Hello everyone, and welcome back to another chatterbox episode here at Qlips.
chatterbox is the series for intermediate to advanced English learners that features interesting conversations between native speakers that's our design to improve your English listening and speaking fluency.
Today Anna and I are going to continue our series about the senses.
We've talked about hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling in previous chatterbox episodes and today We are going to talk about seeing and our sense of sight So we'll get started with this conversation in just a moment But before we do I want to let you guys know that there is a helpful study guide and an interactive transcript to accompany this episode It's a great way to get the most out of listening to this episode is studying with the guide inside the guide, there is a quiz, there are discussion questions that you can use for speaking practice or journaling practice.
There are detailed explanations and breakdowns and examples of some of the key vocabulary that you'll hear Anna and hear me use and much much more.
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Guys, Q -lips wouldn't exist without you so thank you so so much. Okay, Anna, welcome.
I should say hello by the way.
Hey, Anna, how's it going?
Welcome to the show.
Hello, Andrea, I'm very well, how are you?
I'm doing really well, Anna and I think that this episode is a very very timely episode talking about our sense of light and all about our eyes, because I had an incident with my eyes last week, I won't tell the whole story again, because I already talked about it in one of our bonus episodes.
But just to give you the brief synopsis, Anna, I was outrunning and there was this swarm of little bugs that were beside the river where I was running beside, and I ran through this swarm of bugs and some of the little microscopic insects, like very, very tiny ones, went into my eyes and they got stuck in there.
And as a result, my eyes became very blood shot and they didn't clear up so I had to go to the eye doctor.
And that was like the first time and forever that I've been to the ophthalmologist, the eye doctor.
And so yeah, I've been thinking a little bit about my sights and seeing over the last week or so.
And then yeah, we're going to talk more about it here.
So this is very timely for me.
And yeah, and I can see you, obviously, we're doing a video call here as we're recording, but our audience can't, and just to tell them, you and I, we both don't wear glasses, but I'm wondering, Anna, do you have contacts in?
Do you wear contact lenses or do you have glasses?
I am basically blind, I mean really, I probably, I probably am somewhere on that spectrum, but I have worn contact lenses and glasses all my life now probably Andrew when you see me when we're recording I'm normally wearing my lenses because I do prefer to wear my lenses when I'm working but I've worn lenses since I was about 12 years old.
So I am now 34, so that is a long history with contact lenses but if I'm not wearing my glasses or my lens is I cannot function and in fact something funny that happened to me recently and if anyone listened to this also wears contact lenses some freak incident happened and both my lenses fell out this happens sometimes Okay and I was out and I had to get home on the metro and I was like I don't I don't think I actually go home with our finances.
So I had to get a taxi because it's actually not safe for me to be navigating around a very busy European City Center without my contact lenses in.
So, in short, yes. I wear contact lenses and I need them.
They are a vital part of my everyday life.
What about you and you?
Do you wear lenses?
No. My eyes are pretty good.
I have pretty good sight of apparently when I was at the doctors the other day he tested my eyes and he was impressed.
He was like wow they're really great.
But the grass is always greener on the other side as the expression goes because I've always wanted to wear glasses.
I've always wanted that sophisticated academic look that comes with wearing glasses.
I haven't really been brave enough to try the fashion frames.
You know some people just wear glasses with the fake lenses just for the look but I always thought that that just wasn't also a very good look for me.
So yeah, no glasses, no lenses, just good eyes, but that's something to be thankful for, I'm sure.
Yeah, super jealous of your amazing eyes.
Unfortunately, for me, I was passed down the bad I gene.
In fact, all on my mum's side and partly on my dad's side, we all wear glasses, So there was no way that I was gonna get away with 2020 vision unfortunately So yes, I wear glasses and I wear contact lenses and sometimes I wear my glasses if I want a bit of a break And as you said, it's always nice if you want to look a bit smarter or a little bit more professional Just pop on a pair of glasses and you're on your way.
