Hello everybody and welcome to bonus episode number 156 of the Q-Lips 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 a 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 Q-Lips member, you will get a quiz as well.
Thanks to all the Q-Lips members out there for your support, guys.
And if you yourself would like to sign up and become a Q-Lips 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 QLipscom and you can sign up and get all of those goodies and support the podcast as well.
Yeah, check out the website QLips.com for the details on that.
And yeah, members, thank you.
Okay.
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 and But I won't talk about that on the podcast until maybe my next marathon, which is going to be in November.
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 p.m. 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 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 awful, really terrible.
It was horrible to witness 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, this It's 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 Pokemon.
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 okay.
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.
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 some Two kind 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 this 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 sound card, my sound card.
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 and into my computer so that I can share it with you.
The sound card essentially is just an input output device for my computer.
And the sound card that I use is one by a brand called Focusrite.
And I wanna 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 sound card 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 Q-Lips I've used the same sound card 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 sound card 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, okay, 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.
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 90s 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 sound card and tried to get all of the dust out of it and tried it again and didn't work.
Works for Nintendo games, didn't work for my sound card.
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 phrasal verb 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 cords, then suddenly it powered up and i noticed that 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 sound card.
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 sound card 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 sound card, 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 finish 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 QLips, 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.
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 Q-Lips.
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, turned 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 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's like, no, you can't use my mouse, but 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 Q-Lips 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 $100.
I think it's around 100, probably 100 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 $100.
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 isn't going to be true and I'll be clear sailing from now on.
Okay, 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 Q-Lips listener, you will know that my wife and I adopted a dog.
English name for her translates to may, but we call her or 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.
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 pod, 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 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 talked to her, 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, 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.
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 appreciated.
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.
Okay, 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 yeah 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 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 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, 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, 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 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.
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Guys, have a great, awesome week up ahead.
Please take care and I'll catch you in the next episode.
Until then, bye-bye.
