Hello and welcome to bonus episode number 173 of the Q-Lips English podcast.
How's it going?
Thank you for clicking play and joining me for this English lesson today.
My name's Andrew.
I will be your host and your study buddy and I hope you are ready to have a great English learning session here with me today.
If you're new to this series let me quickly explain what it's all about.
I just tell you some stories from my everyday life.
I'm a Canadian, but I live abroad, in Seoul, South Korea, and I hope that by listening to my stories, you will be able to to upgrade your English.
That's what we're all about here at Q-Lips is helping you to upgrade your English and to reach that next level with your fluency, with your listening comprehension, with your speaking, with your cultural knowledge, with your vocabulary, all of these things.
To accompany this episode.
There is a 100, absolutely free for everyone, interactive transcript and vocabulary glossary.
In my opinion, they're pretty cool study tools, so I definitely recommend checking them out.
You can check them out just by visiting our website QLipscom, or by clicking the link in the description for this episode.
Now, if you are a QLips member, then we're also going to toss in a comprehension quiz.
So members, make sure to take the quiz after you listen to this episode, just to see how much you were able to understand.
And if you'd like to sign up and become a Q-Lips member yourself so you can get the comprehension quizzes for the bonus episodes and so much more.
We really give our members as much as we possibly can to help them improve their English better and faster than ever.
Well then, just visit our website QLipscom, and you can find out all the details about what you get as a member.
Just to give you the quick, short, fast list here, you can get access to our speaking classes.
We have three speaking classes each and every week.
You can get access to our member-only series, The Fluency Files.
You can get access to our study guides and interactive transcripts for all of our episodes not just the bonus episodes, but all of our episodes.
And the list goes on and on.
Guys, check out the website qloopscom for the full details and sign up and become a member today for an affordable price.
And of course, a huge massive thank you to all of our members.
Guys, we couldn't do Qloops without you, so thank you so much for your support.
Today, I'm going to tell you two stories about things that have been happening in my life recently.
The first one is a tale of FOMO.
And the second one is about my garden.
So we'll get started right away.
I hope you enjoy.
Here we go.
If you are a regular Q-Lips listener, then undoubtedly, you know that my hobby is running.
I talk about it all the time here.
It's something that I do often.
It's something that I usually really, really love to do.
Although these days I'm not so inspired and motivated to run.
And maybe I'll talk about that here in a second.
But yeah, running is my hobby and especially marathoning.
That's my focus.
Long distance running, marathoning.
Now, over the last several years, I've been running two marathons per year.
I do one in the spring and one in the fall.
And in between those two main races, then I'll do some smaller runs.
I'll do maybe a 10K race or a half marathon race just to stay in shape and to enjoy the racing atmosphere as much and as often as I can, because running in a race is really, really fun.
Now, it's not like I win these races.
I'm not a competitive runner, but it's fun to participate.
And the challenge is really against myself.
When I go and I run a marathon and In an official race, I'm not running against the other racers, although I enjoy doing that, but really I'm running against myself, always trying to improve and beat my personal record.
Well, this year, in fact, things are going to change a little bit, because I already ran one marathon in March.
I ran the Seoul marathon.
And next weekend I'm planning to run another marathon in Jeollanam-do with my buddy Jimmy, my running buddy Jimmy who again, if you're a regular Q-Lips listener, undoubtedly you've heard me mentioned before.
Jimmy and I run many marathons together.
Now, I ran this race last year, last spring, but I only ran the half marathon and I had a very good result.
I had a personal record in the half marathon.
And Jimmy, my running buddy, he also had a great results in the half marathon that we did last year.
And so I think it was Jimmy's idea this year.
He said you know what, since we had such great results last year At the half marathon, this year let's bump it up to the full marathon and maybe we can repeat our great results this year and we'll do a full marathon.
Now these days, because of the running boom that I think many countries around the world are experiencing.
So many countries have just tons of people who are now into running and Yeah, it's boomed.
It's like this huge trend and fad and there are so many people participating in the sport these days, which is really awesome to see.
But because of this it means that actually participating in one of these races, like a marathon or half marathon, It is not so easy.
And if you want to do it, you really have to be on the ball.
