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Hello everybody, and welcome to bonus episode
number 156 of the Culips English Podcast,
the place where I tell you some stories from
my everyday life to help you build your English
fluency. My name's Andrew. I'll be your host and
your study buddy for today. And in this episode,
I am going to share four mini stories
with you. I don't have like one big,
interesting story to share, so I'm just going
to tell you some slice of life stories from
different things that have happened to me over
the last week or two. Some good, some not so
good. We'll start with the worst ones and work
our way to the best. I'll save the best for last.
To accompany this episode, there is an interactive
transcript and a vocabulary glossary that is free
for everyone. I recommend studying along with
the transcript, maybe after you've listened to
the episode once or twice, just so you can notice
the parts that you don't really understand. And
the interactive transcript is awesome, if I do
say so myself. Of course, I'm a little biased
because I made it, but you can click on any word
and hear the audio from that point. So, if you
want to repeat a phrase or listen to something
again and again and again, it's super easy
with the interactive transcript. The vocabulary
glossary will explain and break down and give you
an example sentence of some of the more difficult
or more useful vocabulary and expressions that
you'll hear me use. And then also if you're
a Culips member, you will get a quiz as well.
Thanks to all the Culips members
out there for your support, guys.
And if you yourself would like to sign up
and become a Culips member and get access
to the helpful study guides, interactive
transcripts, quizzes, speaking classes,
our Fluency Files series, which is a member
only series, the ad-free audio and more,
then visit Culips.com and you can sign up and get
all of those goodies and support the podcast as
well. Yeah, check out the website Culips.com for
the details on that. And yeah, members, thank you.
OK, so I think we're ready to get started here,
guys. Enjoy this episode and let's begin
with the first mini story. Here we go.
Let's start at the start with my first mini story,
and I'm going to tell you these stories in order
from worst to best, from worst to best. So,
we'll go from bad news to good news. And this
just happened to me last night, this first story.
So, as you guys know, I love running and I've
been really holding back from talking about
running this summer. I've been doing a lot
of running, but I won't talk about that on
the podcast until maybe my next marathon, which
is going to be in November, actually. So yeah,
I'm running a lot behind the scenes, but I'm
trying not to talk about it too much on the
podcast here. But anyways, the story
in some capacity relates to running.
So, I was out for my run yesterday evening,
probably around 8 PM at night. I have to wait…
still here in Seoul. It's very, very hot, so
I have to wait for the sun to set and for it
to cool down a little bit before I can get out
there and go for a good run. So, I was out on
my regular riverside path, just running away,
when in the distance I could see something on
the path. And when I say path here, it's almost
like a road, but cars can't drive on the road,
but there are two bike lanes plus a lane for
pedestrians as well. So, this path is probably
at least two meters, maybe two and a half meters
wide, and it's paved, so it's actually quite nice.
And I could see something lying across the
path in the distance. And as I approached it,
I realized it was a snake, and it was spread out
across almost, well, not almost the entire path,
but at least one of the bike lanes. So,
I would estimate that it was over half
a meter long and maybe getting closer to
a meter long. It was like a really long,
big snake. And I was shocked because I run that
path all the time and I've seen lots of different
wildlife out there. I've seen frogs, I've seen
toads, I've seen various birds, I've seen rats,
I've seen mice, I've seen raccoon dogs, I've seen
all sorts of different animals, even a rabbit I
saw last spring, but I've never seen a snake.
This was my first time seeing a snake in Seoul.
And I get excited whenever I see wildlife
and especially seeing a new animal like this,
a snake. I was like, "Oh my gosh, it's a snake!"
And to be honest with you, I'm not a snake lover.
I find them a little bit creepy and scary and
disgusting, but still I was stoked to see that
snake on the Riverside path. And so, I went
over to the side and was looking at it from a
distance and I took out my phone to take a picture
because I wanted to get a picture of the snake.
So, I took out my phone and, you know, made
sure that I was still quite a way away from
the snake because I have no idea about snakes
and the kind that live here in the city and
in this country. I know that there are some
poisonous snakes that I've heard about before,
but those are like when you go into the mountains.
So, I don't know, it wasn't like a thick snake,
it was pretty thin, but it was very long.
And so, I kept my distance. You know,
I didn't want to bother it too much, got out my
phone and took a picture of the snake and then
I was actually going to take a video. So,
I was switching my phone to the video mode
when something really shocking happened
and it's actually upset me quite a bit.
