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Hello, and welcome to bonus episode number 160
of the Culips English Podcast. How is it going?
I hope you're doing OK. Thank you for clicking
play and joining me for this English study
session. In our bonus episode series, what I do
is I tell you some stories from my everyday life,
and I hope that by listening to them, you will be
able to build your English fluency. Today, I've
got a funny story about a funky jacket. A funny
story about a funky jacket that I think you will
enjoy. I'll get to that story in just a moment,
but before I do, I want to remind you that there's
a free interactive transcript and vocabulary
glossary available for this episode to everyone.
These are awesome study tools. They're completely
free, and you can get them just by following the
link in the description for this episode. Plus,
if you are a Culips member, then you also get a
comprehension quiz. So Culips members, don't
forget to take the quiz and check to see how
much you are able to understand after listening to
this episode. If you're interested in signing up
and becoming a Culips member, well then, just
check out our website, Culips.com. That's the
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all the Culips members out there for your support.
Guys, you keep the lights on here at Culips. You
allow us to keep making awesome English lessons
for learners all over the world. So, thank you so
much for your support. We really do appreciate it.
And with that being said, let's jump into today's
episode about my funky jacket. Kind of a funny
story, this one, and I hope you guys will enjoy
it. So, let's get right to it. Here we go. All
right, guys. So, in this week's story, I'm going
to tell you the tale of a funky jacket, a funky
jacket, and how I fixed my funky jacket problem.
OK, so first of all, I should mention that this
word “funky,” this adjective funky, actually has
two different meanings in English, and it's very
important to distinguish the two meanings because
they are both very common, but they have totally
different meanings. And especially when I say,
“a funky jacket,” actually, just that unique,
isolated phrase makes it impossible to tell what
I'm talking about. It could be either one of the
meanings of funky. So, the first meaning of funky,
probably the more common one, is used to describe
something that's very colorful or bright or
fantastic. So, if I say “a funky jacket,” then
what probably pops into my mind first is like
a very bright colorful… maybe I think of like
the 1990s style with all of those bright colors,
those like neon colors that were popular back
in the 90s. I think of that. OK, a funky jacket,
meaning bright, colorful, loud, vibrant, bright,
all of those kind of images pop into my mind. But
the second meaning, and also very common, I
don't want to say that this is an uncommon
meaning because we use it this way often as well.
We talk about “funky,” meaning something that
smells really bad. So, a funky jacket could also
mean a jacket that smells really bad. And that's
what I'm going to talk to you today about. I'm not
going to talk to you about wearing a cool, bright,
colorful jacket. Instead, I'm going to tell you
about my bad-smelling, unpleasant-smelling jacket,
my funky jacket. So, let me start at the beginning
by saying that this story happened over a year
ago, and I actually recorded a bonus episode about
it back in the day when this story first happened,
but I had an audio issue when I recorded that
story. And so I didn't want to release the episode
at the end of the day because I wasn't happy with
the way that it sounded. And I meant to re-record
it, and I totally forgot. And then just this week,
I took out my clothes for the fall. Here we've had
a long, hot summer, and we're well into October
now here in Seoul. But just finally, it's kind
of… kind of slowly transitioning into fall weather
and jacket weather. And even during the daytime,
I don't need a jacket when I go outside, but in
the evening, it's getting a little bit chilly,
and I need to wear a jacket. And I put on my funky
jacket, my ex-funky jacket, I should say. And that
reminded me of this story, and so I'm going to
finally tell it here about one year after it
actually happened. So, let me start at the start.
Well, every year, I have this ritual. I guess it's
a twice-yearly ritual of swapping my clothes. My
spring-summer clothes and my fall-winter clothes.
So, I have very limited closet space in my tiny
home, and that means that I can't put all of my
clothes in my closet, and I have to put some in
storage when I don't wear them. So in the summer,
my winter coats and my long pants and my sweaters,
these kinds of things, they are in storage. And
then the opposite is true. In the winter, I put
all of my summer clothes in storage just so I
can free up enough space in my closet and have a
place to store all of my clothes. And when I say
I put my clothes in storage, it just means I store
them under my bed. So, I have this bed that is a
little bit higher off the ground than a regular
bed, and underneath it are all of these storage
compartments. So I can lift up my mattress, and
there are these storage compartments where I
can lift up the bottom of the bed and then store
stuff under there, and that's where I usually put
my off-season clothes. And I also put them in a
vacuum-sealable bag. So before storing my clothes,
of course, I clean them, launder them, make
sure they're all nice and clean and tidy,
and I fold them up nicely and neatly, and then put
them in the vacuum-sealable bag. And then I attach
my vacuum hose to the plastic bag, and I suck out
all of the air, and the bag shrinks down, and then
I'm able to fit it under my bed. So that's what
I do with my off-season clothes, and I've done
this for several years without any issues at all.
