Hello everyone and welcome to Simplified Speech, the QLIPP series, which features clear, natural and easy to understand English conversations between two native speakers.
And joining me today for this episode is Indiana.
Hey there, Indiana.
How's it going?
Hey, Andrew.
I'm doing awesome, as I have just turned 30 and I'm coming off of a great trip with my husband last week.
So I'm in a pretty good mood.
Awesome.
Well, happy belated birthday from me and all of our Q-Lips listeners, on behalf of all of our listeners as well.
I'm sure they would love to wish you a happy birthday.
And happy belated birthday is what we can say when your birthday has already passed, right?
Like, Indiana, your birthday was, what, a week ago, several days ago?
It was pretty recent, right?
But When it's already passed, but you still feel like you want to congratulate someone on a birthday, then you can say happy belated birthday.
So yeah, Indiana, happy belated birthday.
And today in this episode, you are really going to be the star, Indiana.
We're going to talk all about your birthday, how you celebrated it and a special surprise trip that you took.
But everyone.
Before we get started, let me tell you that there is a helpful study guide and an interactive transcript to accompany this episode.
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You can learn all the details and you can sign up and become a member today.
Okay, and with that announcement out of the way Indiana, I think we should jump right in and get started with your story.
So let's start at the start.
Where do you wanna begin?
Do you wanna begin with the birthday or the trip?
What's the best way to approach this?
Sure, so I'll start with a small story about the fact that last year, for my husband's 30th birthday, I planned a small surprise trip for him where he didn't know where we were going to go, but he knew that we would be away for the weekend.
And I organized it so that all our friends went with us to visit a town in Massachusetts where we did a bunch of fun things like go to a barcade, which is like an arcade, where you play games and drink alcohol and play pinball and stuff like that.
We call that a barcade?
Yeah.
A barcade.
Yes, exactly.
Okay.
So it's like a blend of bar and arcade.
I love that.
That sounds really fun.
It's so much fun.
So, like I planned various activities for him that he would be into and that we both would be into, and our friends
Last year, for his 30th birthday, we went to Mass MoCA, which is a really cool modern art museum in Massachusetts.
So I did this nice fun trip for his 30th.
That was last year.
And then this year I turned 30.
So I think I was kind of like, oh, I hope we do something fun.
I hope we have a good time for my big milestone 30th birthday.
So I think he he got the obvious hint that I wanted to do something fun and maybe go on a trip or have some sort of celebration.
So he really planned a really cool, much bigger trip actually, which was a surprise for me.
And he said, we're going, we're flying somewhere.
So we went to the airport the day before my birthday and I had no idea where we were going to go until we got to the check-in and they said enjoy your flight to Las Vegas.
And I was like, huh?
Okay.
So for his birthday, you went all out.
You planned this big trip.
A lot of fun events going to a barcade, going to an art gallery, going to Massachusetts.
So yeah, a really cool trip. last year for his birthday.
And then you were kind of expecting the same treatment in return for your birthday here.
And as you said, your 30th birthday is a milestone.
It's a milestone birthday.
Maybe we should explain what that means to our listeners.
What does it mean if you have a milestone birthday?
Yes.
So a milestone is any sort of significant date, either because it's a, an even decade, like 30, 40 or 50, or because something good happens that year.
That's kind of exciting or a step of maturity.
For you like when you turn 21.
In the States that's a milestone because now you can legally drink alcohol.
Or I suppose, yeah, 18 as well, because I think you can vote.
There's lots of things you get to do at that age.
But after you get past those few, I think maybe...
Some people might consider 25, 35 also milestones.
But the biggest milestones are those decades like 60 70, anything like an even decade.
16th is also big.
Get your driver's license, at least in Canada.
It's 16 years old.
I know it's a little bit different from region to region.
We call it the sweet 16th birthday party, right?
Did you have a sweet 16 when you turned 16?
I did.
I don't think it was particularly sweet, lavish or exciting, but I did definitely have a party.
Yeah okay cool, so this must have been quite the surprise.