Be on the ball means you have to be paying attention.
You could imagine maybe the image of my head for this expression.
Let me just explain the image.
It's like somebody trying to stand on one of those yoga balls.
You know the yoga balls that you can sit on and do some stretching on.
You know those big inflatable yoga balls?
Imagine if you were trying to stand on that ball.
Then you would really have to be paying attention and put all of your focus into staying upright and not falling on your face.
Probably, if I were to try to do this in reality, I would immediately fall on my face.
But that's This expression to be on the ball just means to be focused and paying attention.
And if you want to sign up and participate in a running race these days, you must be on the ball, because almost as soon as they're announced and the registration period is open, they sell out and spots are limited.
So you have to act really, really quickly.
So I don't even remember when it was.
Another thing because of the running boom is like the registration period can sometimes be six months or nine months before the race actually begins.
So I don't even remember when I registered for this race.
However, I registered for the full marathon and at the time it seemed like a great idea.
But now that I have to do it next week, I'm kind of like, oh, I don't know.
I don't know if I want to do it or not.
It feels like I just finished running the soul marathon.
And to be honest, now that I'm in my forties, like I'm going to be turning 42 next month.
The recovery period after running a marathon seems to take longer and longer and longer.
And it's only going to be like six weeks in between marathons.
I'm just not sure if that's enough time or not.
I don't know.
I always seem to make excuses for myself too before a marathon.
So maybe I'm just doing that.
Maybe I'm just making excuses.
And who knows?
Maybe I'll have a great result again this year.
I'm not sure.
Probably when it comes time to run and you know, the firing gun is fired and it's time to start.
Probably I'll full send it and try and put all of my energy into running a good race.
But for right now, I feel like I don't want to do it.
But we'll see.
We'll see how it goes.
Please cross your fingers for me and wish me luck.
So already then this spring, as of around this time next week, I will have finished two marathons already.
And so that's kind of like...
My limit of what I've usually done is just two per year, one in the spring, one in the fall.
But now this year I have two in the spring, but still I want to do one in the fall, because historically I've done much better running in the fall than I have in the spring.
I think it's better for me to train in the summer and then run quickly in the fall than it is to train in the winter and try and run quickly in the spring.
Seems to be just the way that things work out for me.
So my marathon buddy Jimmy and I, we were debating, OK, what race should we run in the fall?
There are several decent options here in Korea, and one of them is called the JTBC Marathon, which is one of the more famous, more prestigious marathons that happens in the country.
And it's the big fun. fall race here in Seoul.
Now, last year was the first time that I participated in the JTBC marathon and I had a great race.
I beat my own personal record by a lot, by like seven minutes.
It was an amazing PR for me.
And the race was really tough and challenging.
And I remember saying to my wife as I finished the race and she met me in the finishing area after the race I said I want to retire.
I don't want to do marathoning again.
And I definitely don't want to do this race again.
Jimmy, who also ran the race with me, he said the same thing.
Wow, this course was tough.
It was terrible.
Let's not do it again.
Next year, let's do a different fall marathon.
So that's what we pledged and resolved to do.
However, we're recently browsing social media and on Instagram We saw the story for JTBC where they said the lotto for registration is happening soon.
Now, because this race is so big and popular, you can't even just register for it.
First, you have to register for a lottery.
And then if you're lucky enough, you'll get selected and then you can register.
So it's like this weird system and it's kind of complicated.
I'm not exactly sure how it works.
However, You know it's weird after some time passes and you look back on things, you're like sure that race was tough.
It was difficult.
But now I have the experience of doing it.
Maybe I can do a better job this next year, this upcoming year.
And so Jimmy and I both were like.
Why don't we just throw our hat into the ring?
Why don't we just try the lottery and see, you know, like it's free to register for the lottery.
Who knows what will happen?
So that's what we did.
We registered for the lottery.
We threw our hats into the ring and we crossed our fingers to see just what would happen.
And the results of the lottery were announced recently that And it was kind of funny.
Like I said, it was a complicated process.
But as far as I understand, what happened was, depending on your race record, you got to be put into a different draw slot.
And so if you had a sub three hour time, which is what I had for my record then you were into the first draw slot.