But last year, I had a big issue when I took out
my fall jackets. Because I took them out of the
vacuum-sealed bag, they had been sitting under my
bed all summer long, and I took them out, and 99%
of my clothes smelled OK except for two jackets
that I have that are made by this company called
Barbour. Barbour is a British brand, and they make
these really nice jackets that are perfect for the
fall. They're not too warm. They're not too cool.
They're just like this lovely fall jacket. And
the problem with these two jackets, once I got
them out of the vacuum-sealable bag in my storage
compartment, is that they were funky. They had
this really strange smell. It's almost impossible
for me to describe the smell. It was just weird,
like not in a good way at all. Just like this
weird, dark, funky smell. Not quite rotten,
but almost like moldy, I guess would be the best
way that I could describe it. Almost just like
stale and bad, OK? And at first, when I took them
out, I thought, hmm. I gave them a good sniff,
and I thought, hmm, maybe people won't notice.
Like, maybe it's just because the jacket is so
close to my nose, right, when I'm wearing it that
no one will notice. But, I put on the jacket,
and I walked by my wife, and actually, my wife has
a very sensitive nose, so she would be the perfect
person to be able to tell me if these jackets were
too strong-smelling or not to be able to wear. So
I put on the jacket, and I just walked into the
room where my wife was sitting. And as soon as I
walked into the room, and she was several meters
away from me, immediately, she was like, “What is
that smell? What's going on?” And I realized, oh
my gosh, these jackets have a serious problem. So,
I don't know what caused the problem. Like I
said, I had done this in the past, and I never
had an issue. So, I wasn't sure what was going on
exactly. And the thing with these Barbour jackets,
guys, is that you can't just throw them in
the washing machine and wash them. They're
a special kind of jacket. They're called a waxed
jacket. So, the fabric has this wax coating on it,
and that's to keep it waterproof. And if you
were to just throw it in the washing machine,
it would destroy that wax coating and destroy
the jacket being waterproof. And yeah,
I've heard that you should never just throw your
jacket in the washing machine. And you also can't
take it to the dry cleaner’s either. So, those
would be my first usual go-to steps, right,
is like wash it and try to get the smell out, or
take it to the dry cleaner’s and try to get them
to take the smell out for you. But those two steps
were unavailable to me just because of the special
nature of this coat. So, I was pretty bummed out
because I love these jackets. My wife bought me
one while we were dating. She bought me a black
Barbour jacket. And then a little bit later on, I
picked up another one because I loved it so much.
I just think that it looks really good on me.
I'm not really a fashion guy or into clothes or
anything like that. But when I wear these jackets,
I feel more adult. I feel more confident. My wife
always says that I look handsome in it. Whenever
I'm in the fall and I wear that jacket, she always
says, “Oh, you look good in that jacket.” So it
makes me feel confident when I wear the jacket.
And yeah, like I said, like a mature adult. And
so I love the Barbour jacket. I wanted to fix it.
I needed to get rid of the smell. I couldn't walk
around with this terrible smell. If I were to
maybe describe it better this way, it's try and
think of the smell, like a musty smell. “Musty”
is a word that we use maybe to describe, think of
like an old book from a used bookstore that's just
been sitting on the shelf for like 50 years, super
old book. And then you open that old antique used
book and it's got that specific old-book smell,
right? So we would say that is like musty or
even think of some grandpas. Maybe think of like,
if you can remember the smell of your grandpa's
sweater, you know, it's got that old kind of musty
smell to it. I think the jacket smelled like
that, but times 20, like it was very strong,
super, super, super musty, super funky. And so
I had to figure out a way to get the smell out
of these jackets. And so it was weird that it
happened to both of them. And all of the other
clothes that were in storage were totally fine.
All of my sweaters were fine. Other clothes,
no issues, winter jackets, pants, no issues,
just these two Barbour jackets. So of course,
I went onto the internet and I tried to find a
solution. And I found many solutions about how to
clean your Barbour jacket. Many people actually
complained about them having a bad smell. So,
I think maybe I'm not alone. Maybe this is kind
of an issue that happens to Barbour jackets. I'm
not sure. But many people were complaining about
their jackets having a bad smell and there were
a whole different range of solutions. And so I
started with the easiest one first, because why
go and do a bunch of hard work if you can do it
the easy way? So, some people said that what you
should do is just go hang your jackets in the sun
and let that sunlight hit the jacket and naturally
disinfect it and eliminate the smell. And so
that's what I did. I waited for a sunny day.