So they are very handy for that In that regard, yeah, is that regard Yes, I wonder and if I could ask you a question then.
So yeah you mentioned there that you have amazing eyes so you have really really good vision and we say in English I think it's 2020 vision which is actually the technical way to say your site is perfect.
Do you think that you rely more on your eyes than your other senses in your day -to -day life?
I think so. I think site is the major one for me.
Obviously hearing is also important but I mean probably if I lost any one of my senses I would feel like a huge loss right like all of our senses are important of course but sight seems like the biggest most important one that jumps out at me just like you said Anna when you were out and you lost both of your contact lenses and you had to take the taxi to get home it's really difficult even to navigate in your home when you can't see, but then let alone navigate throughout the world.
You know, it's very, very difficult.
So I think for me, sight is, is the biggest one.
What would you say?
Would you agree with that?
You've had a little bit more experience than I have because you actually been in that situation where you couldn't see when you're out and about.
Well, it's really weird, because on the one hand, it feels really scary, because when you can't see things.
And this, as you said, Andrew, I mean, this is our main sense as humans to defend ourselves as our sight.
We use our sight to know if we're in danger or not.
So when you can't see things and guys, just so you can understand what it's like for me, when I can't see, when I don't have my lenses in, it's like everything is very blurry.
It's not that it's black.
It's just that there's no definition.
So if even if you were like one meter away from my face, I wouldn't be able to know that it was you, even if you were my friend or family member.
So it's really scary but then the weird thing is it can also be relaxing.
Maybe not if I'm in the middle of the city centre, but sometimes when I'm at home, I do actually really like to just take my lenses out, not have my glasses on, and it can be quite relaxing and not very practical because, of course, I just bump into things.
But I always think as well that if there was a zombie apocalypse, I would be in trouble because as soon as my contact led to his ran out or if I broke my glasses that's it.
I would be completely screwed. Sub -Zombie would find me and I would be able to see it and then it would just bite me.
So there's always a downside and I think yeah there's zombie apocalypse anyone with glasses or lenses that's got a bit of a rough ride.
have you ever thought about doing one of those surgeries like a lasick I believe they call it or lasick I'm not sure how to pronounce it but one of those laser operations where they can correct your eyesight I have and a couple of my friends have done it but I don't know about you Andrew it kind of gives me a bit of the creeps I remember when I had I did have a problem with my eye a few years ago, I actually had an ulcer on my eye, on the surface of my eye.
And it was so painful.
And as part of that process, what they have to do, and sorry guys, if you're a little bit squeamish here, but they had to take a metal blade and scrape the front of your eye to get a sample for the ulcer or whatever it was.
And it was so traumatic, like, that.
I just thought, do you know what?
I don't want to do the laser treatment.
I just want to leave my eyes, I'm happy with my glasses, I'm happy with my lenses.
So I haven't thought about it, actually.
Do you think you would do it, Andrew?
If you had glasses or if you needed lenses, do you think you would do the laser treatment?
I think, although it does seem a little bit scary at first, like getting this laser blasted into your eye and I'm sure maybe it's not as harsh as it sounds like when you put it like that blasta laser into your eye.
But I know so many people who have done it and they said it was no big deal at all and now they can see perfectly.
So although it's hard for me to imagine and probably I wouldn't do it right away as I was saying, like I would love to actually have glasses as a fashion accessory.
So maybe I would want to keep them for a little while.
but yeah, I think in terms of safety, it seems like a pretty safe operation and I know many people who have done it, the only thing is the cost it's a little bit expensive but being able to have your eyesight restored is pretty amazing.
And I guess maybe we're getting there also with hearing technology just to sort of jump around to compare it with other senses, like if we lose our sense of hearing, we have hearing aids that we could wear right, but that's not a complete restoration of our hearing right?
That's just like a tool to help us regain that sense just like glasses are a tool that help us regain our sense of sight.
With the other senses I have no idea.
I don't think there are any medical procedures that could restore your sense of taste or your sense of touch, or your sense smell.
