6 Hours of Listening English Practice Video @ESL English Learning

so Meg what do you like to do in your free time actually I love cooking I like to try new dishes and I love baking as well oh nice that's interesting because I hate cooking oh really yeah and I don't know anything about baking uh but I like cleaning cleaning is relaxing really is that true yeah really I like cleaning oh so my house is usually very clean M my house is usually clean also but I don't like cleaning very much yeah I think most people don't like cleaning but some people think cleaning is relaxing

like me that's true what else do you like to do uh well I like exercising I like going to the gym um I like listening to podcasts so I listen to a lot of podcasts a lot and I like surfing the internet and sometimes I enjoy reading books I also enjoy reading books when I have time but these days I often listen to books instead I listen to audiobooks oh really yeah I like listening to audiobooks why because I can't exercise at the same time ah so exercise in and reading at the same time yeah

it's fun so I love jogging and I go jogging almost every day usually for one hour so I listen to audiobooks when I jog oh so you can do two things at once very important multitasking right I love multitasking sounds like you're good at multitasking let's talk about outdoor activities sure do you like doing yard work I don't especially like doing yard work but right now I don't have a yard so doing yard work isn't something I have to worry about what about you I like doing yard work I think it's very relaxing it's like

cleaning so I enjoy it but like you I don't have a yard so now I don't do yard work very much or I can't do yard work so you like gardening if you have a yard yeah so I grew up on a big house so we had lots of yard work lots of gardening so yeah right but what about other things like hiking do you like hiking I love hiking anything that is in nature I love doing so I love hiking I love kayaking I love uh canoeing any outdoor sports do you like hiking I

do I'm with you I love hiking what about uh things like rock climbing I have never been rock climbing have you gone rock climbing no rock climbing looks dangerous so I'm a little scared yeah so I've never done Rock uh rock climbing either what about things like singing and dancing do you enjoy singing and dancing I enjoy singing but I'm not very good at it so I like singing when I'm alone or in my car are you good at singing no I'm terrible at singing so I hate singing I really really hate singing but I

like going to kok and listening to people sing yeah some people are really good at singing yeah what about dancing I hate dancing too yeah I'm not good at dancing so dancing is very embarrassing for me so I don't like it I'm not good at dancing either are there any other activities you really dislike doing like for me I hate writing letters for example I don't like writing thank you letters I don't like writing anything with my hand typing is okay I don't mind typing things but I hate writing so using your hand to write

you hate writing yeah I like typing fingers is okay thumb is okay on the phone like I don't mind texting right I don't mind typing I just don't like physically writing with a pencil or pen like yeah pen or pencil like a letter writing a letter right because my writing is really bad oh and it's hard to read so it's embarrassing how sure it's fine yeah how about you for example do you like ironing your clothes I don't like ironing my clothes but my clothes usually don't need ironing so I don't have to worry about

it too much I don't like doing laundry it's related to ironing clothes so it takes a long time and the clothes I have to dry the clothes so doing laundry is a little bit boring for me I don't mind doing laundry if I go to the coin laundry but I hate hanging my laundry out so I hate hanging out my laundry it takes forever I don't know why you put it out you take it back in it just takes so much time that's funny I'm kind of the opposite so I don't mind hanging out my

laundry because I like saving money so I don't have to use money at the coin laundry plus you are helping the environment that's true I like helping the Earth yeah I should change okay thanks Meg yeah Meg I'm going to give you a test okay it's a personality test uh-oh and we want to know are you a packrat am I a packrat right do you save things do you keep things or are you a minimalist do you have very few things in your house well I think I try to be a minimalist but I'm a

little bit of a packrat okay we take the test let's see okay the first question is how many books do you have in your house not counting Kindle not counting Kindle physical books how many books do you have physical books I think I have around 15 books oh is that a lot that's bad that's so many yeah so negative negative negative 1 means pack rat positive one means okay okay next question how many shoes do you have can I not answer that question no you have to say okay I think I think I have 25

pairs of shoes oh my gosh I'm giving you negative two points no just one all right next question is uh how many blankets do you have blankets um I think I have 10 blankets oh my gosh I knew you were a packrat I knew it I knew it now you're negative five but you need blankets for the cold winter you only need one blanket but if you have friends visiting you you need more blankets okay I have a lot of friends wow that's that is that's a good point okay next question how many umbrellas do

you have I I think I have around five or six umbrellas wow and you live alone correct yes I live alone okay so a pack rat is somebody who does not get rid of things they don't need so do you need five umbrellas I do need those umbrellas why do you I'll tell you I will tell you why one is a very small umbrella that's easy to carry another umbrella is very large for a really rainy day a third umbrella is decorative and very pretty the fourth umbrella is for the sun and the fifth umbrella

is clear to use on a really windy day that's interesting now the fourth umbrella for the sun that's called a parasol correct I guess so but that sounds a little oldfashioned okay I won't consider that I consider an umbrella for the rain only okay so we'll say four four so let's do I get a point back you do but let's do a recap you are single you live alone yes you have four umbrellas yes you have 10 blankets yes you have 25 pairs of shoes correct and you have 15 books 15 books I'm sorry Meg

but you qualify as a pack rat you are not a minimalist we're taking away your minimalist membership oh well I guess I need to get rid of some things huh and what about you are you a packrat or a minimalist I'm pretty much a minimalist I think because I only have two bags of stuff only two bags like yeah so you can take everything I have and put in two big suitcases so you don't have 15 books no I have maybe four books only four books and they're very small paperback books what about blankets I

have one blanket just one just one so if visitors come to your house that is true they're out of luck I when somebody comes to my house I ask my neighbor borrow a blanket I do why is that funny yes this is this is I am such a minimalist my friend told me he said I am the only person that has one blanket no a spoon and A4 a spoon and A4 for that's it I have okay so basically your house is not prepared for any visitors that's true whereas my house is prepared for many

visitors that's true okay umbrellas uh I have maybe two two so why two because I can't remember if I have one or I will leave the house and I won't take it and so then I need to buy one and then and then you get rid of one no then I just never buy another one I'm pretty good oh only two okay but shoes shoes I only have four pairs of shoes what are the purpose what is the purpose of each pair of shoes I have one pair of shoes for work nice dress shoes I

have two sneakers one pair of sneakers for running jogging one pair of sneakers for fashion and one pair of foota shoes for soccer that's it that's it wow yeah well I have to say you really sound like a minimalist yeah and you really sound like a packrat so Katie I want to go to the mall okay have you been to the new mall yeah I actually went there just yesterday okay so I want to buy some computer stuff is there a computer store there are two computer stores really oh that's good there's um a computer

store on the first floor and then very close to that there's also a Mac store ooh that's perfect I want to buy a new Mac oh me too they're so expensive though mhm okay what about uh books I really like books is there a bookstore with English books there's a huge bookstore on the fourth floor o that's good it's really big and there are lots of English books you can read there oh great nice and how about the food there um the food's okay there's a a big food court on the third floor and you

can get a variety of food you can get a Subway oh that's good I love sandwiches is the is the food good there though uh they don't have any sandwiches that I like at Subway really okay so what else is on the what else is there at the mall oh there's so much that the mall there's a cafe on the ground floor oh nice if you like drinking coffee I do I like to go and study and just relax that's the perfect place for you then I like to people watch is it a good people

watching place oh it's a great people watching place oh cool the windows are really big and you can see out onto the street oh cool what else is there is there a movie theater mhm there's a movie theater on the fourth floor oh great now do they have English movies they have English and Japanese movies oh that's good I should watch some Japanese movies too they're interesting and how about food I hear there's a new Supermarket a big Supermarket there it's pretty big and you can get lots of food there it's on the first floor

okay is there anything else I should see what about the Roof Garden oh what is the Roof Garden it's on the fifth floor and it's well it's on the roof and you can see a beautiful view of the city and there's also places for you to sit and just enjoy the view oh nice and Roof Garden I like that it's really nice now do you buy clothes at the mall do they have nice clothing shops they have um yeah they have nice clothing shops some of them are a little bit expensive ah yeah and I

like buying cheap clothes so okay is it when's a good time to go uh I think the best time to go is probably probably weekdays okay if you go on the weekend there are so many children there and it's it's hard to walk around yeah and we're teachers we teach kids all day mhm okay I don't want to go then no me neither well I want to go there next week maybe Thursday night okay do you want to join me yeah that sounds good maybe we can watch a movie cool I'll buy you dinner sounds

great so Katie you are from England correct that's right are you from a big town I'm from a very small town oh what's the name uh it's in the southwest it's called t t okay is it a fun place to live uh I think so it's it's very famous in the UK because we have lots of beautiful beaches oh that's nice so in your town where is a good place to go food shopping there are a lot of supermarkets that you can go to um most of them you need to go by car ooh that's

a problem it's difficult to walk to a close Supermarket but I'm lucky because there's one very close to my house that I can go to okay and can you recommend a good restaurant in your town where's a good place to eat dinner there are lots of amazing restaurants along the seafront so you can sit in a restaurant and you can look at the beach at the same time oh that's nice mhm how romantic it's beautiful is it expensive uh it depends what restaurant you go to if you go to an Italian restaurant that's going to

be expensive what kind of foods do they have they have all kinds of foods but the most popular food in my hometown is Italian food and Chinese food okay no British food not really it's okay we don't have American food either except hamburgers they're good though yeah uh in your town where is a good place to exercise it depends on what kind of exercise you like but we have lots of parks and people are always playing football in the Parks so there's a is there a big Park in the middle of town mhm okay is

it easy to get to it's pretty easy to get to most people can walk there so that brings us to Nature mhm where's a good place to see nature well you can see beautiful beaches where wherever you look there are so many beautiful beaches in t but there are also lots of beautiful gardens and you can see lots of flowers okay nice very nice that that is nice so are there walking trails on the beach mhm and in the Gardens Too there are walking paths that you can take and you can go in the mountains

oo beautiful see stuff there too that's lovely so in your town where is a good place to meet people well I keep saying the beach but lots of people from all over the UK come to toi to see the beach so you can meet lots of different people people come for their holidays okay so you can meet new people lots of new people yeah that's cool can make lots of new friends now what about a quiet place where's a good place to study or read or just relax well we have lots of cafes that you

can go to if you want to just have a quiet moment or just to read some books you can go to a cafe okay and are the cafes easy to find they're very easy to find and we have lots of famous uh Cafe Brands as well okay are the cafes on the beach too uh no they're in the town center but the Town Center is very close to the beach okay now when is a good time to visit your town so you say the beach so summer yeah I would say summer is a good time

but in England there is not usually a good time because it's raining almost every day but if you want to go to the beach probably summer is a good time okay what about the fall um I mean the fall is okay winter is good lots of people go to um go swimming on Christmas day well I definitely want to go there yes it's a lovely place so Katie let's talk about family okay in your family who is nice in my family I think my my mom is really nice uh she's always looking out for everyone

she always makes sure everybody is happy and she's just really nice and kind oh that's great who is a funny person who is very funny um I think in my family my dad is very funny but I don't think he knows he's very funny all right oh that's interesting now who is serious is anybody serious I don't think anybody is serious in my family no uncles or aunts Everyone likes to have a laugh Everyone likes to have a good time everyone's always joking oh what a nice family okay who is very hardworking uh well obviously

my mom is very hardworking and she's always been very hardworking she has to make sure that the whole family knows what they're doing she has to make sure the whole family is ready for every day um yeah I think my mom is the hardworking one okay is anybody not hardworking maybe a little lazy definitely me definitely me um especially when I was younger I would never help with any of the chores in the house I was definitely the lazy one oh I understand I'm the same way okay now in your family who is very smart

my brother is really really smart um he actually went to Oxford University whoa yeah he's very smart but I didn't get any of that my brother has all the smart jeans wow that's a good school okay who is very fit well my dad is a chef oh really and yeah my dad makes really really good food so no one in my family is fit we all eat too much food oh nobody exercises a lot not really oh okay yeah in my family my dad is super fit okay in your family who is talkative oh I

keep saying my mom for all of these but my mom is is definitely the most talkative she talks to anybody who even if people who she doesn't know she will talk to anybody strangers on the street people she meets at the bus stop she talks to everybody oh that's cool now who is quiet H I think when he's meeting people for the first time my brother is very quiet he's very shy he doesn't like speaking to new people a lot okay thanks a lot sounds like a nice family yeah I think so too hey Todd

can I ask you a favor sure anytime um I really need a place to stay uhhuh and I heard that your house is on Airbnb it is on Airbnb I do rent my house but for you it's free oh amazing yeah can I stay there then you can how long maybe a a week or two weeks okay uh when uh from next Monday yeah actually you can do that that that works excellent thank you so much how about uh how about a car can I park my car Ah that's a problem you can't park your

car because there's no space but there is a cheap parking lot about maybe two blocks away okay so it's only a couple dollars a day okay I guess I can park my car there how about cooking there can I cook of course yeah you can cook I have a stove refrigerator you can bring your own food you can do whatever you want excellent thank you can I use the internet you can use the internet um there's a password I will write down the password before I leave and um I will write down the password before

you get there excellent thank you so much I was thinking about asking my friend if he can stay could my friend stay over yeah sure so your friend can stay um not a problem I don't think he has a dog can he bring his dog o that is a problem uh does the dog have a cage um no but we can get a cage I'm not sure about the dog if the dog is in a cage it's okay in the house but I think yeah you can't have the dog in the house okay how about

smoking mhm my friend is a very heavy smoker can he smoke outside yeah he can smoke outside just please pick up cigarette butts but of course he can't smoke inside okay he can't smoke inside no okay how about if we want to have a party can we have a party yeah you can have a party that's okay but please be quiet don't be too loud um the neighbors live very close to my house all right that sounds good thanks and I have one more question uh-huh can I use the washing machine yeah of course you

can use anything you can use the washing machine um you can use the internet you can use the TV you can use anything you like wow excellent that sounds great thank you so much yeah I am I will write down directions for my house and I will send you a map and you can check it out and get all the information and just um I will leave the key for you with my neighbor excellent thank you very much sure no problem so Meg are you busy this weekend yes I'm so busy because I'm moving oh

no yeah there's a lot of work to do what do you have to do first I have to prepare my apartment so I need to pack all of my things that's not fun no takes a long time do you need help yeah do you have time to help me I can help you on Sunday oh are you busy on Saturday yeah on Saturday I have to work I have to teach two classes and then after I teach I have to grade papers um it sounds like you're really busy too yeah plus I have to meet

my friends that evening oh what will you do with your friends I'm helping my friend also my friend has car problems so I have to take him to the mechanic oh but on Sunday I can help you okay that would be great because on Sunday I have to take some trash to the dump and I have to finish some paperwork at City Hall to prepare for moving to a new country oh now because you're moving do you have to go to the post office I do have to go to the post office I almost forgot

at the post office I have to submit a form to say my new address Ah that's good because I have to go to the post office too oh really I have to send my mom's birthday gift to her when is your mom's birthday it was 1 month ago ah so you have to send it quickly yes I have to get on it okay well let's go together so I'll see you Sunday what time should I be here I have to go to City Hall by 300 p.m. so can you come at 2 okay but if

you want to go to the dump The Dump closes at noon so we have to leave earlier ah okay can you come at 11: yes okay so I will see you at 11 o'clock great see you then bye bye okay we'll talk about movies okay have you ever seen a German movie I haven't seen a German movie oh really you haven't seen Das boo no I haven't have you yeah it's a really good movie I haven't seen very many movies okay even English movies I haven't seen very many well have you seen a Canadian movie

I don't know have I well the thing is in Hollywood in America all the famous actors are Canadian so I think everybody's seen a Canadian movie I've definitely seen a Canadian actor yeah I all actors in America are Canadian it seems like I think so okay um have you ever bought something from Italy from Italy I have I bought not for me but I bought my mother a bag from Italy one time okay what was the brand I have no idea she asked me to buy a brand and I bought it but I don't know

which one it was okay have you bought something from Japan I've bought lots of things from Japan I've lived in Japan for a few years so I've bought all kinds of things from Japan okay and now we'll move on to countries okay have you ever been to France I have actually I've been to France a couple of times my my my high school has a house in Japan a in that's okay my high school has a house in France so for our school trips we would go to France every year oh how nice yeah how

about you have you been to France you know I haven't really I took a bus from England to Prague so the bus drove through France but it never stopped I see what other countries have you been to uh I've been to I've been to Germany I've been to to Hong Kong I've been to South Korea and I've been to China wow you've been to a lot of places yeah how about you what countries have you been to uh I've been to countries in Europe I've been to Israel I've been to Cambodia and La I worked

in Thailand and I've been to Taiwan and Korea wow which country did you like the best uh oh boy that's impossible uh I will say this I love I love soul I love Soul Korea it's a great City okay anyway thanks Katie thank you okay Katie yeah let's take an international test okay how International are you let's find out let's find out okay first have you ever eaten Greek food Greek food uh I've eaten how do you say it fuffalo oh is that Greek I think so okay I've had that but apart from that I've

never eaten Greek food okay how about you have you uh I think I have well I've I've eaten Greek yogurt does that count that counts that counts count okay okay have you ever eaten Vietnamese food ah I I see it written down it's is it faux faux the noodles yeah I've eaten Fae before yeah I've been to Vietnam so I've eaten Vietnamese food a lot in full the noodles is really good it's yeah it's delicious I've had that too okay now let's talk about languages okay have you ever studied French I have I've studied French

for five years oh can you still speak French nope not at all yeah me too I I once studied French years ago but I haven't spoken French in so long I can't remember anything I can't remember anything either yeah have you ever studied an Asian language um I've studied Japanese o okay I can still speak it a little bit now and I studied a little bit of Korean but I don't speak Korean oh really okay wow like I've studied uh Thai okay because I lived in Thailand for five years and like you I've studied Japanese

but my Japanese is terrible how about your tie my tie is okay uh it's okay I can talk a little bit okay so have you ever met a Spanish person a Spanish person actually I don't think I have really I don't think I have met a Spanish person oh interesting I've Been to Spain so I've met a few and we have a Spanish teacher at my school oh maybe I have met a Spanish person then maybe maybe I've met a secret Spanish person okay have you met a Chinese ches person oh yes I've met lots

of Chinese people okay and have you met a Brazilian person I feel like if I say know that I have probably I've probably met a Brazilian person yeah I've met a few people from Brazil so they're always very nice very friendly people so Amy let's talk about routines okay what time do you get up most days I get up I get up about 6 oh wow that's early I'm about the same I get up at 7ish usually okay yeah and what do you eat for breakfast I usually have toast uh I'm lazy I don't cook

in the morning so toast but I always have coffee right yeah that sounds good yeah I love coffee do you have coffee every morning I have coffee every morning yes I also have hot water and fresh lemon juice every morning why because it is good for your body and I enjoy it okay good uh so when do you leave the house most days I leave the house about 7:00 wow that's early it is maybe between 7 and 7:30 yeah how about you Todd uh a little later usually around 8:00 okay and uh where do you

eat lunch every day every day I eat lunch at work every day so I I will buy something from the cafeteria at my work or I will bring something most days what do you have for lunch I have a sandwich and uh a smoothie oo that's healthy yeah you're healthy no not really uh yeah sandwich and a smoothie and probably a chocolate biscuit oo okay that's not healthy no it's not and you uh I eat at the cafeteria every day at my school and I always have salad every day so I love salad yeah I

usually have a very healthy lunch I have lean meat chicken usually MH and a salad and tea that does sound healthy it is kind of my healthy meal of the day uh so every day who do you talk to I talk to my children every day mhm yes we talk a lot what do you talk about we talk about our everyday routine I remind them to do their tasks I remind them to get on with the chores yes chores and their routine what what do they do what chores do they do well they're still young

so my 2-year-old doesn't do anything she she brings her uh plate to the kitchen when she's finished she's good at that actually my 8-year-old she she folds her clean laundry and puts it away oh that's good yes nice very responsible so when do you get home most days I get home around six o'clock how about you Todd oh I get home late I get home around 10:00 oh that is late yeah very late so I work late I live alone so I work late and then I go to the gym oh okay and sometimes I

go eat at a restaurant nice I never cook I never go to the [Laughter] gym uh what time do you go to bed then I go to bed early actually I get home at 900 or 10 and I go to bed by 11: usually okay yeah and you 11: is early it is early okay um I think I'm probably about the same uh 11:00 yeah I go to bed about 11 o' oh okay so how many hours do you sleep most nights um I guess about seven six or seven hours yeah I get eight I

love sleeping I sleep more at the weekend definitely you sleep in on Saturday and Sunday I try if I can yeah Sunday is easier to sleep in okay thanks Amy hey Amy how are you today I'm good thanks Todd and you I'm good pretty good let's talk about our favorite things okay what is your favorite food oo my favorite food is avocado avocado honestly wow how about you my favorite food is pizza I think I love pizza oh me too it's so good it's so delicious and what is your favorite movie well my favorite movie

is Star Wars classic I know and you what is your favorite movie well I do love Star Wars 2o but my my favorite movie is Ferris be's day off oh I like that movie a lot oh very good very good so I was in high school the same time as the movie Where Are You great so cool who is your favorite actor my favorite actor is Jean Renault the Frenchman yes yes he's French but he has been in a lot of American movies too yeah I like the movie Leon love it it's very cool yes

I agree how about you uh my favorite actor is Brad Pit so I like Brad Pit a lot he's great yeah he is good very talented uh who I'm sorry what is your favorite season my favorite season is probably spring I think it's the cold of winter has passed and it's not too hot yet so I think spring how about you what's your favorite season um oh my favorite season is fall or Autumn I love the fall I love the colors um it is not hot it is not cold and there are many holidays and

my birthday is in the fall they are great reasons to love a so when is your birthday actually my birthday is also in the Autumn my birthday is in October oh wow me too my birthday is in October that's right what day 14th 14th yes and you the 2 yeah oh cool so next year let's have a birthday party together okay October birthday party good idea so what is your favorite City my favorite city is probably Osaka oh in Japan yes yes so far yes Osaka it's very noisy and colorful and the people are very

open and talkative so I really enjoyed Osa nice how about you what's your favorite city I think my favorite city is Barcelona oh in Spain yeah it's very nice it is and it's warm it's beautiful the food is delicious yes the people are nice yes but it's expensive right a little bit Yeah but Osaka is expensive that's true very expensive yep okay thanks thanks Todd bye bye bye hey Todd are you healthy do you eat lots of fruits and vegetables I guess I am healthy I do eat lots of fruits and vegetables uh but I

also eat junk food sadly but I try to eat lots of fruits especially to stay healthy what kind of fruits do you like to eat well I like all fruits I love all fruits except pineapple I hate pineapple I don't know why I just don't like pineapple I don't like the taste I don't like to chew it it just feels funny uh but I love apples I love bananas I love oranges I usually have an apple every morning for breakfast it's very easy to eat and I just love Apples because you can take them to

school you can eat them quickly they're very easy to eat uh I also like oranges and I love orange juice so sometimes I make fresh orange juice in my kitchen so oranges are great but my favorite fruits are bananas and strawberries I love bananas and strawberries and I love to eat bananas and strawberries together so my favorite snack is to cut up some banana and then cut up some strawberry and mix them together and then eat them well it sounds like you really like a lot of fruits oh yeah I do what about about vegetables

do you eat vegetables every day I do I try to have uh salad every day and I have a special salad I make and I call it my uh chunky crunchy salad and it's carrots cucumbers and tomatoes and I cut the carrots and cucumbers into small little squares and then I cut up the tomatoes and I mix them together and the carrots tomatoes and cucumbers mixed together the colors are really pretty and when you eat the salad it's very crunchy and it's very chunky cuz it's all little squares so I call it my crunchy chunky

salad oh that sounds delicious do you ever share it with someone else no I don't but I want to because I really I like it so much and I can't cook so when I go to somebody's house and I need to bring food I think oh I should bring chunky crunchy salad M that's a good idea another idea is to cook some vegetables do you cook vegetables not too much I do cook asparagus asparagus is probably my favorite vegetable and it's very easy to cook because asparagus you just have to cut up into small pieces

and then you can put the asparagus in a bowl with some water in the microwave and you can cook asparagus in about 30 seconds so I eat asparagus a lot also I eat broccoli I love broccoli sometimes I have broccoli and lettuce together for my salad and then sometimes I cook eggplant I like to cook eggplant because I like the taste and it's easy to cook I don't really like eggplant really I don't oh no why not it has a strange flavor to me so I prefer not to eat eggplant well as long as you

eat your veggies yes so Meg you look like a healthy person do you eat lots of fruits and vegetables I do eat lots of fruits and vegetables uh especially fruit I love to eat fruit CU it's so sweet yeah what fruits do you like I love bananas because they're so healthy for you and so usually in the morning for breakfast I'll have a banana I also love blueberries blueberries are my favorite fruit uh but sometimes they're expensive so I can't often eat blueberries oh I agree blueberries are so good I love blueberries in oatmeal Ah

