Script:  Quiet quitting

Hi everyone, how are you?

Today I am going to talk about quiet quitting. It is a new term that I just learnt last weekend when I was looking up for new topics for my work.

Quiet quitting refers to doing the minimum requirements of one’s job and putting in no more time, effort, or enthusiasm than absolutely necessary. That means no working overtime or attending non-mandatory meetings, and not checking work emails or answering work-related phone calls in their own time. “Mandatory” means required, something you have to do. It is not clear who invented the term "quiet quitting," but it has become a popular topic on the social media site TikTok.

To me, quiet quitting is not the same as slacking off. Slacking off is when a worker is working less hard or less than what is required.  Slacking off is not good, but quiet quitting doesn’t sound like a bad trend. The worker is trying to find a balance between work and life. Work is not your life, and it shouldn’t be. Only doing what you need to do at work is normal, only the term itself is new.

The reaction of managers to the phenomenon has been mixed. A phenomenon is a fact or situation that sometimes nobody knows how it begins. Some managers have been tolerant, in part because the tight labour market makes hiring difficult, so it is hard to replace these quiet quitters, at least for the time being. Others have responded to quiet quitting by quietly, or loudly, firing employees whom they see as slacking off. In fact, “quiet firing” has become a buzz phrase. A buzz phrase is a word or phrase, that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context. Quiet firing is making a job so unrewarding that the employee will feel compelled to resign.

This term, “quiet quitting”, has expanded from meaning doing the minimum work in the office, to meaning doing the minimum work in a romantic relationship. “Quiet quitting” or “quiet dumping” is when your partner chooses to only do the bare minimum required to date you without you breaking up with them. They're no longer going above and beyond for you, they've lost interest but they don't want to be the one to break it off.

9 Fun facts about Canada

Script:  Today I am going to tell you the 9 fun facts about Canada.

1. Canada is the number 1 donut consumer in the world. I didn’t know until after I did the research. I thought Americans consume more donuts than we do.

2. Sourtoe cocktail in Dawson City, Yukon. There is a cocktail where people drink whiskey with a human toe inside. People donate toes that have fallen off due to frostbite or other means. It is so gross! Gross is a slang meaning disgusting.

3. In Churchill, Manitoba, nobody locks their doors in case of a polar bear attack. Churchill is located in the center of Polar Bear Alley and polar bears walk freely through the town towards Hudson Bay. Residents have learned to live with the polar bears.

4. Canadians are confused. Being part of the British Commonwealth, Canada is influenced by Britain, but with the United States as our neighbor we are a bit confused. Canada uses both the metric system and the imperial system in weight and measurement. Our speed limits are in kilometers and we measure distances in metres, but we measure our height in feet. We use Celsius for room temperature and outdoor temperature, but we use Fahrenheit in cooking. We weigh food in kilograms but we weigh ourselves in pounds.

5. We adopt both British and American English spellings. For example, we spell the word “color” COLOR or COLOUR.

6. Smelling bad is illegal in Canada. “Offending a place with a bad smell” is illegal under the criminal code.

7. Cannabis is legal in Canada. Cannabis is marijuana. People can smoke marijuana in public, just like you smoke cigarettes. Yes, many people are jealous of us.

8. Canada has two official languages, English and French, but contrary to popular belief, most people are not bilingual.

Now the last fun fact that I am going to tell you today is… and you are not going to believe how absurd it is.

9. Prostitution is legal in Canada while buying a prostitute’s services is illegal.

Thank you for listening.

https://dawsoncity.ca/sourtoe-cocktail-club/

9 Fun facts about Canada

Script:  Today I am going to tell you the 9 fun facts about Canada.

1. Canada is the number 1 donut consumer in the world. I didn’t know until after I did the research. I thought Americans consume more donuts than we do.

2. Sourtoe cocktail in Dawson City, Yukon. There is a cocktail where people drink whiskey with a human toe inside. People donate toes that have fallen off due to frostbite or other means. It is so gross! Gross is a slang meaning disgusting.