I think once if you lose those for some reason, probably they're lost forever.
Maybe there are some operations you could do, but I don't know of any.
However, with sight it's really amazing, right?
We can do that operation and we can regain that sense.
And so I think that's pretty unique when we compare it with other senses.
So yeah, it's hard for me to say because I'm not in that situation.
But I feel like it's pretty safe.
And it is expensive, but it's not like break the bank expensive, right?
It's not going to financially ruin you for the rest of your life or anything.
So I think I would strongly consider it.
Maybe I'll put it that way – I would strongly consider it.
Yeah, and that's a really good point you mentioned that this insight, there is actually something practical that you can do about it if you do suffer from bad eyesight and you want to make it better, which is different than in the other senses as well.
I was wondering Andrew if I could ask you about what kinds of visual things calm you down or maybe help you focus, because I know in the other episodes when we were talking about the other senses we touched on this point.
So I wonder what about from a visual perspective, what comes you down or helps you focus.
Yeah, I don't know if I have any visual cues that can help me to calm down or focus.
I would say it's almost like the opposite of having something to look at to help me calm down or relax.
It's like removing visual stimulus helps me calm down or relax.
So if I do feel anxious or I need some relaxation time and closing my eyes or trying to find darkness, like, which is actually very, very hard these days.
I don't know if you've ever tried to go into like a dark room in your home or something because at least in my home, when I turn off all the lights and I try to make it dark, there's still like light from outside that will come in the window or there will be like some electronic device, like maybe my TV has a little red light on it or something, you know, like some electronic in the house will emit some light.
So trying to find darkness these days is really, really difficult, I've noticed.
But for me, I would say instead of having an image or something to help me find focus and calm, It's like the opposite, it's darkness, and giving my brain, and my eyes are break from having to process information, just letting it hang out in the dark.
I think that would be my answer, and how about you, do you have any kind of visual thing that you like to look at, to calm you down or to relax?
I mean, I guess we watch TV and stuff to relax, but anything else?
Sure, well, the first thing I wanted to say it's interesting because here in Spain and in other Mediterranean countries, one of the most amazing things is that they have shutters on the windows and that's pretty standard in most houses.
So I can shut her down my windows and there is no light that is going to enter.
So in my house can be completely dark which is amazing and of course it's for the summer when it's really hot here and actually during the day you don't want any sunlight coming into your apartment because it's gonna make it warmer.
So that's one thing that I absolutely love because I totally agree with you Andrews sometimes just having complete darkness.
Well actually I can only really sleep if there is complete darkness.
So I totally agree it's very, very relaxing just to switch off visually from things.
But one thing that I do find really relaxing are lights.
So I'm a big span of light changes and colors.
So I have lots of these light changing bulbs in my house that I set up to have different lights at different times.
So when I wake up in the morning it's kind of a warm white and it's quite bright.
And then when I go to bed or about 8 o 'clock, the lights change so it goes to more of a orange hue.
And then just before I go to bed, I use a red light.
So for example blue light when you look at your phone and you visually see that it keeps you awake Where is red doesn't actually affect your body in any way so it's not going to keep you awake at night when you should be sleeping so that's one of the things I use on a day -to -day basis to keep me calm to keep me relaxed and also to tell my body visually now is the time of to wake up and now it's a time to relax And I do think that it makes a big difference.
And the best thing is, that those light bulbs are light changing ones, they're really actually quite cheap nowadays.
And you can just set them up on your phone and I absolutely love them.
They make such a big difference to my house.
I love them. I think even on my computer and my phone, maybe there are apps built -in that block the blue light that come on at a certain time of the evening and some people wear blue -light blocking glasses.
I don't know I've never tried that, I should maybe try it.
I wonder if it would improve my sleep quality.
I usually feel like by the end of the day I'm so tired that I just pass out and it doesn't really matter.