that's a good idea I love to have blueberries in muffins oh that's nice well you bake do you bake blueberry muffins I do bake blueberry muffins and also blueberry bread blueberry pancakes many blue blueberry things oh wow that's great so are there any fruits you don't like I don't like kiwi actually because the flavor is okay but the fruit is too soft so usually I don't want to eat kiwi oh wow I love kiwi I love kiwi and kiwi and bananas it's very good M sounds okay but maybe I'll just have the banana so what

about vegetables um are you a person who eats lots of salad um I don't eat a lot of salad but I do like to eat vegetables with my meals usually lunch and dinner so you cook vegetables I cook vegetables or I eat vegetables fresh for example usually with my lunch I'll cut up a cucumber and put some uh salt or pepper on the cucumber and eat it with my lunch oh great I love uh vegetable sticks so I love carrot sticks cucumber sticks radish sticks it's very good do you like to dip um vegetable sticks

into any dressing I do but it's not healthy right but yeah I love the dressing like the ranch dressing with carrot sticks or the ranch dressing with cucumber sticks it's very nice yeah it's pretty delicious but you're right not so healthy no so what vegetables do you cook sometimes I cook broccoli I actually like to roast broccoli which is when you put broccoli into the oven and cook it for a few minutes um so it's really delicious you can add some salt or seasonings and it's easy to make you can cook some meat or rice

while the broccoli is in the oven and then it's ready for your dinner oh that's great yeah you see some vegetables uh like on a kebab that are roasted I guess onions are roasted peppers do you vegetables besides broccoli sometimes tomatoes and uh sometimes potatoes although is that a vegetable it is but it's not a very healthy vegetable oh so maybe I shouldn't eat potatoes oh I love potatoes though um so you roast vegetables do you cook vegetables any other way do you boil vegetables or fry vegetables sometimes I boil vegetables for example I like

to boil carrots because they're soft and you can add some spices again to have some flavor when you eat carrots with your meal yeah actually I love carrots but I only like raw carrots oh really and I hate cooked carrots oh well I'll try to remember that if you ever come over for dinner yeah carrot sticks please okay hey Todd I noticed that you only have two two pairs of pants Oh no really yeah yeah you got me um I have only two pairs of pants for work I have my green slacks and my black

slacks and that's it I don't like to buy clothes and I travel a lot so I really don't have that many clothes are you not into fashion yeah I'm not into fashion uh I'm not really interested in clothes or shopping and I only have clothes for the season and after the season I usually throw the clothes away oh really yeah and so to save money I don't buy a lot of new clothes each year wow so you only have clothes for the season yes well what clothes do you usually wear in summer well summer is

great because you don't need a lot um in summer I just have four or five t-shirts I usually have some white t-shirts and then I have some colored t-shirts like maybe a black t-shirt or uh you know a blue t-shirt which has some letters on it or maybe a little bit of English but usually my t-shirts are really simple and then I have some jeans usually two pairs of blue jeans and I have shorts for doing sports or running or exercising I have about four or five pairs of shorts and that's about it well since

you do some exercising do you also wear sneakers I do I always have two pairs of sneakers so I have one pair of sneakers for the gym and then I have one pair of sneakers for just walking around town and also for running for jogging so I have my outdoor sneakers and my indoor sneakers ah what about flipflops I'm not a flip-flop guy um I do have a pair of flipflops for the beach or for going to the store quickly but I usually prefer to wear my sneakers m in the summer it's so hot I

usually like to wear tank tops but I have to put on sunblock what about you I do have to wear sunblock um I have very pale skin so sunblock is very important uh I should wear it more often but I do have a hat so I always wear my baseball hat in summer so to protect myself from the Sun I just wear my hat hat all the time and sometimes sunblock ah so those are the clothes you wear in summer what do you wear in winter in Winter I'm also pretty basic um each year I

usually buy a couple new dress shirts uh long sleeve dress shirts that go with my slacks that you see at work and that's about it the only clothes I always keep I always save um are my nice jackets I have two nice jackets for work work and I wear my you know my business jackets to school and that's about it it does get really cold in Winter though when you go outside do you wear anything extra no I I don't like scarves and I don't like things like ear muffs and gloves um so I usually

just keep my hands in my pockets uh but I do have a couple sweaters so each year I like to buy one or two new sweaters and I do wear those sometimes a sweaters are warm what about when it snows don't you wear boots no I don't wear boots and luckily it doesn't snow that often where I live so I don't have boots but I should buy some maybe sometimes I buy the really cheap rubber boots or plastic boots that I know I don't have to keep for a long time but you know boots like

that are easy to get rid of a do you ever wear something like Long John's you know when I was little I wore long johns um I grew up on a farm and it was very cold but now not so much I don't wear long johns but I do have sweatpants so I have a sweatpants and a sweatshirt for exercising in Winter I usually have two or three sweatsuits like that and sometimes I wear those to bed that sounds s like a good idea so summer winter what do you wear in fall and spring well

fall and Spring's great because in fall and spring you can wear nice clothes so um usually if I buy dress shoes uh I like to wear those in fall and spring in Winter sometimes the dress shoes aren't really good for the snow but I like to wear nice dress shoes in the fall and spring and then sometimes in the fall and spring I might wear a tie when I go to work and of course I have my slacks and I have my jeans and I have my you know running shoes so I keep those as

well as a woman uh I often wear skirts and so sometimes in the fall and spring I wear tights underneath the skirts but you don't wear tights do you no I don't although these days when you go to the gym they have special tights now for men that you can wear when you exercise so there's like the running gear is almost like tights it looks almost the same wow that's interesting yeah kind of strange so for any season do you wear any accessories no I'm not a big accessory person um like I said sometimes I

wear a tie but not often and of course I have a belt I need a belt but I have one belt and that's it um but I don't like things like necklaces or um you know bracelets um I don't really like jewelry I do wear a watch sometimes but I don't wear a watch every day because now you don't need a watch you can just look at your phone Ah that's true I usually use my phone also so Meg uh we are talking about clothes and you always look nice at work you have a very

nice fashion scent oh thank you so you must go shopping a lot um I do go shopping sometimes it's fun to go shopping and buy new clothes especially when it's a new season like what what do you like to wear per season for example what do you like to wear in winter in the winter it's pretty cold so I like to wear sweaters um sometimes a t-shirt with a sweater over it to stay warm uh lots of long sleeve shirts I like to wear long sleeve shirts and I still wear skirts in the winter so

sometimes I wear um tights underneath the skirts to stay warm what about dresses do you like to wear dresses I do like to wear dresses in the winter it's a good time actually to wear sweater dresses they're warm and a dress so it's nice for work sweater dresses have you you seen a sweater dress before I have no idea what a sweater dress is what is a sweater dress it's it's a dress but made of sweater material so sweater cloth made into a dress so it's very warm okay I was I was picturing a sweater

with a skirt attached to it you might find that but I think a sweater dress is a little different okay um what about uh what about in the summer in the summer I love to wear flip flops it's my favorite thing to wear so I often wear flipflops with jeans or shorts uh skirts again um I don't wear tights in the summer because it's too hot right do you wear flip flops to work I can't wear flip-flops to work so when I go to work I often wear high heels or flats some dress shoes okay

oh so do you like to wear shorts or skirts which do you prefer M I prefer shorts because it's more comfortable and easy to move around but I also can't wear shorts to work so I have many summer skirts for work okay now uh let's talk about shoes so women often have many types of shoes high heels boots flats like you just said sneakers so what kind of shoes besides flip-flops do you like to wear I do have many pairs of shoes and so I like to wear flats and sandals especially in the summer in

the winter I like to wear boots and uh rain shoes when it rains or rain boots when I'm exercising I like to wear sneakers or tennis shoes because it's good for your feet all right now you Tred Trav a lot we both traveled a lot what shoes do you usually take when you travel when I travel I usually take Flats because they're easy to remove at the airport and they're light and convenient for traveling all right what shoes do you usually use just my sneakers so my sneakers I wear everywhere um now women sometimes have

accessories you know like earrings necklaces scarves things like that uh what do you like to wear I like to wear necklaces especially long necklaces I don't like necklaces that are too short uh it feels uncomfortable I don't like to wear bracelets or a watch because I don't like anything on my wrist but I do love to wear rings I usually wear one ring on each hand just for fashion not for anything special oh that's nice oh cool well anyway thanks Meg thank you so Meg we are talking about animals uh do you like to go

to the zoo I love to go to the zoo okay so when you go to the zoo what animals do you like to watch I really like to watch giraffes giraffes are so tall and giraffes look really soft and friendly so I wish that I could touch a giraffe someday oh that's so true there is a zoo near my house in California and you can walk up some stairs and then you can feed the giraffes and their face is the same height as your face and they look really really cute and yeah giraffes are great

oh giraffes are so cute maybe someday I can feed the giraffes I like how giraffes look I love their face and I also love camels also because I think camels have a similar face they look really cool I don't think camels are very cute really yeah they're so hairy uh camels have so much hair that they look ugly oh really oh I like camels they always look cool and relaxed M they do look relaxed but I like giraffes better than camels well what about llamas llamas are kind of like camels and are kind of like

giraffes they kind of have the same face do you like llamas I think llamas look cute but I've heard that llamas aren't very friendly really have you heard about llamas spitting at people before no actually I think I heard camels do that but maybe llamas do it too H I'm not sure okay so um what about other animals what other animals do you like at the zoo I really like the zebras because zebras are black and white with stripes so their the zebra stripes are really cool and zebras are similar to horses so sometimes I

think I could ride a zebra if I had one yeah that would be cool zebras do look pretty cool uh are there any other animals well there's one animal that I'm afraid of and that's a bear yeah bears are pretty scary bears are really scary and they're so big with huge teeth and giant Claws and I feel like a bear would eat me if I met it in person actually have you seen a bear in the wild no I have never seen a bear in the wild and I really don't want to oh wow in

California uh sometimes you can see bears in the wild small black bears and actually the black bears are not that dangerous really yeah I mean you need to be careful when you see a black bear in the wild but they almost never attack anybody so the one animal you must be afraid of though is the mountain lion so there are mountain lions also in California and they are scary so maybe I should avoid Mountain lines too yeah yeah if you walk in the wild and you see a mountain lion maybe it's too late you're already

in trouble maybe I'll just keep going to the zoo hey Todd did you have any pets when you were a kid I did I had many pets actually uh I had a dog of course and I had some cats but actually I grew up on a farm yeah so uh we raised lots of animals and on the farm I always felt like the animals were my pets so it was pretty cool wow that sounds really exciting for a kid oh it was great it was the best what kind of animals were on your farm we

had almost every you know farm animal possible um for example we had pigs we raised a lot of pigs and pigs actually are really good pets they're very fun um pigs are very friendly animals and they're not really dangerous so uh also pigs like people so sometimes when we were little we would ride on the pigs back but if our grandpa saw us riding on the pigs he would yell at us we always got in trouble uhoh yeah also aren't pigs dirty they are dirty so when you would go in the pig pin you would

get very very dirty but you know when you are small when you are young you don't care it's just fun ah what about other animals like chickens we we did have chickens and lots of chickens and the chickens maybe were the least friendly animals so chickens don't like people really and the chickens you have to go get the eggs so working with chickens was not easy and I never really liked the chickens that much plus the chickens you eat more often so it's a little different right yeah yeah I don't think I've ever seen a

chicken in person really no oh wow you must be a city girl I am although when I was young I always wanted to have a horse did your farm have horses we had one horse for a while uh and then we had uh a pony so yeah we had one horse and we had one Pony the pony was great because when I was little we could ride the pony but the pony was actually really mean so the pony would bite you if you were not careful and if you tried to ride the pony sometimes the

pony would get angry very angry but it's okay uh you know when you're small on a farm it's normal oh that pony sounds scary were there any other animals that you had that were more friendly yeah actually the best pet you can have is a goat really a goat yeah goats are fantastic goats love people they really really love people and they're very social and goats follow people so so when you are little on the farm and when you walk around the goats become your friend so when I was little I would walk and I

had friendly goats that would follow me everywhere and they were great and they're very curious they like to see what you're doing and uh yeah and they like to be petted so you know how like you pet a dog you pet a cat goats also like for you to pet them they're very very social and it's interesting because goats and sheep are kind of similar but really they're very different so goats are very social goats are very friendly and sheep are very shy and sheep don't like people at all so sheep stay away from people

and goats always get close to people sounds like a goat is a good pet to have goats are the best they are so friendly and goats are cool because goats talk to you so they like to make a sound you know like ba they ba or whatever they make a sound and uh when you walk around as a young boy or young girl the goats are great they follow you and you feel like the goat is talking to you which is cool that sounds really fun now I wish I had some goats yeah you got

to the only other animal we had um we also had cows oh and cows are cool some cows are friendly most cows are shy uh but cows you know they always come to you because they think they will get food but if they see you have no food then cows stay away so cows like sheep are a little afraid of people a but pigs and goats love people and they're very social oh it sounds really cool growing up on a farm it was it was I was lucky hey Todd where do you live I live

on the east side of town oh do you like it there I do I live in an older house but it's a big house and it's really relaxing it's a nice place to live wow sounds nice how many rooms does it have my house is pretty big it's four rooms um it has a big sleeping room um it's a Japanese house so it's not really a bedroom cuz you sleep on the floor oh but it also has a living room it has like an office room MH and it has a kitchen is it a big

kitchen no it's a pretty small kitchen and it's a very old kitchen I have a small stove so it's very difficult to cook um but you know I have a refrigerator I have a microwave um I have a nice kitchen table to eat at so it's a it's a pretty decent kitchen it sounds okay what about your living room what do you have in the living room my living room it's pretty cool for a guy because it's a good place to watch sports I have a really big TV and I have cable TV so I

get all the football channels nice and I have a really big sofa so I can sit on my sofa and watch sports and drink beer it's great sounds relaxing very relaxing well do you also have a nice bathroom I do I actually have three bathrooms oh really it's kind of crazy yeah so in English you know we say bathroom but I have two rooms that are for the toilet and I have one room uh or bathroom with a toilet for the guests and then I have a bathroom that I use and then also I have

a natural hot spring bath outside my house so if I want to take a shower or bathe I use that room wow I'd love to have hot spring at my house it's very nice it's very very nice does your house also have a yard it kind of has a yard so outside my house there's an area for flowers and bushes and it's like a yard or a garden around the house but it's not a place you can place Sports there's no grass or anything so it's a very very small yard but you know it's a

nice place oh yeah it sounds like a nice place to live it is a nice place to live I'm very very lucky you said you have a sleeping room not a bedroom what does that mean yeah I live in a Japanese style house so it's called the tatami room and you sleep in the tatami room and you sleep on the floor on a futon so I don't have a bed so it's not a bedroom room um it's a room that you sit in during the day and you can eat and talk with guests but it's

also a room that you sleep in at night so yeah I call it my sleeping room but I think in Japan they just call it the tatami room uh is it comfortable sleeping on the floor yeah it's really comfortable now I love it so before I slept on a bed uh but now I sleep on the futon on the floor and I really like it actually I prefer to sleep on the futon on the floor well it sounds like your house is really comfortable it is it is I never want to leave so mag do

you live in a house or an apartment I live in an apartment near the train station oh you live downtown I do ah do you like living downtown I do like living downtown because it's so convenient everything is close by grocery stores the mall the station oh that's great so what about your apartment do you have a nice apartment it's a nice apartment but it's really small oh yeah how many rooms well there are three rooms but each room is pretty small mhm there's a bedroom a sitting room like a living room and the kitchen

room oh wow so in your bedroom like do you have like a big queen-sized bed a small bed I have a small twins siiz bed or a single bed in the bedroom because it's pretty small so there's not much space for a big bed all right so do you have a TV in your bedroom no actually I don't own a TV at all really so there's no TV in the living room too there's no tv anywhere in the apartment wow what do you do in your house uh I have a laptop computer so usually I

can watch some TV shows or videos on my laptop all right okay do you like to like watch movies in bed uh yeah sometimes I like to watch movies in bed or sometimes times I prefer to sit in the living room and watch movies right so you must have high-speed internet I do yes I have an internet box that my laptop can connect to okay cool do you have a nice big sofa uh I have two small sofas so you can push them together to make one big sofa or you can keep them separate usually

I keep them separate because there's more room for people to sit on okay now you like to cook so you must have a nice kitchen M unfortunately I have a very tiny kitchen oh no how do you cook I I have to use some extra tables to have more space the counter is really small so there's not much space so I have an extra table I use for preparing the food okay do you have an oven I have a very small toaster oven so it's not really an oven all right so do you have a

microwave I do have a microwave and a small refrigerator and one burner like a stov top burner okay do you cook every night I don't cook every night sometimes I'm too busy and sometimes because my kitchen is so small I get a little frustrated so I just pick up some food from a restaurant all right now you live in an apartment so how many floors does your apartment building have the building has five floors and I live on the fifth floor nice fifth floor yeah the view is nice but unfortunately there's no elevator so you

always have to take the stairs wow five flights of stairs five flights of stairs every day but it's good exercise so you're on the fifth floor do you have a balcony I have a small balcony where my washing machine is and I can also hang up my laundry out there oh cool washing machine's outside it is outside it's a little different from my house in America oh so from your view what can you see I can see the train station from one window and uh all the restaurants downtown and from a different window I can

see the mountains oh nice yeah the mountains are nice yeah it's really pretty mag thanks so much for helping me clean my house yeah no problem oh you were a big big help so I want to thank you I want to repay you so tomorrow can I take you to lunch oh it's too bad but tomorrow I'll be really busy oh yeah why why well I only wash my clothes once a week so I need to do my laundry tomorrow oh right do you wash your clothes at home or at the coin laundry shop I

usually wash my clothes at home because I have a washer oh nice do you have a dryer too I don't have a dryer so I have to go to the coin laundromat to dry my clothes right so for work do you usually iron your clothes I usually iron my work clothes before before I hang them up oh right you know I never iron my clothes really why not I just put my clothes in the dryer and then I take my clothes out of the dryer when they are still hot and fold my clothes and usually

they're okay I don't have to iron my shirts or pants or anything M that sounds good I also have some clothes that I cannot wash at home so I have to drop them off at the dry cleaners oh yeah oh right I I use the dry cleaners sometimes do you use dry cleaner by the supermarket I use the one by the train station oh right okay I know that one too yeah well since um you know I want to do something for you and I can't take you to lunch maybe I can drop off your

clothes at the dry cleaners really will it be okay oh no problem because tomorrow I have to return some movies that I rented so after I return the movies I can take your clothes to the dry cleaners wow thanks while you're going to the dry cleaners could you also mail some letters for me sure no problem just at the post office right yes just at the post office okay oh I have an idea how about this since you are busy um after I go to the dry cleaners and I drop off my movies I buy

lunch and I bring you lunch to your house yeah that sounds great so uh what would you like for lunch I can get Thai food Chinese food pizza M pizza sounds great okay I'll go to the same pizza place we use for the party it's really good sounds great any kind of pizza uh I like pepperoni pizza what do you like oh pepperoni is fine it's for you so definitely I'll get pepperoni pizza okay great thanks a lot hey Todd are you busy today yeah I am so busy last night I had a party and

now my house is so dirty and I need to clean my house wow where will you start cleaning well everywhere in the house is dirty so the kitchen is very dirty the living room is dirty but I think first I'll do the kitchen um I have to throw away all the old food we have lots of trash from the party and then I have to wipe the counters we have food all over the counters and then of course I have to wash the dishes and put everything everything away wow sounds like it was quite a

party yeah it was well we ordered pizza but also everybody brought food and so we had lots of food and everybody left their dishes and pots at my house after they went home so I have everyone's dishes and pots and plastic containers so I feel I should clean everything and then give it back to everybody m that sounds like a good idea did anyone drop any food on the floor yeah actually they dropped food everywhere so uh I have to vacuum the carpet in the living room and I need to mop the kitchen floor so

I think I need about three hours just to clean the entire house oh 3 hours can I help you clean well actually yeah if you can I really need help um but if you can just collect the trash I have some trash bags and go around and collect all the plastic cups there are many plastic cups and collect the pizza boxes and maybe get the old food and throw away the old food that would be great sure I can collect the cups and throw away the old food is there anything else you need me to

do well yeah actually if you have time uh can you go to the store and buy some cleaning supplies I need dish soap to wash the dishes and I need window cleaner to clean the windows but window cleaner why w why the windows well it was a very crazy party and you don't want to know uhoh hey Todd I know you've traveled a lot what kind countries have you lived in I've lived in three countries um I've traveled to many many countries but I've actually lived in three I lived in England for one year I

lived in Thailand for four years and I have lived in Japan for 15 years wow so when you lived in England why did you live there it was the first country I traveled to after college and I had a work permit a work visa for one year and I worked at a pub restaurant which was great it was in the countryside and I really enjoyed it and then I did that for 6 months um I lived near Cambridge so I was near Cambridge University and then after that I moved to London and again I worked

at a restaurant and I lived in London and just worked wow so it was after college how old were you I was 23 years old oh and living in London that must have been fun it was fun and interestingly when I went to England I could not speak English so I could not understand British people uh it took me maybe two months before I could understand their English so it was very very difficult to understand British people when I first moved there uh so you liked it I did like England it was fun it was

my first country um but the weather was cold for me so I'm from California and California in the United States is very warm so I didn't like the weather but that's okay because all British people don't like the weather too oh really yeah everybody complains about the weather a so after England did you move someplace warmer I did uh right after England I moved to Thailand and I lived in Thailand for over four years wow why did you live in Thailand uh I was traveling and in Thailand I had no money and I needed a

job and I wanted to stay in Thailand so I became an English teacher really yeah did you teach English there for four years I did so I went there and I began teaching English then I got a teaching uh course certificate to teach English in Thailand and I really enjoyed it the Thai students were really fun and Thailand is a great place to live because the weather is really nice the people are really friendly and the food is delicious it has the best food in the world I think I've also heard that Thailand is beautiful

is it true it is it has many many beautiful islands and it has uh lots of beautiful places with nature in the mountains it has jungles it has beautiful beaches so it's a nice place to live so you liked Thailand too I did Thailand was great yeah so England Thailand you said next was Japan yeah so next was Japan um and Japan's nice I am a teacher an English teacher in Japan and I love teaching English in Japan like Thailand the food is really really good the people are nice the scenery is really beautiful so

Japan is really nice are there fun things to do in Japan Yes actually I like Japan the most because you get everything you get lots of beautiful nature so you can go hiking you can go see beautiful beaches you can go to really nice Islands but also Japan has many many nice cities so um you can go to Tokyo Osaka fuka Oka and the cities have lots to do there's good shopping great restaurants um it's easy to travel in Japan by train and bus so it's really nice wow that sounds like the best of both

worlds yeah it is definitely a good place to live Meg we are talking about traveling and visiting other countries what countries have you traveled to ah I've been to quite a few different countries uh for example Spain Biz and Indonesia wow three different continents yeah pretty far apart wow that's cool so Spain that must be a really nice country what did you think of Spain Spain is really beautiful there's a lot of beautiful nature and also some nice cities while I was there I lived in a small city called casades oh nice are the people

really friendly in Spain uh Yes actually the people are very friendly and very helpful especially if you're lost oh that's great I hear Spanish food is really really good M Spanish food is delicious I lived with a Spanish family and my my Spanish mom cooked delicious meals every day for lunch in Spain Seafood is really popular so I ate a lot of fish and shrimp oh I love fish and shrimp me too now Spain is really warm right yes Spain was very hot while I was there during the summer oh yeah how hot how hot

does it get it got up past 40 degrees C during the summer wow yeah it was pretty hot does it rain it does rain but when I was there in the summer it didn't rain very often so what about bise bise is a really small country Biz is very small but it's also hot similar to Spain in the summer why did you go to Biz I went to biz on a study trip for school and I stayed there for about two weeks okay now does biss have good food bise also has good food there was

a family that cooked for us and we had a lot of delicious um almost Mexican type food oh really so for example what do you eat like what do people eat in bullies M people eat it's kind of like a taco but flat uh with a tortilla and some meat and vegetables on top and some spices that make it really delicious so the last country is Indonesia when did you go to Indonesia I actually went to Indonesia just last year oh wo how long did you stay I only stayed there for about a week oh

yeah oh short trip yeah it was a short trip but I was just visiting some friends there where did you go I went to Jakarta and Bali oh okay so I hear Bali has really beautiful beaches is it true yeah it's true there are a lot of famous and beautiful beaches in Bali oh did you surf in Bali I've never surfed before usually when I went to the beach I I just wanted to put my feet in the water oh yeah now Bali also has a very famous scenery on the inside like the rice fields

did you see the rice fields of Bali no I didn't see the rice fields but I did go to some famous historical spots so of the three countries Spain Biz and Indonesia what country was your favorite maybe Spain was my favorite because I love learning language and it was really nice to stay with my Spanish family yeah I could see that I really want to go to Spain and I hope to go soon I hope you can go too it's beautiful hey Todd so continuing talking about then and now I was thinking we could switch

to talking about just life in general sounds good so my first question for you is are movies today more more interesting than before well I'm going to sound like an old guy but I would say no movies are not more interesting today movies were much better 20 30 years ago the stories were better um they were more interesting these days movies just have too much special effects and there's too many movies about superheroes I hate movies about superheroes so yeah I think movies used to be more interesting what you you think I have the opposite

opinion of you I think movies today are more interesting than before um maybe I'm too used to a lot of special effects so when I watch some older movies the story might be interesting but I get a little bored watching it and actually I love superhero movies so oh really I would say that yes any superhero movies uh Spider-Man or Batman especially is my favorite so those movies for me are more interesting than in the past okay well we're talking about comparative so right who's cooler Batman or Spider-Man oh Batman yeah hands down I'm sorry