And if you had like a little bit slower time than you were in the second slot and that there were maybe five or six different slots?
And if you weren't chosen from slot one.
Like there was a draw and my name was in the first slot, right?
The first bucket.
I didn't get selected, but that means my name would get put into the second bucket and there would be another draw, but my name would still be in there.
And so there were several different draws.
That happened on the Friday afternoon when all the names were selected.
And I guess this works out like it's kind of unfair, really.
It's like if you have a faster time, then you have a higher percentage of actually being able to register for the race, because your name gets put into more slots for more draws.
Right.
This kind of thing.
So regardless about whether that's fair or not, I'm not here to comment on their lottery system.
However, that's how it worked.
And yeah, I think the lottery started at like 2 in the afternoon.
And they said by 4 pm in the afternoon if you don't hear back from us, then that means you weren't successful.
So I wasn't like... keeping my eyes peeled on the lottery all afternoon on that Friday afternoon.
However, I did notice on the clock that it had passed 4 pm and I checked my phone to see if I had a message to be accepted to register for the marathon or not.
And I noticed, no, I didn't have any messages.
I sent a text message to Jimmy and I asked him, hey, were you successful?
Did you get selected for the lottery?
And he said no.
And that's kind of where we left it.
We're like, okay.
Well, destiny has made the decision for us.
We weren't destined to run this race for 2026.
We both didn't get selected for the lottery.
That's, that's it.
That's, that's it.
That's all.
As they say in Quebec, in Canada, that's it.
That's all.
And so, okay, whatever, no problem.
And then, about an hour later, I got a message and it said Andrew congratulations, you have been selected to run the JTPC marathon in the foreigners draw.
And so I guess there was an extra lottery for foreigners, specifically to And I don't know how many were selected.
Probably not that many.
I don't think there are that many foreigners who live in the country that participate in these races.
But I guess there's enough of us that they had to do a lottery specifically for foreign residents in Korea.
And so I was successful in that one.
And then I was shocked.
I was like, oh my gosh, I got in.
So then I messaged Jimmy and I said, were you selected for the foreigners lottery?
And he said, no, I didn't hear anything.
And I thought, well, okay, give it an hour or so.
Like maybe they're still drawing names and you'll hear back from them shortly.
But a little bit later that evening I messaged him again for an update and he said nope, I got a rejection, a rejection message.
In fact, saying that I wasn't successful and that I would have to try again for a different year.
So that kind of sucked.
Like when only one of us gets in.
And so we've resolved to do a different marathon together.
Like our.
We have several different options and we're going to try and run the same race together in the fall.
That's awesome. our plan.
However, I had a few days to make a decision.
Do I want to do this JTBC marathon or not?
And originally, as soon as I heard that Jimmy didn't get selected, I was a little angry or ticked off.
I was like, this is so stupid.
This system, this lottery system, what's going on here?
What has running come to these days where you can't even run in a marathon if you want to?
And so initially I was like, I'm not going to do it.
And I think the draw was made on Friday and I had until Tuesday to register if I wanted.
And after Tuesday, I would lose my slot.
However, guys, it's really weird.
FOMO, the fear of missing out.
During Saturday and Sunday, I was mulling it over.
And by Monday, I had decided, you know what?
Screw it.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to sign up for the JTBC marathon.
Because my thought process was...
I had a great race last year at that marathon.
It's also a really difficult marathon and I'm not one to shy away from difficult things.
I kind of like challenges and I know that it's difficult.
So that's exciting to me.
Three, I know what to expect this time.
Now I have some experience of running it so I can maybe possibly do a better job.
And then four, it was just like the fear of missing out.
I mean, I was lucky enough to get this opportunity and I think it's kind of not cool to pass on good opportunities in general.
So you know what I said screw it like I'm getting older, who knows how long I can run for and run these marathons right.
Like, Lord willing, I can do it for a long time, but who knows?
So I decided, okay, I'm doing it.
So I signed up and I registered.
So that's going to be my third marathon, but I still want to run a marathon with Jimmy.
And I think that will be like my A race.
The race that I really focus on and put all my attention into is going to be the one that i will run with jimmy, which is tbd to be determined we don't know yet.