3. In Churchill, Manitoba, nobody locks their doors in case of a polar bear attack. Churchill is located in the center of Polar Bear Alley and polar bears walk freely through the town towards Hudson Bay. Residents have learned to live with the polar bears.

4. Canadians are confused. Being part of the British Commonwealth, Canada is influenced by Britain, but with the United States as our neighbor we are a bit confused. Canada uses both the metric system and the imperial system in weight and measurement. Our speed limits are in kilometers and we measure distances in metres, but we measure our height in feet. We use Celsius for room temperature and outdoor temperature, but we use Fahrenheit in cooking. We weigh food in kilograms but we weigh ourselves in pounds.

5. We adopt both British and American English spellings. For example, we spell the word “color” COLOR or COLOUR.

6. Smelling bad is illegal in Canada. “Offending a place with a bad smell” is illegal under the criminal code.

7. Cannabis is legal in Canada. Cannabis is marijuana. People can smoke marijuana in public, just like you smoke cigarettes. Yes, many people are jealous of us.

8. Canada has two official languages, English and French, but contrary to popular belief, most people are not bilingual.

Now the last fun fact that I am going to tell you today is… and you are not going to believe how absurd it is.

9. Prostitution is legal in Canada while buying a prostitute’s services is illegal.

Thank you for listening.

https://dawsoncity.ca/sourtoe-cocktail-club/

Script: What is Canadian food? That is a hard question. Canada is a multicultural country and we eat the foods of the countries our parents or grandparents came from. There are many different cultures in Canada, and as a result, many different types of food. When we think of food, we think of Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Greek and Iranian food.

If you ask Canadians what the original Canadian food is, they might say “poutine”. Poutine is an original Canadian food. It is a dish of French fries and cheese curds topped with gravy. Gravy is the juice coming from meat that runs naturally during cooking and thickened with flour or corn starch. When you roast a loaf of beef, you get the meat juice, you add corn starch to it. So gravy is usually very oily.

Non-Canadians might think we eat poutine regularly, but that’s not the case. Most restaurants don’t serve poutine, and most people don’t make that at home often. I have only eaten it once at an amusement park.

I don’t like this dish. French fries should go with ketchup, and gravy goes with roast beef or mashed potatoes. The gravy makes the fries soggy.

Canadians eat a lot of potatoes, baked potatoes topped with gravy or sour cream. A traditional homecooked Canadian meal consists of meat, such as roast chicken, roast beef, meat loaf, potatoes and vegetables. Vegetables such as steamed carrots, broccoli, peas or salad. We also eat hamburgers, pizzas and chicken nuggets.

When I say ‘we’, I mean Canadians in general, especially those that were born here.

Immigrants usually prefer food from their countries, no matter how many years they have been here. Chinese people eat Chinese food and Iranians eat Iranian food.

But everyone loves Japanese food. There are many sushi restaurants in Toronto. Most people love Chinese food too. But Canadians like Canadian Chinese food, which consists of sweet and sour pork that are over-done with red food colouring, and lemon chicken pieces that are too yellow. Chop suey is also popular in North America. ‘Chop’ what? Chop suey. S-U-E-Y. It is a dish in American Chinese cuisine and other forms of overseas Chinese cuisine, consisting of meat and eggs, cooked quickly with vegetables such as bean sprouts, cabbage, and celery and bound in a starch-thickened sauce.

It tastes awful to me. This dish is often very oily. But a lot of Americans and Canadians like it. People from different cultures have different preferences. We are comfortable with what are used to. I am used to plain, less oily, less salty food with minimal sauce.

Script:

Hello, everyone, how are you doing?

Today I am going to talk about ghosting. Have you heard of this term?

Ghosting, is a casual term describing the practice of ending all communication and contact with another person without any warning and ignoring any subsequent attempts to communicate. The term originated in the early 2000s, typically referring to dating and romantic relationships. In the following decade, with the increasing use of social media and online dating apps, ghosting is on the rise. Now, this term is also used to refer to similar practices among friends, family members, employers and businesses.

