Rolf: Wish me luck and keep your fingers crossed for me.
羅爾夫：請祝我好運，為我祈禱。
Tessa: What's up?
黛薩：甚麼事了？
Rolf: I'm just going to my performance review and I'm going to ask the boss for a raise.
羅爾夫：我要去見老闆，檢討我的工作表現。我會要求加薪。
Tessa: Welcome back. How did it go?
黛薩：好啦，你回來了。和老闆會面情況怎樣？
Rolf: Well I got a lot of nice words about how well I've been doing, but when I asked for a raise, he just hemmed and hawed.
羅爾夫：他說了很多好話，誇許我做得好，但一聽到我要求加薪，就只是支支吾吾。
Tessa: It could have been worse - he could have said no. So there's still hope.
黛薩：那還不算太差－他沒有說「不」，所以還有希望。
羅爾夫請黛薩祝他好運，黛薩問：What's up?他說：I'm going to ask the boss for a raise。
What's up?即「怎麼回事？」通常指不如意的事，和What's the matter?差不多。What's up with somebody / something?是問某人/某事物有甚麼不妥當，例如：(1) What's up with Bess today? She looks very depressed（貝絲今天怎麼了？她看來很抑鬱）。(2) The photocopier is making a strange noise. What's up?（影印機發出奇怪聲音，是怎麼一回事？）以上兩句的What's up改為What's the matter也可以。
Up有「（不如意事情）正在發生」含義。除了what is up?還有something is up（有些事情發生了）、is anything up?（有甚麼事情發生了？）等說法，例如：Something is up with the computer (=Something is the matter with the computer); it keeps crashing（電腦有些不妥當，不斷當機）。
Raise作名詞，指「加薪」，英式英文則說rise，例如：The boss eventually agreed to give me a raise / rise of 10 percent（老闆最後答應給我加薪百分之十）。
羅爾夫談到和老闆會面情況：When I asked for a raise, he just hemmed and hawed。To hem and haw等於英式英文to hum and haw或to hum and ha，意思是支吾其詞，hem、hum、haw、ha都是擬聲字(onomatopoeic word)，例如：I asked why he was there, but he just hemmed and hawed / hummed and haed, and avoided giving me a clear answer（我問他為甚麼在那裡，但他只是支支吾吾，不給我一個明確答案）。
明天課文
They're shilly-shallying are they?
他們是在拖拖拉拉
古德明撰文