I think Spider-Man's really lame I've never liked Spider-Man he kind of whines a lot he looks like a kid in his pajamas he is a kid in his pajamas maybe that's it whereas Batman has a lot of skills that he's developed himself so true true okay well how about Batman so you like who was better who's the best Batman who's the better Batman say who was better um who was the last one it was um well the most recent Batman was Ben Affleck yeah but I didn't watch that one okay so before that there was

Christian Bale oh that's right so without having seen Ben Affleck I would still say that Christian Bale was a better Batman yeah I'm sure I'm sure okay so let's talk about other things how about the news with news are you more knowledgeable these days than before say 5 10 years ago actually I think I am less knowledgeable than before there's a lot of news out there and it's easy to access the news but there's so much news coming from so many sources I'm not sure which news source is more trustworthy so I think it's more

difficult now to find the correct news or the True News what do you think I agree sadly I think I'm less knowledgeable because before I would read the newspaper or I would read magazine articles or I would listen to um better news stories on the news these days I just look at a Facebook headline yeah and I don't even read the article yeah so I don't even know what's going on sometimes which is terrible for a man my age terrible for anyone I think yeah I think it's because I think the news was more honest

than before than than now I'm sorry I think the news is less honest these days it used to be more honest I just don't trust the news anymore yeah I don't really trust it either yeah less trustworthy so along those lines would you say social media makes life better or worse for people I think it's it's both like I think it's you know two points better three points worse so it's a negative it's better because you can keep track with so many family members especially if you're far away right so I like how it connects

people but uh yeah it just makes people sad sometimes or makes them frustrated about their life maybe right so yeah I don't think it makes life better but I'm an old guy so no I think it's true I think there are scientific studies to show that because of social media people compare themselves too much so it's quite appropriate that we're talking about comparison because people will see other people's lives on social media that look quite good and they will compare themselves and feel bad about themselves so for some people I think it has made it

worse but like you I agree that some points are better like seeing pictures from my family yeah so true hey Meg so I thought we would talk about then and now the present and the past sounds good so it's very easy to compare things compare things now and sometimes people think things were better in the past or things were worse in the past so let's see what you think first one is are you happier now than you were last year am I happier now I think I'm about the same happiness level so last year I

was happy with my job and my family and my friends and this year I'm still happy what about you are you happier now than last year I am happier because last year I was still in college in graduate school and I finished congratulations yes and I have more free time now and because of that I'm happier this year less stress less stress always makes us happier okay so the next one is um do you think you are healthier these days than you were before say 10 years ago actually no I think I'm not healthier than

I was about 10 years ago lately I've been so busy that I haven't been taking enough time to exercise or cook healthy food so I'd say I was probably healthier 10 years ago what about yourself are you healthier now or before I think I'm healthier actually um even though I'm a little fatter than I was 10 years ago um I drink less and I eat more vegetables I eat less fast food I think I get more sleep and I feel less stressed so I think I am a little bit healthier than I was 10 years

ago yeah that definitely sounds healthier I'm older so that's you know right well older and healthier right okay so how about stress are you more stressed now than you were five years ago that's a hard question um probably I'm about the same so I wouldn't say that I'm more stressed now but 5 years ago I was finishing my Master's Degree so that was also a stressful time and lately I've been quite busy so I'm probably at the same stress level as 5 years ago what about yourself are you more stressed now I think I'm less

stressed now actually uh because now I worry less than I did before so before I was more stressed because I wor about everything yeah and now I I've learned to let it go I let things go I don't let them bother me that sounds like a good policy yeah so you think that you're less worried now but what about your future are you more worried about your future than before oo you know what yeah I think I am more worried about my future now because I'm older so I'm more worried about money I'm more worried

about what I'll be doing in years job security things like that right so yeah sadly I am a little bit more worried about that there's a lot more to think about yeah so but I'm less worried about my life day-to-day everything happening around me so I guess that's why I feel less worried than I was let's say five years ago right how about you are you more worried about your future these days I don't think so I have a good job and I like where I live so so I don't feel too worried about what

I'll be doing next year or in 5 years but probably I should plan ahead a bit more so maybe I should be a little more worried but I feel okay about the future oh well that's a very healthy attitude to have yeah it helps with the stress level as well so Sarah when I was a kid my school had the usual classes and we could take band class Orchestra class choir class and art class if we wanted to take it MH but nowadays schools are cutting art programs and music programs yeah I think it's too

bad I think that it's really important for students so so Sarah do you play any musical instruments yeah I play too I love to play the guitar I started playing in college and I like to play the piano too I started learning the piano when I was really young how about you oh that's interesting for me I started playing the trumpet when I was really young mhm and I don't play it much anymore but I started playing the piano when I finished high school and I still play it now oh wow so you started learning

the piano when you were older yes do you think people can start to learn an instrument at any age yes I think so do you have a theory about that yeah I think that if people start to play an instrument when they're older I think they enjoy it more because they chose to learn it and I think they're going to play it longer but if you have to learn an instrument when you're younger I think you won't continue playing it uh because you have to practice for homework or something like that yeah I have five

brothers and we all learn to play the piano but as soon as my brothers graduated from high school and went away they stopped playing the piano and they don't play it now in fact they forgot everything oh wow yeah well I do think that music education is very important for children MH because reading sheet music is like reading a language and children can learn it much easier than adults learn so no matter what instrument you play if you're a child you learn how to read music and I think too it's really important for kids to

be a part of a group like that for example singing in the choir or playing music in the orchestra I think it's really good for kids to learn to work together and make music as a team I have some really good memories of being a young kid in Orchestra me too I was also in choir and Orchestra and marching band so I don't play the orchestra instruments anymore and I don't play marching band instruments anymore but I'm very glad that I had the experience of learning to read music and learning to work together as a

team that's true me too okay I changed my mind even little kids they should learn how to play a musical instrument so John you're an English teacher now is that right yes I've been an English teacher for 6 years now oh do you always want to be an English teacher well actually recently I've been thinking about changing my job oh yes I have been studying Math and Science oh I'm learning a lot more about math these days I hope in the future I can be a math teacher it sounds interesting yes I think so I

think math is important because if we can understand math we learn new ways to think about problems mhm what age student do you want to teach math too I think I would enjoy teaching um Junior High School students so you said you're studying math now how do you do it do you study online that's exactly right I study online from various websites and these websites connect you to free online courses from real un universities around the world oh wow yeah so I signed up for a free algebra class from a university in the United States

will you get a degree when you finish well you can um for every course you finish you can get a certificate that says you passed this course and if you sign up for a series of courses you can get uh certification in a field like math or science oh really and it's all online yeah and it's not only math or science you can choose any field you want I've been thinking of studying Spanish language there and you can study computer programming or history or law oh interesting Maybe I'll try it you should they have a

uh different types of classes you can study by yourself by watching videos or you can even have an interactive class with a real teacher and you can meet through video chat wow hey thank you yeah you should try this opportunity I will so Sarah you're an English teacher right that's right you must have taught in many countries before yeah I did I taught in the USA in Taiwan China uh South Korea Japan and Ecuador oh Ecuador yeah so you must be able to speak Spanish very well I think so I studied really hard and then

when I lived in Ecuador I spent a lot of time talking to people did you teach Spanish too no oh I didn't when I lived in Ecuador actually I volunteered for the United Nations wow and I taught families and they were being relocated to Canada because they were fleeing the drug wars of Colombia wow so I felt very badly for these families but they had a really bright future so that was good but then one week I had a family a couple of families and they were being relocated to Sweden oh and I said I

can't teach them Swedish and the UN said well maybe just teach them English so I thought they're going to Sweden they don't need to learn English right now and my friend at the time she's Norwegian and we were living together and every day she helped me to learn a little bit of Swedish just enough for one class so that I could teach these families wait wait some Swedish you were teaching Swedish language yes you are an English speaker yes you lived in Ecuador yes and a Norwegian person taught you Swedish yes so you could teach

Swedish to people from Ecuador from Colombia currently living in Ecuador so they could move to Sweden yes and you did this as a volunteer yeah I wanted to help people so I moved to Ecuador and I got a volunteer job with the United Nations to help teach people but I never thought I would be teaching Swedish wow yeah it was a lot of fun I would like to try that someday too you can do it so do you think that we should send people to Mars or the moon to spend all this money on space

travel well I think we should um space travel can give people hope for the future and space travel can unite people from different countries for a common goal but do any countries work together to travel in space Oh certainly the International Space Station mhm has astronauts from different countries working together um and I think that a joint effort is the best way to do space missions I think that we could go back to the moon and learn much more by going there then we can learn if we don't go there I see what you mean

but I think we could learn more and we could improve more if we can help the people on Earth think of everything we could learn from the children that can't get an education these days maybe the next Einstein is a poor little girl who doesn't have the money to go to school if we spent more money on school and clean water and vaccines maybe we could learn more from ourselves than from going to space and going to Mars I I agree with you that more money should be spent on education but we don't need the

next Einstein if we're not doing space travel um the problem is what are people with money willing to spend it on I think that it would be nice if we could have all the rich countries spend money on education for poor people but if you look at the numbers the cost of one space mission is much cheaper ER than the things we spend money on now like what well the first example that comes to mind is war one day of war is so expensive for all the governments and militaries that are involved one day of

War costs more money than one space mission but War goes on and on for days yeah in years so if you think about the money in terms of um sorry so the money for a space mission seems expensive by itself but when you compare it to other things it's actually kind of cheap I see what you're saying you're comparing the cost of space travel to war but I would compare the cost of space travel to the cost of for example getting rid of malaria I think we could get rid of a terrible disease like malaria

for as much as we would spend on a trip to Mars getting rid of malaria or going to Mars well of course I would also choose that we should get rid of malaria maybe we'll have to agree to disagree we might have to disagree this time okay so I was wondering about disciplining kids in public you have kids right yeah I have two kids I have a three-year-old and a one-year-old are they ever naughty when you're out in public yes they are naughty out in public and I think that you shouldn't discipline your children in

front of other people so if I'm out in public and my three-year-old starts to be naughty and she's crying because she wants a toy from the store or something I will pick her up and I take her somewhere quiet until she's calm like I might take her to the family bathroom or a quiet hallway so she can stop crying and stop making noise I see so you you wouldn't just give her the toy she wants no I don't think you should do that sort of thing to make your child be quiet just give them something

until they are quiet because then they'll be bad more in the future if they know they can cry and scream and Mom and Dad will give them what they want they'll just be worse and worse oh I see they'll learn that it's okay they can get what they want by crying yeah but don't you think you'll won't you lose more time if you have to take your kids to some quiet place to calm down yeah you you lose time but I think it's worth it because I think of the future and the time I'll save

by making sure that my child is better behaved in the future and the other thing too is I'm always trying to think about other people so I don't want other people to have to listen to my child scream and cry and I also don't want them to see me talking sternly to her cuz they'll maybe be annoyed or feel uncomfortable and and maybe my child will scream more because she can feel that so I try to go somewhere quiet oh I see sometimes that's impossible though sometimes if you're on the plane or on a train

you can't go anywhere or do anything you have to stay in your seat oh what if you're on an airplane then do you um give your child whatever they are crying for as soon as possible yes I do I try to plan ahead and I think okay I need to have enough toys I need to have lots of snacks lots of fun things so that I prevent them from becoming naughty or crying or Screaming but sometimes you can't help it and if your child or your baby starts to be loud at that point I will

I'll give them candy or food or toy whatever they want oh I get it so I think you're saying you think there might be a different reason why kids become naughty besides what they want for example if they're hungry or bored yeah I think a lot of the times children are naughty because maybe they're tired or they're hungry or they want to play and stretch their legs but you but they can't cuz they're on the plane or they're in a stroller at the shopping mall so instead of waiting for bad behavior and then doing some

discipline like yelling at your kids or grabbing their arm maybe it's better to prevent bad Behavior by making sure the kids sleep enough and don't get bored yeah that's what I'm saying and you know my kids are young just three and one so a one-year-old can't really be naughty they're just a baby so if they need something I give them food or what they need but a three-year-old they can throw a tantrum and so they can be very naughty a tantrum yeah when they they scream and maybe they fall down on the floor and they

kick their legs sometimes they try to hit you it's really bad but I think all two and three-year-old children sometimes they do them oh I've heard of that it's called the terrible twos yes but it also lasts into three oh well it sounds like you're a good parent oh I try okay John I was curious about a trip you've taken have you ever taken a really really awesome trip yeah I've been on a lot of awesome trips but I didn't know the trips could be so awesome until I went with my kids really it went

well oh yeah yeah it went very well um it's more fun I think to take kids with on a trip where did you go I went to Thailand wow um my first trip with a kid was with my daughter to Thailand we did everything um we rode on elephants in changmai and we went down south and went to the beach um I wasn't worried about anything because of having kids with us um yeah so I wonder what would have been different if I didn't have kids I probably would have stayed up too late and I

wouldn't have woken up in the morning in that way I think kids can help you have a better vacation you can use your time better because kids are definitely going to wake up early so you can't waste the morning you said you rode an elephant yes with your daughter didn't you think that was dangerous well I was nervous about it at first I thought maybe it would be too dangerous but we had very good guides to help us so I asked the elephant trainers do you think it's safe enough for my daughter to ride the

elephants and the trainers told us yes it would be very safe and the trainers were right there with us together from the start to the end so there was never any risk was there anything that you wanted to do but you decided you couldn't do it well well maybe there are some things that younger people would do if they don't have kids like going out to a dance club late at night but um I wasn't too interested in doing that anyway so I don't consider that I missed it uh besides a dance club late at

night I don't think there's anything else I skipped maybe an amusement park when you have a baby or a toddler you can't go to an amusement park and go on a roller coaster but after kids are older you can do that too so when you went to Thailand you had one daughter do you have more kids now yes now I have a daughter and a son is it hard to travel with two kids oh it's a little harder than traveling with one kid but it's not twice as hard ah there are two kids now but

it's not twice as hard as traveling with one kid also you find that lots of people want to help you so if you have too many bags for example someone will help you carry your bags or if you need to feed your kids because babies can't feed themselves right well you just have to learn some skills like give one kid some toys while you feed the first child and then switch so give toys to the other kid and feed the second one so you learn lots of tricks like that so you can make traveling easier

well it sounds like you have a great time traveling with your kids thanks for telling me about it oh yeah I want to go on more trips with my kids I can't wait for our next vacation hey Katie I'm having a party uh Super Bowl party at my house on Sunday in a couple weeks would you like to come over um okay but I have absolutely no idea what the Super Bowl is well you know the Super Bowl is our big sporting event and we have it um once a year but it's okay if you

don't know anything about American football because actually the Super Bowl is kind of like our unofficial holiday okay yeah so what happens is everybody comes over to somebody's house and you have a big party and you watch the game but nobody really watches the game there's lots of other stuff going on so it should be good do you have like Super Bowl food you exactly exactly so it's kind of like a big Feast so we'll have um you know like hamburgers and stuff that we'll barbecue and we'll have lots of like chips and dip and

stuff like that so you don't have to bring any food but it's potluck so if you do want to bring something um yeah I I would recommend it do you have to be like a supporter of one of the teams in the final no and actually the game's not for a couple weeks so we don't know who the two final teams are going to be they still have to decide but um actually there's a bunch of things that have nothing to do with football on the Super Bowl that you'll probably like um the first is

they have the halftime show you may have heard about the Super Bowl halftime show okay you like music right I love music right so they always have a really big musical act um and actually this year I don't remember who it is I'll have to check but it's usually somebody like Bruno Mars or YouTube or somebody like that I think last year it was KT Perry was it not it might have been yeah but it's always a really really big person um another thing that's really cool about the Super Bowl is the commercials okay so

the commercials you know the companies spend a lot of money on the commercials and they're usually really good so the commercials people are often more into the commercials than the game okay especially if one team's kind of if it's a lopsided win so yeah so the commercials are fun what kind of commercials do they have oh you know like companies like Pepsi or Coke or like really bigname companies really big ones yeah they'll spend like millions and millions of dollars these are usually the most expensive commercials uh because it's one local game in one local

audience like the World Cup is a more watched event but the commercials are Regional for all the different countries whereas the Super Bowl the commercials are just for Americans so yeah these are usually the most expensive commercials like around the world so they're usually really well done is it just American teams in the Super Bowl yes it's very you know Americanized you might say um but you know like I said the game's really not that important but there is one way that you can make money okay I'm interested so what happens is we have like

a pool and you can draw numbers and like you don't have to know anything about football but you can have like you know draw numbers for the first person to score a touchdown or the first player to get a penalty or things like that and you just fill out the chart and then if your player gets that then you can get money so you have to contribute you have to pay like 10 bucks to play but then it's in a pool and then you could win money at different points during the game have you ever

won at the Super Bowl before yeah it's kind of like how it works out where everybody wins a little money and everybody loses a little money so you know gambling technically is illegal but um yeah but it's like just one of those things that everybody does it's not for big money no just for a little bit of money just a little bit of money just to have fun yeah so um uh and then I once I find out what teams are in the finals then I'll tell you about the colors and it's usually best that

you choose one team that you're going to support okay so I'll fill you in about who the teams are later and all that right so are you willing to come yeah sounds like fun okay cool I'm in all right so it's going to be at my house at 3: so if you can show up around 2ish should I bring some food you can like you can bring some type of maybe salad or um like a bean dish or something like that if you like but we'll like the main food we'll provide we'll have pizza we'll

have Burgers oh and it's Bob okay so if you want to drink you have to bring your own alcohol all right but we will have some beers and stuff do you drink uh sometimes okay cool like 10% of the time all right so see you there glad you can come no worries so we're talking about housing Meg um you know these days a lot of people can actually stay in houses when they travel like they don't stay in hotels they stay in a house have you heard about Airbnb yeah I have heard of it I've

looked at the website a couple of times do they have Airbnb where you're from uh they do they actually do have Airbnb in San Francisco but I've not used it in San Francisco I've only used it actually traveling in other countries I used it in Thailand and I was use it in Japan but I ended up I couldn't use it because of travel problems but yeah so how does it work basically what it works is if somebody owns a house they can rent out a room and so you find the house online and then you

book it with the scheduling system online and then you pay Airbnb the money and then um the people let you stay in their house what are the costs usually is it expensive it can be really cheap or really expensive you have both ends I mean sometimes you can just rent a room and sometimes you can actually rent the whole house so um you know and and now in places like Thailand or other places in Southeast Asia what they do is a lot of Condominiums now are kind of turning into mini hotels so rather than try

to find long-term tenants they just search for or they just rent out their apartments on Airbnb right well it sounds like a good way to stay someplace you haven't been before it is good I mean when I used it in Thailand what I liked about it was you feel like you have a real you know you have real Roots there you're not in a hotel so nobody's kind of intruding on you or nobody's coming to clean your room every day um so you feel like you have more privacy and you feel like you really live

in the place and usually the apartments are in real neighborhoods so they're not in touristy areas so there definitely some advantages would you say that it's safe yeah I guess that's the biggest concern um it seems to be safe I mean from what I see um although there was an interesting case recently in California where they've had problems of squatters and a what are squatters squatter is somebody who they take the a or BNB house and then they just never leave oh yeah and then they're hard to evict so that was one interesting thing and

then also recently the company's been in the news because people that have lowincome housing like government subsidized housing they've been trying to uh rent out their apartments on Airbnb and then the city or the government said hey you can't do that because we give you this house at a discount to help you cuz you're low- income you can't use it to make AIT so it's been a very debatable situation yeah I guess it's kind of like double dipping you're getting discount or paid in a way to live there and then you want to get paid

more so it sounds sounds like a problem yeah so what what do you think would you be interested in doing something like Airbnb yeah I definitely think so uh after researching a place maybe if it had a lot of pictures and it seemed clear that it would be safe and uh yeah I think I'd like to do it and actually their websites fantastic like if you go to their website you can let's say choose a house in Paris or Madrid or whatever and then they often have like the Google street cam thing so you can

see what the house looks like on the inside and then you could actually do the rotating camera and see what the neighborhood looks like and then everybody leaves reviews about the owner and about their stay there so you get a good feel about what the place is like so it's kind of a new way to travel and it's kind of cool yeah it sounds interesting especially the reviews I think knowing someone else has had a good experience I would definitely be interested doing it yeah definitely so Todd I heard that you're from San Francisco and

that it's really expensive there maybe to live is it is that true yeah it's ridiculously expensive it's obscene actually um it's so hard to to to get other people to realize how expensive it is you have to actually live there and then you you can experience it firsthand but basically you know your average small apartment is a minimum a minimum of like $3,000 a month wow that sounds really expensive well so I don't know much about the San Francisco area is that like just in the main downtown part or anywhere in the city it's actually

yeah it's pretty much the entire Peninsula um and the high pricing the high pricing affects all of Northern California and the reason is because uh companies like um Facebook Google Apple Yahoo Cisco all these really big rich rich companies pay people a lot of money and so there's a lot of money in San Francisco for the tech world and that just drives up the prices for everything so everyone who lives there like must be pretty rich yeah so it's a very high income I think the average income is over $100,000 a year or something crazy

like that so yeah it's a lot so if apartments are $3,000 a month what about houses houses are ridiculously expensive uh so your average house is probably in San Francisco a really small Rinky Dink house can go for almost a million dollars wow yeah wow that sounds impossible that sounds obscene um yeah years ago I worked on a construction crew and this was 15 years ago and we were just renovating or painting a very small little Shack I mean the house wasn't even that big and it was going for a million dollars wow yeah yeah

so when you were working there were you living in San Francisco also I was and that's actually why I became a teacher in Asia why I moved to Japan because we were losing our lease on our apartment and I had to go find new housing and not only is the housing expensive but even if you have the money you might not get a house because you have to go through this long process it's almost like getting into college that you have to go through this interview process and just going and finding an apartment is such

a complicated process in San Francisco that I I thought thought I'll forget it I'm just going to I'm going to take the easy way out and go back and start teaching overseas again so if someone were interested in living in San Francisco what would your advice be uh don't or uh make sure you have a lot of money or you have a really good job I guess there are ways around it you can rent rooms um and things like that but um it's doable because there there is some lowincome housing and if you live in

the outskirts and if you are going to commute into the City you could probably find something around $1,500 a month but still it's pretty expensive so work for Google first then move to San Francisco exactly make sure you get that job at the tech company and then once you have that job then then you're set great well thanks for sharing about San Francisco sure okay so um I'm here with Shantel and we both are from the United States and we both are teachers in Japan so I thought we would talk a little bit about some

of the stereotypes that people might have in other countries uh for example Japan or other countries about Americans so first we're going to talk about hamburgers okay okay so hamburgers how often do you actually eat a hamburger ah hamburgers I would say it's actually not that often although I love hamburgers I love them very much but maybe only a couple times a month or so yeah I agree I think hamburgers is the one thing that does not meet The Stereotype that we don't eat them that often like I never have hamburgers in America ah okay

pretty much never like I I'll have them if somebody's barbecuing it maybe for a picnic or something um yeah and if I do eat fast food it's usually not a hamburger I eat something else like I eat tacos or burritos right I don't eat hamburgers so that's one I think hamburgers don't really match The Stereotype myth yeah I agree I agree especially because I know many many of my students here in Japan they will ask me often what I eat for lunch and before I respond because they're playing a joke on me they'll say like

oh hamburger h and I have to tell them that you know I now I do live in Japan but in the United States I don't typically eat hamburgers every day but that is a lot of what they think they think that I I eat hamburgers regularly or at least fast food but their image of fast food is only hamburgers so true and actually the the funny um Side Story to that or contrary story would be you know sushi so we both teach in Japan and I think most people think that you eat sushi all the

time in Japan and it's almost the equivalent of the hamburger you don't eat it that much that is so true so true I cannot say how true that is or uh another one we're talking about um stereotypes would be Sumo so Japanese people are not that into Sumo really right but it's an iconic thing yeah so that brings us to the point of baseball ah yes so do you actually like baseball I I do I love baseball I do and I used to go to some games in the United States in San Francisco I went

to several Giants games growing up um yeah so I do enjoy baseball do you enjoy baseball I do I have to admit like I I played you know baseball when I was younger I loved baseball um but I do think it's not as popular as people think it is you know what I mean I think that like a lot of people like it you like it I like it but a lot of people could care less yes about baseball most of the time I think I hear people say it's it's a slow sport it's boring

no one wants to watch it they're much more inclined to watch basketball or football instead of baseball so true so Rachel did you grow up in New Zealand yes I did nice so I grew up in the states and I thought we would talk about how life is so much different for teens today than it was for Our Generation okay I think we can do that so obviously the first thing is that when we were young we didn't have like smartphones and things like that we didn't have the internet actually internet we didn't have email

yeah so I remember if you wanted to meet a friend you would have to plan it way in advance yes you would have to wait by the phone remember that waiting by the phone you couldn't go outside because if you were waiting for the call you had to wait at your house until you got the call and then we didn't even have an answering machine at wow my gosh that's really old school we used have to wait by the phone yeah actually I used to spend every afternoon after school on the phone with my friends

uhhuh after we got home from school we would call each other and discuss the day events I suppose yeah you had so much to share that's true I think so my teens these days they come home from school they get on their phone and they text all their friends right and they do it all day like it's constant constant chatter I think maybe that's why I'm not so much into texting it's just too much work you know like I like to build up the mystery of not knowing what somebody did for a while um yeah

but I was thinking about it recently and I think they it was similar because we used to telephone a lot but then we did have to wait a long time before finding the news true yeah I read once uh about how a lot of the movie plots from like the 60s 7s and 80s wouldn't work today because of cell phones yes because a lot of the storyline they're about missed Communications right yes and somebody yeah somebody arrived and somebody else didn't so another one I think that's uh really obvious is bottled water so when I

grew up there was no such thing as bottled water like you had to get water from a faucet right yes a tap yeah and I think I remember when they first started coming out with bottled water I think I was about 14 or 15 it was a bit lighter in New Zealand I think yeah M yeah yeah so that was crazy but I mean do you remember what it was like when when people were first drinking bottled water how strange it seemed at the time everyone was like why don't you get it from the the

water's very clean in New Zealand so the tap water is clean so there was really no reason yeah like if you come from a temperate climate it was never a problem right because you just I'm from a temperate climate as well and so the water doesn't really have problems with bacteria or things like that so it's always clean it used to be clean so in New Zealand it's probably still clean the rivers used to be clean but they're not so clean now oh really even in New Zealand problems yeah oh really shocking it's a bit

sad yeah um so how about other things that we used to do when we were kids like one thing is I think compared to kids today is we used to spend a lot of time outside actually like our parents would not allow you to stay inside you had to be out go outside it's the opposite today they make them stay inside won't let them go outside why is that why what's the rationale for why they should stay inside safety safety yeah we didn't used to hear about all of the kidnappings and abuse um in in

the media so people weren't afraid of it yeah and the crazy thing is I think hear about it now it's actually safer now right they say it's yeah it's safer now even the states where they hear about this I think statistics say that there's actually it's actually safer than it was before yes but the perception is there although that could be because the children are all inside that's true yeah that's a difficult one to figure out but I don't think it's I don't think it's that unsafe to play outside I think it's better for kids

socially for their bodies for their development to play outside if they can I agree I totally agree like kids definitely should be outside and kids should be bored I think that's one of the things that kids miss out on is boredom they're never bored now they've always got a screen to look at right so you know obviously When We Were Young you had nothing to do so you had to go outside and find something tree yeah exactly oh that's so fun I thought of something um we used to have video watching parties oh yeah only

one person in 10 had a video machine right so we would all go to the video store together and and argue over which videos to watch and choose some horror movies and some comedies and then go to some one person's house and all watch them all together I do remember that yeah it was a big Netflix binging but yeah having a video party at someone's house was a big deal and I think movies were a much bigger deal back then because we didn't have screen time we didn't have there was no such thing as screen

time you had your TV but that was not the same thing your parents wouldn't let you watch that much TV anyway and so movie was a big deal it was more of a big deal you didn't just watch it on Netflix when you were bored yeah but a kid these days it's just you know they're on their screen all the time it's just more digital pixels yeah different times okay here's another thing it's a little bit uh impolite what about looking at other people's monitor over their shoulder because you just mentioned the BTS one thing