I went outside. I put my jackets in the sun and I
let them sit outside for several days. And I even
moved them around in my yard so that they would
get maximum sunlight exposure. And after being
outside for three or four days, I took them inside
and I gave it the sniff test. “Sniff” is this
action that we use with our nose, right? Not sure
if you can hear that on the microphone or not,
but a sniff is when we breathe in deeply with our
nose to smell something and to see what it smells
like. So, I gave it the sniff test and I let
my wife do a sniff test as well and fail, fail.
They didn't improve at all. They still smelled
exactly the same way. So that was a bust. That was
a failure. The next method that I tried was the
second easiest method, and that was to put them
in the freezer. So, some people said that they
had some success by putting their smelly Barbour
jackets in the freezer and letting them freeze.
And I guess if there's like some bacteria, some
bad smelling bacteria or something in the jacket,
that that could kill the bacteria and eliminate
the odor that way. So, I put them in plastic bags
and folded them up neatly and put the jackets in
my freezer. And again, it was kind of set it and
forget it. So, I just put them into the freezer
and then didn't think about them again. And then
several days later, I remembered, oh yeah, my
jackets. And I took them out, gave them the sniff
test and yeah, no success. They both stunk and
they were very cold. Rock hard, ice hard, stinky
jackets. So, those were the two easiest steps to
try and solve this problem is just putting them
outside and putting them in the freezer, but no
luck. So the next step was to try some spray. So I
tried a fabric spray. I went to the store and got
one of those odor-eliminating fabric sprays that
you can just spray on clothes or on furniture to
remove a smell. And those to an extent masked the
bad smell and covered it up. When I say “masked,”
it's almost like we're putting a mask on our
face. We're putting a cover over the bad smell. So
you know, they smell kind of like a perfume or a
cologne, right? They have this nice odor to them,
nice scent to them, but it didn't really
eliminate the bad smell in the jacket. It
just covered it up. It just masked it. So then it
smelled kind of like fabric spray combined with
the bad smell of the jackets, that musky smell.
So, that was almost worse even. And so terrible,
had to find another solution. So, then another
thing that I read online was that you could spray
it with vodka. And somebody said that they had
really great success giving their jacket a vodka
bath. And so I tried that as well. And again, no
dice, no dice. And “no dice” means no luck. So,
I had no luck. I had no dice. And the jackets
were just really bad. And it stressed me out
because these jackets aren't really cheap. They're
rather expensive, actually. It's like one of the
most expensive items that I own, I would say, for
clothing. It's up there. One of my more expensive
big ticket items. And like I said, I look really
good in them, I think. I feel good in them. And
so I really wanted to save these jackets. I
didn't want to just, like, throw them out or
have to buy a new one or something like that. And
so I thought I need to enlist the help of a pro,
of a professional. And, “enlist the help”
this is just a phrase that we mean to use,
like, “get the help.” Or usually I think we use it
when we're saying like we want to hire somebody,
we'll give somebody some money to do something,
we'll enlist their help. So, I needed to enlist
the help of a pro to help me clean these jackets
and get them back to new. So, I went onto the
Korean internet and I searched around for some
different cleaning solutions. And I actually
found a guy online and was able to connect
with him through Instagram, weirdly enough,
who is like a Barbour cleaning specialist. He's
got this small local business where that's all he
does is like clean and restore Barbour jackets.
And I think here in South Korea, especially,
Barbour is a pretty famous, popular brand. I see
a lot of guys my age in their late 30s to 40s to
50s wearing this jacket, especially in the fall.
So, I think it is a popular brand here. And yeah,
it's cool that he's able to have a business where
he just cleans and restores Barbour jackets. So,
that was like the perfect fit. And I read all
of the reviews and then I messaged him and I was
like, “Where's your store? I'll come pop by your
store.” And then he messaged back. He was like,
“I don't really have a storefront. I just do
this business out of my home.” So, he gave me his
address and he's like, “Just send me your jackets
and I'll clean them and then mail them back to
you.” And he actually lives quite a ways away from
me in a different city. And so, I was like, “Yeah,
OK, no problem.” I didn't even question that this
might be a sketchy thing to do at all. So, I just
sent him the money and sent him my jackets. And
then after I did that, my wife was like, “Are you
crazy?” that you just sent your jackets and money
to a stranger, just like believing and trusting
the stranger that he's going to fix your problem
and send you back some fresh smelling jackets?