The most common cause of ghosting in a personal relationship is to avoid emotional discomfort in a relationship. A person ghosting typically does not care how it will make the other person feel. The person being ghosted usually feels devastated and hurt.

A friend of mine, let’s call her Mary. Mary told me her story and gave me permission to share her story here.

She has been dating a guy for over a year. Their relationship has been volatile. Volatile means changing quickly and unpredictably, usually changing for the worse. They broke up every couple of months, and got back together after 2 weeks. However, Mary has had enough of this guy, and ghosted him on Halloween.

She said, “When he said something rude or made an insensitive remark, I used to get mad at him or explained to him how I felt. However, after all these months, I realized he is not going to change. That’s just the way he is – a total jerk. What he said to me recently was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, and I so ghosted him, and blocked his number.”

The idiom, “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” means the last in a series of bad things that happen to make someone very upset and angry.

When Mary told me that she ghosted and blocked her boyfriend, I felt sorry for her. Ghosting somebody is rude and immature, however, I am sure she had her reasons. I guess she was so fed up that she didn’t even want to end this relationship in a more mature way. She could have responded to him by saying she has had enough and she wanted to break up. But sometimes a bad romantic relationship drains a person emotionally, so much that the person does not even have the last bit of energy to end it.

Have you ghosted anybody? Have you been ghosted before?

Script:

Hello, everyone, how are you doing?

Last time, I said, in winter, sunrise is about 8am and sunset is around 5pm. I would like to make a correction. After changing the clocks, sunrise is about 7am, and sunset is 5pm.

If I could change the rules, I would prefer a later sunrise and a later sunset. It gets dark soon after my kids come back from school, and I feel like I have to rush them to eat dinner and do homework. For those people working a 9 – 5 job, it is nighttime the moment they step out of the office. Isn’t that depressing?

Okay, so, today we are going to talk about eating habits.

Breakfast is the first meal of the day. The word in English refers to breaking the fasting period of the previous night….

Do you eat breakfast? Do you skip breakfast?

Health experts say it is not good to skip breakfast, and there are 5 reasons:

1: Quick Fix of Essential Nutrients.

2: Prevent Weight Gain.

3: Healthy Skin.

4: Power Your Brain.

5: Energy Boost.

A lot of people who are trying to lose weight make the mistake of skipping breakfast. When you skip breakfast, you often crave sugar and end up eating unhealthy snacks before lunch time. Or you end up eating a lot during lunch time.

What do you eat for breakfast? It is important to eat protein in the morning. A quick and easy breakfast would be 1 boiled egg, 1 slice of toast and 1 fruit.

I love my morning coffee, more like, I need it. I cannot start the day without a coffee.

How do I take my coffee? With milk and honey.

How do you take your coffee, or tea?

The phrase “how do you take” in this sentence means, if you add milk, sugar, sweetener or prefer it black.

Are you a picky eater? A picky eater is someone who doesn’t like to eat a variety of foods, and dislikes many kinds of foods. What do you crave?

Do you eat 3 regular meals a day?  Or do you graze during the day? To graze is to eat small portions of food throughout the day. Usually, when people graze, their food choices are poor. People usually graze on low nutrient foods like chips and sweets. Grazing is not the same as snacking. Snacking is eating between main meals, and you finish it right away. Usually, snacking is planned and choices are better. For example, if you eat a fruit in the mid-morning, that’s snacking, not grazing. If you have a bag of Smarties on your desk and you eat 1-2 Smarties while working, and it takes you a few hours to finish that bag of Smarties, that’s grazing.

My meals are mostly planned. I eat breakfast at 7am, usually oatmeal topped with granola, and blueberries. Around 9 or 10am, I eat a slice of cheese with toast. Lunch is around 12 noon. Then mid-afternoon, before I pick up the kids from school, I eat a granola bar, or some leftovers from lunch. Dinner is at 5:30 – 6pm. My last meal of the day is 8 pm, when I indulge in a little bit of sweets, 1 to  2 oatmeal cookies while watching Netflix.

What is your eating habit like?

Thank you for listening.