I have to admit is because I don't have my phone out and I am looking around I have a tendency to see when to check and see what's on everybody's phone and it's total intrusion it's creepy in a way but it's also because in Asia I'm a little bit taller than the average person so I'm looking down and I can see everybody's Monitor and um yeah do you ever find yourself doing that too I do yeah but like you I think I think it's impolite right so you gotta pull away I know I shouldn't do

it um but do you know the worst thing with phones these days um the worst thing from my point of view is the amount of pictures that people take of themselves everywhere on the BTS on the subway eating I've been to S21 in Cambodia where those poor people were slaughtered basically and there are people in front of pictures of these people who were killed and they are just literally taking selfies themselves you know this world isn't about you yeah it's sometimes just stop and look and listen yeah the selfie thing I did a little bit

sometimes I would do it almost like it's sending a postcard yes you know what I mean like oh look I'm here but I have to admit yeah I don't really like doing it yeah and they take it the shot again the shot again I use selfies um in a group because I think they're fun it's actually quite fun to see one person in the front and the rest at the back yes and it usually means I can get further back in the photograph so that's that's always a good thing oh that's yeah that's true so

but you that's good that youm you do some selfies yeah yeah yeah with groups and you know if I'm taking a group in the class I'll get one of them to take the photograph yeah what about the mild pet peeve of mine not a pet peeve but people taking photos of their food I don't know why it's a thing why eat it yeah exactly enjoy it enjoy the memory you know it's it's interesting you you said that about Cambodia um a woman a group of women once said something that was really like a just a

a spear in the heart really made me think I was in C bod this was years ago and I was at um enor MH at batong bayong or I can't say it right but where they have the beautiful face sculptures and I'm like oh I got I got to get a photo and so there's a w a woman just sitting there relaxed she was maybe French or something she was European and she's like oh you want me to take your photo and I go yeah yeah yeah so then she takes it she takes my photo

this is before like cell phone cameras and then I'm like okay I have to reciprocate oh would you like me to take a photo of you just like no I'm like you don't have a camera she goes no and she just points at her head and she Taps her head like this and she goes it's all up here yeah I was like wow like she was really kind of like you know politely saying like just I'm never going to for and I'm I'm never forgotten how those things look I've never forgotten her sitting on the

Rock when she said that so wise advice I think yeah I think so now actually you are in photography do you think that actually taking so many I'm sorry you have a photography business yes do you think that actually taking so many photographs lessens the value of the Art of Photography and really appreciating a good picture yes I think it does and I think that um a lot of the apps and the the things that you can use these days to improve photographs take away the real skill of the photographer using the light using the

lines using what's in the photograph to make a really good shot I think people miss that these days yeah that is true anyway uh so today no no no using your phone no I did hear it Go B so I'm here with Angela and in a previous interview we were talking about kids and technology and devices uh and how these days often people look at their device when they're with another person how do you feel about that like if you're eating with somebody you're at dinner is it okay to check your phone we have a

rule in our house no phones at the table very nice abs no phones because you know you see people they meet in restaurants they sit around a table the food comes but everybody's looking into their phone and engaging with whatever they're doing on their phone and not talking to the people who have met them and you see people walking on the on the subway the street heading their phone it's you know it is crazy it's really sad and if you think about it we used to have you know manners uh things you couldn't do for

example no elbows on the table uh no hats inside the house I mean it sounds silly but I remember those rules as a kid you know the one that was really hard was the no elbows on the table Yeah Yeah so it's interesting that we don't have uh new rules like we should reinvent them like you can't have your phone on during the plane when it takes off so your rule is a really good idea yeah no phones at the table so you're an English teacher what do you think about phones in the classroom if

they're on a break I always call it their text break because when I'm teaching um English out here I find that people have got their phone to their hand and maybe they're Googling a word or something so it's not not too much of a distraction but when you stop them for a break as soon as you say let's have a break now they're all out with their phones and they're sitting individually looking at their phones and it's silence I know what you mean like I'll teach and it used to be you would say okay take

a break and it would be really loud they would start talking with each other and these days it's just silence they just go and they do that that motion of just flicking with their finger as they're scrolling down and um I know I just sound like you know some old guy hey get off my lawn uh and I have the same problem I want to check my phone all the time but I have to admit it's it's strange I think yes yes and now you need to even check your phone you can just look at

your Apple watch or your right your watch on your wrist it's going to tell you if your phone leads your attention and it used to be where I would say things like you know as a teacher you're teaching and you can see if a student's looking down at their phone yes and I would say hey don't check your phone but now these days kids actually call me on it they're like oh I'm looking up a word or oh I'm checking something and they literally are checking something and the kids are good at using their phone

as a learning tool yes I think that's fine so it is it's a it's a great area these days yeah so when you're with somebody you never pop out your phone I would admit that I would be guilty of checking my phone in my bag but I would never get it out and go on Facebook or Instagram and start instagramming I would just look at it and put it away yeah I there's other things I've done I mean it could be because I'm getting older uh but uh for example I try not to listen to

my iPod so much anymore or my phone radio music whatever uh I actually just try to listen I notice that when I'm always listening to everything I kind of tune the world out and I might miss things you will miss things and you know you see people i' I've been quite um tempted some days to put my earphones in and walk to the BTS but actually I think no you'd miss the traffic noise You' miss the Tuk tucks you know you'd miss a dimension of the world that's happening around you and then you get on

the BTS and everybody in the carriage is head down yeah the same position on their phones yeah that's it is and and actually I don't do it just for that reason because I noticed it I'm missing out um it's so tempting but you know I might see something uh so I'm here with Jerry and she's Tai and we are in Bangkok and uh we are going to talk about fashion so uh Jerry Bangkok is a very very fashion conscious City yes absolutely shopping is huge here so let's talk about prices so first we'll talk about

jeans um you are wearing jeans today so how much are an expensive pair of jeans in Bangkok well that's funny that you asked because the price range for uh clothes here is quite wide so you can go from 200 B tii bot for a pair of jeans up to 4,000 tibot for a pair of jeans in like like one of the top brands wow and so just so people know 200 bot would be in US Dollars that's about $6 and 4,000 bot would be about $130 yes wow so it's quite a quite a difference there

yeah um but I would say that um generally it will be in the range of 500 to 2,000 tiot okay 500 to 2,000 that's still pretty a wide Gap yeah yeah yeah Okay cool so those are jeans what about for women a blouse a blouse I would say for like a nice quality one like 500 tibot okay that's not bad $15 about okay uh what's the most you would pay for a blouse no more than 1,000 tiot okay that's your that's what about the cheapest the cheapest like 300 tibot like if you start going lower

than 300 tibot then you have to accept that the you know the qual you might get to wear it not more than three times so that's the price you pay nice all right so uh what about shoes shoes uh it's it also depends on where you go so chatuchak Market is known for affordable clothes so the shoes there would be from 200 taibat to 500 tiot but if you visit um the more well-known stores in the department stores then they can be from 500 tyot to 1,000 tbot okay mhm that's interesting so you mentioned J

toj Market can you kind of talk about Jau Jack Market yes so this is one of the main activities for tourists to do when they visit Bangkok it's a weekend market so it's only open on Saturdays and Sundays it's quite crowded but it's definitely something you should do um there's a lot of souvenir stores a lot of local shops and yeah a place to shop for clothes um and it's not just for tourists you also see a lot of ties go there because all the stores there are reasonbly reasonably priced and they're quite trendy um

yeah they have like different styles uh stores that you won't find anywhere else right oh yeah I've been there a couple times it's massive it's really massive it takes about half a day to to do the entire thing yeah yeah and it's it's easy to get lost right like if you go inside it's like you kind of don't know where you are exactly exactly which I guess it's also the fun part of it it's like an adventure in itself right right exactly okay cool thanks Jerry you're welcome let's see how's that on time oh that's

a short one hang on actually I'm going to add a little bit more mhm uh um okay so um what about things like uh like belts or you know like accessories mhm um I would recommend going to platinum Mall this mall is um located near sayam BTS station and it's known for its accessories that are like reasonably priced um so at that at Plum Mall accessories can be from two 100 tiot to not more than 1,000 tibot but usually in the range of 100 to 500 tibot okay oh wow yeah but there's a whole floor

like two floors that's dedicated to accessories so you can find necklaces sunglasses Rings earrings about 10 chops for for each category yes oh that's fantastic so bok's quite interesting because it has so many different ways you can buy things on the street yes you can buy things at the markets you can buy things at the nice air conditioned malls yeah what about online do you TI shop online very much yeah online online uh chops are becoming more and more popular now because it's quite convenient you just get it delivered to you um yeah there's a

lot of uh a lot of more fashion brands that are online on Instagram for example yeah so it's becoming a thing oh cool all right thanks Jerry you're welcome cool and then another famous thing about Bangkok is the motorcycle taxis which really freak a lot of the tourists out they're afraid to get on one can you explain the motorcycle taxis which are incredibly common absolutely so yeah it can get quite it's quite scary but it's probably the fastest and most uh costeffective way to get around Bangkok especially during the rush hour um Mor ta you

there's like a lot of MTB taxis in Bangkok and there are different stations so you can get them at the at uh right below the sky Train Station mostly and yeah they know the streets very well um they know the the the fastest routes to get to your destination and once you get familiar with it it's actually not too bad as long as you ask for a helmet I always think that that that is cuz it does get quite scary on the main roads with like yeah women a lot of times sit in a very

dangerous position because of their skirt they'll sit sideways they don't sit with both legs on with one leg on each side of the motorcycle which I always find incredibly dangerous yeah you ever sit that way I have to admit yeah most of the time I sit that way and it's quite like you don't realize it yourself but when people see it they're quite fascinated by it like how we can balance ourself and then the motorbike is like swearing its way around yeah right exactly um another thing about the uh maybe just explaining about the motorcycle

taxis Is So Bangkok has really long streets it's not a grid system it's kind of like the roots of a tree like the the the roads will just go forever in One Direction so basically people take the the main lines like the Subway or overhead train to their stop and then they take the motorcycle taxi to their home correct yes yes correct that's the most common way yeah to do it and in the mornings and in the evenings it's amazing cuz it's like this Fleet of motorcycle yeah yeah yeah like the whole street is just

humming with motorcycles and then you you realize how popular they are when you're standing at the station and there's no motorbikes left cuz you know they're all being yeah is yeah so like in your where you live do you see the same motorcycle taxis every day yes yes do you know them by name um yes so like even the one in front of where I work um they're like familiar face they know where I live and they take me home every day oh my gosh that's so awesome so what about new things like uber and

grab mhm so it's causing quite a bit of tension in in Bangkok um as expected uh you know the motorcycle taxis and the normal taxis are not so happy about uh this um but yeah I think um with the election coming up a lot of parties are trying to regulate it a little better because currently the main problem is that the Ubers and the grab drivers are not legal to have passengers they don't have the license so that's the main issue where why the motorbike taxis are and the the normal taxi drivers are quite Fed

Up about mhm wow well one thing's for sure sure it's very easy to get around this city yes definitely like did your kids work when they were in in school how did you feel about your kids when they were in in high school my kids had to work for the pocket money so they would have chores to do and they would get pocket money um they would help with the washing up sweeping cleaning whatever they always had to earn their pocket money they thought was really hard so did you ever withhold their wages yeah you

did really you'd be like no you didn't do your chores you don't get the money having it yeah really how often would you have to do that uh more so in the in the beginning once they get the idea you know if you don't work for your money you don't get your money and that that's a life lesson isn't it that is do your work great cuz I I think don't get money I think a lot of people just assume even me like i' I've never had children but the parents just spoil the kids and

they just they don't want to have the hassle they don't want to have the fight they just give them the money but you look at the difference between the Western kids and the kids out here you can go on a bus trip with the kids out here you can go on a 6-h hour bus trip you don't hear a peep out of that kid they're sat there the M's asleep maybe the kids asleep as well if you put Western kids on a bus for six hours you'd have to have a PlayStation or a tablet or

something they'd be crying you'd have to feed them things it's a totally different way of acting yeah I like I missed that like when I came to Asia I noticed that the kids were happier with less much less than than we have and it wasn't until I spent the year in Asia and then I went to Australia landed in Sydney noticed one thing that the people were that much bigger but also the kids were just so spoiled and the the the parents were just giving into them so you think that maybe we need to to

rectify that situation that we should stop spoiling kids yeah do take away the PlayStation yeah to them outside yeah you can get strollers today with um a place where you can put the the kids tablet yeah crazy could just look at the world yeah it's so funny you mention that because before we were talking about potential business ideas and I have an idea called Camp boredom so what Happ bedom is good yeah what happens at Camp boredom is you send your kid to Camp boredom it's like a just a camp in the woods or on

a farm and the kids come and they go what do we do and I go I don't know no nothing go outside just find something to do no Wii yeah cuz I grew up no Wi-fi no nothing I grew up on a farm and I'm I'm really blessed I had no idea how blessed I was at the time but I grew up I spent all my time on my grandfather's farm and we had nothing to do I mean nothing but we had this Farm like so we had everything to do so rule was you had

to be up for breakfast at 7:00 and then once you finish breakfast you had to be out of the house like you could not be in the house it was almost forbidden to be in the house unless it's like rain in outside and you would be outside from you know sun up to sun down yeah climbing fences climbing trees hay stocks right having the best time of your life and your imagination is going and you just oh the little things that you would do oh we're going to build a tree for it oh we're going

to do this or we're going to do that we're going to stop the River from flowing right right so that's my idea I think Camp boredom so maybe we have to I think boredom is good for kids yeah how so because it it as you said you know if if they're always entertained and always fed then they don't get to learn how to entertain themselves yeah you know if you sit sit them in a car with nothing for six hours right look out the window there was a great a thing recently where Jerry Seinfeld the

comedian he has a bit where he talks about how his mother would take him to the bank when he was like a kid and like a bank or an department store was the ultimate space of boredom like there's nothing you can do you like you're so bored you just want to like flop down on on the floor type of thing but but you're right like I don't know if kids have that anymore no they don't where they have like they hit that wall where there's nothing for them to do yeah you know so do you

think that maybe you we should limit the the devices the smartphones all that the kids use I do think you should but I think it's too late now I think you know we've pass a point where you can get Wi-Fi internet you know if we took all that off the kids now know what what would they do they'd be bored well you can just never give it to them right yeah in the first place maybe that's impossible that's impossible Okay cool so I'm here with Angela and we're talking about families differences in family culture and

structure um one thing that I noticed uh um sorry and we both have experience with the West actually we're both westerners and we also have worked and lived in Thailand have you noticed a difference in the flow of money which I think is quite interesting so in a lot of Asian cultures especially Thailand the money the flow of money goes from the children up yes whereas in the west the flow of money goes from parents down the parents down or the older the family member down yes it's a completely different flow which is quite interesting

when you think about it isn't it because you know a lot of the people that were working in Bangkok and some of the the tourist places in Thailand they send money home they don't earn money for their own keep and their own life they actually send money home to the villages to pay for their children to pay for their mothers and I think it affects the way that people respect people within the family there's huge respect for older people in Thailand that I didn't notice in in the west and I I think maybe it may

be something to do with the fact that they are still giving to their parents yeah you know that's so true I think uh also the fact that that the family is almost like a bank yes it's and and they have a pool of wealth that they use together as a unit which I think is a just a great concept yeah although when I say this I don't kick money up to my mother so but I'm always thinking I wish my family did this our family in the west we should we should adopt this practice you

know everybody gives 10% to the pool to the Family Pool yes but I I don't know if it it would it would ever work I don't know if it would no so I mean so you have kids yes um how would you feel if suddenly your your your children started giving you 10% of everything they wouldn't that be wonderful but it's not going to happen right it's just not in our society yeah but you wouldn't spend it though right like the whole idea is like they just give it to the like you would be the

guardian you would be the safekeeper of the money yeah i' probably have the money and then put the money away for them right because I think that the pressures in the west are different as well you know it's very hard now for people to become house owners so for my kids it's going to be very very difficult for them to get on the the property ladder so if they gave me any money I would give it back to them as a deposit yeah you know although there is one other thing that goes the other way

which is uh in Japan um I hope I say this right I I think it's called aoshi dama basically it's you get money from your relatives if you're a child or a kid you get money from your relatives on on January 1st they give you an envelope and sometimes kids might get two3 $4,000 on New Year's depending how wealthy your family is and I think there's Chinese New Year maybe they do something similar the kids get money I'm not sure so there is the other flow where where families do give kids money I think and

also I remember years ago when I first came to Thailand I was talking with a guy and I said yeah you know one thing that's shocking about kids in Thailand is they don't nobody works they don't have part-time jobs not that many have part-time jobs although it's changed I said America you work and it's a good thing like you know you you you build values and he said yeah you know in Thailand they can't do that because if a child Works especially for a middle class family it's an embarrassment to the family like the father

can't provide for his children his children have to work when they should be studying so it's really interesting the different Dynamics and money across cultures so I'm here with Angela and she's a writer and a traveler a teacher a businesswoman and you're also a mother yes and twins you have twins that's amazing wow and so you also are now what's called an empty nester can you explain what that means it's the feeling that you get when you realize that you've worked hard to your kids all those years and now they're ready to leave and because

they're twins The Nest is going to be emptied completely at once yeah and I would be in the house by myself um I did think though that my son um would have stayed home forever so I would never have got to a position of having an empty nest and and uh my daughter H she she left a little bit earlier but it was just the thought of you know you're in a house that your family's grown up in you know what are you do now do you take in lodges do you let the house out

and that's when I made my decision to travel and it was a gap that I spotted because my kids were 18 at the time it was likely that my daughter uh would have grandchildren at some point I would have grandchildren she'd have children and then it would not be possible to come away again so I saw the Gap um I rented the house out and my son who was the last to leave the house he said M are you renting my room as well I said well of course and rent to your room you don't

get a house with a teenager resident in it and he was Absolut flu but he he found somewhere to live he's he's working she's found somewhere to live she's working and I think that that one of the things you can give your kids actually is Independence I think it's the biggest thing that you can give them yeah back in the day you know it used to be that you would get kicked out of the nest that was another phrase you know you say like okay when you're 18 your parents would you know give you that

push like a motherb bird go fly go go do your thing but I think it's still a good thing actually I think it's a very good thing you know that you go out you I was not really kicked out but I did leave right away and uh it was a good experience it was the best experience you know that those those years when you've got freedom you've got your friends you're growing up you're learning about the world you should be out there by yourself now you um are you've done something uh Against the Grain you

went and traveled by yourself um and your Gap year now in Asia where we are it's very they're not this isn't really an empty nester culture like I don't know if they especially Thailand They Don't Really push kids out of the house people stay and live a little bit more have you noticed a difference in like kind of the family Dynamics now that you're in in Bangkok I think um in Bangkok and Thailand and certainly the the other Southeast Asian countries I've traveled I've been amazed at how families operate and live together I think I'm

very saddened by um my own circumstances in the UK and lots of people in the UK where families are divided and they don't live together they don't support each other when I was living in isan it was very obvious that families because there's no um Social Services people have to work or they've got no money so the the parents would have to go to Bangkok or puket or one of the the tourist areas and the children would be left with the grandparents in the village so it was obvious there were lots of children who were

growing up with grandparents aunties but I looked at this and thought well these kids are living in a village where it's safe they're happy you know they grew up as a a gang and and they loved yeah that's really nice it's interesting you mentioned that one of the saddest things I ever saw unexpectedly was when I was in the Philippines I was flying out I was in the Philippines had a great time and when I was going at the airport they had this long line and I didn't know what was going on it was all

these children and their mothers I mean we're talking dozens and it just it seems strange and then it hit me oh because the Philippines have so many people that work overseas these were all mothers that were saying goodbye to their children yes because they had to go work overseas and it's like I only get choked up now like thinking about it it was just really powerful that though you know like the people that had that situation that those mothers you know they don't want to leave their kid that's got to be really hard but they

have to they have to go to wherever they're going to go in the world yeah that was that was something I'll never forget that yeah and I find families over here are just so willing to share they share their food they share their beds they share you know they share their houses in a way that is just so so different yeah to have experienced the UK that is true that is true so Ruf you are from China and in America Chinese students have a reputation of being very hardworking is that true yes exactly uh in

my high school uh in one class we have 70 around 70 students in one class and uh everybody wants to be the top student so everybody worked so hard and uh I'd say my high school was kind of like a prison you have to go to school every day from uh 6:35 a.m. to 9:40 p.m. really um that long yes that's that's over 12 hours that's like 13 14 hours a day yes exactly whoa how did you feel as a student studying that much sleepy bad every day I'm so sleepy I I can imagine do

you think it was productive studying that much um I think uh their purpose just let us to stay as much time as we can in the school and we cannot get distracted by other stuff so we always stay at school and we always focus on we studying and yeah we kind of cannot know anything about the outside of the wall from school that's amazing so for such a long day can you talk about the daily schedule what was your schedule like every day uh from um 650 we start to have class from 650 until maybe