If I look at a screen or not, I'm pretty tired, but I'm also like you Anna, where I really enjoy the darkness but unfortunately here in Seoul, it's almost impossible to find a dark area because there are just so many lights outside and we have obviously, we have some like window shades, but they're not shutters like you have in Spain.
So there is some light that seeps through the cracks in the blinds.
And because of that, I actually wear an eye mask at night to block the light out and I usually wake up and the eye mask is not on my face.
So it doesn't make it all the way through the night.
I can't wear it all night.
I guess at some point when I'm sleeping, it becomes uncomfortable.
And so I sort of knock it off on my face.
but when I'm falling asleep, I find that it really helps because I do get that complete darkness experience when I have the eye mask on and I shopped around and tried many different types until I found the perfect one that's like comfortable and still blocks out all of the light and gives me complete darkness.
So yeah, it's kind of weird that we're talking about seeing and sight, but one of our focus points here is actually how the absence of sight and darkness is so important for our lives as well.
Yeah. You should definitely try the blue light thing.
I always have my computers always on night light mode.
So always even during the day, it's always on that setting and all of my devices as well.
So you should give it a try, Andrew.
You might notice a difference.
But like you said, if you're already tired anyway, maybe it will bake.
Maybe it will be too much of a difference.
I guess. Yeah. And could I shift our focus here for a moment?
I wanted to talk with you about the role of visual information, images, in sight, in learning.
Because I know we have different styles of learning, right?
And one of the most popular kind of learners out there is a visual learner.
And me personally, I don't think that I'm really a visual learner.
And what I mean here, guys, by visual learner is somebody who can really connect with image as well and is able to retain and remember a lot of information when they learn it with a picture or learn it with a chart or an image or a video, something like that.
So for me, I think I'm better at reading information and having it stick vs seeing information and having it stick and here, stick means just like remain in our brain, right?
But how about you Anna?
Are you a visual learner?
Do you rely on your sense of sight to learn new information?
Well, as far as I know, all of humans have a tendency, or I should say, brains have a tendency to be visual.
And a good example of this is that when you don't remember somebody's name, for example, if you've ever had the experience where you're like, oh, I remember the face, but I don't remember the name.
So, many of us have that visual recognition first, but also we have learning preferences so some people prefer to read and But your brain is geared towards being more visual.
But yes, I am a visual learner, and I'm going to give you an example.
At the moment I'm trying to learn all the capital cities in the world, all the countries and capital cities in the world.
Why? This is a really good question, why?
I'm a geographer, so I love geography and I love maps.
And it really annoys me when I do quizzes, and I don't know the capital cities and countries.
And I just wanna learn it.
I think there's so many places in the world I don't know and it's a way to discover different places as well.
Okay. There's a website online where you can do lots of geography quizzes and one of them is where you just have a map and you have to identify all the different places.
And when I'm learning it and when I'm remembering it I'm visualizing that map in my head and I'm going through and I'm visually sort of pointing okay this is the country, this is the capital city so I do picture it in my head so I definitely think that I am more geared towards being a visual learner and that works really really well for me.
I don't know about you but when I'm navigating so one thing that i'm quite good at is compared to my partner for example is I will be able to go to a place that say a new city and I'll take a new route, and once I've done that new route, it's visualized.
It's in my head and I can almost build a picture of it, like a 3D model in my mind of the city and where we're going.
Whereas my partner, on the other hand, you know, they'll be like, oh, we've never been here before, and I'm like, we were here last week.
I mean, I don't know how you don't remember where we are.
I mean, he's like a goldfish.
I mean, it's great because you know, Just everything is new, everywhere is a surprise.
But I think that's also something to do with like visually seeing places and then being able to map them in your mind.
It's not exactly the same thing, but yeah, I mean, I'm definitely a visual learner.
But in some ways, I think we all are.
We just have other preferences as well.
So that's my take on it.
Yeah, I'm very visual definitely.
That's a great point and when I said that I wasn't a visual learner I don't mean to say that I don't rely on my sense of sight to learn at all and As you mentioned there, the name and the face example is a great one Like humans were hardwired to remember faces, right?