And that was, there was somebody,
I didn't actually see who it was,
but there was some cyclist riding behind
me and just ran right over the snake,
like didn't make any effort at all to stop or
avoid the snake. Poor snake just got ran right
over, right in the middle of its back as I was
switching my camera from the photo mode to the
video mode. So, I snapped the photo and then
I was switching my camera mode and then boom,
the snake got run over right in the middle of
its back. And as you can imagine, in that moment,
it was writhing around in pain, and it just looked
really terrible. It was horrible to witness so,
so close, right in front of my eyes. And the snake
was able to move to the other side of the path
and then it sort of disappeared into the grass
and I don't know exactly what happened to it.
But yeah, that was the first shocking
thing that I wanted to tell you about.
Just happened yesterday and I thought, just like
the world is cruel, right? I don't know. For me,
within the span of about 60 seconds, like one
minute, I see this snake, I'm so excited. Wow,
I saw this new wildlife sighting in the city.
For me, it's almost like Pokémon, like you go,
and you see a new animal and you can add it
to the different animals that you've seen.
It's almost like collecting animals, right?
You build this database of animals you've
seen in real life. So, I had that cool
moment where I saw a new animal and I was
just checking it out and taking a photo and
then boom, hit by the bicycle and who knows?
I don't know. My wife and I asked ChatGPT later
if that would be a fatal blow to the snake and
ChatGPT said that maybe not, maybe it will
be OK. And it was able to get off the path,
so I guess that's a good sign. But I
imagine snakes like humans have adrenaline,
some kind of response to help it survive
in a bad situation like that. Anyways,
it sucked. I didn't like witnessing that. The
world is cruel, and life is unfair. And yeah,
that was, that was the first mini story that
I wanted to tell you about. It affected me for
the rest of my run and here I am almost
12 hours later still thinking about it.
So yeah, we'll leave that story there and we'll
go on to my second story, which is also a negative
story. You know, I like to keep things posi on the
podcast. I like to have positive energy and PMA,
a positive mental attitude, but I do have two
kinds of negative stories for you to start off
with. The second one isn't as bad, but we
have this expression, the superstition in
Western culture, in English speaking countries'
culture at least. And I wonder if you have this
superstition in your country as well and in
your native language as well. And that is the
belief that bad things come in threes, bad things
come in threes. Have you ever heard this before?
A lot of people use this expression and apply the
superstition to celebrity deaths. So, it almost
seems like for whatever reason, celebrities
seem to die and pass away in threes. So,
if there's ever two celebrity deaths, then a lot
of people online are always like, "Who's next?"
because the superstition is that bad things
always happen in threes. And so, I've had,
well here over the last week, I had two tech
malfunctions and I'm kind of thinking like,
"What's going to happen next?" I'm worried that
I'm going to have a third tech malfunction. Maybe
I'm buying into this superstition, this
belief that bad things come in threes.
So let me tell you about it. The first
tech breakdown I had was with my soundcard,
my soundcard. And as a podcaster, this
is a super, super important piece of
equipment. It's how I get the beautiful
sound of my voice into my microphone,
into my computer so that I can
share it with you. The soundcard
essentially is just an input output device for my
computer. And the soundcard that I use is one by
a brand called Focusrite. And I want to give
this company a shout out and say, Focusrite,
you make a great product, even though I had a tech
malfunction with your product this week, they make
a great product. And I've had the soundcard
that I'm using now for well over a decade,
maybe even longer than that. I think the whole
time that I've been doing Culips, I've used the
same soundcard and I've never had an issue with
it. So, I think that's a pretty good lifespan.
But yeah, this week when I went to record
something for the podcast, I pressed record,
and nothing happened. And so, I checked my
soundcard, and it didn't power up. And so,
I unplugged it and plugged it back in. You
know, the first step that you should do when
doing any kind of tech troubleshooting is unplug
something and plug it back in. It doesn't have a
power button, so I can't turn it on and off.
I have to unplug it and plug it back in. So,
I did that and nothing. And then I thought,
"OK, let me try a different USB port on my
computer. Maybe my USB port isn't working
correctly." So, I tried that and nothing. So,
then I checked the port in the back of the sound
card and toggled around with that and nothing.
So, then I was a little bit stressed in
that moment. It's like, "Oh, did it die? No,
I need it. I need to record right now." I wanted
to record for the podcast in that moment. And so,
I did what I think anybody from my generation,
maybe if you grew up in the nineties, like I did,
then this is something that you do with hardware
and that is blow it. Blow it. Physically, try to
remove the dust from any electronic device with
your mouth, just because we used to do this, or at
least I used to do this. And all of my friends too
when we were playing Nintendo games. For whatever
reason, the Nintendo game cartridges would lose
connection with the game machine when you were
playing them. And sometimes it just wouldn't work.