Script: 

Hi, today is November 3. It is starting to get cooler here in Toronto. Daytime temperature is around 14-18 degrees and nighttime temperature is under 10 degrees. I love this weather. The leaves are changing colours too.

I wake up around 7am, and it is still dark at 7. In Canada, we utilize Daylight Saving Time. Daylight saving time began on March 13 this year, and ends this coming Sunday, November 6. We have to move the clock backwards by one hour. The time “changes” at 2 a.m. When I say change, I mean the new time is in effect.

Ever since I was a kid, I have always wondered, what happen to midnight TV programs and radio shows when one hour is missing? I asked my parents, I asked everyone. Nobody gave me an answer because nobody cared and they didn’t know. I always ask people this kind of weird questions, weird to them, but not to me. It is a legitimate question. The missing TV show or radio show doesn’t concern me, since I have long fallen asleep at 2 am, but I still want to know.

After the time change, 7am will become 6am. There will be a 14 hour time difference, instead of 13 hours between Toronto and Japan, where most of my students are.

What is Daylight Saving Time? It is the practice of advancing clocks (typically by one hour) during warmer months so that darkness falls at a later clock time. That means we get more daylight. In the winter months, we set the clocks back by one hour in autumn to normal time.

It doesn’t make sense to me at all. In the summer, even if we don’t advance the clock, the days are already long. It is still bright at 8pm.  After we change the clocks to Daylight Saving time, it starts to get dark around 9pm. It is ridiculous. We have 15 hours of daylight. Who needs so much sunlight? How can kids fall asleep when the sun in still shining?

In winter, sunrise is about 8am and sunset is around 5pm. The days are very short. We don’t get enough sunlight and therefore not enough vitamin D, and many people get depressed in the long Canadian winter. So, shouldn’t we change the clocks in a way where we get more sunlight in the winter and less in the summer? It makes more sense, right?

Let me know what you think.

Thank you for listening.

This podcast is created for intermediate English students.  Today's episode is my first one, so I will start by introducing myself.

Podcast 1 – November 1, 2022

Script:

Hi, everyone, this is Audrey from Toronto. Nice to meet you! This is my first time creating a podcast, so let me start by telling you a little bit about myself.

I live in the suburbs of Toronto. It is a multicultural area with lots of Asians and Middle Eastern people. As a result, there are lots of Asian and Middle Eastern shops and restaurants. I love the diversity here. It is really fun.

About my job, I teach English online. I have been teaching on a website called Cafetalk for over 5 years now. I also offer life coaching and wellness lessons. I really love my job. I get to talk to different people everyday.

Since I work from home anyways, the pandemic hasn’t affected me much, except for a couple of months when we had a lockdown. All the shops except grocery stores and hardware stores were closed. I remember that for a while, the local hardware shop only offered curbside pickup. We had to park the car at the outdoor parking and called the store’s number, which, nobody answered. It was winter time and the temperature was sub-zero! Sub-zero means below zero.

I couldn’t see my friends for months. We could only chat on Facebook and Whatsapp. I am pretty surprised it didn’t affect me that much. I didn’t get depressed or anything. On the other hand, I enjoyed this secluded life.  I guess I am more of an introvert. Being cooped up at home didn’t bother me at all. I am still cooped up at home, because I recently got a puppy, who gets anxiety when I am not at home, so I don’t go out much.

Now, let’s talk about my hobbies.  I like fitness and wellness, studying Japanese and watching Netflix. Well, is watching Netflix considered a hobby?

About a year ago, I started listening to Japanese podcasts and I got inspired by these Japanese tutors. They have very interesting topics and I always look forward to their new episodes. So I have been thinking, why don’t I try making podcasts too?

There are many English podcasts out there. I haven’t listened to any of them but I checked out their websites. It seems each episode is pretty long, 30 min to an hour. I can’t talk that long, at least not today, which is the first time, and I can’t listen to anyone talking for that long either. So for now, I will make shorter podcasts.

It will be great if you, my listeners, can offer me ideas for upcoming topics, and the length of each episode.

Thank you for listening. See you next time.