LnR 044 I caught a cold (Replay)

*** This episode is from two years ago. I don't have a cold now. :-)

I wrote this dialogue because I've been a bit under the weather lately. I thought I had a cold, but it turned into a mild sinus infection. I will survive. :-) This is just a short podcast, and I didn't take the time to edit out when I had to cough. Fortunately, I just had to cough one time.

This is a dialogue between two people who work together:

A: Hi, Melinda. I didn't see you yesterday.

B: Yeah. I took a sick day. My daughter caught a cold at kindergarten last week. I must've (must have) caught it from her.

A: Did she miss any days of school?

B: Yeah, two. My husband stayed home with her. His job is more flexible than mine.

A: That's for sure! If we miss a day of work here, we have twice as much to do when we come back.

B: I know. The work just piles up when we are gone. The company really needs to hire some more people.

A: Yeah, I know. But they are too cheap. So they make us do more and more work.

B: You know, I'm still not feeling well, but I didn't want to miss another day.

A: You look a little red.

B: Yeah, I still have a fever. And a headache. You know what? Forget all the work. I'm going home. I need to go to bed. I'll call the manager from my car and explain.

A: I understand. See you tomorrow.

B: I hope!

I'm still at my mother's house in the U.S. I plan to interview her for next week's TQ podcast. Here's an older one with my former neighbor Rob. We were co-workers for two years, and now he's going to another city in China and I will stay in Nanning for another year (or two). 

TQ 053 Rob from Vancouver, Canada (Replay)

Rob, 34, is married to a woman from the Philippines and is from Vancouver, Canada. He taught in Korea for many years and is now my next-door neighbor in Nanning, China. If you listen carefully you can hear that he has a slight Canadian accent. He says "out" and "about" and "been" in a different way from me. He also gives a fun imitation of a Newfoundland (eastern Canada) accent. He says, "No doubt about it", but it sounds like "No doot aboot it"! Listen as we talk about the words "Yankee" and "Canuck", interesting places in Korea and the Philippines, and suggestions for learning vocabulary words. Also listen for the sound of birds in the background. We recorded this at about 12:30 pm on a nice day, and the birds were singing outside my windows.

Here are some words we use that you may not know: sibling, Baby Boom Generation, barbecue/BBQ, hockey, snowbirds, kiwis (three meanings!), steep, vertical, to carve, Buddha, statue, rice terraces.

LnR Around the World in Eighty Days 5

Listen and Repeat to improve your English language pronunciation and intonation.

The mansion in Saville Row, though not sumptuous, was exceedingly comfortable. The habits of its occupant were such as to demand but little from the sole domestic, but Phileas Fogg required him to be almost superhumanly prompt and regular. On this very 2nd of October he had dismissed James Forster, because that luckless youth had brought him shaving-water at eighty-four degrees Fahrenheit instead of eighty-six; and he was awaiting his successor, who was due at the house between eleven and half-past.

Phileas Fogg was seated squarely in his armchair, his feet close together like those of a grenadier on parade, his hands resting on his knees, his body straight, his head erect; he was steadily watching a complicated clock which indicated the hours, the minutes, the seconds, the days, the months, and the years. At exactly half-past eleven Mr. Fogg would, according to his daily habit, quit Saville Row, and repair to the Reform.

A rap at this moment sounded on the door of the cosy apartment where Phileas Fogg was seated, and James Forster, the dismissed servant, appeared.

"The new servant," said he.

I'm home in the U.S. now! My brother met me at the airport, and then drove me 2 1/2 hours to our mother's house. It was great to see my mother and her three cats again. . . and my brother and his cat! Yes, at the moment there are four cats at home. Wow, that's a lot of cats. :-) I'm not able to send you the last interview I had, with a hitchhiker from Singapore, because it's on the good Dell laptop that stopped working a week ago. I'm writing this on a brand new Lenovo laptop that I ordered from Amazon, which arrived yesterday. I'm writing this at 2 am, because I have jetlag. That means that I sleep at the wrong times. It will take me about eight days to get my sleep patterns back to normal. Some people adapt to new time zones easily, but I don't.

Here's one of my older interviews, with a nice guy I worked with for four years, Gavin. This is from November 2015.

