Lost in translation

Apologies again for the lapse in posting. The quarter appears to be slowing down to something a little less than a full-out sprint, but that doesn’t mean that I have many worthwhile MSE- or school-related stories. However, here are some snippets of things that have made me laugh a little too hard in the past week or so:

The Hungarian professor for whom I TA asked me if I knew “how to dance the chive.” After TA-ing for him for three years, I just let these sorts of questions roll on by, so I told him that no, I didn’t know how to dance the “chive.” Then he asked a student if she knew “how to dance the chive.”

“The chive?” she asked.

He said, “Yes, like on ‘Dancing with the Stars.’”

“You mean chive, c-h-i-v-e?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t think that was a dance. I thought that was a kind of onion.”

“So you don’t know how to dance the chive?” he asked.

“No,” she replied.

* * *

Last week, at the end of the eighth week of the quarter, I finally realized that when one of my beloved non-native-English-speaking professors kept saying “rowboats,” he actually meant “robots.” Which made a whole lot more sense than imagining rowboats in the foundry.

* * *

While we were logging hour 55,000 on our corrosion lab write-up, my MSE buddy Brad started singing the kids’ song “Sally the Camel.” Since I’m not one to shy away from breaking into song (especially when I’ve been working on MSE for too long), I took over the singing at the “so ride, Sally, ride” part, then immediately said, “Oh, WAIT! Was I just singing ‘Mustang Sally’ instead?”

Word to the wise: both songs have the lyrics “ride, Sally, ride” in them, but any song by Wilson Pickett is always the far superior choice.