You're ready to travel, but you don't know where you're going at all.
And then you get to the airport and you find out Las Vegas.
Okay, we're going to Las Vegas Nevada, western part of the United States, and I'm wondering did your husband tell you like what to pack Or anything like?
Did you have any idea at all?
Because Las Vegas is in the desert, right?
If you're bringing like a winter parka or something, it's not very practical.
So did you have, like any inkling, any idea at all about where you'd be going, based on what he told you to prepare?
So I did ask him for tips on packing, and I was like, okay, what are the temperatures going to be?
What kind of stuff do I need?
So he tried to keep it as vague as possible, but he gave me the daytime and nighttime temperatures.
So I was like, okay, I know we must be going somewhere warm.
So maybe we're going south to Florida or something, the southern United States or maybe California, something like that.
I was thinking like, wow, that's a big trip.
But yeah, I had some sense of the climate, I suppose.
And let's talk about Las Vegas for a little bit here because it is really a unique place.
I think maybe there's nowhere in the world quite like Las Vegas.
Unfortunately, I've never been there.
I would like to visit at some point.
It's only a couple hours away from my hometown by airplane.
And there are lots of cheap flights and packages to go from Canada to Las Vegas.
So it's pretty easy to travel there.
And so that's why so many people I know have been there.
So I've heard lots of stories, but I haven't been there myself.
But could you just maybe paint a picture for us about what kind of city Las Vegas is?
So I think Las Vegas is most famous as being a place where you can go to the casino.
There are so many different casinos, all owned by the same company, I believe.
There's the Las Vegas Strip, which is this main street that is just covered with restaurants and venues for concerts or magic shows and tons of casinos.
So I think the impression that I had there before I visited and of course that impression was upheld, it was true when I went there was like it was gonna be a non-stop kind of city where there's always something going on and it's very bright and flashy and, in your face, like come to this store, come to this casino, like very, very intense.
Yes okay, so it's got a reputation for casinos, for gambling, for unique hotels, for shows and performances, like you said magic shows, comedy shows, concerts.
And I think, when it comes to concerts and we'll get into this a little bit more I think of residencies.
So maybe an artist that instead of touring from city to city to city will do a residency in Vegas where they will tour, perform several times a week for a long time, for like six months.
I know the famous Canadian singer Celine Dion.
She did a Vegas residency for years.
So instead of touring the world, she stayed in one place and you could go to her if you wanted to see one of her concerts.
And I think a lot of artists do this.
And also I think of entertainment in Vegas as being a little bit older.
Like.
It's maybe not where you would see the cutting edge new musicians play, but you could maybe catch an older act, and a lot of singers from yester years will perform there.
So that's the kind of place that I think of when I think of Vegas.
I also think of buffet restaurants.
I've heard there's a lot of famous buffet restaurants and maybe we can get into that in a second as well.
And there are a couple of expressions related to Las Vegas that we have some sort of idioms and nicknames.
Why don't you tell me if these are accurate or not?
Okay.
The first one that comes to mind is Sin City, S-I-N-C-I-T-Y, Sin City, Las Vegas.
And of course, a sin is like doing something immoral, right?
Doing something evil or bad, right?
And so Sin City, why do you think people call Las Vegas Sin City?
And would you agree that it is a place where sins happen?
Well, I would definitely agree.
Not only the gambling and the casinos, but I think everybody's partying, trying to get drunk and be.
There's all sorts of people on streets in scantily clad outfits, sort of come to my gentleman's club, come to my business yeah, no for sure.
I think it's the very accurate description of the city.
Sin city, sin city.
And the other kind of idiom that people say when talking about las vegas is what happens in vegas stays in vegas.
What happens in vegas stays in vegas.
I'm sure you've heard that one before.
What does that mean?
Well, you're probably going to go to a city like Vegas to party, as I've said, to risk it all at the casinos.
You're going all out.
You're doing things you might not normally do on this crazy trip.
And so if something you might not want to get back home to your loved ones happens...