At least I think most of us are and You can see somebody once and remember their face for a long long time even though you may have forgotten their name a long time ago, but you're like, oh, I recognize you.
I've seen you before, right.
So we do have that great visual memory in regards to faces, but I know for me, I've just tried, I'm studying Korean, I'm learning Korean and have been for around a decade or so now and I've tried like many, many different experiments with my learning and at certain points in the past, I've tried using images to remember different words, or I've even associated some words with colors and tried remembering it that way and I've done different experiments like that in the past, which would be more visual, adding kind of like a visual aspect to language that was different than just writing, right,
because also reading is, of course, visual, but it seems like a different kind of system that's at play when we're talking about images, versus reading and so I've tried that and I didn't have like great results it wasn't like a breakthrough that oh if I associate different words with different colors like I can remember things easier didn't really help me in anyway so that was a failure that experiment but...
But you tried it, that's the important thing you've got to try these things and see what works and that's what I always say to my clients and things is you know you've got to just find something that's interesting and engaging for you the more you're engaged in it the more that you're going to learn.
So if something is not quite sticking or doesn't feel right just switch just change and try something else there's no point trying to continue for example doing Andrew like you said your visual system if it just doesn't click with you because just won't learn effectively.
So find, find what clicks for you.
For me, that map thing is such a good way to learn the capital cities and countries.
I don't think I would be able to learn it the same if it was just a list of words, and it just works so well to have that map there in the background.
So works well for me, but that doesn't necessarily mean it works well for you, and everybody, and everybody's brain is different and works in a different way in terms of learning effectively.
I remember reading about some like memory champion, he was like one of the Guinness Book of World record holders that could remember like huge strings of random numbers or some like really really difficult data he could remember.
And he used this technique called the memory palace technique.
I don't know if you've heard about this Anna or not, but in your brain, you create like this huge house or this castle and then you decorate the interior and or sometimes you can even use it for your own home and you're supposed to associate like some information with the walkthrough of the palace or the walkthrough of the home.
So you go through the front door and you turn to maybe where your shoe rack would be and there they're sitting the number one so that's a one and I don't know.
I've tried like doing these kind of memory techniques with the Korean language especially when i was riding out and trying to remember the vocabulary.
Turns out that we can learn vocabulary just over time and by doing a lot of reading and listening to the language.
And I think that helped me, but when I was more at the beginner stages, I was trying to learn a lot of information quickly, right?
So I tried one of these memory palace techniques, associating different vocabulary and decorating my home in my mind with Korean words and it just failed spectacularly for me.
It didn't work at all.
So that's another kind of visual memory technique that I've tried in the past that just didn't really work for language learning.
But maybe for like random strings of numbers, it would be okay.
But not for vocabulary, per se.
And there's one more topic that I wanted to touch on here before we wrap things up and well, actually, I'm curious, Alex, I don't know this about you.
On a scale of one to 10, how would you rate your artistic abilities in terms of like drawing and sketching.
Are you pretty good at that or not so good?
Oh, no. I mean, it's got to be somewhere in the low, three, two, something like that.
Of the low, three's.
Yeah, the low three is gonna be a low three there.
I would say that I like creating things, but I'm definitely not artistic in any way shape or form.
What about yourself and two?
Me too. I'm like really, really bad when it comes to drawing, sketching painting any visual arts.
I'm even worse than a low three.
I'd maybe be like a mid one.
Yeah, right, like a 1 .5.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm very poor at it.
But what I think would be so fascinating is to see the world through the eyes of a true artist because I have some friends who are actually quite good at art.
And the way when you see them draw and they notice the way that light reflects off objects or how shadow works and perspective to me it blows my mind because like we're looking at the same thing but you see something that I don't see like just because my eyes are not tuned into the way that light bounces off things and how shadow works and perspective and shape all of these things to me that's like they're seeing a hidden world that I just don't have access to And I think that's really, really amazing.