TQ 022 Gavin from England (Replay)

Gavin  is my neighbor and co-worker . . . I know, it seems like I have a lot of neighbors and co-workers! He's from London, England. He explains to me that he speaks the Queen's English, also called BBC English. Compare his accent with Andy's in TQ 019. Gavin also tries to explain England, Britain and the U.K. to me, but I'm not sure I got it. Listen as he talks about world cinema, including Japanese movies and Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. He also tells us about a unique British holiday called Guy Faulkes Day and suggests a museum for us to visit at the Forbidden City in Beijing.

LnR Around the World in Eighty Days 4

It was at least certain that Phileas Fogg had not absented himself from London for many years. Those who were honoured by a better acquaintance with him than the rest, declared that nobody could pretend to have ever seen him anywhere else. His sole pastimes were reading the papers and playing whist. He often won at this game, which, as a silent one, harmonised with his nature; but his winnings never went into his purse, being reserved as a fund for his charities. Mr. Fogg played, not to win, but for the sake of playing. The game was in his eyes a contest, a struggle with a difficulty, yet a motionless, unwearying struggle, congenial to his tastes.

Phileas Fogg was not known to have either wife or children, which may happen to the most honest people; either relatives or near friends, which is certainly more unusual. He lived alone in his house in Saville Row, whither none penetrated. A single domestic sufficed to serve him. He breakfasted and dined at the club, at hours mathematically fixed, in the same room, at the same table, never taking his meals with other members, much less bringing a guest with him; and went home at exactly midnight, only to retire at once to bed. He never used the cosy chambers which the Reform provides for its favoured members. He passed ten hours out of the twenty-four in Saville Row, either in sleeping or making his toilet. When he breakfasted or dined all the resources of the club—its kitchens and pantries, its buttery and dairy—aided to crowd his table with their most succulent stores; he was served by the gravest waiters, in dress coats, and shoes with swan-skin soles, who proffered the viands in special porcelain, and on the finest linen; club decanters contained his sherry, his port, and his cinnamon-spiced claret; while his beverages were refreshingly cooled with ice, brought at great cost from the American lakes.

If to live in this style is to be eccentric, it must be confessed that there is something good in eccentricity.

I'm leaving for the U.S. this afternoon! It will be great to see my mother and her cats again! My brother, the one who teachers drama at a high school, will also be home for a short while.

LnR 040 It's a long story! (Replay)

It's a long story" can have three possible meanings: 1) the literal meaning is that it might take too long to tell the story; 2) I don't want to talk about it; and 3) It's none of your business! In this dialogue it just means that it takes time to tell the story.

Two friends are talking:

A: Hey, Jason, what happened to your car?

B: My car? Well, us, it's a long story.

A: Really? I've got time. You can tell me.

B. Well, OK, if you really want to know.

A: Yeah, I do.

B: Well, last night I was driving home from my friend's house. He lives about two hours away. I was a little sleepy, so I stopped at a gas station on the little highway to get a cup of coffee. I put the coffee in the cup holder and left. A few minutes later I picked up the cup to have a sip, but it was too hot and I dropped it. The hot coffee spilled on my legs and I was screaming in pain.

A: Is that when you crashed your car?

B: No. I kept control of my car even while I was screaming. When the shock wore off, I started to look for a good place to stop and clean up the mess, but there's only trees in that area. I was distracted for a few seconds, and that's when a deer jumped in front of my car!

A: Oh, no! Did you hit the deer?

B: No, I turned the steering wheel quickly and missed the deer, but I had turned too much and I ran off the road and hit a tree!

A: So, your car has a big dent in it and your legs were burned by the coffee, but at least the deer was OK. Wow, that really was a long story!