And so I thought, hmm, maybe that wasn't the
greatest idea, but he had lots of reviews on
his website and social media. And I thought it
would be weird, like, why would somebody want to
steal dirty jackets? I mean, I guess if you had
the skills, you could restore them and then sell
them again. But in order to get the jackets, you
would have to give me your legit address. And so,
it just seemed like a really weird crime to do if
you were going to steal jackets this way and steal
money this way. And so, I was kind of assured
that probably it would be OK. Just going through
the thoughts in my head like that, I assured
myself, I reassured myself that it was going
to be OK. So anyways, I sent off the jackets and
I waited a few weeks and I actually totally forgot
that I had sent them. And then again, my wife
was like, “Hey, where are your jackets? Like,
hasn't it been two or three weeks since you sent
them out? Did the guy send you a message to say
that he got your jackets OK and was working on
them?” And I realized, no, he actually didn't send
me any messages and we hadn't communicated after
that point. So, I was like, I got to find out,
I got to see what's going on with my jackets. So
I sent a message and then I got a reply saying,
yeah, he got my jackets, but he was busy working
on other jackets and that it was still going to
be a week or two. But don't worry, he got them
and he's going to work on them. And so I thought,
yeah, these Barbour jackets, actually, they must
have a pretty bad problem with the smell if he's
so busy working on other people's jackets. But
yeah, a couple of weeks went by and he sent
them to me and I received them. So, absolutely no
problems with the service. Everything was OK. And
the best thing was the smell is now gone. They are
no longer funky jackets at all. They smell back
to normal. And he even packaged them really nice
in these plastic bags with the Barbour branding.
And he gave me some little packets that are like
dehumidifier packets. I guess they suck up any
moisture in the air so that the coats couldn't get
moldy or funky again to put in the pockets of the
jacket. So, really good service. And they smell
fine. They look good. They're all nice and clean,
all restored, re-waxed. I paid a little bit of
extra money to get them re-waxed and restored
back to brand new. They're as good as new. Now,
as I mentioned, this story happened last year.
And while this whole kerfuffle was going on trying
to get my jackets restored and cleaned, most of
the autumn passed by. So I actually didn't get to
wear these jackets last autumn for very long. And
one of the worst things about living in Korea, I
really do enjoy living in this country. Otherwise,
I wouldn't be here. But the climate is one of
the things that's a little bit unfortunate. We
have a beautiful spring and a beautiful fall,
but they're very short. We have a cold winter
and a hot summer, and they're very long. So, that
means this nice jacket-wearing season in the fall,
and sometimes a little bit in the spring as well,
is really, really short. You only get to wear your
beautiful fall jacket for five or six weeks before
you have to get into your winter coat. And so that
meant that last year, I didn't get to wear my
jacket very much at all. But this year, guys,
I'm going to be able to wear these jackets
for the whole season. I just recently took
them out of storage, and thankfully, they
still smell fresh. They still look great.
And I'm going to enjoy wearing these jackets
as much as I can this autumn season. So guys,
thank you for listening to the story of my funky
jacket. And just before I let you go, I wanted
to share some common adjectives, and words, and
phrases, and expressions, that English speakers
use to talk about bad smells. Because in fact,
there are a lot of different words and expressions
that we have. I made some notes here in my
notebook, and I wrote down 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
8… 8 different adjectives that I could brainstorm
that we use to talk about bad smells. And I think
even while telling my story here, I probably
mentioned some other ones as well. So, let
me break them down for you and tell you what we
use them for and what kind of smells we describe
with them. So, let's start mild, and then we'll go
to extreme. OK, at the mild end of the spectrum,
we have two words that I think I used already in
this episode. The first one is “Musty.” Musty,
M-U-S-T-Y, musty. And this describes old things
that just don't smell very fresh. Think about,
like I said, an old book, a grandfather's old
sweater. I like to collect records and I have
old records from the 50s and the 60s. And when
I open those old LP records, often the inside of
the cover smells musty. It's like this old smell.
Next up, we have “Stale.” And stale is a smell of
just not being fresh. Think about a really stuffy
room where maybe there's no circulation and the
air is not fresh in that room. You would say that
that smells stale. And we also use this word to
talk about bread that isn't fresh anymore. So, if
bread has gone hard and it's lost its softness and
its freshness, we would call that stale bread. So,
that word stale just means not fresh. Moving up to
like the middle level of a bad smell, we have this
word “Pungent.” Pungent, pungent, P-U-N-G-E-N-T,
and pungent describes strong smells. Maybe you
could say food is pungent. Maybe garlic or onions
or like a strong cheese, they could be pungent.
Also body odors, like maybe somebody's BO, that
is the bad sweaty smell that comes from armpits.