You know, if the friends you go with or the people that you're with, they should zip their lips at the airport and keep the stories within the city of Vegas.
Yeah.
So you might do some things that you're not so proud of, or you think okay, that those stories are best left unsaid.
Yeah.
If you lose all your money at the casino, you don't have to share that information with everybody back home.
Yeah.
I don't know if that is an official tourist slogan of las vegas or if somebody just created it, but yeah, it really spread and is really famous and, i think, an attractive thing to a lot of people.
They're like i can go wild in vegas and kind of keep it a secret and then go back to my regular life after and be a different person in vegas than i am back home.
That's right.
So listeners might be wondering, like what is Indiana doing in the city?
The city.
And honestly so, like when I was at the airport and then I learned we were going to Las Vegas.
It totally threw me for a loop, which means I was shocked and confused.
Like what, why are we going here?
It's, I'm not interested in gambling.
I mean, I liked a little bit of alcohol.
I like to party like slightly, but like the reputation that the city has, it's too much for me.
So I was like okay, surely then maybe we're doing something like an event that's going to be there, you know.
And that's why we would go all the way to the city.
So I was like okay, I'm suspicious, but I'm going to trust my husband and assume that he has something wonderful planned.
And that's the reason that we're going to this crazy place, and not because he thinks I'm interested in gambling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a very good point.
And we should say that many people visit Las Vegas regularly just to explore and just to have fun, and it can be whatever you want it to be.
Right.
And so, yeah, don't assume that just because Indiana visited there that she got up to no good.
I'm sure there are tons of people who visit there every year, who who don't do some kind of immoral things.
And with that being said, you get onto the airplane and you're, off to Las Vegas.
Now did your husband tell you all of the details about what he had planned for the trip at that point?
Or was it sort of a surprise that was slowly unveiled and revealed to you?
It was slowly unveiled, which I think is more fun.
Like, you don't know what's in store.
You don't know what you're going to do.
And then at the the exact moment where you have a choice like do you want to go do this thing or do you want to go do that thing?
That's what we have planned for today.
I'm like, oh, let's do this.
And it's very fun for it to be a last minute surprise.
I think we both agree about that.
So I was like, don't tell me anything until it's the moment to do it or until I'm there.
So yeah, it slowly, slowly unraveled into, oh, that's what we're doing today.
Yeah.
Nice.
Yeah, OK, that's fun.
So did you stay at any of the interesting theme hotels?
I know there are lots of different like famous hotels.
There are several different ones with different theme rooms and like really big famous hotel buffets and casinos in the hotels.
Did you stay at one of those places on the strip?
We did.
We stayed at the Luxor, which is in the shape of a pyramid and has a massive light shooting out from the top of the pyramid into the sky.
So you can't miss it from the plane or from the ground.
It was really wild.
Yeah, and just over the top, so extravagant, ridiculous building, ridiculous experience.
But yeah, it was kind of neat to just be in that building, for sure.
I recommend any listeners to who are interested look up some pictures of the Las Vegas strip and like the different hotels that are there, including the Luxor and the shape of a pyramid.
What do you mean it's over the top and ridiculous?
Like, is it the decor?
Is it just the general vibe inside?
Is it the size?
How is it over the top?
Yeah, just, I mean, because next to this pyramid is, is a giant sphinx statue out front.
And there are these walls that are decorated with I guess.
I don't know if they're real hieroglyphics probably not, but what looks like hieroglyphics.
And next to this building is another hotel which is in the shape of, or supposed to be, a medieval, cartoonish medieval castle from Europe.
And then down the street is a.
It's just some other massive building with a strange theme and it's all just in one mishmash.
Like you know, you just look in any direction and something really eye-catching and unusual is there.
So it's very overwhelming and just kind of like over the top is the word I already used.
But it's like, it seems like too much.
It's just very in your face and attention grabbing.
Okay, interesting.
Okay, so...
How about some of the activities you did then?
What did your husband plan for you during this trip?
So, as I mentioned, he knew that I would not be into spending like the whole time in the city and doing things on the strip and like shopping.