But then yeah, if i just fun, run the jtbc, or maybe i do a full send, full effort, run twice.
In the fall we'll see.
It depends on the timing.
But yeah, i guess this year will be the double the amount of official marathons that I run.
It looks like I'll be doing four marathons this year.
So please, please, please wish me luck.
Now ironically, all of this is coinciding with this huge lack of motivation lately for me for running.
After I finished the Seoul Marathon, I took about a week to recover.
And after I recovered, then I had two really amazing weeks of training.
Lots of volume.
I was running like eight or nine hours for those two weeks, around 100 kilometers per week, and doing fast, intense workouts to to try and build my running skills.
However, something just hit me like a ton of bricks after those two weeks and I just haven't been motivated at all to run for the last two.
Going on three weeks now.
I have no idea what it is.
I haven't quit running completely or anything like that.
I've still been going out for some slower jogs and stuff.
Yeah, maybe I've been running like 40 kilometers a week instead of the 100 that I was doing before.
And I've been doing not too much speed work, mostly just slow jogging it.
So I don't know what happened.
Like just out of the blue, I got hit with, it's almost like writer's block.
You know how writers sometimes.
They want to write their next masterpiece novel or their next amazing song or something.
And then they get hit with just this frustration and lack of motivation.
That's what's happening to me right now.
I just don't really feel motivated to go out and run.
And I'm not sure why that is.
So if you have any tips for me about like, how to get out of a funk, how to snap myself out of this just this attitude of not really caring about running these days please let me know, because I have signed up for these races and I'm going to do them.
If I sign up for them, as long as I'm healthy, I'm going to do them.
I would never not do something just because of a lack of motivation.
It's different if you're injured, but if it's just a motivation thing, That's not cool.
So I'm definitely doing them, but I just don't feel like getting out there and running these days.
It's really weird.
This is maybe the first time that it's happened to me, where it's just like I've lost the mojo or something.
I'm not sure.
So if you have any tips, let me know in the comments or on our Discord server, because I would love to be able to break out of this funk.
And a funk is what we call like a depression.
It's almost like I'm depressed or something.
It feels like Maybe some of the symptoms, like some light depression where I just don't feel like running,
So who knows?
But if you have any advice or tips or solutions, please let me know.
I am definitely all ears.
For my second story, I'm going to briefly talk to you about gardening.
This was a requested topic by several QLips members that I chatted with during our last speaking class.
Guys, last week we had just an amazing speaking class here at QLips.
We had, I think, 28 or 29 people join me on Tuesday evening.
We'll see you next time.
Our weekly small group speaking classes where I can interact with Q-Lips listeners and members.
And they're really, really fun.
We've got a great community here at Q-Lips.
But during that class, we were briefly talking about gardening.
And so I thought I would share some updates from my garden for this year.
So I have a little yard in front of my home and my wife is really into gardening.
So she does most of the work.
She's got some great trees and she's got cacti and she's got just all sorts of different lovely flowers and plants.
And it's amazing.
Our garden is looking beautiful. better and better and better each and every year.
This spring, it's the best it's ever looked.
I think we have this great lilac tree, these beautiful purple flowers, and so fragrant as well.
Just walking outside is amazing because you get the great smell of the lilacs.
But the thing I want to talk to you about is my little vegetable garden.
I have a very, very small, but very, very productive and flourishing vegetable garden.
And it's kind of unique the way that it all came about.
I guess it was in the winter time.
We got a flyer.
I think. it was a flyer or maybe it was like our local newspaper.
We get a newspaper every couple of months for the district in Seoul that I live in.
I think it's published by the local regional district government office.
And we always like to read it because it gives you some neighborhood updates, like some news stories from the neighborhood.
And it tells you about different rec programs that are coming up, like classes you can sign up for, and this kind of thing like local news, right.
Well, in that local newspaper there was an ad saying that there's a government program that you can take advantage of where, if you just register, then you can get a mini vegetable garden.
So what they do is they give you this big planter box, They give you some vegetable seedlings, and the seedlings are like the mini plants that are already established but not full grown, like those baby plants that you can transplant into the garden.