And so, what we do is take out the game cartridge
and blow it and then remove the dust with our
breath, and then it would magically work again.
And so that's what I did. I held my soundcard
and tried to get all of the dust out of it and
tried it again and it didn't work. Works for
Nintendo games, didn't work for my soundcard.
And I realized that the USB cable connector was
not so tight. Like the connection wasn't so great.
And as I was kind of fiddling around with it,
and that's a nice phrase over there to know,
“to fiddle around with [something],” that just
means like what you could imagine I was doing
in this kind of situation, moving the cord up and
down a little bit, slightly moving it to try and
find a good connection. That is “fiddle around.”
And we also say “jiggling.” As I was jiggling the
cord. So, as I was fiddling around with the cord,
jiggling the cord, then suddenly it powered up.
And I noticed that, "Hmm, I think if I can
arrange this cable, so that's in the optimal
spot, then it will power up and I can use the
soundcard." So, I had to fiddle around with it,
play around with it, jiggle the cable a little
bit and boom, I fixed it. So that was good,
but I'm not holding my breath that is going
to live forever. I think maybe I might have to
replace the cable and I actually, I'm not sure if
it's the cable that has a problem or if it's the
physical soundcard itself that has a problem
with the port where I plug in the cable. So,
if that's the case, then I may need to replace
the soundcard, but I'm hoping it's just a cable
and I can just buy a new cable and that will
fix it. But for now, it's working, and fingers
crossed that it will at least hold up until I
finished recording this episode for you guys.
So, with that in mind, let me tell you about
the second tech breakdown I had this week,
and this was actually slightly more frustrating.
It was with my computer mouse. And because I do
a lot of audio editing and video editing for
Culips, I have, I don't want to say it's a
super high-tech mouse, but it does have many
more features than a regular mouse. It's got
many more buttons. So, as you hold your mouse,
there are, I think three buttons on the top,
plus a scroll wheel and another button
in the middle of that mouse. So,
several buttons on the top and then on the
side as well, there's an additional scroll
wheel plus another set of buttons. And
then where the bottom of your hand rests,
like the underside of your thumb and that part of
your hand, there are some buttons there as well.
And the reason why I like this mouse
with so many buttons is that you can
customize the buttons and map them to different
functions. So, it's great for audio editing,
for video editing. It's so much faster.
I can save a lot of time just by mapping
custom functions to the buttons. And then
I don't have to go to the menus or hit
shortcuts on my keyboard. It's just a fast
way to audio edit and video edit for Culips.
So actually, this week I was in the middle
of doing something important. I had only 15
minutes before a deadline that I had,
where I had to send a file and I was
doing like the last little touches on this
document when suddenly my mouse just died,
and the cursor wouldn't move. It was stuck in
the middle of my screen. And it was weird because
when I hit some of those other buttons on the
mouse, they all worked, but the cursor itself,
and when I say the cursor, that means the
arrow that you can control on the screen
to do the different things that you want to
do on a computer, but that wouldn't work. So,
I was like, "Oh my gosh," feeling super stressed
out trying to move my mouse and it wasn't working.
So yeah, again, turn the mouse off,
turned it on, didn't work. Unplugged it,
plugged it in. It’s a Bluetooth mouse or
some kind of wireless connection mouse,
but there is a little receiver USB plug
that has to go into your computer. So,
the mouse and the computer can communicate. So, I
unplugged that, plugged it in, didn't work. Tried
a different port, didn't work. Same, same thing,
right? Going through these troubleshooting steps.
And so, I was super stressed out. The mouse wasn't
working. I had this deadline to meet. And so,
this was actually in the morning as well. My wife
was getting ready to go to the office. And so,
I was asking her like, "Hey, can I borrow your
mouse?" But she needs her mouse for her computer.
And she takes her laptop and her mouse to work
when she goes with her. So, she was like, "No,
you can't use my mouse, but I, you have another
one somewhere." And I know I have a backup mouse,
but I didn't know where it was.
So, I was like frantically looking
through my home. I found my backup mouse,
thankfully met the deadline just barely,
but now my mouse is still broken. My expensive
fancy Culips audio/video editing mouse.
So yeah, once I got the replacement mouse working,
then I met my deadline. It was troubleshooting
time. I had to fix like this mouse is over
a hundred dollars. I think it's around
a hundred, probably a hundred American
dollars. So, I don't want to buy another one
if I don't have to. So I went onto YouTube,
which is a great place to find some tips for
solving tech problems. And I realized this is a
super common problem with this mouse is that that
button that I said that rests under your thumb,
sometimes I guess there's like a flaw in the
design. That button can remain pressed down and
it won't release correctly. And when that happens,
it pauses the cursor movement on the screen.