11:45 yeah we have 45 minutes class and then 10 minutes break and we also have 30 minutes we have to do exercise on the playground and uh in the afternoon is the same routine and then we went to dinner around 6: to 7 and from 7 to 9:40 we have to do our homework oh so you study at school so it's not hom work it's school workor you don't actually go home right yeah that's crazy so how many classes would you have every day classes uh eight classes okay and what were the subjects um we

separate the subject if you learn more mathematics we learn mathematics English and Chinese and uh uh physics chemistry and uh um biology that's yeah that's very rigorous did you enjoy all the subjects yeah I love I love physics and uh uh biology and chemistry and now you are training to be a doctor yeah that's fantastic did you know you wanted to be a doctor when you were in high school I kind of know because my father is a doctor okay and uh he was kind of forcing me to study the medicine oh nice so we

have a a phrase in English we say follow in your Father's Footsteps so you definitely are following in your Father's Footsteps oh that's great is your mother a doctor uh I'm my mother is a business woman now okay oh great um so you had all these courses Now in America there's a big controversy about tests that kids take too many tests to test driven what about in China do you have a lot of tests yeah I have test every month and they will um they will make a list of uh every single person how much

score you got in test W so they rank everybody to see yes that's very competitive yeah I think that's that's kind of bad for our over emotion yeah so it creates a lot of stress yeah we have 2,000 students in one grade that is crazy and so you can be number 2,000 you can be the lowest student yes and they put that out there yes really oh my they can never do that in America yeah I think so oh my gosh do you think that's a good idea depends on the person right yeah wow so

you have a lot of pressure did you feel pressure from your parents from your peers from your teachers yeah like who gave you the most pressure myself oh that's good yeah yeah I don't want to be lazy I don't want to be uh worse so I have to always work hard to chasing other people everybody wants to be the best so everybody worked really really hard even we have breaking time they don't break at all seriously yes what do they do during the break they do questions they quiz each other the students quiz each other

or they just do homework they do their homework and uh they find out what problem they've had and they solve the problem with teachers or other students they just starting out day they can't do that that's amazing and kids do this like 14 15 hours a day yeah wow that's really good for China and uh we don't have that much summer location and winter location in Winter location we have two weeks because of the Chinese New Year it's about two week stuff so we have two weeks in Winter loacation and one week summer loation only

is that enough of course not and uh even we have loacation the teacher would uh give us a lot of homework to do that is very impressive that's is very not good experience wow well actually okay we'll talk about that in the next interview I think that's a very interesting point so Ru you said that your education system is very strict mhm and you study like 15 hours a day yes okay so if you were in charge would you keep the system the same way it depends on the person uh I think there should be

a place that uh as strict as my high school and and um you can choose to send your children to go there or or if the students themselves they want to go to that school they can go I think that's really really motivative to students to study hard because everybody do the same and they are trying their best to do to be the best well yeah we have a phrase in English like a rising tide lifts all boats and I think it's kind of the same right so if it's really rigorous for Ev for most

people it's going to pull everybody up yes okay um there's nothing you would change like if you were in charge like would you give maybe a little more vacation time would you start the day later would you make classes smaller if I can choose I would definitely don't choose my school because that's that was horrible for me because I need a lot of sleep than normal people but I cannot have that much time to sleep so I always sleep on the class and uh when somebody found out that I I'm sleeping on class they will

decrease the score of my class oh that's serious yes very serious and uh yeah and your um teacher would punish you to write a paper like I'm sorry I'm sorry I decreased the score of our class I shouldn't sleep on the class and I have to write it for like uh 1 hour to write that stuff that is very harsh yeah I think though a lot of people when they hear stories like that they actually are a little bit envious especially parents or teachers because in the rest of the world it's not that students don't

try that hard yeah so that's kind of special actually yeah I think that's yeah I think that's the special point of China so uh what time did you have to get up every day to get to school at 6:45 or I have to get up at the 6 oh well that was not too bad that's pretty fast you wake up at 600 you get to school by 6:45 yeah I can I can like wear my clothes pretty fast and uh directly get on my father's car and eat on my father's car and put my socks

on on my father's car wow yeah that's yeah that's talk about streamlined very mobile that's great okay so uh what about the tests so it's really controversial like in the US about standardized tests rather than just learning the students often have to prepare for tests yeah in your country is there also a Big Mo movement just to have a lot of testing we have a test I each month and we only do paper test and uh the questions can be really difficult yeah always very very difficult uh in my case I'm the still I'm I'm

the like a middle in the middle middle of the pack as we say yeah the middle of the pack and uh uh for mathematics we have totally 50 uh scores and probably I can get 60 to 70 that's wow that's a big range of that mean do some students get 100% no no if you get more than 120 you are really brilliant so the questions always really really difficult can the teacher get 150 I'm not sure well I have to admit cuz even like English teachers will tell you and they're lying if they don't admit

this even on tests like the TOEFL mhm uh it's it's very hard for a teacher to get 100% just not because of knowledge but because of concentration yes exactly we have a lot of questions and some of them they are kind of tricky right yeah so they mislead you a little bit yeah that's great so you took all these courses what was the course you were best at and the course you were worst at uh English was was my worst ad oh no your English is wonderful really yeah oh I disagree it was it was

okay oh actually how how do you learn English in China uh actually my speaking skills I get it from my traveling I did uh solo traveling last year wow you've learned a lot quickly yeah thank you that's great that's really that's really inspirational I think for a lot of the students that listen to this site one year yeah fantastic but uh the thing I have to mention about is you have to know a lot of words before you start speaking English you have to know what you known like you have to remember a lot of

words and then you can uh use it when you have to use it okay right so English was tough not easy not easy for everything you have to learn learning isn't uh easy and funny stuff for everyone starting is hard and it's kind of betray the human uh spirit yes so wow that's crazy so how many students would be in an English class I hear that China has huge English classes like there might be a hundred students in one class it can be but um it it depends in my high school we have the same

class at the same classroom all always and in my University we have 30 students in my English oh that's good that's kind of normal that's still a lot for an English teacher that's a lot but well was your teacher usually Chinese or an international teacher Chinese teacher Chinese teacher okay and so there was a big stress on grammar and vocabulary things like that yes how about listening um uh we only do the audio listening test okay so it's uh always the same the same pronunciation like uh uh yeah so you don't have a lot of

variety of accents different way yeah okay ah we have to introduce L to China yeah website yeah cool so what was your best subject my best subject was mathematics great yeah that's impressive I have a degree in economics and there's a lot of math and I went to a good school but I was not strong at math and I was terrible at physics oh and so physics and economics are kind of related but not really I did not do very well in physics so how how are you at physics uh I love the actually I

love all the math stuff uh also included physics because you also have to use a lot of mathematics on your physics and uh for the physics you have to know the uh formula very well then you can use it if you don't know the formula very well you cannot when the question is there you cannot th apply apply that yeah oh yeah I I agree it's tough I'm very impressed with you because whenever I meet somebody who's good at math or physics uh I have great admiration because my degree was math heavy but math was

not my Str so what was your strong point uh that's a good question I was never a good student in anything uh I I went to how I got to a good University is actually surprising but I was always middle of the road middle of the pack as we said um always be minus student in everything I see I was not exceptional like you you you don't have to be very good at starting but you can handle your life very easily that's also a important thing for a human that is true I do agree with

that but I think if I was a student in China I would be that Mr 2000 so Shantel you were saying that you grew up in a small town and had a very rustic life but then you moved overseas to Italy correct yes I moved to bolognia bolognia Italy wow that's like that's such a huge transition what was that like and like why did you move to Italy oh wow um so I moved to Italy because I was studying abroad during my junior year at University and so I was to do a immersion program at

the University of bolognia which means all of my classes were in Italian all of my homework all of my exams everything was completely in Italian and I also had to find my own housing which was also the first time I found housing on my own because I had always lived in the University dorms at my university in the United States and so yeah to navigate one a new city a city in general and then finding my first apartment and learning how to survive a new University system it was exhilarating and very exciting and um yeah

I I loved it that's so cool so what was it like when you first got to Italy like the did you have culture Shar I mean because you you came from a small town environment and now you're living in a big city in Europe I think um I think my friends would probably say that I was very quick to trust everyone um as as I mentioned before growing up in a small town I I knew all my neighbors and I was very trusting of of strangers and very welcoming and I I still am but in

hindsight when I moved to Italy I think I was maybe a little too naive sometimes and especially not knowing the language it was easy to sort of put my trust or my faith in someone if I and I when I needed help because I needed help often whether for translating or even just grocery shopping and so sometimes I I think I look back and like oh maybe I I should have walked away a little bit sooner or something like that yeah oh so how I mean compare life in Italy to life in the in the

States what was it like how was it different life life in Italy feels so much slower it um people are still very productive and they're very passionate and they they go to their jobs and they go to work but there's just this sense of how important it is to enjoy your time and to enjoy your time with family and with friends so for example I feel like in the United States people and this is very general but I feel like people have their jobs and they work really hard and to the point where maybe they're

so tired they go home and they just want to watch Netflix or watch TV and relax and and that's their way of relaxing is being at home and in Italy it feels like the way people recharge and the way that they relax and get their energy back is being in the company of their friends and being in the company of their family so they'll finish work and everyone will meet up for a drink in the center of town and it's it's not to drink a lot it's really just to have a glass of wine eat

some delicious food and just sit and talk but about nothing really just enjoy the time and eventually people decide to go home but it'll be hours later even though they're exhausted from work but that's the that's how they relax and that's how they get their energy back and they go to work the next day and are productive and I really enjoyed that the most I can relate to that I I was in Spain for about two months just traveling around and the one thing that I still remember the most is that I would go into

a little Pub or a bar at late at night 10:00 at night and there would be old people and I'm I'm not talking like 50 or 60 I'm talking like 75 years old maybe and they're well-dressed and they're sitting at a table with their friends and I could never imagine that happening in the United States and it was so impressive I was so impressed by that that people really in the in the later years of their life still had that social Spirit they go out they socialize they have a good time and we're talking late

at night like 10:00 you would never see that in America ever yeah I completely agree and it's very similar in Italy too so what about the food I hear the food is fantastic everyone you know Raves about Italian food yes it is so good and I probably wow where to begin with food I love the cheeses there's just so many different kinds of cheese and I'm I'm a huge cheese meat um jam person and so the combination of of having all of that available in Italy and especially the different regions are known for different foods

so sometimes you can't even eat a specific type of food unless you're in that City and or otherwise you'd have to pay a lot to get it at a different part of the of this of the country so yeah I I mean pizzas were delicious too I know it's ypical but the pizzas were awesome and they're so different than the US they're so thin super super thin there's no like deep dish pizza in Italy or or double crust or cheese filed crust that doesn't exist exactly like it melts in your mouth right yeah yeah it's

it's so delicious and pastas of course are great and their wines are delicious too and yeah I I miss Italian food a lot a lot well I am thinking of going there so you'll have to give me some tips I would love to hey Jen we're talking about technology I'm curious how many times do you check your email every day um nowadays I check it every day because I have so many emails coming from uh my company so I have to be updated but in the past I would not check it for like like I

would just check it two or three times a week How would how about you yeah see actually that I brought that up because I think this is an interesting generational shift like I don't check Facebook and all that stuff that much but my generation we we check email multiple times a day right for work like you just said um but the younger generation from what I understand you guys don't even use email yeah like uh if you ask me the same question question two months ago I would say I hardly check my meils because everything

like all the conversation I have it's all on like Facebook or some other social media you know not emails like I think that's very old school yeah so you do like text messaging ly WhatsApp yeah all of that all of that like how many accounts do you have actively that you actively use uh wait maybe I activ actively use five of them but I have eight of them yeah wow you can manage that like the reason I don't do it I I I imagine that you just must get a message like every 20 seconds not

every 20 seconds like unless you're dating but yeah really get a lot of messages and that doesn't drive you crazy that doesn't like bother you I think uh in the beginning it was like too much but now we've just gotten like used to it you know like it it's just very normal for for us it's like you checking your mail three times a day which is crazy for me yeah but still cuz the thing is I don't like the phone I think we talked about this before like my generation was the you know the fingers

generation so we used our fingers to type and the younger generation you use your thumb right and to me it's really slow and just painstaking to do like to communicate with your thumb on the phone really because for me I think think it's faster than typing I know actually I see you guys and it's amazing like I see my students how fast they can use their phone and it's phenomenal to me it's like Blurry it's so fast I think if you start using your phone more and like not your um PC then you would be

fasted it too because like even if I were to check my meals I don't do it from my PC I actually reply to all my meals from my phone itself wow actually no I think it's not true because I've tried I think it's cuz I'm older right so my my phone gets stiff I mean my phone my thumb gets stiff like arthritis or something like it literally stops moving that's why I'm amazed like I physically do it no no I really like I and when I type I could type really fast touch type but I

cannot move my phone that fast and the and the more the longer I try I get thumb fatigue like my thumb just stops like the joint won't work anymore for me I it's very difficult for me to type really fast I would rather use my thumb and text well that's cool okay so now these days I don't know if you realized but you can do uh voice typing have you tried that so like Google docs for example you don't even have to type anymore you can just talk in a microphone and with no special software

and Google Docs will type what you what you say but then again you have to be very clear because like it always makes a lot of mistakes yeah but you know what's amazing about it is I had I was doing it with my students and then I uh was going to have my student do it and the voice recorder wouldn't take their voice it would only take my voice I think uh it's because like the V the the user account name yeah the user user account name can only uh recognize your voice voice because that's

been saved first right so it saves the first voice and then another one won't work yeah I guess so that brings up the question technology gets better and better and better do you think typing will be obsolete will be gone in 5 10 years I cannot really say but maybe no not in 10 years maybe 20 to 30 years yeah but not in 10 years because I think still people are more comfortable writing their books and stuff like reports just typing you know everybody doesn't like to talk a lot true yeah I think there's a

different mental process when you type and it just when you just speak it goes away yeah okay so Jen we're going to talk about uh media and Technology you know like uh phones and music things like that so the first one is how addicted are you to your phone like how long can you go without using your phone oh that's a difficult question because like I'm very I would say I'm very addicted to my phone because I like I keep on checking it every five minutes like I feel like without my phone my head doesn't

like my brain stops working you know yeah wow I would say like the maximum I can stay without it would be one or two hours you've got to be kidding me I mean if you asked me in the past yeah I could like stay without it for a while but nowadays like I don't even own a watch so that would be like you know my time right as well so um I have to keep checking it what about you we are Polar Opposites actually I am so bad about not using my phone and it's a

SmartPhone actually I have two I have an Android Galaxy and I have an iPhone uh I set them down and forget to forget where they are and go like days without actually checking them sometimes and I'll go to work and somebody will be like are you mad at me I like I'm trying to reach you and you won't and I'm like no I'm not mad at you why and I'm like oh I haven't even checked my phone in like two days so that would like that sounds so crazy to me because I could never go

without my phone without two day for two days yeah well one there's a couple things one it's old school right and two I get all my information on the internet on a PC so I'm working so I get everything on the internet like Facebook um news stuff like that the computer like you said tells the time so I actually forget about my phone okay then I think if I have a PC then I would also forget my phone right yeah but your generation you're like it's all in your hand right and that's right because it's

more convenient have you heard the term second brain no yeah somebody some teacher conference was saying that phones are student second brain so they use it it's like you know you hold it and you have two brains one in your hand and one in your head I would agree yeah well it's weird so how about uh music like how addicted are you to music do you have to have music playing all the time not all the time but then I would have to listen to music once at least once a day because you know it

just refreshes your mind and you can just like um remove your from your stress through music but it depends upon what kind of music you have what about you like do you like listening to music no I do but I I'm not a music of fiction a and I always listen the same 10 songs I think a lot of older people we kind of get in that rut where I listen honestly to music and I'm from the'80s right so I'm 48 I'm almost 50 so I love music from the 70s and ' 80s and that's

all I listen to that's understandable actually I also have a lot of old songs but like I just don't listen I just it's not like I just keep on listening to those music I actually keep on adding more music more songs to it so that my playlist is like you know update like is updated every now and then and I think if you have good music you will actually be addicted to it maybe you don't have good music no the music from the 80s is good um okay so what about like TV do you watch

TV every day um not so much because lately I've been so busy at school so I cannot really yeah I don't watch much TV but the during my week during weekends yeah I do like to like uh watch new movies or different series what about are you one of those people that will stay up till 2: 3 4 in the morning and just watching YouTube videos not YouTube videos but yes if I'm addicted to some series then I would just binge watch and I mean watch it like watch them till 5: in the morning yeah

like what shows do you watch uh shows recently I've been watching Suits it's like it's a SE it's a new series and it's really good you should try it too okay oh I'll have to check it out thanks you're welcome Todd so Jen we're talking about gifts we were talking about giving gifts before now let's talk about receiving gifts so what is the best and worst gift you have received uh why don't you go first sure mine's easy my stepfather uh he made a basketball hoop for me in our driveway and and he made it

for my birthday and it was pretty cool cuz he put it up in like one day so uh I had a car at that time and so I would have seen him making it but I just came home one day and there was big basketball hoop with a big bow around it it was on my birthday and it was great yeah and I used it like every day and I had nieces and nephews they used it and I had all my friends in the neighborhood come over we had basketball tournaments it was a really good

gift that's really cool I mean it's so nice of him that he would like you know go through all that and give you such a special gift yeah and you know the funny thing about it is I think he really regreted it because he wasn't thinking how loud a basketball would be when you bounce it uhhuh so when you would bounce the basketball it made like this really loud noise echoing sounds down the street so but no my dad was great he was really cool that's really nice yeah it was nice um so how about

you do you have a a really special gift uh for me my special gift would be like this uh my mom once uh made like suit a pair of socks for me and they were like really cute like with little flowers on the right side of the socks and I would wear them every day when I was a kid and I thought that was really special I still have them in my bag oh really yeah wow winter is coming I'm going to use it again so socks wear out pretty easily you've really kept them in

good condition yeah because like it was uh she probably used really good uh willo because it's still there and I still wear it a lot oh that's great so what about a bad gift or a gift that you were not so crazy about uh I don't know if it's okay to say like I have a bad gift or something and but yeah once I did get like a very big teddy bear from a friend who loved toys by the way and she thought that I would love it as much as she did and she gave

me this big toy and I didn't know what to do with it I was so embarrassed by it that I would actually hide it in my closet so that other friends cannot see it yeah every time she came to my house I would take it out and you know just put it on my bed but I hated that Teddy oh no wow yeah so what about your worst gift uh so yeah uh for me well uh a very close person to me a good friend bought me a shirt it was lime green it was so

ugly and the the texture also was really kind of rough it had this like ribbed texture and I knew the minute I saw it I would never wear it ever um and so I felt bad because this person would come over to my house and you can kind of see where I kept my clothes in my closet and and it was a very small room and that lime green shirt was just always there that's so funny what did you do with it did you wear it you know I was thinking of a million ways to

get rid of it so I would wear it occasionally if I knew my friend was going to come around and I wasn't going outside I knew I had to wear it one or two times uh and then I used it to mop up some coffee once and then I threw it out what I know that's so crazy I know but but it wasn't quite so bad because there was actually two shirts and so like my friend bought the shirts two for one I guess mhm and I I still have the white shirt uh but the

lime green one I got rid of yeah you know what you could have actually worn it during winter and like put on like a sweater on top of it and then like like you know a coat or something you didn't really have to do that that's kind of mean it is actually it is mean and I don't know why but for some reason I really did not like the color and I just don't like lime green I don't like neon colors and I would just see that bright neon color all the time so I understand

what your what you feel but I do feel bad for your friend though I know so am I a bad person um I don't know no comment no you're not a bad person everyone has like some problem with colors and stuff so I guess it's fine yeah like have you ever had something that had just rubbed you the wrong way like for some reason you look at it and it was like an ey sort you just hated looking at it uh like a piece of clothing or maybe something in your house or besides that toy

I got which I actually I kind of like nowadays just because it's with me and like when I own something after some time I end up liking them because they're mine you know yeah it grows on you exactly yeah actually just thinking about that lime shirt it kind of is growing on me now and now I really regret it I wish I had kept it too bad you already spilled some coffee on it so Jen the holiday season is coming up and many cultures give gifts around the New Year's for different holidays um first of

all do you like to give people gifts um what kind of a person would I be if I said no I don't like people giving people gifts but yeah I'm not really good at choosing gifts for people yeah why why why do you think that because every time I go and buy something for someone I want to buy something that I like and I would think that it would look good on them or something but then my friends end up being like you know they don't really like the gift so much because they're not it

doesn't suit them or something yeah yeah for example I bought this pair of this pair of earrings for this his friend and then I realized that she doesn't really like you know jewelies and stuff so she never wore it yeah ah right yeah it's kind of hard to know what they want actually for that reason I yeah I don't like giving gifts at all uh I think it's because of my background like studying economics it's just to me it's inefficient you're buying something you don't know if they really want it and they say oh it's

the thought that counts but the time that you waste finding the gift and then you give them the gift maybe they don't use it so I'm not a big fan of gift giving even for birthdays I actually agree with you and for me like if it was my birthday I would rather have someone make a card for me it would have more value than someone buying gifts for me any Reas you up yeah and I think like in Asia it's more common which I like and that's kind of the gift you give to somebody when

you travel so if I travel somewhere I'll pick something up for my mom you know from a country I went to or if somebody you know let's say they went to Korea or China during the break they might bring back some special food to the office and everybody can have a cracker or a cookie or something like that and I I like that yeah I mean I am from Nepal and here too like in my country too they would rather give us like fruits and like different kind of uh other sweets and stuff rather than

clothes and M jewelies you know yeah so true yeah and actually another thing I like to do is sometimes buy a really nice gift and then for one year and then maybe for the next year or two don't buy the person the gift for example like maybe one year I bought my land lady who I'm very close to I bought her an iPad I'm like oh she's kind of older and she never had had an iPad so I bought her an iPad but then the next year I didn't buy her something really expensive I bought

her like a box of chocolates or something you know uh in that case like I think it would create a problem because once you give someone really special thing then the next year they will expect something more you know yeah so like it'll be really dis like disappointing if you if they get something that's not very valuable than it was the year before yeah it's kind of hard to climb back from that isn't it yeah yeah after an iPad it would be bad yeah though she she's a really nice woman and she defin I don't

think she thinks that way at all so she's actually better at giving me gifts she's always giving me gifts so uh have you gotten any gifts recently for anybody are you already planning to get your gifts for the end of the year uh I actually just presented a pair of shoes for my friend because it was her birthday but then the thing is we don't really celebrate New Year at this time of year it's kind of different for us because we celebrate the lunar oh right which is an April right yes okay cool so I've

not really thought about like Christmas gifts or anything so in your country in Nepal like when do people give gifts on what occasions um yeah during our new year and during like we have a lot of festivals so more than like gifts we just invite people in and you we like you know um gather around and eat good food that's it yeah that's the best I believe so too so I'm here with seantal and we're talking about stereotypes or about images people have about Americans we're both teachers in Japan and it's interesting what people think

about Americans so I'm going to bring up a touchy topic guns guns in America yeah so I have to admit that my students also are shocked when I tell them that pretty much everybody that I know has shot a gun yes and that every family I know has a gun and it's really shocking when people hear that but it's kind of true I think yeah I think especially since you and I both are from rural rural areas yeah but I I'm I grew up in a household that had several guns because my father is a

hunter so I I think this is a little bit rare the hunting at least but I I grew up and learned how to hunt along with my brother um and so for me me it was it was really normal to shoot a gun to know how to be safe with a gun to know uh when you can use it how to clean it things like this um and I think a lot of people in my town knew a lot of a lot of my friends and family members knew how to do it but in Japan

it's if I tell someone that I have a gun in my home in America the the look on their FA is yeah like horror scared yeah very confused why would anyone have a gun and I I think I can understand because in Japan it's just not the case guns are not as common or as readily available to the public in general yeah and I have to admit like I grew up on a farm and we had you know rifles and shotguns and we had them for either hunting or we actually had them for to protect

livestock like animals on the farm um but we never really use them well actually shouldn't say that we could use them for target practice and we would if we were bored sometimes we would go out in the field and have you know try to hit tin cans or something that was kind of how we would pass the time but I have to admit I was always freaked out when I saw handguns I didn't like handguns I never did I don't know why it just was like you know you would see somebody would have one in

a shelf or something like that and I thought oh wow that's kind of weird but the rifles and shotguns never bothered me at all yeah no I actually with that too I could agree because I am also at home we do have a handgun and I for me well maybe for me target practice was not so exciting for me and so with with handguns that would be typically what people would use them for is target practice and I I yeah I don't know I was never really drawn to them either I typically I enjoyed using

shotguns for trap shooting or clay pigeon shooting and that that was really fun because it's like a game it's a sport and uh it's the noise wasn't so loud so my ears didn't hurt too much so yeah all right um okay so another thing that you we're both teachers in Japan so another thing that I think is shocking for the students is I would tell them that I had a car in high school and I drove to high school starting at 16 so I was quite young and I I was driving at 15 and what

really shocked him I'm a bit older than you is that I actually got my driver's license at high school I actually had a free class I took and we had a building with like a simulator we actually got it for free I don't think they do it anymore yeah so back in the day and our parking lot was full of cars I think that's very rare in most places in the world that high school kids drive to school yes yes I agree and the I just like you my students too have been very surprised that