And they give you a big bag of soil and everything's for free.
You just need to register for it.
So we registered for that.
And I guess it was probably early in April when it was delivered to our door and we got it.
We got all of these things, which was awesome.
It's like this big neon green planter box.
It's not just like a big empty planter box, but it had some piping inside and some platforms that you had to install in there first, which I think are like for water management.
So maybe it's slightly like a hydroponic grow box and hydroponics means growing plants in water.
So I think it's kind of 50-50 using soil, but there's some water management in the planter box as well.
Obviously, I'm not an expert.
Anyways, I got it all set up and you had to fill the planter box with some water.
And then put in the soil and get the pipes all hooked up.
And then I planted the little, we got delivered lettuce.
I think maybe everybody got lettuce.
I'm not sure, but maybe people.
Some other people got different vegetables, but we got two different varieties of lettuce.
They gave us eight little baby lettuce. seedlings that I planted into the planter box.
And guys, it has been flourishing over the last month here.
It has been growing like crazy and we've already been harvesting and eating this lettuce.
It's so delicious and so soft.
I'll put some pictures online so you can check it out and just see how much it's growing.
But it's been really fun to see it just explode in growth, and I'm not sure what it is.
I like to think it's my green thumb that's really encouraging these plants to grow quickly, but probably it's just the location.
For whatever reason, it seems like we have a great location in our yard for growing lettuce, because they have been growing like crazy.
And the reason why I know our location is so good for growing lettuce is that I can see these planter boxes at other people's homes around our neighborhood.
So as I walk my dog through our neighborhood, I can see these big green neon planter boxes.
And I know, ah, You guys signed up for that program too.
Oh, you guys signed up for this program too.
And our lettuce is just doing so much better than the other three or four planter boxes that I've noticed in the neighborhood.
So yeah, I want to say that probably our location is very good.
And maybe it's just because I'm putting a lot of attention into making sure that that the lettuce grows well, that it's doing so well.
Who knows?
But as I said, they gave us eight lettuce plants.
And really, I don't know why they gave us eight.
Maybe that was a mistake because this box seems to be the perfect size to fit nine lettuce plants.
Like a three by three grid would be the ideal system, but we only had eight.
So that means there's like a quarter. corner of the planter box that's empty.
So I decided to plant some other plants in there.
So I recently just maybe last week, late last week planted some cilantro seeds and some basil seeds.
And I'm hoping that both of those will grow well in that position.
But from the reading that I did beforehand, it seems like cilantro really won't grow too well here in Seoul, because it doesn't like hot, humid weather.
And that's exactly what we have here in Korea.
But I'm hoping that the basil will do better.
We'll see.
It's an experiment.
Hopefully both of these things start seeding soon and I'll have some basil and cilantro, which are probably my two favorite herbs of all time.
But yeah, time will tell if those are successful.
If they grow anywhere near as well as the lettuce has been growing, then I'm in for a very delicious summer here up ahead.
So that's a little update from my garden.
The other edible that we have in our yard is our blueberry bush.
And it's flowering right now.
So you can see all the flowers on it, which will eventually turn to blueberries.
So they're on their way and it looks like we're going to have a bumper crop this year.
A bumper crop means a really good harvest. amount of food is grown.
If you have a bumper crop, it just means you were able to successfully grow a lot of food.
So looks like it'll be a bumper blueberry crop this summer as well.
Fingers are crossed for that.
And yeah, that's the update from my garden.
You made it all the way to the end of this episode.
I gotta pat you on the back because i was just rambling on and on and on.
In my mind when i hit record i thought i'm gonna make this a 20 minute episode, But here I am, going on for over 30 minutes.
So I apologize for being a little bit long in the tooth.
I gotta run because I'm meeting my wife for dinner.
And if I'm late, that'll be no good at all.
So I'm gonna...
Wrap things up here right now, everyone.
Please take care.
Have a great week up ahead.
Don't forget to check out our website Qloopscom, for more episodes and for more information about becoming a member.
And also join us in the Discord so you can practice your English with our amazing community.
Again, the link is in the description for this episode.
Guys, have a great week, take care, and I'll talk to you next time.
Goodbye.