So, what you have to do is you have to physically
take the mouse apart and then unscrew the tension
that holds that button down, and you can do
that by loosening the screws. And then once
you release that button, then the mouse should
work again. And I watched the tutorial video
about how to do that. And there were hundreds
of comments of people saying like, "Thanks. You
just saved me a hundred dollars. I was about to
buy this new mouse. And then I realized I could
fix it like that." So, I got excited, and I was
like, "Oh, I can just fix my mouse like this."
So, I followed the instructions. You have to
remove some of the pads on the bottom of the
mouse to reveal some screw holes. So, I
removed those pads and carefully pulled
them apart so that I could reassemble and put
the mouse back together again later. Unscrewed
the screws. And then there were another
set of screws that you have to unscrew,
the final two screws to take the mouse apart.
And then you need, for whatever reason,
the first set of screws use just like a regular
screw size. But the second set of screws have
this really specialized, small, tech-screw that
you need to use. And I didn't have a screwdriver
to remove those ultra-small screws. So,
I had to order that and that's going to
probably come today or sometime soon, and
I'll be able to hopefully fix my mouse.
But yeah, anyways, I had two
stressful tech breakdowns this week,
and I'm hoping that this superstition bad
things come in threes, it isn't going to
be true. And I'll be clear sailing from now on.
OK, let's get to the good news.
I have two more stories. That one
took a little bit longer than I wanted to.
So, let's go through the next two quickly.
Good news: dog training. So, if
you're a regular Culips listener,
you will know that my wife and I adopted a dog.
The English name for her translates to May,
but we call her O’Wall in the Korean language.
And usually, I found myself now that we've kind
of adjusted to her living in our home. I've been
calling her Wally a lot. Wally, Wally, Wally,
Wally-ah. Anyways, something like that. She's
a poodle. She's six years old. She's very cute.
However, when she came to our home, she
wasn't the most well-trained dog. She's
very well behaved. She doesn't bark.
She doesn't cause a mess in the home.
She's not chewing anything or causing any
problems. Super clean. She is trained to use,
we call it a “pee pad.” So, if she needs to pee in
the house, she'll pee on that pad. But actually,
I'm really happy that she doesn't really use that
at all. She likes to go outside and that's the
way I prefer it as well. So, we take her outside
a lot so she can do her business. But what I'm
trying to say here is that there's no real issues
caused by her. She's well behaved in that regard.
However, she's not really trained. So, when she
came to us, she didn't know how to sit. She didn't
know how to shake a paw, do any tricks. She really
pulled on her leash a lot. When we would take her
out for a walk, these kinds of things, she wasn't
super educated on, didn't know how to do. But
we've had her since May. So that's around four
months now and slowly, but surely, she's getting
used to living in our home. It's been a little
bit of a process where I think she was pretty
nervous for the first little while, but now she's
into a routine and getting used to us. And yeah,
it's just, has adjusted pretty well to life in
this new environment for her. She still spends
like 22 hours a day on the sofa. She's completely
taken over our sofa and yeah, it's her zone. Now,
my wife and I don't get to sit on the sofa as
much as we used to. That's Wally's zone, but,
yeah, she's really, you know, happy to
be a member of our home now, I think.
Anyways, my wife and I wanted to train her. We
thought, you know, she needs to know some basic
commands. And so, over the last month or so, we
have taught her how to do some things, how to sit,
how to shake a paw. There's this command where
we can say the Korean word for nose, which
is “ko.” Ko, and she will go and put her nose in a
circle that we make with our hands. If we make our
hands into a circle, she'll go and put her nose
inside the hole. And yeah, it's kind of cool.
There's this expression in English, “You can't
teach an old dog new tricks.” And I guess O’Wall
isn't really an old dog, but she's a middle-aged
dog. And I think the saying is incorrect because
we've been able to teach her these tricks
and it's fun to see her learn them. You can
almost see the wheels in her brain spinning as
she's learning these new tricks and putting it
together that if we say “sit” and she sits and
she gets a treat that that is a behavior that
will be rewarded. And yeah, it didn't take too
long. She's a pretty quick learner, but it did
take a couple of days. And during that process, it
was interesting to see. She's very expressive. So,
you can see her eye movements and her ears move
and her attention. And as she put it together,
that this verbal command equals a treat
if she does some kind of action. Then,
yeah, that was just cool to
witness and a first for me.