I'm not really into brands or anything.
So of course, the first night we had a nice walk around just to see what the environment was like.
We got some drinks, we got some food.
But the next day we went to a desert.
I guess you could call it a botanical garden, but it featured a lot of desert plants because of course Nevada is the desert, Las Vegas is in the desert, so there was lots of cactuses and really cool desert plants a little bit outside of the city.
So it was a bit more of a calm, natural experience compared to all of the hustle and bustle.
And...
We did that, but then that day was actually my real birthday and that's when this surprise event as I suspected, we were doing some sort of event that evening.
That's when that was going to be.
So we did stuff all day, and then we finally it was time to go to this event, which I still didn't know what it was.
So we crossed town on the monorail, and we're walking into another hotel, another casino.
Okay, what's the event happening here?
I can't seem to find any information, posters or billboards for something that would I would recognize like Oh, this is must be what we're going to, this must be what we're going to see tonight until like, we're right outside of the entrance of this theater.
And I finally see a poster that says tears for fears, which is a band that was really popular in the eighties that me and my husband both love to death.
Like we love them so much.
So I was like, ah, and I think I was like, Oh my God, you know?
Um, Like, this is so incredible.
Totally worth coming to the Sin City for this event.
So yeah, we got to see this band that we both really love perform live.
It wasn't a residency, as you had mentioned earlier.
So it's not like they were in the city for a couple months performing nonstop.
But I think it was like three nights of shows that they came for.
And yeah, so we saw this wonderful band.
Cool.
Tears for Fears.
So they're...
Synth-pop band, I guess, would be the genre, right?
From the 80s?
Yeah, new wave and synth-pop would probably be the top genres you'd associate with them, totally.
I think of their song, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, right?
That was their big hit.
So what was the concert like?
Did you really enjoy it?
It was interesting because it was seated and it was in this theater and...
Something that actually really bugged both of us was, before the concert started, the venue kept playing these covers of famous Tears for Fears songs that other artists had done.
Like they covered these songs, but they were all really bad covers.
And it was like, why are you torturing me with these awful covers?
I wanted to see the band like...
Don't play any music right now.
And then after the show, they also continued to put those covers on.
I was like, I don't need to listen to this.
I just saw them.
It's a bizarre choice, but maybe it makes the band actually sound better during the concert, right?
It's like when you compare the bad covers to the real deal, the real deal is just going to sound so much better.
So I wonder if that was a choice of the band to do that just to make their own performance sound good.
True.
A little sneaky tactic.
Sneaky tactic.
But yeah, very cool.
So Indiana, it sounds like you got up to a lot of different things.
A little bit of this, a little bit of that.
Did you hit up any of the casinos?
I didn't ask you yet.
Did you go gambling at all?
Did you do that?
Okay, so I really could have gone without it.
But I said, all right, I'll try the slot machine for two minutes.
And it was as uninteresting as I expected for me.
However, my husband was like, okay, if I'm here, I'd better try the experience.
So he played Blackjack for about an hour.
He turned $100 into $90.
So I would say he didn't do too bad.
But I think it was very fun for him.
And I guess it was cool to learn the game.
I had no idea how to play it.
So I watched him do it.
And it did seem like a novelty, a fun activity to do.
But yeah.
After an hour, I was like, okay, we got to go.
I'm getting bored.
Have you ever done any gambling yourself, Andrew?
Do you know how to play blackjack or anything like that?
I have been to casinos before.
I don't know really how to play too many casino games.
I know how to play poker and I've played poker with my friends, but...
I don't think I would trust my poker skills at a casino to play with strangers.
I'd probably lose all of my money right away.
I think.
Thankfully I'm not really too interested in gambling because I tend to fall in love with things that I try.
And I know gambling is super, super addictive.
And so I don't even really wanna try it too much.
But when I was a first year student in university, My friends and I used to go to the casino in my hometown.
It was right downtown.
So we'd hang out and we'd go to the casino because there was this one really big horse racing game in the middle of the casino.