when I tell them that I started driving I started a little bit later at 15 and a half 16 um but still that is much younger compared to 20 or in Italy it's 18 so most students or most people have finished high school and then they start driving it seems in at least in European countries and here in Japan um and so yeah they're always shocked and some teachers will ask me like oh what was it like driving when you were 16 my daughter is 16 I would never let her drive and oh it was

okay I practiced with my parents and I scared them half to death a few times but we I'm still alive they're still alive everyone's okay yeah I know looking back wow especially when you're young um another thing I think that's really different would be just the the social relationships when you're young so uh you know kids would hold hands sometimes kids would kiss if you're a boyfriend and girlfriend in public at school and I think in Japan that would be very rare oh so rare oh so rare that would really be risque they would really

be throwing yeah so yeah relationships were we're we're definitely different okay so I'm here with Jen and we're talking about clothing and now Jen I'm a bit older than you so I I probably don't really care about what I wear so much so I always kind of pay the same price for my clothing so I'm wondering what's it like for a younger person like how much are you willing to pay what is your price range uh it depends upon like what you're buying like for example if it's like a pair of jeans then I would

pay around 4,000 Yen uh that's Japanese yeah $40 oh really that's still relatively cheap like some people pay like $100 right or $200 I don't think I would ever pay that much because like I'm a student right now so paying more than that would be like something I wouldn't do well what about in your home country of Nepal like how much would people pay for pants there oh Nepal like compared to Japan it's really cheap there so you can actually get a really decent pant in like what um$ 1,500 Yen so that's like $15 around

oh that's good so what what's the cheapest you would pay I mean I guess you can get stuff for free but what's the lowest you pay for clothes uh for pants for pants okay so sometimes when there's a seal and especially if like there's like shorts then you can just get it for like 500 yen oh wow five bucks like five bucks yeah that's good now what about shoes uh do you have a lot of shoes yes I do okay so for some people like shoes they spend a lot of money on shoes like I

have a rule I unless it's dress shoes for work I don't like to spend anything over $100 and if it's athletic shoes like sneakers never more than $50 ever okay so like how much do you on average pay for shoes I think it's different for girls because like our shoes range from like um what $10 to like you know a lot of money well what's the most you've ever paid for a pair shoes um $100 oh really that's not too bad yeah it's not bad at all yeah that's that's good kind of good range how

about the cheapest five bucks um not five bucks maybe 10 bucks yeah 10 bucks yeah yeah I don't even know if I could find shoes for $5 they'd fall apart right you can though oh yeah yeah so you can like even get in in like three bucks okay so that brings up a good question because we're talking about shoes how important is fashion for you are you willing to wear uncomfortable clothing to look good I mean uh not always because I really like Comfort I would rather wear like uh pajamas and go out than like

you know wear something really uncomfortable but it depends like if you're going to a party then you would obviously want to look good and wouldn't really care about Comfort M much but in a daily basis I would go for Comfort always okay okay nice so how about uh for example jewelry do you like to wear like necklaces earrings Rings things like that um no I'm not much of an accessories person okay yeah now in your home country Nepal is it common for people to wear a lot of jewelry yes they do oh yeah oh okay

so like what what do people like to wear uh everyone prefers gold I guess because it's like uh uh people think that if you wear gold then you are like rich and yeah Gold Silver and some wear diamonds okay nice nice yeah I don't have any jewelry I don't think oh wow I didn't even realize that I don't have one piece of jewelry really yeah I have no rings no necklaces I have a broken watch but yeah didn't you ever feel like buying one though like you know didn't you ever follow a trend and like

thought about piercing your ears or something oh that would be interesting piercing my ears you know when I was uh your age which was about over 20 years ago it was just starting to happen that boys or men would Pierce their ears but it was a bit controversial it wasn't like it's common now so yeah what about necklaces yeah I used to have a necklace yeah and I just stopped wearing them it's just not a a thing yeah how about you do you would you like to have uh like you know piercings like do you

have like a you have earrings right yes I do but I rarely use them because like at some point it just hurts and you just feel like you don't really need it yeah so yeah what about in your country do people have pienes in different places like eyelids or lips or like a nose ring yeah they have nose ring and then they also like Pierce their ear like ears like in so many different places but I've not never really seen anyone piercing their eyelids or stuff I would want to pierce my belly button the belly

button oh my gosh that looks like it would hurt I know but I really like I really want to do it really all right well just be careful okay I will uh okay so we're recording so hey Jen how are you today hi Dad I'm fine thank you how are you I am doing pretty good it's uh kind of getting colder so I like that I like super hot weather really because it's kind of opposite for me because I really hate that it's getting colder day by day oh you don't like the cooler weather no

my fingers start swelling and uh it's really tough because you cannot really go outside you you just want to stay in your bed all day you become very um unproductive I guess yeah I guess I can kind of yeah I know what you mean by that but at least in the winter at least in the fall like you can wear warmer clothes so I enjoy that although I don't like having to do so much laundry because you wear so many more clothes you know in summer it's just so easy to do your laundry I think

um yeah you're talking about warmer clothes but the thing is if it was summer you wouldn't really feel like wearing any warm clothes at all because that would be unnecessary and that's why I would rather go for summer than winter and well I know but what I'm saying is that in the summer you don't have to wear so many clothes right you just have a t-shirt shorts that's about it pants yeah and your laundry problem would also not exist exactly although I don't have that many clothes anyway so I have the same three pairs of

pants that I wear so that's the benefit of being much older how about you do you have lots of clothes yeah but I think even if I was older I would still have a lot of clothes maybe it has got to do with me like always shopping all the time um yeah well actually so what do you do with your clothes for the season like do you pack away your clothes for the season like do you pack away your winter clothes or your summer clothes Yes actually like during winter I pack all my summer clothes

and like tug it away somewhere and during summer I do the opposite yeah yeah you know I now am regretting it so much because in the summer it was so hot this summer and I had these big sweatpants and sweaters mhm and they were taking up space in my closet and I just threw them away and I knew winter was coming and I would regret it and now I regret it because I have to go buy all new sweatshirts why would you do that I just I hate clutter and yeah it was really shortsighted wasn't

it yeah it was I'm so sorry but yeah I I'm I'm being blunt but you should have just packed it and put it somewhere you couldn't see so they didn't bother you that much I know so about clothing um like how often do you keep clothes so you're young but you're probably like you reached you know you're not going to grow too much anymore right so you can keep your clothes a long time like me unless I get fatter I'm not going to grow any taller cuz I'm so much older so I keep my clothes

sometimes for like 10 years 10 years yeah well what about your parents uh like I bet your dad has shirts and pants that he's had for 10 years yeah that's true actually my dad does use like old clothes but sometimes I also use his clothes because I think it's kind of cool it is it's like recycling that's sweet like so what is a piece of clothing that your dad has that you wear sometimes actually like the jacket that I was wearing yesterday I got it from my dad and I wear it like so much because

I love it no but so it's it's a it's a a woman's jacket no it's a guy's jacket oh I wear it oh really it was his jacket yes oh really okay that is cool and I miss him a lot so that just reminds me of him and that's why I like to a lot that's really nice how about your mom do you share clothes with your mother uh I'm very thin and she's not so thin so we don't we cannot share same clothes uh yeah like I my stepfather and I used to always be

the same size and now I'm a little bit bigger than him and he says that his pants are only 34 in which is quite small in America MH and I'm like no that's no way like it looks like we're the same size but we're not I guess I mean I could wear my mom's clothes like I did my like Dad's because but then you and no no but then you cannot really do that because if you wear your mom's clothes it'll just look like you borrowed a cloth from someone but if you wear your dad's

clothes it will look cooler I guess right yeah I know what you mean oh that's cool so how about your friends do you share clothes with your friends no not with my friends but with my cousin sisters yeah oh really oh nice so what are some fun holidays that you celebrate in Australia well we have Australia Day um and it is a public holiday so on that day we go to the beach and we do various Stan kind of things we have barbecues and picnics um and it's a day to where um the flag colors

um so it's your patriotic day yeah it is yeah like our fourth of July yes yeah I like that um we don't usually have fireworks though oh because of fires um no I don't know why we don't but I guess fireworks are popular on the 4th of July right they are although these days they don't do it so much because of uh fires oh it's summer in July right so it's dangerous um what about other holidays like for example uh Valentine's Day do you celebrate Valentine's Day is a romantic day yeah um so for Valentine's

Day usually you'll go out with your partner for dinner um usually chocolates and flowers um it's pretty extravagant actually um the flowers are um becoming more and more extravagant and people like to send Bunches of roses to their Partners work um and uh there's decorations and uh a lot of the um products in the store are aimed at people for Valentine's Day I think what do you think of Valentine's Day well I didn't want to get caught up in everything when I was in Australia um I would go out for dinner sometimes but nothing big

yeah now in Japan they have two days they have Valentine's Day and they have white day can you explain that yeah well I was surprised that Valentine's Day is the day when um the girls are supposed to give something to the boys right it's reversed yeah because I think in Australia on Valentine's Day it's very important for boys to give something to girls um but not necessarily as important for girls to give something to boys so when do boys give something to girls um so that's what white day is for so the white day is

for the boys to reciprocate the the action of giving chocolate or something to their partner um and the students at school as well they will um exchange chocolates or candies that they've made um and they will give something back on white day yeah it's kind of nice how they flip it around I actually like that it's broken up gives you time to think about what to do maybe right exactly so Megan we were talking about holidays and Christmas and in the last interview we talked about the difference between Christmas in a cold country and a

warm country so now I thought we would talk about Christmas in countries that aren't really Christian countries that AR they don't really celebrate it for religious reasons for example we're in Japan and I think it's interesting that in Japan it's a romantic day right yes yeah it is it's like Valentine's Day yes you have to spend Christmas with your partner right and everybody looks forward to it to go out on a date and to give each other gifts and yeah yeah yeah I think um the fireworks are uh for the boyfriend and girlfriend and I

think yeah there's a lot of uh kind of decorations that are similar to like Valentine's actually yeah it's interesting because they have uh the Christmas decorations everywhere but nobody gets the day off no family celebrate it really yeah it's a regular day except eating the chicken dinner which we talked about that the fried chicken dinner so yeah it's kind of like one of those like I call it a soft holiday like in America a soft holiday would be St Patrick's Day like everybody has to go to work but you do something that day related to

the holiday even though you have no historical connection to it at all oh I see so for example on St Patrick's Day you drink green beer and you wear a green yes like do you do that in in Australia uh that started to become a thing in Australia that the U bars do tend to have green beer and you have green clothing that you might wear and people go out um it's definitely a drinking holiday um not a holiday though right yeah are there any other holidays that you've absorbed into Australia well people are starting

to celebrate Halloween more these days um and people take their kids uh trick or treating oh really yeah um not everyone does it so I think that some people like to put a sign on the front of their door to say that trickle treaters are welcome because generally we don't do that kind of thing in Australia but um the Departments uh department stores are having more decorations and it's definitely infiltrating from America I think oh that's interesting so in America Halloween's a big time to have parties do you have parties I think more and more

people are having parties uh they have their own party in their house with decorations and costumes um but it's hard to say how many people celebrate Halloween really well what about costumes did you wear a costume I never wore a costume in Australia I had never celebrated Halloween um but I noticed that some of my friends and um friends with children they are celebrating it more and it's becoming a chance to just have a party and um dress up as an English teacher did you dress up here in Japan yes I did actually twice oh

you did did you like it I did it was fun to dress up I dressed up as a character from Jubilee movie and um it was really good to get uh together with my friends and to go out have you ever dressed up before oh uh countless times countless yeah so as a kid it was a big thing definitely in America okay so Meg we're talking about baking and in the last one in the last interview you mentioned cake pops and some other stuff now you also mentioned truffles what what is a truffle a truffle

is um it's a little chocolate candy or it can be not so tiny but it's not huge it's like bite-sized bite-sized chocolate candy with something in the inside that's called ganache which is uh can be a chocolate or a different flavor kind of creamy or a little more firm and then coated in chocolate so it's a chocolate candy basically okay now I sometimes sure the word truffle is like something that pigs find under trees is that the same word different no well same word same word but those are a type of mushroom I think yeah

yeah so there's truffle mushroom and then there's truff chocolate candy so I guess be careful which one you're ordering if you're at the store right they have nothing to do with each other no I I mean maybe someone has made a mushroom chocolate truffle before I'm not sure but not me okay so are truffles easy to make uh they are they're time consuming so I don't think they're difficult to make but you have to have the time to put in because you need to make the inside chocolate part first and mix together the ingredients and

then form I always did it by hand form all the little balls uh so that you can dip them in chocolate and so one batch I could usually get maybe 60 truffles so probably I had to spend a few hours working on a batch of truffles BR can you go through the process like how do you make them from start to finish so probably my favorite ones are like an espresso chocolate kind where um you would I need some chopped up chocolate more like baking chocolate or really dark chocolate or if you if you want

milk chocolate you can use it and then uh mix that with some heavy cream and butter on the stove and if there's any flavor you're going to add and so if it's like a coffee flavor you can add some coffee grinds and later strain them out so it has that flavor and and that's the the inner part that that's like what's that called again ganache ganach okay and so um then you you've made that and so it's still pretty thin more liquidy and so you need to put it in the fridge to let it firm

up for it can take that recipe can take a few hours before it's ready and then once it's ready I just use like a small spoon to scoop a little out and then use my hands to roll it into like a ball shape and then uh let that sit and my might had to put it back in the fridge because your hands kind of warm the chocolate back up and then once it's out you can use a special dipping fork or just a regular small fork and have some melted coating chocolate that you can get

at craft stores or there's fancy kinds or cheap kinds or whatever and then you need to dip each ball individually and put it down on wax paper like a special paper that stick to and then you let them if you're going to add anything on top like sprinkles or anything you can do that then and then that's it you're done wow and then you just put them in the fridge you chill them right uh you don't have to they're better actually if you keep them out of the fridge because if you put them in the

fridge then you maybe have to handle issues with it going from cold to warm and chocolate you might not know chocolate if it gets too cold sometimes or like Frozen little white spots can come to the surface and so it kind of ruins the the prettiness of the chocolate so okay yeah so you can just leave them out it's good to know yeah oh thanks well I might give it a try but it still sounds pretty hard I'll help you so Mega hear that you're quite the baker you like to bake brownies cookies things like

that yeah I love to bake it's pretty relaxing for me and kind of fun uh kind of a creative Outlet Bing well everybody notices it in the office when we see you bring in brownies for your students and we're all jealous we wish we were in your class so what what's what's it with baking like is it just something you do to relax um yeah well personally I love sweets like I'm would eat only sweets if my body could handle it but I try to eat regular food too so I think I inherited that from

my mom but so because I love sweets so much it's ends up being really fun making something uh like brownies or cookies um and for the creative Outlet aspect um I love to make cupcakes or cakes and I don't know if you've heard of cake pops and no what's a what's a cake pop a cake pop is like a little piece of cake on a stick coated in chocolate oh really that's that's pretty good so in America right now they're getting pretty popular there's some people are saying it's the new cupcakes I don't know if

you know a few years back cupcakes got pretty popular popular and so now we have cake pops um and I was in the process of starting a little cake pop business before I moved to Japan so um it's really fun because you can make the cake pops and it takes a while but then you can decorate them in all these really creative ways for different holidays or parties or birthday or just cute things so um yeah so the creativity plus something sweet makes it fun for me that's awesome but what cake pop is it like

a corn dog but a cake no it's just like a little round piece of cake so the process is you should bake a cake like normal and then sift it up so it's just tiny little crumbs so ruin the cake that you've made sift it up till it's just crumbs and then mix in just a little bit of like cream cheese frosting and it makes kind of a dough a formable moldable dough and then uh you mold balls put it on a stick dip it in chocolate and then you can decorate it so it can

be chocolate or like a vanilla a colored type you know you can have different colors wow cake pops yeah yeah so cake pops are probably my favorite thing to make but also decorating cakes I took a couple of cake decorating classes um and making frosting and you know using the special frosting tools to Swirl It Off cupcakes or whatever so so have you ever made uh like a wedding cake or anything like that I did actually make one wedding cake I never really wanted to make wedding cakes because they're very complicated and there's so much

pressure for it to be extremely perfect because it's someone's wedding and so but there was uh a couple that I knew who were just doing really like lowbudget cute wedding and they weren't too concerned about it being a huge cake they just needed something smaller and so I did a couple of teers and it was actually a chocolate cake so it wasn't even white but so I did one chocolate cake but I've done cake pops for a few weddings as like favors for the guests wow the cake pops are the thing yeah cake because they

come out so cute I actually have a cake pop set that I can make where it looks like a little bride and a little groom like a little tuxedo and so those are probably my most popular ones for weddings um and I also before cake pops I was making truffles so that's another thing that you can also decorate in a cute way wow well actually we'll talk about that more in the next interview I'd like to ask you some questions about truffles sure okay so Anthony I thought we would talk about Bitcoin okay so you

are kind of the expert about Bitcoin I I wouldn't I wouldn't say I'm an expert just maybe a a hobbyist so how long have you been involved with Bitcoin um probably I first heard about Bitcoin in probably 2012 and uh I really uh really kicking myself that I didn't buy some then because it was about $20 but uh I so $20 per Bitcoin Bitcoin $20 so how much is it worth now it's right now it's about 8,500 some you got it kidding me no I wish I was but W uh I got into it as

a hobbyist around 2014 a little uh before I moved abroad and um I got into what is known as mining so uh to briefly explain what that is is miners people who call themselves miners they buy spec uh special computers which are called as6 and that stands for application specific integrated circuit and the application specific part means that the the the chips that you're using in that computer can only be used for one specific purpose and that purpose is to solve uh cryptographic problems thus creating Bitcoin uh so that's what I was doing I was

running a a mining computer so you say mining like mining you're you're getting little bits of Bitcoin and it's a tiny tiny fragments exactly you have this chip in your computer your computer finds this cryptographic problem yes so your computer you get the uh reward by getting a small bit of Bitcoin exactly so usually uh you can mine it's called solo mining you can do solo mining where you're only working with your with whatever computers you have but what's a lot more popular is uh pool mining where you you join a pool and you work

together with a group of miners to solve one problem and once the the block is discovered as they say uh each block contains 50 Bitcoins so depending on the computing power that you were um giving the pool you get paid out in equal measure so uh for people that's a lot more profitable than solo mining because you could solo mine for years and never find a block um so yeah so yeah for somebody who has no concept of this the first thing they're going to ask is well who creates these blocks of who makes this

that's a good question it's like a you know where are we from like it's like a chicken and an egg thing so and that's a very interesting point to bring up because um apparent uh allegedly the creator of Bitcoin is someone called uh Satoshi Nakamoto and he is the alleged Creator as I said but the reason I say alleged is that no one has ever met this person it's kind of uh he's kind of a a mystery so no one knows his real identity um some people have uh had made theories that it could be

a group of people um it could be a specific person that that then that's just an alias but no one really knows who this guy is and where he came from and uh he's uh yeah it's a really interesting uh uh concept so then how did this take hold how how did this get a foot in society you know what I mean like get a foot in the door I should say so somebody creates this system this person is a mystery yes but then the internet grabbed onto it and said hey this is a really

cool thing I want to buy this it just it's quite interesting that this Market came out of nowhere and now it's challenging traditional currency systems exactly well it started um there was this mail this was like before the internet was even really what it is now but I think in like 2007 I think 2007 2008 there was like a group of uh of people called the cipher punks and they were kind of like anarchistic um programmers that were kind of anti-establishment and they ran this mailing this email uh mailing list and they they were just

collaborating together talking about you know creating some kind of digital cash and uh Satoshi Nakamoto was a member of that mailing list and that's where it kind of gained the underground movement uh and really I think there's there's what is called a white paper and that's a document that's that details everything about Bitcoin um and it's really big it's maybe like I I'm not sure exactly how large but it's it's like a book and um a lot of the reason it took off is people would read it and they would they would believe the technology

and they would try to try to sell it to other people um because they believed in it really wow that's an interesting history and so basically this community read this white paper yeah and then it took off and G momentum and then that here we are today yeah but I think a big part of it as you mentioned is really just convincing people because really fiat currency I mean if you break it down it's just paper right it's just paper that the government makes it's an illusion yeah and the only reason that it has any

value is because we we trust in it right so if I give you a $100 bill or whatever uh you're going to trust that you can spend that right to buy something so it's the same thing with Bitcoin like it's a process of convincing people that because um this technology makes something that is scarce it cannot be replicated it cannot be like you know without the proper means it cannot be moved or taken that it is a valid way of of transferring uh value uh digitally so that's a really big part of it and a

lot of people have bought into it wow very interesting so Anthony we're talking about Bitcoin now you've invested in Bitcoin before yeah yeah a bit do you still invest a lot now uh I haven't recently okay so why did you stop uh I stopped because um I was getting a little anxious about seeing my portfolio swing like in up and down by like five six $7,000 in in a day and uh I kind of decided that I would take out the money that I invested in it and just let my profits ride basically right so

basically originally then you were using Bitcoin for speculative purposes right not to actually buy things you weren't using it as a means to actually make transactions that is correct I've only bought one thing with Bitcoin and that was a uh it's called a hardware wallet which is basically it looks like a USB stick but it's it's a way to secure your your your funds um so do you do you think that in the future uh we will have people using Bitcoins more like it's going to become a a a viable alternative actually for Commerce to

pay for things um yeah that's a good question I I don't think Bitcoin will be what we all use but it's it's definitely in my opinion is definitely the archetype for what is Pioneer yes the pioneering technology there's going to be something that is similar to bitcoin that that we use as a a digital payment system yeah so a a lot of people are freaked out are freaked out about Bitcoin uh what are some reasons people are skeptical against it that's a good question uh one question that I've been asked before is um who controls

it everyone always wants to uh to know who's who's in charge right who's the CEO yeah because we're so conditioned to to this kind of system but um that is the thing there and it's kind of scary for some people but there is no control over it it's it's a program at the end of the day and there's no governing body you know it there's no there's no government organization that really has this uh say I mean governments specific governments will try to regulate um the markets to a certain extent but you know at the

end of the day the the the power is in the hands of the people that use it really and as long as people use it there will there will be some kind of value to it just as long as we use paper money there's value to it as long as it's exchanged right right and some people have made some good points um for example nobody foresaw the use of e-commerce or smartphones or social media um but these things adopted and ramped up quickly yes uh so do you think this could happen with these crypto Technologies

is that the right way to say it crypto technology cryptocurrencies cryptocurrencies or blockchain Technologies blockchain technology okay uh I think it is it's very rapid right now it's kind of becoming a household word um whereas when I first got into it if I talked to someone about Bitcoin they would look at me like I was C like like they would look at me like I had a a hole in my face or something right um but now it's people people know like even older people who aren't really so uh in touch with technology uh know

know what it is or have at least heard about it but but I think the biggest hurdle to mass adoption is that as it stands now um it takes a a a lot of knowledge and a lot of knowhow in order to to safely because the reason why I say safely is because if you're dealing with Bitcoin you're in charge of securing your funds so you know if someone you know hacks your into your funds or something then it's your fault you know you don't have anyone to blame whereas if you have your money in

a bank you can't call customer service exactly you can't call customer service so there's there's there's a big hurdle as far as the knowledge you need to to safely and effectively maneuver in that space space so I think until some like second party or third party comes about and and makes it more user friendly I don't really think it's going to it's going to be ready to really take over until that happens because either either PE more people need to be educated and know how to use it and how to how to purchase it how

to store it Etc or there needs to be some huge company that's going to say look we make it we'll manage it for you you just need this app or something I don't know something like that yeah it's going to be interesting the crossover you know they always say like you know be careful what you wish for you know you might just get it yeah and if Bitcoin or some crypto currency currency uh becomes the primary source of transactions I think a lot of the ills and the you know the dodgy stuff we have with

banks will seep into it it'll be interesting if they could keep it out yeah if if you know what I mean but I think one thing that's interesting about the the Curren is that I think a lot of old people will go for it I think a lot of old people usually are hesitant about technology and change but the thing that they have a lot of money that they're sitting on usually older people and they also don't trust the government they've been around a long time and so I think these uh crypto uh currencies are

going to be very attractive to a lot of a tech unsavvy people what do you think about that I I think you have a point um I think that um yeah they probably more so than young people have money to to invest but um I think that's like I said before it's just there there's such a you know you really I've spent like so many hours reading about these kind of Technologies and uh just really obsessing over it um and I still feel like there's so much I don't know right so well I guess we

all got to learn yeah all right so Natalie you were saying that you are a foodie I'm a huge foodie and you are now in Bangkok and Bangkok is famous for its Street stall food but that's changing it is so this is probably 70% of the reason why I moved to Bangkok because of the street food so yeah the street food scene is changing um it seems like they're trying uh to take the model that's similar to the Hawker centers in Singapore so the Hawker centers is basically where all of the street food carts that

used to be on the corner of a street and what we call entire soy um they've been moved into one big Center so almost like a like a deli Center um and I think it's in efforts to keep things clean um and to just have a hub where you get all of your food and it's easier for tour Forest um so that's happening a lot there are pockets of areas in Bangkok where you can still get amazing street food on the street um particularly in the business districts like silon I think they will struggle to