OK, last mini story here I'm going to tell
you about is last weekend, my wife and I were
invited over to our friend's place. Now, this is a
friend who I've been buddies with for a long time,
over probably 10 years. And a Korean friend,
we've just had a really solid friendship over
the years that I've lived here. However,
a couple of years ago, she had twin baby
boys. And as you could imagine, when you have
twin baby boys, your life suddenly gets very,
very busy. So, we haven't been able to hang
out too much after she had her babies. But she
invited us over to her place last weekend to
just hang out and catch up and meet the boys.
I first met them, I guess, last year, but they
were still pretty much babies. And they weren't
really maybe they were just barely walking at
that time. Weren't really talking. But now a
year later, going to see them again. I think
they're probably two, two and a half years old,
something like that. They're walking, they're
running, they're talking. And they're super,
super cute. They're twins, but they don't really
look alike. One takes after the mom, and one takes
after the dad. So, they have this different
appearance, but they are super, super cute.
And it was fun hanging out with little babies
like that who speak Korean exclusively. And that
was that was fun for me to get to speak Korean
with them and to hear how babies talk. At first
it was a little bit… they were really talkative,
which I thought maybe they would be shy to see a
foreigner in their home like that, but I guess
babies, they don't have that discrimination
built in yet. They just treated me like anybody
else. So that was really cool to see as well.
But yeah, they were super, super talkative.
So, from the moment that we walked in,
they were just chatting away to us. And at
first, I was like, "What are they saying?"
I felt stressed. I couldn't understand
what they were saying because, yeah,
they're not perfect speakers yet. But after a
couple of minutes, I adjusted to their accent and
their way of speaking, and then I could understand
them. And it was fun to play around with them,
play Legos, read some books, and just
do some cool activities with them.
And I realized, too, about how
children learn language. Like, yeah,
all of you parents out there definitely
will know this. And I know this, too,
but just to get a reminder and to see it in person
about when, like, we were playing with Lego,
and I made this kind of dragon out of the Lego.
And I showed it to them, and I used the Korean
word “Yong,” which means dragon, just to show
them that I made this dragon. And then after I
said that word, then they repeated the word
like a hundred times. They were like, "Yong,
Yong, Yong, Yong, Yong." Like saying it over
and over again. And it was just like, "Wow,
this is how they get so good at speaking Korean
so quickly!” They're only like two years old,
right? But they they speak better than me in many
instances. So, yeah, it's a little bit depressing.
But just to see how they are so creative and
productive with the language as soon as they
hear it, they're using it again and making so many
different sentences with it. And, yeah, it was
motivation for me to be more productive with my
Korean speaking. If we want to learn like babies,
we have to mimic their behavior and they use
language very productively. They don't care about
pronunciation mistakes. Even I was teaching them
some English words and they were just repeating
the English words “monkey” and “yellow” like again
and again. It was very cool to witness and cute to
witness. And yeah, I think our Korean speaking
is probably on a similar level for right now,
even though they're just babies. But I imagine
if I go and hang out with them again next year,
then they'll probably be better than I am. So,
it's really frustrating how fast children learn,
right, when we compare it to our adult
learning, it can be a little depressing.
But, yeah, super cool to hang out with
my friend and her growing family and
to see the boys. And she lives in this
really, really amazing new apartment complex,
which is something like I've never really seen
before. Huge development. It's almost like a
city within a city, which was really neat just to
explore and check out this, yeah, this kind of new
urban development project that I've never really
experienced before. But I won't get into all the
details about that, because if I described it, I
could go on for about 30 minutes about how cool
and interesting this new kind of urban development
project is. The city within a city. These
Korean apartment complexes are getting bigger and
bigger and better and better and more interesting,
but I'll save that maybe for another episode.
If you'd like to hear me talk about that,
leave a comment and maybe I can include
that in an upcoming bonus episode.
But for now, I think I should wrap things up. I've
been going on and on with these mini stories that
have turned into more like stories. So, if you
made it all the way to the end, awesome job. You
know, when you're learning English and you want to
up your fluency, you need to get the language into
your head. You need to spend time with English.
And if you made it to this point in the episode,
you did that. So great job. You can feel
proud of yourself and keep going. Keep going.
Visit our website, Culips.com for thousands,
literally thousands of more episodes that
you can continue your English studies with.
Don't forget about our Discord server as well,
which is the place where you can connect with
Culips listeners and share your thoughts,
comments and opinions and practice your English
writing and speaking and make some new friends
as well. The link to join our server will
be in the description for this episode,
and of course, it's free for everyone to
join. And we also have that free interactive
transcript available for this episode. Again,
check the link in the description for that.
Guys, have a great, awesome week up ahead. Please
take care and I'll catch you in the
next episode. Until then, bye bye.
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