Hi everyone! I was going to edit a new interview I had done with a hitchhiker from Singapore who stayed with me for two days. But my computer won't start! I think the problem is the fake Windows operating system that the technician installed in the computer when I had a hard drive failure six months ago. So now my laptop won't work, but at least I can still use this old desktop computer. I have to give you another old interview, with a young man from a warm country (Malaysia) who was traveling north to a cold part of the world (northern China and Russia)! This interview is from November 2016. I just ordered a new, small, cheap laptop (though I hope my old one can be fixed, too). I'm leaving for the U.S. in two days, so the new laptop will arrive soon after I do. I handed my grades in to the English Department yesterday and I feel so free now. :-)

TQ 055 William from Malaysia

William stayed with me for four nights after spending several months in Southeast Asia. Now he's on his way up through China on his way to Russia and then Europe. He plans to travel for two years! He's from Sarawak Province on the island of Borneo, which is the eastern part of Malaysia. His family has been there for four generations. He tells us his English name, Chinese name and Malay name. Listen as we talk about the warm clothes that he has bought here and about his experience of staying awake for more than three days.

Warning: He has a strong accent and speaks quickly. Some listeners will have problems understanding him. Sometimes when he said something that was hard to understand, I repeated it, but other times I didn't. His accent is typical of Chinese Malaysians and Singaporeans.

Here are some words you may not know: ethnic group, moral, morals, trend, backpacking, backup income, ginseng root, dialect, randomly.

Personal note: Near the end of the interview I said that I was going to start teaching the 3 1/2 year old daughter of some Chinese friends of mine. I said that I was scared. Well, I was so scared that I contacted my friends the night before our first lesson to tell them that I couldn't do it. I shouldn't have told them yes, but they kept asking me. I finally gave in and said OK. My mistake.

LnR Around the World in Eighty Days 3

Was Phileas Fogg rich? Undoubtedly. But those who knew him best could not imagine how he had made his fortune, and Mr. Fogg was the last person to whom to apply for the information. He was not lavish, nor, on the contrary, avaricious; for, whenever he knew that money was needed for a noble, useful, or benevolent purpose, he supplied it quietly and sometimes anonymously. He was, in short, the least communicative of men. He talked very little, and seemed all the more mysterious for his taciturn manner. His daily habits were quite open to observation; but whatever he did was so exactly the same thing that he had always done before, that the wits of the curious were fairly puzzled.

Had he travelled? It was likely, for no one seemed to know the world more familiarly; there was no spot so secluded that he did not appear to have an intimate acquaintance with it. He often corrected, with a few clear words, the thousand conjectures advanced by members of the club as to lost and unheard-of travellers, pointing out the true probabilities, and seeming as if gifted with a sort of second sight, so often did events justify his predictions. He must have travelled everywhere, at least in the spirit.

LnR 038 I'm afraid (Replay) This podcast episode is from March, 2016.

You can listen and repeat using two dialogues. The first one uses "afraid" in the normal way and the second one uses it to make bad news seem softer.

Two friends are talking:

A: What are you afraid of?

B: I'm not afraid of anything!

A: What are you (whatcha) talking about? Last week you screamed when you saw a spider.

B: I didn't know you saw that. Yes, spiders scare me to death. What about you?

A: I don't like spiders, or rats, either, but what I'm really afraid of is elevators. Elevators and caves.

B: Ah, it sounds like you have claustrophobia.

A: Let's meet tomorrow afternoon to study for the history test.

B: I'm afraid I'm busy then. What about tomorrow night?

A: That won't work for me. I've got a meeting. I'm afraid it won't end until 9:30.

B: Well, I'm afraid we'll have to get up early the next day to study for it.

A: Well, that won't be fun.

B: Yeah, but we've got to (gotta) do it.

TQ 104 Marcelo from El Salvador, Central America

Marcelo spent several days with me in my apartment in Nanning, China. He rested, relaxed, and did some research on China. He has been cycling around the world for the last six years! He entered China from Vietnam and is on his way north. His home country, El Salvador is very small in size, and has a population of only 7 million. He talks about the problem he has at some borders, because the border guards have never heard of his country! Listen as he talks about his trip, and lists all the countries he has cycled in. There's a good chance that Marcelo will say your country!

Marcelo has a strong Spanish accent. Some of you may find it challenging to understand him. I usually repeat the words that he says incorrectly, so that you can understand him. I don't correct his grammar. He told me that he didn't have to study English in school, so he chose another language. He learned English as an adult.

Here are some words we use that you may not know: saint, humidity, tropical, journalist, optimistic, Nordic, Scandinavia, malaria, picky, cemetery, to surf, shade, Bedouin, and nomad.