Saying " the long way around" is a classic example of where the US controllers go wrong as evidenced by JumpJumpJump 's story. If you want someone to be confident that the instruction is indeed meant to be 'the long way around' you simply say " turn left, left heading one eight zero".
There is so much extra jargon and unnecessary words used in the transmissions that it is no wonder the frequencies are often more congested than they otherwise would be.
I'm not excusing the Eva crew but the ATC was atrocious.