It was made by the video game company Sega.
So I think this was like a Japanese horse racing machine.
And it was crazy because it was this big track and there were these mechanical horses, maybe the size of like a shoebox machine think of like a shoebox size horse and there were maybe 10 of them on this mechanical track and you could choose what horse you would like to bet on.
And then they would do a race simulation.
Like they would race the horses and one of them would win.
And I thought that was so funny.
Like you just watch this fake horse race around this mechanical track.
And so we would always just bet like a dollar or something.
We had no money.
We were just students, but it was really fun to do that.
So yeah, Yeah, I would bet on the mechanical horses and I've played bingo in the past.
Bingo and bingo halls are a big thing in Canada.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
And if you win bingo, you can get some money.
That's not really gambling, but it is a game where you can win some money.
So that's a lot of fun.
And what else?
Yeah, here in Korea I've been to also, there's a real horse track and I've been there before and I placed a bet or two, but again, nothing serious, just to sort of experience what it's like to do that.
But there are a lot of people who do bet seriously on the horses and I've also been to.
This was my favorite one because I really love cycling.
This is cool.
Here in the outskirts of Seoul there is a velodrome which is a place where bike races happen, and there are bike races, so cyclists will race each other and you can bet on which cyclist you think will win.
And that is super, super exciting.
I loved every second of that when I went there, I've only been once.
And I didn't really want to go again, because I was like, this is awesome.
This is so much fun.
And I could feel like, I might be the guy that's there every day betting on the cyclists.
Probably not a good thing if I go there too often, because I did think it was so awesome.
So Yeah, I have just a very limited experience with gambling.
It's not really for me.
And yeah, here in Korea, actually, it's interesting.
As far as I know, there are some casinos that foreigners are allowed to go to.
But for just a regular Korean citizen, casinos don't exist as a thing.
They're not available for Korean people that are illegal.
So yeah, not too many of them around here.
Very different than... your country and my country, I think.
Yeah, that's fascinating.
I have been to one casino here in Korea that was at a ski resort, actually.
And I went with my friends.
We were at the ski resort and we walked inside and it was mostly other Asian people, tourists from different Asian countries.
I think we were the only Westerners in there.
But the vibe was very different at this casino.
It felt heavy.
It was very quiet inside.
A casino in the States or in Canada is going to be really lively lots of lights, lots of music and sounds and just activity, hustle and bustle.
But this casino was very quiet.
And I felt like the atmosphere inside the casino changed.
Like people were seriously gambling, probably for large amounts of money.
And we played roulette.
We're like, okay, we're going to play one game of roulette.
And roulette is the game where you just put the ball into this spinning wheel.
And there are different colored slots.
And you have to guess, will it go into the red slot or the black slot?
If I'm recalling correctly.
And yeah, you can, win money that way if you can predict where the ball will finish.
And we predicted correctly.
I think we doubled our money.
We made a bet of around $5 and we doubled it to $10.
And we were really excited.
We were like, well, yeah.
And everybody looked at us like, shut up.
We're seriously gambling in here.
So we quickly just escaped.
We left.
And that was my only experience in a Korean casino, which is over a decade ago when I first came.
It was my very first year in Korea.
So yeah, that was the only experience I had.
A good one though.
I doubled my money.
So I have a good memory of visiting there.
Cool.
Well, Indiana, a very nice conversation.
I'm glad that you had a good trip.
Do you think Las Vegas is a place that you'll go back to again in the future?
Or is it one of those one and done destinations?
For me, I'm thinking it's probably one and done.
It's not exactly my kind of, it's not my cup of tea, I could say.
And there's plenty of other really cool places.
Like I'm very close to New York City.
If I want to see a famous musician, I can probably go there instead.
It's a little shorter of a trip.
But it was very special to see this band that I love on my actual birthday, the day of my birth.
As I turned 30, that was an unforgettable experience.
So I'm glad I went.
But yeah, perhaps I will not be going back anytime soon.
All right.
Well, thanks again for telling us all about your trip.
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