校園口語第184課:九霄雲外

rock the boat
指的是“找麻煩，或者讓人感到厭煩”。人們往往會勸別人不要去找麻煩，比如下面是兩個人在辦公室裏談論一個很偷懶的同事：
Sure, I agree Smith isn't worth the big salary he gets, but I wouldn’t tell the boss if I were you. Smith is one of his favorites, and he’ll think you're just rocking the boat and making trouble. 當然，我同意斯密斯根本沒有資格拿那麼高的工資。但是，要是我是你，我就不會把這種想法告訴老闆。斯密斯是他的親信之一。你要告訴他的話，他會以爲你想找麻煩呢。

cloud nine
我們都會說一個人高興得都找不到北了，高興得走路輕飄飄就好像騰雲駕霧、到了九天雲外一樣，這樣子在英語中有一個很傳神的習語來形容，就是 on cloud nine。比如：
I've been on cloud nine all day long - I heard this morning that I got an A on my final biochemistry exam.
我今天一天都很高興，因爲我早上聽說，我生物化學期末考試得了一個A。

令人高興的事是層出不窮的，下面這位太太也是很高興，至少她的先生是這麼說的：

My wife has been on cloud nine since I told her the other day I would spend my year-end bonus at the office to take us to Hawaii to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary. And to tell you the truth, I'm really looking forward to it myself.

我那天告訴我的妻子，我要把辦公室發給我的年終獎金用來和她一起去夏威夷旅行，以慶祝我們結婚二十週年。自從那天起，我太太一直很高興。說實話，我自己也非常想去。