get their street food vendors off the streets because it is so convenient for people when they leave work it's right near the elevated Sky Train that we talked about earlier people can just grab some noodles it's under a dollar get the dinner or perhaps they get the food to take away and then they go home um and these places are always really busy there's usually a line to get in one of these um streets food places and they have little seats little plastic chairs outside and and little metal tables so you can eat there but

it is on the street um so there are areas now where you can get amazing street food but it's not on the street anymore it's in one of these small Haw Lake centers yeah that's too bad because I you know ate street food going way back to you know 25 years ago when I first moved here and it's just the best like it's I never got sick eating street food for all my years uh it's always clean and safe and one of the things I really like about the street stall vendors that people don't talk

about is that they're always really nice and I have a theory about this the people that own the street stalls often that's their own small little business so they're the one that's in control of it and I think mentally they're just happier people rather than if you go in some restaurant the service can be quite poor because that person is is kind of in servitude they're not really in control of their little economic Endeavor so I love the street stall people because they're just so positive yeah it does feel more entrepreneurial um and these guys

something that I love about the street food as well just while we're on the topic is you walk down the street in Bangkok and there are all kinds of noises and there's all there's color everywhere all the cars the taxis are super colorful they're really famous for that but then you will smell something right you will smell something being grilled or you'll smell some tum this is where they have the pestel and water and then mixing up um papaya and um salad and garlic and a smell of fried garlic I feel like every if you

want to sell something just blast the smell of fried garlic out you will get people in and that's one of the things that I love about the street food here um and as you say it is really cheap and the thing is is these people have most likely been preparing this this food since the night before right so there is a huge misconception about street food being dirty and obviously there of course there are going to be places that have dirty street food and might make you sick but the chances are these people have been

preparing these ingredients at home and then they've brought them onto their their street food cart and they're selling them all day so they really care about what they're selling and people go back time and time again and I can say that because I do and I wouldn't go back if these people didn't make amazing food yeah and if people were sick right then then they would lose their business yeah you know it's almost illogical because when people think that oh the street food is is dirty you can see the kitchen you literally are sitting next

to the Cook in the kitchen you can see see everything they're doing right in front of you whereas in a restaurant you have no idea what goes on in the kitchen yeah so I can give you some advice for street food don't be scared of street food try it but there are a couple of things that you can do to make it a little bit safer so if you're getting something that's grilled um so we have something here called moping which is pork and it has a kind of like a sauce on the top of

it it's like coconut and spices it's delicious you get it for like 10 B um put it sometimes it'll be sat out and it might have been for a while so maybe you're worried about dirt on it or bacteria growing on it or flies getting on it something like that the grill is usually on the cat so ask the street food vendor or just pick it up yourself and put it back on the grill so that will the Flames will kill off any bacteria that's on there to put it on there for a couple of

minutes as long as you need to be happy and then you can eat it and it will be it'll be roasting hot but you can be assured that there's nothing in it and they often do that themselves well even if you don't ask you I always wondered that they'll like Oh They'll just flop it back on there fast another thing I love that they do in Thailand too is if you go to it's similar to the streets food it's the hole in theall place where literally it's a like a room with no door and it's

bit kind of an outdoor restaurant yeah and they have the hot water bucket and you dip your spoon and fork in the hot water bucket it's the most brilliant idea it's not like something almost restaurant should do you know what I mean genius yeah I love that it's like like okay this's just sterilize it real fast yeah so the idea is that the water is usually hot or boiling so it will kill any bacteria that's on it if you go to a street food place and perhaps they don't have that but they do have like

a table and chairs set up when you get you get a box usually like a rectangular metal box and that has your chopsticks in it or it has your spoon in it or your knife we don't use knives in Thailand it would be a spoon and a fork um just use a napkin wipe it down before you use it they will have cleaned it before and you know I've never had any issue but if you're not sure just wipe it down with a napkin there are always napkins yeah it's it's so clever so I'm here

with Natalie and she is working in Bangkok and how long have you been here I've been here about 10 months see it's interesting to hear your thoughts on Bangkok because I was an English teacher here over 20 years ago from 1994 to 1998 it was my first teaching job and Bangkok was very different then than it is now um now I would say it's a pretty amazing Cosmopolitan City could you agree yeah that's part of the reason why we chose it so um my partner and I traveled for about a year and a half and

we said okay now let's live somewhere so we decided to move to Bangkok because it has this great balance of you're still in Southeast Asia so it still feels like um it's developing um it's on its way to something perhaps what we see Japan or China as now um but it's not quite there yet um and also that it can you can get get all the modern conveniences that you could possibly need here in this city um it's really well connected so it feels like um you know a regular Metropolitan City but at the same

time it still feels like you're living in Southeast Asia which is really cool it has done an amazing job but one becoming this just bustling beautiful Cosmopolitan Paradise I mean it's uh the skyline was not here 25 years ago so all the buildings that they've built are just amazing so now it almost rivals Hong Kong or New York and and years ago they didn't have that so in terms of the city planning it's just phenomenal what they've done but also like you said they've kept the kind of original cultural vibe to the city which is

pretty amazing so you have different neighborhoods that you can live in so there is the I guess the main artery of Bangkok is the sky Train so we call it the BTS and this is a uh I guess what they would consider to be high-speed um transportation rail system that goes right through the heart of Bangkok so a lot of the neighborhoods that I would talk about are um kind of populated around the sky Train so you will have pockets of um Bangkok that will feel very tie so they will be further out on the

BTS Sky Train but you can still get to the heart of Bangkok where all the malls are or perhaps where all the the business areas are within I don't know 20 minutes and obviously with it being in Southeast Asia is still really cheap so you can go way out into the areas that that are super tie you get amazing street food you'll see very few tourists um and then you can within 20 minutes you can be in say the Japanese area which is more expensive and it has a lot of Western Restaurants um obviously Japanese

restaurants 20 minutes later you can be in the tourist center um where you'll see all the malls and so it's very accessible yeah it is it's interesting have you been to Dubai I haven't no so what's interesting is Du bu and Bangkok have almost the exact same developmental model so what they did is they built a a a nice train line an elevated train and then along the train they built a bunch of shopping malls yeah and condos and they've built uh a worldclass airport and made it a hub for travel to other areas yeah

and even though you know Dubai and Bangkok are such they're so different culturally it's quite interesting to see that economically they're they're kind of thriving on the same model they get lots of international travel they have a lot of things for tourists to do when they go there they get a lot of people now that want to retire or maybe live there yeah the more people that I speak to about that um they're saying the same thing Bangkok is almost the center of Southeast Asia you can get pretty much anywhere in the world um on

a long haul flight so you can fly to the UK directly from Bangkok which is insane you don't have to stop anywhere um if you want to go to Vietnam from somewhere in the west you have to stop in Bangkok for the most part very few direct flights um and you can get to the likes of Japan and China within just five or six hours so I'm here with Olga who's a health coach and a life coach um so you've talked a lot about things we should do but what about stopping doing things or or

Breaking Bad Habits Like that's the hardest thing right so what's your advice for giving up sugar or alcohol or obsessive Behavior things like that well actually um I am not suggesting that people fight with themselves and they avoid or break anything because um that would constitute violence against yourself and uh I'm a student of Marshall Rosenberg who developed a nonviolent communication system so uh instead of uh taking away the bad you add something good so you find exciting fun new habits that will naturally substitute okay so for example like let's say you watch too much

TV or you're addicted to your smartphone you would try to you know maybe play outside or do something like that well you can um develop a lot of new habits and see what works for you and um um one of the things that uh I discovered for myself is that um willpower is a very finite resource we don't have infinite uh amounts of willpower so we need to use it very sparingly on short distances it's not for marathons so uh what I suggest when you're establishing a new habit that you feel that is a right

habit for you you need to use a little bit of willpower to repeat it enough times and uh usually magic number is 21 days really 21 days why 21 I have no idea but uh this number keeps uh popping up from different traditions in east and west and uh also psychology and uh I saw it in my own practice that it works fascinating so what about like let's say you want to give up sugar or um you want to give up smoking or something like that you know a physical substance do you have any tips

for that yes um one of their easiest uh things to do is incorp fermented foods that um break up biochemical uh dependency on sugars alcohol and some other addictive substances so when I work with people who are recovering from any kind of addictions you know they don't have to be substance addictions uh fermented foods help a lot okay can you give some examples of fermented foods well absolutely um if you just chop up any kind of vegetable let's say it's uh cabbage and carrot so you um cut it up you massage it with the salt

and some spices uh until their juice comes out and you press it down so all the vegetables are covered with its own juice 3 days later you have perfect fermented sourkraut wow that's great so could you just buy like sauerkraut or or vinegar or something like that like would that work well unfortunately it wouldn't because um most of the um crowds that you buy is pasteurized which does not give you their probiotic activity and uh a lot of it is uh um fake um cell cruts what I mean by that if uh there was no

uh bacterial activity and The Taste comes from vinegar um you do not get this benefits wow that's good to know I think though part of the problem though is even myself thinking like oh I'm not going to cut up a bunch of cabbage and carrots and wait three days like it seems like it's too much work well it might be and uh you know maybe you can visit the friend who is doing that or uh if you have access to Farmers Market or you know some natural you know organic stores they may provide something that

is not pasteurized and uh prepared the right way well that's a good idea okay well uh thanks a lot that was some really good advice very welcome so I'm here with Olga and she's a health coach and we were talking about the difference between modern Trends in nutrition and traditional and like health and things like that I thought I would throw out some idioms and you ageold idioms words of wisdom and how they apply today so the first one is uh variety is the spice of life I totally agree with that and I see it

in clinical practice uh to be true uh you don't really need to be PhD in um healing or nutrition you know if you throw into your diet a variety and uh it would change with the season it would change with the location it would change with your mood and how your body feels that and uh that's it a variety can really give your body everything and your body has all the knowledge all the wisdom and knows what to do with that so basically when we eat we shouldn't just eat one type of food we want

to make sure we have a very um varied food supply of vegetables fruit even meat things like that that is correct and uh our ancestors used to have a variety that is not two not five not 10 but 100 times more than what we do now you know our ANC ancestors would uh have 3,000 different food items that they would rotate wow that's fascinating okay how about the next one common one an apple a day keeps the doctor away that is actually very interesting because um the more I was uh looking into to this particular

uh fruit the more respect I got for it and um when I design liver detox uh systems uh we have a special apple day and uh uh we use malic acid and uh you know apples as a preparation to dissolve gold bladder and liver stones and uh uh you can uh go on and on and on about all the components of Apple it's so complicated and yet so simple you just grab an apple bite chew swallow done wow and I think also it's kind of like um basically if you just eat like unprocessed Foods if

you eat Natural Foods right then you will probably stay healthy and you won't need to see the doctor well this is exactly what the the proverb says and uh it's very literal okay so how about one not related to food uh all work and no play makes Jack a d boy which I guess means like if you just work all the time and you don't rest and relax and have fun then you'll just be a boring person well uh actually uh any kind of extreme has Health consequences um we talk a little bit about uh

toxicity and deficiency as the roots of any health problems so um when you don't have enough of something or too much of something uh both cause problems wow that's fascinating okay so let's talk about uh sleep uh the early bird gets the worm so I think it kind of just means like the people that wake that you know go to bed early and wake up early they're more productive uh do you think that's what it means well I'm not sure I honestly um I've seen people really individualize their life and and uh some people uh

go to bed late and wake up late and they're still productive and in different times of Our Lives we have different periods um when it's better to go to bed early and wake up earlier and other times it's okay to go to bed late and wake up late but in general yes um Chinese medicine talk a lot about uh their uh times for the different meridians that represent organs for example um uh from uh 11: in the evening until 3:00 in the morning it's um liver and gold bladed time so if you're up during the

time these organs do not rejuvenate they don't repair and uh it's tremendous stress for them wow okay so let's talk a little bit about medicine um and seeking help how about a stitch in time saves nine well um I I think it's true for a lot of things uh in the healing world it's much much easier uh to prevent disease than to reverse it so a lot of times if you get the disease uh the best case scenario in modern medicine is just to control the symptoms and to slow down the progression but if you

um use the natural preventive uh medicine um it's uh actually much less effort then you can enjoy life and you can enjoy that first Stitch without uh ever thinking or needing the nine that um would be needed if you didn't do something preventive okay wow fascinating and the last one I think this is you've talked about this before uh too much of a good thing is a bad thing yes uh again I can refer to um Oriental wisdom of ying yang if you uh can visual ize the symbol of yinan usually it's um uh two

half circles and uh there is a seed of the opposite color right in the middle of so you know in the white you would have a seed of black and in the black a seed of white and they constantly turn into each other so too much of something turns into it's exact opposite wow fascinating thanks a lot most welcome uh so Rachel I thought we would talk a little bit about um items and their shelf life like how how long will you keep something for example like a book or like clothing because like yesterday I

was talking to my students and they were surprised when I admitted that the shirt I was wearing I had had for over 10 years now they're young they can't imagine that no that might be a function of being young right exactly clo of 10 years ago obviously too small yeah um are you do you like to keep your clothes a long time if I really like them I might yeah how often do you toss out your clothes I toss out clothes once or twice a year I'll go through my wardrobe and throw out things that

are too small or have started to look um shabby um but there are other things that I just keep year after year after year yeah probably things people don't see us often like jams might last a little longer yeah some people advise that if you haven't woron something for 6 months you should throw it out but that seems to me to be not logical given that there are four seasons and they last a year yeah you haven't won something for a year maybe you should consider throwing it out but yeah definitely at the start of

the Season not in the opposite season right you have to you think about the weather um yeah well what about food so we live in a Japan we're both teachers in Japan so one thing I often wonder about is the sashimi and the sushi the raw fish like how long can you keep it before you eat it they say You're supposed to have it that night but I sometimes eat it the next morning or even for lunch with uh fish as well as other meats um I think it's very easy to tell because you can

tell about the smell whether something's good or not I actually think the rice is more dangerous oh really yeah cuz it it um will grow bacteria because it's been warm it'll grow bacteria easily at room temperature the rice is the part you need to be careful about but what about like other foods like are you somebody who's really strict about the expiration date or I'm not I think the expiration date on most products is um there is on the side of safety um another thing is people confuse the best bu date with the um expiry

date right the best by date is just about freshness flavor for that's the date they put on the package in the store the date that that people sell bu yeah yeah sell by and Best Buy for example spices might have a Best Buy date after that they might they might Clump a little they might lose a little flavor but they're not dangerous they can still you can still eat it you can still use them yeah my role is always three days so I'll eat anything with if it's within except for meat maybe but anything if

it's within 3 days of the expiration date or the cell date on I think that matters yeah to me it makes an enormous difference what it is for example uh moyashi um which is bean sprouts I'll eat them on the day or the day after but not after that they start getting bad really quickly but for example a jar of pickles that's going to last much longer than the three days after I think the the big one I guess you're right about time is is dairy the one milk is obvious because milk you can smell

yes but on the other hand it just turns into yogurt right yeah so that's the other one is yogurt so yogurt I'll see it in the fridge and I'm like how long can I keep this like sometimes it'll be past the expiration date but it smells fine it looks fine milk yogurt is soured milk right yeah it's difficult to say at which point it sour because it's already sour yeah and cheese too lasts forever it seems like pretty much you can see the mold on cheese yeah so what about if you see bread and there's

a little mold on the bread no no are you old school you cut around um I used to and I used to cut the mold off cheese but Having learned more about visible mold is only a small amount of it and it um parts of mold you can't see it branching into the food oh I see yeah so that makes a little dodgier so no I probably wouldn't eat um bread that had any kind of mold on it and I'm dodgy about cheese too that's got the wrong sort of mold on it right right sort

of mold like a blue cheese and that's fine right and I should clarify here neither of us are medical professionals so take this advice don't take our ad we're just talking about our own habits here so what about juice what about juice like how long can you keep juice can you smell when juice is bad I don't usually buy juice so I don't really know oh yeah maybe you can smell it maybe you can smell it yeah i' probably toss juice because I'm not um experienced stuff with it obviously to to have made my own

mind up about it so I'd probably go by the date but one what's interesting is when you see some foods that you think would last forever but actually they won't they just have an expiration date that's way in the future like canned goods yes sometimes it's surprising when you're like oh there actually is an expiration date on there there is but it's way in the future way in the future as long as the the can's not dented or Rusty right the rule for that yeah yeah well interesting topic so I'm here with Rachel and we

were talking about expiration data so you were saying that you throw out your clothes regularly mhm regularly do you donate them or just toss them I put them in the recycling and hope they're going to be remade into something else yeah I guess yeah I always like take it out on the day that they'll say that they'll pick up clothes the reason for that is cu they usually throw clothes out when they've started to look a bit shabby so I don't think anyone else wants to wear them by that stage what about furniture how often

do you try to get new furniture almost never that's that's something I don't yeah I'll put I'll up with what I've got yeah it seems like such a waste to throw out such large things yeah but you never want to replace the couch or the chair be replaced three or four times right that's a that's a big one but we've still got the same kitchen table we had got did get some new chairs yeah I've never been a big furniture guy but I just when I see something that's really cheap like I would never buy

new furniture I'm always amazed like who buys new furniture because when you walk by a store and you see the furniture it's so expensive and I'm going to sound really cheap but it's like I'm like why why would you pay hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars for that when you can just buy one used or whatever for 10 bucks or 20 bucks definitely a used furniture person now when we moved into our house we did go to a furniture store and bought all new furniture it's just it's easy at the start and if looks

new and it's kind of nice but I almost exclusively buy secondhand furniture now you can depending on which store you go to you can get some really good Bargains on some beautiful old antique that look really nice in your house and cost a fraction of something new yeah that's why you like anything that's made with metal or wood because usually think it's going to age well yeah plastic not so much no no I've definitely sworn off plastic I think plastic is a filling if you need something quickly yeah um and cheaply but definitely don't like

to to buy plastic now so what about like electronic Goods like getting a new TV new refrigerator stuff like that like how often did you well that we just wait until that um breaks down it's a pretty easy one what about the TV though the TVs don't break down they go on forever like how often do you think oh I want a new TV I want a new nicer TV our last TV broke um it did well we had lightning hit the house oh and we lost several electronic um items lost a keyboard and a

computer um I think we lost two out of we had three hard dis um DVD players so it was an electrical surge that like fried all the circuits of fried the house yeah pretty much wow I did not know that could happen yeah okay uh so I'm here with Olga who is a health coach and I thought we would talk about learning so people have to learn all these new things to be healthy it might be a big change in their life what what type of advice would you give people for for you know completely

adapting a new change and learning new things well I discovered that um the most important things that people can do to be healthy and happy is to educate themselves so what I do I call Vita Academy The Academy of life and uh uh there there are four hes that the Cornerstone of this learning concept okay oh that's great so what are the four hes the first H is head so first you upload a lot of information that is maybe logical brainy and you get knowledge you kind of understand things okay right so you basically you

you take in the information and okay then the next step so the next next step is to check with yourself if the message that arrived into your head resonates do you feel it in your heart wow that's pretty good so also you could probably use your heart to see if it's true right like so intuition is it something that's that's believable if it's something that's true exactly you know you can call it God feeling intuition Talking to Angels um I teach bi resonance based on that it's how to raise your intuition to the pretty much

brain level and understand yourself but it's not an you know God feeling is not an age so I just stick with heart I like that um okay so then after the heart you said it's hand yes so um the third level of learning is experiencing it so using your hands and uh uh bring all this knowledge into your life and see how it works all right so basic basically like you know put something into practice right so use it or lose it if you don't do it then you're not going to really know it exactly

use it and lose it work on all levels you know is there muscles if you don't uh lose goes into atrophy uh same goes for your memory or you know anything else in your life oh wow that's great okay so then the last one is uh help yes so once you um understand what to do you feel that it's the right thing to do you experience and you saw the positive results then it's only natural to share your success story and help other people so for me the best way to learn is by teaching by

helping oh wow that's really nice so recap so it's head you Tak in the information heart uh you know if it's true or not like does it resonate with you hand you put it into practice and then help you actually give yes exactly wow that's some really good advice thanks a lot most welcome hello I'm here with Olga she's from Russia uh Olga can you go ahead and introduce yourself yes sure um I do a lot of things that uh concern with health and happiness uh I am concentrating on modalities that allow you to help

yourself so um I do a lot of courses of self-healing so um I have a lot of different alphabet soup after my name hhp which is holistic health practitioner NC which is nutritional counselor but I like to refer to myself as health coach okay wow that's cool so what's your advice for staying healthy well I was very excited um to find out that I while I thought I was studying different modalities some Oriental healing systems like you know Chinese and ayurvedic and Japanese and then I thought oh you know um I'm studying something totally different

in us when I went into uh Indian like American Indian healing systems or uh when I was in Russia uh we have our own Traditions but then I discovered that all of them uh even though they use different words uh have something in common so the deeper you understand the principles the closer uh they become and in the end they converge into three points so any successful healing system addresses three health problems and turn them into three healing opportunities wow that's so interesting so what are these three principles sure one of them is toxicity so

what I call tox toxic is anything that is too much even something good can turn into bad when you have uh too much of it uh and uh toxicity doesn't come in the physical form only uh we can have toxic uh food and air but we also can have toxic thoughts or toxic emotions so um when I say toxicity I call I say that it's on all levels of existence Body Mind and Spirit oh that's so fascinating so can you kind of expand on that a little bit more give some examples no absolutely um when

I say that something good can turn into bad I can give you example of water everybody knows that uh to drink water is very important and dehydration causes a lot of uh diseases especially nowadays but if I ask you to drink 20 L of water what do you think will happen you would get sick right you die because uh the 20 L of water rushing through your system will wash out all your electrolytes and uh you will not be able to sustain life wow that's yeah I've read of people actually dying uh like on marathons

and stuff because they overhydrate actually that like it can get risky if you drink too much well um if you drink too much of the stuff because um there we don't need only water you know if you drink distilled water it's very risky because uh distilled water is extremely aggressive and acidic so distilled water let's reserve it for fountains and cars it's not for human consumption wow so interesting so what other uh tips do you have about you know wellness and health well uh we just uh covered one of the which is too much of

something what they call toxicity but there are two others so the root number two is deficiency which is the mirror opposite of toxicity so what are you lacking in is it uh nutrients what do you need to bring into your life maybe it's uh self-love maybe there is a deficit of self love and acceptance and respect or maybe it's a deficit of knowledge wow that's so interesting you know that we're in Bangkok and that actually reminds me of a time that I was not eating that many vegetables and I felt really sick and I was

walking in my in my brain I I felt like my my body was talking to me and it was saying go eat a salad like you need to eat a salad immediately and I went and ate a salad and I was like 23 years old at the time and it I felt immediately better and I remember thinking wow like my body literally was talking to me telling me to go eat my vegetable well I believe that our bodies do it all the time but if we ignore the voice The Voice becomes so low becomes a

little whisper and uh then it nearly disappears and uh uh to resolve that problem of not listening to yourself I actually teach a class on bioresonance that brings the voice back up again well that's interesting so what is bioresonance bioresonance is a umbrella a term for a lot of different modalities and how to use vibration their resonance you know their their energy uh to understand uh something about the universe or yourself oh that's fascinating so you said that we have toxicity and then we have deficiency what's the the third problem well the third root of

uh pretty much any disease uh physical or mental is stagnation so when something is stuck like let's say um water doesn't move it becomes to stink yeah so um stagnation is death and movement is life so uh it works on cellular level it works on planetary level on the level of our whole organism so everything should circulate there should be circulation of oxygen of blood lymph of thoughts emotions so when you block the flow uh it usually manifests pain so pain is either stuck or broken flow of energy wow that's so true you know you

know that reminds me of one of my favorite sayings variety is the spice of life you know like so basically we always should have some change we shouldn't always be stuck in a rut so to speak and we should be trying to do new things correct yes and uh uh a lot of my clients in this uh Health coaching business uh call my approach to diet uh uh with the rainbow diet because I'm all about full spectrum full spectrum of emotions full spectrum of nutrients you know full spectrum of Life W that's great thanks so

much okay we so Rachel you said that in your home country of New Zealand there's lots of birds that don't fly yes there are a lot of birds that don't fly wow see I'm I only knew of the kiwi and of course the the penguin but I didn't know of other ones so first the Kiwi doesn't fly right the famous one right they don't fly but they can run very fast I've seen them and like are the Kiwi all over like are there different types of kiwi yeah there are lot several different varieties they're very

rare though and they're nocturnal so oh nocturnal I'd say most new zealanders have never seen one in the wild haven't seen them in uh kiwi Parks oh really yeah see them so I thought they'd be like kangaroos in Australia or something you go and there's one very precious and very rare oh wow one that you see more often is a PUK which is um it looks a little bit like a stalk I suppose except it's dark blue what what's it called puko puko uh yeah and they're a lot more common and an takah is another

one so the first one you can see them along the side of the road when you're driving through the countryside they're much more common so this puko does it fly no they don't fly really and it's like a stork it has long legs it has quite long legs yeah it's a very cute little bird but it's very dark how tall is it like up to your knee up to your hip maybe up to your knees really cute little bird that's that's awesome and so what was the other one you mentioned takah it's a very similar

looking to that one it's different difficult to tell aart really and it's also like kind of dark bluish yeah um another one's a kakapa is a very famous one it's New Zealand's flightless Green Parrot it's kind of like a large fat parrot that lives on the ground really it's extremely rare I I'm not sure what the numbers are now but around 20 years ago I think there were only 45 left oh that is rare R so there's an intensive breeding program for them and of course nobody's seen those in the wild w yeah you have

to be careful it'll go like the way of the the Tasmanian Tiger they yeah they breed and they nest on the ground they'd lay their eggs on the ground so they're very vulnerable to to introduce predators to any animals yeah I know that like you don't have snakes but I know that snakes when they got into Guam like decimated the bird population yep that's what would happen and that's why New Zealand immigration or Customs is very strict about what kind of animals you can bring in we don't even have snakes in zoos that's smart yeah