Like, it's probably something that you can learn, learn how to see, but I don't think I've learned those lessons yet about how to see things.
And that blows my mind when I think about that.
There is this like world out there that's hidden to me because I just don't have the talent or the artistic ability or I haven't put in the time to learn how to see the world in that way.
Have you ever thought about that at all Anna, or have you ever considered the things that are out there in the world that maybe are right in front of our noses?
But we just don't see for whatever reason.
Sure, and I think it's a really good point.
I mean, I was a gallery recently in Edinburgh, the National Gallery, and it was amazing.
Some of the paintings they have there are just incredible, and you think how has somebody actually been able to do that?
Because sometimes when you look at paintings up close, they don't really make much sense, and it's only until you get a little bit of perspective, all the colors and light come together.
But I do have a family member who's a tattoo artist, and it's really interesting because he's an incredible drawer.
I mean, he can draw amazing, amazing pictures.
And he just says it's practice.
He says, it's not to do with talent, it's to do with practice.
Now, I'm not sure if I 100 % believe that, because I think really, if I just practice and put in the time, I'd be able to draw like that, he is adamant, he's absolutely insistent.
It's not about talent, it's just about practicing.
And he has spent thousands of hours drawing, and whenever you see him, he's got his iPad with him, and he's always drawing on his iPad.
So maybe it is just practice.
maybe there is something that all of us could unlock and see if we made the effort to do that.
But I think I'll say about the world from my terrible drawing.
I think I'll stick to podcast for now, but never know.
Maybe that could be a new branch of my work, but I think I'll rely on the experts.
No. I think there's gotta be something to that.
Like most skills in life, we can get to a high level just with practice and repetition and time and effort of course.
So I think probably you or I, if we actually started learning how to draw maybe we went to an art school and took some classes we could probably go from like our mid ones and low threes, up to like sixes pretty quickly probably within like a year or two of, of studying and practicing but to get to that really super high level that's where I think maybe the talent comes in.
But yeah, just like most skills in life, I'm sure that you can get there with hard work.
But yeah, for me, I think I just like it to remain kind of a mystery like we can't be good at all things in life, right?
And so we have to be humble and sort of recognize that, yeah, probably, you know now that I'm in my early 40s here, I'm not going to have enough time to ever learn how to draw really well.
It might be something that I just have to never really learn how to do in life.
And that's okay, and one of the nice side effects of making that decision is that I can have my mind blown by people who can see the world in a totally different way and I can appreciate their talent and appreciate that skill so much more as somebody who can't really understand it.
And so, not understanding it is one of those mysteries that kind of gives me some joy in life and makes me appreciate art even in a deeper way in a weird way as well.
So, yeah, I don't know.
That's just a thought that comes into my mind whenever I'm thinking about seeing individual information and all of those things.
Guys, we're going to continue the conversation about the senses in our next episode as well, and you may be thinking, Andrew, there are only five senses.
And it's true, we have only five physical senses, but we also have this concept in English to talk about our intuition, And we often call that our sixth sense.
In our next chatter box episode, Anna and I are gonna talk about our sixth sense intuition and I'm looking forward to that one.
But for now everybody, I think we'll wrap things up here.
Please don't forget to check out our website, qlips .com because that's where you can get the helpful study guide to accompany this episode.
And also join us over on our Discord community.
We have, if you can believe it or not, over 8 ,000 people who are a member of our Discord community now.
And we hang out there as a community.
We're chatting and practicing our English each and every day.
And we'll definitely be continuing the conversation about this episode over there.
And we'd love to hear your thoughts, your opinions, your takes about seeing and the sense of sight.
So join our Discord by clicking the link in the description for this episode.
Of course, it's free for everyone to join, And we'll talk to you about seeing and sight over on the server.
Alright, Anna I think it's time for us to wrap this one up here for today So thank you so much for listening everybody and guys.
We'll catch you in the next episode.
Bye bye. Catch you soon guys.
Bye