We call it BO, body odor. So, like pungent BO,
or if somebody had really bad breath, like maybe
after eating a bunch of garlic, you got a whiff
of their bad breath, you'd be like, whew,
that's pungent! Some pungent bad breath. OK,
not a good smell. I don't like a pungent smell.
Does anybody really? Probably not. OK, next, going
up to the stronger level, OK, the next level up,
we have this word “Rancid.” Rancid, R-A-N-C-I-D,
rancid. And we use this mostly to talk about food
that has gone bad, especially oil and butter. So,
if you left butter out for too long or oil out for
too long and it started to smell and was just bad,
that would be rancid. Also, we use this word
in a comical way to describe people's farts
or when they pass gas, right, when someone
has gas and they let it out of their body,
usually with a fart at the back end, we say
sometimes, oh, that's rancid! Ugh! OK, like that.
Another word that we use, as I mentioned here
many times in this episode, is funky. OK, funky
is just like an unpleasant smell and usually like
a weird smell. We say you can't put your finger on
it. You can't really identify it. And that's why
I use this word to describe my jacket is because
I had a hard time describing the kind of bad smell
it was. It's kind of like a combination of moldy
and musky and stale. And it's hard to describe. So
we say funky and we also use it as a noun, too. We
could say, “Oh, that's got a funk to it.” Maybe my
jacket had a funk to it. So, we can describe a bad
smell that way. It's got a funk. It's funky. OK,
but don't get it confused with the fashion style,
funky, meaning really bright and colorful. And
also we can use this word to talk about music,
right? If a track is really funky, a song is
really funky, it means it's got a good beat,
good groove, very upbeat music. And yeah, funky
music, just like the genre funk music. OK, so a
very dynamic word in English that we can use to
describe many different things. And then let's get
to the very strong end of the spectrum. So we have
three adjectives we can describe really, really
bad smells. One is “Putrid.” Putrid, P-U-T-R-I-D,
putrid. And I would say this is almost like a
very, very extreme smell. I wrote, a decaying body
or like something rotting, you know, like a dead
animal or even a dead human's body decomposing and
rotting. That would be putrid. OK, thankfully, I
haven't had to smell too many putrid things in my
life. But yeah, again, sometimes we use this word
in a comical way to describe people's farts. Like,
“That's putrid. Ugh, get out of here!” The next
one, “Foul.” F-O-U-L. If something is foul, again,
it's just like a word that we use in general. It's
a general word that we can use to describe really
bad smells. I think also a lot of body smells.
Maybe after someone uses the bathroom and then you
walk into the bathroom, it could smell quite foul
if the air hasn't cleared out yet. OK, maybe a
rotten egg could smell foul. Sometimes, if you go
to an area where there's, like, farming activities
taking place, it could smell foul. Farms with,
like, fertilizer could smell foul. Hot springs
with sulfur in the air, they can smell foul,
this kind of thing. And then finally, the last one
is “To reek.” R-E-E-K, it reeks. And this is just,
yeah, an extremely bad smell. Again, in general,
anything that smells extremely bad, we can say it
reeks. OK, and often we use it as a phrase, “It
reeks of something.” So, if somebody is like a
chain smoker and they smoke a lot of cigarettes,
then that person probably reeks of smoke,
right? They smell like cigarette smoke. They reek
of smoke. Or maybe if somebody was an alcoholic
and they drink alcohol a lot, their breath could
reek of alcohol. You could say he or she reeks of
alcohol. And it just means that they smell really
bad because of that thing, because of the smoke,
because of the alcohol. And yeah, we use it as
the phrase “it reeks” often, right? You could walk
into a room that smells really bad and be like,
“It reeks in here,” meaning it smells really bad.
So, yeah, we have a lot of interesting, dynamic
vocabulary to talk about bad smells in English,
wouldn't you know? Well, guys, I think that's
going to bring me to the end of this episode.
Not the most pleasant topic to talk about these
kind of bad smells, but I hope I entertained you
with a funny story. And I want to congratulate you
at least for making it to the end of this lesson.
You put in the time, you put in the effort today
to improve your English. And I really got to say
that I respect that and admire you for that.
So keep going. You're doing awesome. And this
is what you need to do to keep building your
English is incorporating it into your lifestyle,
spending time with English each and every day,
and putting in those seconds and minutes and
hours. It will all build up to helping you become
a clearer and more confident English speaker. So,
keep up the good work. Of course, we've got
hundreds of other lessons over on our website,
Culips.com, check it out. And if you become
a Culips member, then you'll get all of them
ad free with study guides, transcripts
and more. And you'll be able to join us
for our weekly speaking classes as well. So,
guys, please take care. Have an awesome week
of English studying up ahead. And I will catch
you in the next episode. Until then, bye bye!
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