I heard it on the street... my brain's gone!

Yes of course, 焦 jiao1 - thanks; I asked my friend to write the expression down but couldn't read her terrible writing, I wasn't sure. And your translation is great (in my opinion) - she explained 嫩 as 'not good at something' but now I realise that she was just trying to identify the character for me. Sadly I didn't know that meaning either. I thought that her 'brain had gone' so she was 'no good at anything', but the expression is much better than that. I didn't get it all together until now - colourful indeed.

any thoughts on 纠结的? (she just said that it means the same thing.)

The first thing I thought when I saw that was the 'entangled' from 纠, but I hadn't seen this word used like that before.

So, I did a search though and found a good explanation here.

Here's an explanation from the link:

目前网上这个词的意思应该是陷入某种境地而心理混乱

"At present, online this word means something like to be bogged down in a situation and also to be in a confused and chaotic mood."

It also says that it can be used to express 囧, or alongside it.

So, it looks like it's another one of those vague expressions. 'confused, befuddled, shocked, awkward, etc'.

Another good one. :)

Hey Jason, thanks for the research, very helpful. I gather from my friend that this is a 'new' expression, or at least a new meaning; possibly one born on-line? The idea that it can be used to express 囧 lends support to that, but it also raises the issue about how broad the meaning is? You know I find it difficult enough to learn Chinese without the younger generation keep changing it!

As an aside, I have recently begun talking to a work colleague who has taught both Chinese and English for something like 30 years. He is one of the few Chinese I know who insists that Chinese is 'not hard' (ditto English). He gives elective (& popular) language classes using his own language learning method. He is writing text books - I think he may want to sell them to the Confucius Institute. The most interesting thing for me is that his (English teaching) method involves no writing - it is all oral.

I 'floated' this around a bit and now offer the following:

1. Jason's explanation above may be pretty spot on - but it is not a well-known expression. I think it might have been invented at my university! :-)

2. 外焦里嫩 - is a fairly well known idiom with a concrete meaning of charring something and leaving the inside rare (eg. when you're cooking)

3. Putting 雷 together with 外焦里嫩 (雷得外焦里嫩) probably gives it an abstract meaning, assuming the 雷 is being used to mean 'shocked and amazed'

4. There may be an anime connection, the scenario where a character is struck by lightning and they are left 'shocked and amazed' and 'burnt to a crisp' and ... feeling that their brain is gone? ;-） 囧 jiong

I put a stack of photos on Flickr, then went and forgot the password! 我是纠结的。 :-) I have started another (and written the password down) and will start putting some more photos on soon.

酸痛 suāntòng OR 酸 (a low grade soreness) - good find Barbs. Exactly the kind of thing we are after. Nice find. I wonder if you can say:

我喉咙酸。 wǒhóulóngsuān (I have a bit of a sore throat)

I bet you pay more than we do for a massage. :-) We can get 40 minutes foot massage (including shoulders, arms and hands) for A$1.60. But the language learning makes it worth it. Actually the massage makes it worth it.

I recently became familiar with 寒酸 [hánsuān] to mean "shabby" or "sloppy". How "cold" and "sour/sore" combine to mean this is beyond me.