don’t rush to call the psychiatrist. I know, Gates doesn’t need protection and he didn’t need mine at all. Nor will “those who know” be willing to think. But things are so ridiculous that it’s hard for me to keep quiet. Despite the fact that my writings are simply a kick in empty space.
According to the fans of conspiracy theories, Bill Gates wishes to poison a big part of the Earth’s population to reduce it. And of course, how else to do it if not by vaccines – the nightmare of any self-respecting conspirator!
It is shocking how even the noblest intentions can be misunderstood and how individuals trying to solve serious problems can be Satanized.
What actually Gates has in mind is revealed in many videos and documents. Here is an example:
There he speaks not only about vaccines. He also mentions the necessity of health care and hygiene in the poorest areas of the world. His idea is that when people are healthy, they will not need to have that many children because the probability of losing some of them is low. And it is only the ultimate anti-eco fanatics who would not agree that the vast population of the Earth burdens ecosystems and spews an unimaginable amount of waste. One does not have to be an ecotaliban to realize that there are a lot of problems because of the overpopulation of the Earth.
But Gates misses something important. Hygiene and vaccines in themselves are not enough to reduce birth rates. In my country, there are minorities, who are vaccinated and have access to health care but this does not prevent them from reproducing at a rapid rate. The problem is that a very important part of the equation is missing. And it is the same that Gates forgets about.
Education.
That’s why this man,
and many like him, have launched a fundraising campaign to build schools in poor countries. So that the equation of health care, vaccines, hygiene and education can be completed.
Some final words about Gates. To the shock of the conspirators, he did not produce any vaccines. Nor does he sell them. He donates them. So far, Bill and Melinda have invested more than $30 billion to fight the world’s most dangerous childhood diseases and have managed to reduce child mortality from $12 million in 1999 to $6 million in 2016, with the ambition of cutting it to $3 million in 2030.
I often read and hear about Bill Gates that “he is so greedy”, and “will he take all his money to the grave” and so on. Well, he won’t. He didn’t even bequeath them to his children but will leave his wealth to charitable causes.
All the 70 billion he has. Well, he set aside 10 million for each child of his, but compared to the billions, that’s just a drop. His idea for his children is to accumulate their own billions if they are able to do so. True, he has given them a good start, and there is nothing wrong with that.
As for the biggest part of their father’s money, it will neither be buried nor eaten. It will go to charity.