Michael Jackson F famously came to New Zealand in the 1980s and wanted to bring his pet snake with him and he wasn't allowed to oh good on you there were no exceptions to that rule are there any other birds that don't fly like for example do you have penguins oh yes there's lots of penguins in New Zealand in the South right yeah in the South oh they come up to the north sometimes really that far that far north yeah occasionally they the big colonies are are down south oh that's amazing how cool any other birds

that don't fly uh not that I can think of off the top of my head I'm have to look it up on the internet no that's still that's sell that's that's quite a few that's so nice um yeah the most famous was the Moa of course the mo which is an ostrich sized bird oh really yeah but they were they were killed off before Europeans arrived in New Zealand oh easy hunting they were easy hunting yeah yeah and big Feast yeah it's funny how when you go to a place you really want to see like

a local animal so uh last year I went to the Middle East I went to um UAE and Oman and I just wanted to see a camel I wanted to see a camel so bad and I thought like you know I had feeling' be on the side of the road there'd be a camel and I was actually kind of going out in the country side I wasn't just in the city and I never saw a camel and I was asking people to work there they're like oh yeah you do see them but I was just

so heartbroken that I never saw a camel oh yeah it's one of my favorite animals I just think they look so cool so when I go to New Zealand I have to make sure I see a kiwi but you'll have to go to the Kiwi house the Kiwi house kiwi house it's cool we'll just look up zoos and they got them yep they got them there but you won't see them just driving around so Rachel uh you are from New Zealand correct yes that's right now when I lived in London many years ago my roommate

was from New Zealand really nice guy and he had the coolest job he would ride around a motorbike in New Zealand in the bush as he called it the wild as we say the bush the bush and his job was to just kill invasive species that was his job just go out and plant traps for rabbits and yes that's right actually I have a friend who does that now really yes so it's that big of a problem you have to like it's a huge problem yeah really like so what animals are a problem rabbits like

you mentioned possums are a big problem in the bush because they eat a lot of the native plants um we have possums too in America and Northern California and they are disgusting they're I love animals but they're one animal I don't like they just they're nasty there is a big possum hunt in many areas every year and they're starting to sell the the pelts as fur because it's not a protected species so there's there's no limits on how much you can catch and how much fur you can sell yeah and they often have rabies right

at least in the states we have to be very careful no we don't have rabies in New Zealand oh that's good to know yes so yeah we have crazy stories of uh possums or raccoons having rabies and so when you see one like you know they tell you do not touch it Don't Go Near it because if you get bit you're not good and I got bit by a dog when I was in Thailand and had to get the rabies shot and it was not fun oh that sounds awful yeah and then good luckily for

me I went in to get the shot because I didn't know know really about rabies I wasn't educated about it and I thought well the dog just bit me a little bit but I better go and check and then the doctor was like oh no I can kill you like yeah you you better get it checked out so this is one of the reasons we have very strict import laws in New Zealand we've seen the damage that can be done and we're very strict now and rabies is one of the um diseases that we don't

have and are very keen not to ever have yeah you hope so so you have a problem with um possums and with rabbits rabbits on farms um there's also wild um deer and boar in the forests who also do a lot of damage and stray cats and dogs as well also kill a lot of native species there's no native animals in New Zealand the only mammals that are native to New Zealand are dolphins and bats so there's no natural Hunters except for Hawks so the birds a lot of the birds have lost the ability to

fly and they nest on the ground so they're enormously vulnerable to predator species like cats and dogs they've almost completely decimated many bird species so there's that's why the there um you know there are Hunters throughout New Zealand who are basically given free reain to to shoot whatever they can find because they are so destructive to the natural environment yeah I think I read somewhere that you have some campaign to have like no Predators by a certain year right like a new thing in New Zealand I haven't heard of that but um I wouldn't be

surprised I think that's always been a goal I think there was it was in the news I'll have to check so I could be wrong but I think it was 2050 is the goal of the government to have no predators that would be yeah amazing and they say the big the big one is dogs and cats that's like the sticking point yeah it's starting they're starting to become much stricter about um controlling cats and dogs now keeping cats inside and keeping dogs leashed yeah so that they don't run off and to the bush and cause

a lot of problems but dogs I think are more domesticated they're probably not as dangerous but cats are basically they're not really that domesticated they're still natural Hunters yeah they we we keep them with us to hunt to you hunt you know pests like mice they live with us yeah so they catch a lot of birds but with the birds nesting on the ground and unable to fly it's very easy for the dogs to kill them as well oh I see so and dogs just can be kind of naughty sometimes he yes and they run

off wow so what do you think do you think uh your country can achieve this goal no Predators by 2050 that sounds very challenging I think at present only some of the offshore islands are completely pest free um well no Predators yeah that's not quite the same as no pests because pests also include things like um rabbits and possums and um deer and that don't eat the native species so just Predator free might be a bit more achievable I think do you feel pressure to get certain gifts for your kids I sometimes sometimes um thankfully

the it's not there's not too much pressure where we live right now um so I don't feel too much pressure and I also work hard to fight against it yeah um every year I tell myself okay they're so young we have so much stuff already we don't need to go crazy with gifts just get one or two and we we do that and then last minute it's like oh no they don't have many gifts and then we end up buying a few more so we're not as bad as we could be there's not as much

pressure as there could be yeah I'm lucky in that I live uh in Japan you know we both teach in Japan and so my family's in America so Christmas usually always falls like the day after we finish school so I can't actually make it home in time for Christmas yeah which is awesome because then I don't have to buy gifts for everybody and I don't mind it's not the money I don't mind spending the money but I really don't like shopping and I hate having I have a huge family huge right so the thought of

having to buy 20 different gifts it's a lot of gifts oh and really it's not the cost either it's just like I'm too lazy to think of oh you know what sweater can I buy this person or it's not my thing and I don't want gifts and I don't want to give gifts well yeah that's that's fair how about you are gifts still something special for you uh I'm not I'm not very good at it um I'm trying to improve because I know a well-thought out gift can mean the world to someone so I'm trying

to improve um but yeah I'm not I'm not the best I don't I don't mind I'm not like I don't I won't fall out with someone if they don't get me a present I'm not like that well I like I like getting people birthday gifts I have to admit that like birthday gifts I like it's just like having to buy 20 30 gifts within a one Monon period to me just seems obscene yeah I know and that's the pressure that people are under because that's the way it is isn't it and it's always it's always

the mothers of the family that have to do it as well right they're the ones that have to make sure they buy all the gifts for everyone yeah so they feel they have so much to do that mental list of everything and everyone they have to buy for so of course they they have to organize it so they maybe start earlier right and taking advantage of things like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are manageable ways to um deal with that Lord you've changed my mind I was very anti both but now that you put it

that way maybe you're right I don't know let's go okay hey Todd so I have a question um I've noticed recently in the UK that this holiday um called Black Friday has appeared and this is a new thing for us um I don't really know why it has appeared I think it's American um shops just give super discounts in November and people are going crazy for like TVs and stuff uh do you know do you have experience with this yeah uh unfortunately I think it's one of our worst exports like I am not a fan

of of Black Friday I we've had it now probably for 10 20 years I can't remember but it started where the department stores would have these massive sales on Friday which is the day after Thanksgiving which is always on a Thursday in November oh that's the connection okay after Thanksgiving right and I think it was called Black Friday because that was the day that the stores could show that they had a profit for the year or something like that okay so it's B recently all about money oh totally and originally what they would do is

they would entice people with really good Bargains but then they kept on ratcheting up the um the bargains so now they have these really really low teaser products you know like they only offer 10 TVs or something like that for like 20 bucks oh so it's like a limited a really limited supply of of really good deals and so then what you do is you get these huge crowds that converge on these these stores MH and then they open the doors and people Rush In And it literally is a freefor all you have fights and

it's so crazy I've seen that I've seen videos and clips and it started happening in the UK now and I oh no can't believe it how people can be so greedy and especially what's bothersome is that you're with your family on a holiday you're having a good time and then like you go to war practically you know what I mean yeah with strangers yeah or your neighbor even doesn't matter who it is just fight them over to cheap TV I mean I'm proud to say I've never been to a Black Friday me neither yeah me

neither so I guess that's hypocritical for me to say that uh because or you know I've since I've never actually been to a Black Friday I've only seen it but I just don't like going to shopping malls and to um like department stores very much or big box stores I'm just not a shopper so you prefer online shopping I just prefer not shopping at all like I I don't care like what I dress or how I dress so I like buy my clothes at a supermarket okay you know I know I'm not the most fashionable

person but as for Black Friday you know I think a lot of times parents want to get stuff for their kids you know they want to get that special gift maybe I think that's what attracts a lot of the crowds yeah it is you know once Thanksgiving is over then it's the buildup to Christmas so of course there's the the stress of preparing everything in time for that and it's hard to resist really good Bargains I guess if you're trying to be careful with your money you're trying to be sensible or there's those gifts that

you know your child really wants so I can understand people feel a lot of pressure to do that I mean some of the stores look like they've been through a hurricane after the after like the crowds go through yeah it's crazy it it does sounds awful doesn't sound like my idea of a good time no now there is one option though if you don't want to face the crowds and all the hysteria you can do what's called Cyber Monday do you have Cyber Monday I I'm not no I'm not familiar with it so Cyber Monday

I think it's the Monday after Black Friday okay and you just get all the you know the deals online over a 24-hour period okay is this like remainder leftover stock or is this like a new no this is just the online stuff so I think it's just you know the you know the Amazon and okay and all the online stores that they want to have their deals that people can buy they wanted a piece of the action basically yeah exactly so they can make it super super it's too much yeah it is all too much

I know we should have like uh you know I don't know cut back on spending but if you cut back on spending then you're you're hurting the economy right so that's true yeah okay Meg let's talk about um idioms related to the body oh so we have lots of idioms in English that we use for specific meanings so to learn these idioms we'll just talk about them by asking each other questions okay okay the first one is about dating so should a man always foot the bill on a date well I think I'm a little

bit of a traditionalist in that maybe at the the beginning or the first date the man should foot the bill but after that if you're in a relationship doesn't really seem fair for the man to pay all the time do you agree yeah I agree I mean on a date I feel awkward if I don't pay the bill so yeah the man the man should foot the bill on the first date okay so the next one related to feet is when you dance do you have two left feet yes I definitely have two left feet

I'm not a good dancer by any means and I don't really enjoy it so I think I look a little awkward when I'm dancing what about you yeah I definitely have two left feet um I yeah I just look like a mess on the dance floor so and I don't enjoy it and I think because I'm nervous I want to get out of there so yeah right I understand your feeling not ly okay so also related to uh feed is the leg so in your city what costs an arm and a leg in my city

where I live right now I feel like fruit costs an arm and a leg it can be quite expensive especially if you want fruit that's out of season but in my hometown in America you can usually get fruit very cheap so it feels like it costs an arm and a leg here what about for you yeah the city I live in now is in Japan and it's also very expensive taxis cost an arm and a leg so to take a taxi ride is so expensive in America where I'm from I would say healthare costs an

arm and a leg it's so expensive yes crazy expensive you never want to get sick yes even health insurance costs an arm and a leg it's very very costly I agree with that yeah all right so let's now talk about feelings so is it okay to give people the cold shoulder sometimes well nobody likes the cold shoulder right nobody likes the cold shoulder I don't think that we should give people the cold shoulder however I have to admit that I have sometimes given a friend or a family member the cold shoulder when I've been upset

about something yeah the whole thing about the cold shoulder is you're you're actually you do want them to talk to you you just want them to feel bad yes right yeah it's kind of passive aggressive exactly like I'm mad at you but I really want you to just see that I'm mad at you and you give me attention and I'm happy yes you want to make it clear that you're mad yeah exactly by giving the cold shoulder have you ever given someone the cold shoulder oh yeah I can be very moody so I've definitely given

people the cold shoulder and then I'm embarrassed sometimes afterwards I'm like why did I do that that's so bad yeah feel a little guilty later yeah so we're both teachers do you ever give a student the cold shoulder no I don't think I would ever give a student the cold shoulder because if they have questions or need help um I want to be able to assist them so that's a little different I think what about you yeah no totally like the students give me the cold shoulder right so you know that something's wrong but yeah

a teacher can't give students the cold shoulder it's impossible or it shouldn't be done all right those were some interesting points so Meg in the last one we were talking about idioms uh but we didn't cover them all let's go over some more idioms okay all right so the first one is what activity is in your blood I would say anything with nature is in my blood so hiking or especially kayaking I love going kaying um and so it's hard for me to resist if I'm in a place with beautiful nature I need to go

outside so what about baking isn't baking kind of just natural for you that you just love to bake isn't it in your blood I do I do also love to bake yeah I guess hiking and baking are both in my blood together kind of two different activities so baking especially when I can make very creative and decorative desserts to share with people so I don't like to bake for myself but sharing with others um it's quite enjoyable for me do you have any activities or things that are in your blood well I think one is

actually just teaching I love teaching I just want to teach all the time even if I won the lottery I'd be a teacher I just like thinking of lessons thinking of new ideas for lessons trying technology with lessons so even on my free time I like thinking about it um and another thing is jogging even though most people are surprised cuz I'm little fat I'm about 20 lbs overweight but I run almost every day I think I've seen you running before yeah I literally run every day like if I don't run I feel terrible like

it's the most relaxing thing for me yeah I can't go two or three days well two days maybe but I can't go three or four days without running so jogging is really in your blood yeah and I started when I was a kid um you know the movie Forest Gump where he just starts running right yes yes yeah that was me as a kid I literally would yeah I would just run out of my driveway also in the country and just go running for an hour wow just a run I thought it was fun well

that's great yeah it's definitely in my blood okay so we'll talk a little bit about feelings so when you get criticized do you take it to heart I think my first reaction is to take it to heart so sometimes I might be a little over sensitive when I first get criticized but after some time passes and I'm able to think about it usually I can see how that criticism can be useful and I can try to make a change or improve something or I can decide that I don't care about that person's opinion what about

you what do you how do you respond yeah I used to take things to Heart a lot but as I've gotten older as many people do um now a lot of it just rolls off my back as we say like water a duck's back so it doesn't bother me at all yeah yeah I just realize that everybody has different opinions and don't worry about it yeah I think that's a good attitude to have yeah okay so the next one also about feelings and opinions so are you more likely to bite your lip or speak your

mind when you disagree with somebody I think it depends on the situation so if I feel like someone else is being treated unfairly or there are some rules that are there for a reason that should be followed I am more likely to speak my mind but if it's something personal or just related to me I might bite my lip to try to keep the peace what would you do bite your lip or speak your mind well I have a big mouth so no so I always speak my mind so I have a really big mouth

I just never keep it inside um yeah it's really hard for me to bite my lip yeah so that's can be a bad thing but sometimes good yeah um say it like it is as they say hi John hey so today we're talking about artificial intelligence or AI oo and maybe you know getting into a little bit of Robotics I like it um just wanted to know your take on how you think this will change our society the advancements that have been made so far in Ai and Robotics well uh I mean already we've seen

you know there's a huge push towards whether it's you know AI in think tanks or things of that nature to you know people just exploring the idea of AI in terms of writing their own books poetry art AI that is painting I think the possibilities are endless like we will see you know uh development and exploration into ideas and areas we've never even thought of you know think about the idea of an AI painter or sculptor they can probably pull the knowledge of all the painters and artists of the world and come together to form

you know some entirely new form of expressionism or something of that nature uh the uh the idea of AI in medicine you know it can look at exploring different ways of doing things things that humans have never thought of and because of the the uh sheer speed at which computers can proc process and for lack of a better word think um you know the potential for growth in this area I think is uh endless overall do you think these things will improve or worsen our our society well um like anything I think it has the

potential to do both um if we're not careful it could uh you know lead to the corruption of Minds the uh the abuse of these uh the these advancements to either oppress people or subjugate them but it you know with the proper Minds at the helm you know know this could serve to benefit Humanity uh you know if we have ai taking care of things like surgeries uh exploration into dangerous areas humans no longer need to uh endanger themselves to uh engage in Exploration these AIS can do the exploration for us and we can benefit

from what they find and that's not to say that humans can't still you know be exploring and and uh you know expose them to all these amazing new things it just means that we can take out some of that you know crazy level of danger and reduce that down so that humans can spend their time uh exploring other pastimes other leisure activities to improve their minds their bodies their souls however you want to put it interesting very interesting ideas so if you could have ai or a robot to help you with something in your everyday

life what do you think you would want help with like what would you use a robot for what activities uh tasks basically would be like a personal assistant I would have somebody to help me organize my day my activities uh help me stay on tasks stay focused um take care of cleaning um I love cooking so I would probably still want to engage in some of that myself but you know there may be days where I'm busy so an AI whether it's in robot form or something like that uh to take care of those tasks

for me so that I can be more productive in the other areas of my life that need it would be fantastic yeah I agree I I would love to have someone who could do chores around the house for me like cleaning so yeah thanks for your ideas John it was awesome to talk to you not a problem I look forward to it the next sorry I look forward to the next time we talk technology Patricia is it changing people for the better or for the worse I think it's doing both um it depends on the

person uh I think technology is an amazing tool and resource but I also think that people can become easily addicted to things I agree yeah like their phones or social media um so I mean it's like anything in life it has its advantages and disadvantages what do you think is one of the biggest advantages it has for us right now uh I think uh information um you know we can access information so easily now we can look up you know anything we can dream of doing we can Google it and find either a tutorial or

a book um you know there just endless information about every topic um and then you know if you can't find what you're looking for you can write about what you're looking for yourself online and help other people so you know that is that is huge right now okay what about uh a negative uh for technology something you think it's doing to uh you know you know impact us negatively I mean it definitely impacts um our relationships especially if they are more inclined to be introverted they're not forced to go outside their comfort zone so much

they can stay home and and send messages or or just stay home and play video games and uh and not really yeah not really engage in socializing with with an actual um human being and I don't think I think while it is nice to be able to exchange messages easily I also you know think that that is not like that doesn't take the place of actually talking to a human face to face I think our society still needs that in-person um connection and I think you know some people aren't getting that anymore because they're so

involved with their online presence or okay yeah now I think a big part of that is the technological advances surrounding things like social media how do you feel about children being exposed to social media or things like that I definitely think it should be limited for them um parents really um need to be a role model for their children and you know put boundaries in place for themselves as well I think that's the best way you know to be a good role model for for children by limiting their own their own U screen time and

and what they're doing on social media so that you know children can learn what is what is healthy I think it's all about balance there needs to be a healthy healthy balance and you know if parents find that their children are spending too much time in front of a screen or on social media or you know they're being bullied I think they need to be involved and they need to set boundaries for their for their kids where where those things are concerned okay last question for you what do you think is the most important and

beneficial technological Advance sorry beneficial technological advancement that we've seen doesn't have to be today you can go all the way back to whenever probably I mean technological advancement in medicine is probably the most Ser the thing that has seriously affected our society and our world the most you know being able to mass produce vaccines you know comes to mind or um you know robots who can perform surgery um things like that I think have actually really made a big difference in in people's everyday lives around the globe nice all right well that's all the questions

I have for you thanks again for coming so you listed travel as one of your passions uh yeah um but actually my passion is um airport to airport what happens between airports so you it's you like the flying then the journey absolutely so what about that do you like I I love airplanes um do I love airports not not really I I when I go to an airport I go to the window to look at the airplanes yep um since the tender age of five I've always had a a this passion for airplanes and my

dream was to become an airline pilot so yeah okay have you ever flown in an airplane have I ever flown in an airplane not in an airplane have you ever flown an airplane um I've never flown an airplane I've been in the flight deck of an airplane of many of a number of aircraft um but I've never flown one okay so walk us through a trip with Tony what's going through your mind along the journey from airport to airport um well just like um the other Souls on board I I go on I sit um

I buckle my seat belt I obey the commands from the the cabin crew um I hear the pilots talking over the intercom but I take it another step further I actually listen to the details of what the pilots are saying I'm thinking about what's the weather going to be like what's the weather on the ground what's the surface winds on the runway all these things that uh regular passengers don't think about when they're in the seat and they're just like yeah I certainly don't think about that no I am just probably just relaxing and maybe

once in a while looking at the window if I'm privileged enough to get a window seat um yeah and just seeing how pretty it is and if you're looking out and you're you say you have a window a a a seat just over the wing you're looking out and you're like oh there's the wing it looks nice long okay I don't even think that much anyway yeah yeah yeah but to me I'm like I'm looking at the wing and I'm like hm so that's the landings that's the forward slats those are the landing flaps that's

the spoiler oh look at the winglet at at the end yeah okay no I'm definitely not thinking that at all so you actually don't care about like the cities that you're traveling to and seeing new places no no no don't get me wrong I actually do um I've had the fortune of visiting um some really amazing places like uh Glasgow Scotland which I I do love um I you know meeting the people meeting different people actually is a is something I look forward to so yeah and um the architecture and and all the all the

fun stuff you know like art artworks and crafts and all that stuff that um you know when you travel you always try to secure before you return home but uh yeah I do I do like um the experiences um outside of Aviation when it comes to traveling but for me which is you may think it's weird but it's still Aviation for me that's the top that's definitely at the top of the list for me um so you know when it comes to flight there are five critical phases you have takeoff climb out uh Cruise descent

and Landing so even at the end of a flight coming to the end just before landing the pilots um are trying their best to keep the nose of the airplane training down the center line of the runway um after landing when I'm when we're deplaning I would often stop at the flight deck door and I'll be like uh what happened there on the you know just before touchdown and the pilots would laugh and be like oh just a little gust nothing nothing really um but we're on the ground we're safe so oh my gosh so

basically you're grading the pilot as you are taking a trip somewhere weird it's so weird right absolutely absolutely weird AV that's what Aviation Buffs do you know it's it's yeah crazy crazy we are in the full swing of spring right or summer no will it's summer weather but yeah no today feel today feels like summer it's 29° feeling like 30 by the way are you a beach girl or a pool girl I prefer the beach to be honest um I like it I just I like the the seab breeze I like the trees I like

the sand waves everything I'm so good with that okay so are you beach girl Caribbean or beach girl uh by the lake in in in in in a North American country I don't think that that count I don't think I guess the Lakes can count as a beach because anything with sand but that's not what I think of when I think of beach you know I think of yeah I think of the ocean or I think of the Caribbean Sea or something a sea not even Caribbean but the sea MH how good a swimmer are

you on a scale of one to 10 two what or one I yeah I don't think I could swim to save my life I took lessons when I was a little girl like um around maybe five six seven years old I would take lessons and so I learned a few things I think at that time I had more confidence and I could swim but now as an adult oh I can't remember one thing I mean I I don't even know if I could keep myself afloat any more yeah I'm I'm I'm definitely a a pool

guy and I it it sounds weird I'm I'm I'm originally from the the the tropics but gez I I I can't take the sand I can't take sometime the sometime the the small little seaweed stuff in the in the sea it's just annoying like oh my gosh wow who are you Beach is amazing I know it's I know it's good for you for your skin absolutely it's like the sand is exfoliating the salt water no matter what the content whether it be just a little bit or a whole lot it's good for your skin good

for your hair all of that type of stuff kind of rebalances you you can treat the beach as a spa day in fact yeah I think so but yeah pool is just um a clean Affair for me just like the the river you dive in you come out you dry off you go no need to be going washing off washing off the sand out your underwear oh my gosh you are missing out I don't know what you what you mean I get I get it I get what you're saying with regards to being clean but

I think you're missing out there's so many benefits to the beach so if you don't like swim you don't dive into the water and go undera uh exploration that sort of thing what do you do when you go to the beach do you just recline on the sun and soak up the sun and and then yeah that's part of it I like to do that but I also I pose a lot this is the age of Instagram you can just oh take pretty pictures and things like that I also do a lot of splashing you

know going into the water and and splashing and getting the water on me but I I swim assisted as well so I done s snorkeling I've done scuba diving and I really actually like the underwater life the fish and the animals so you don't you don't fear the Deep not really not really as long as I am assisted with a life jacket with a you know with oxygen those I've even um I've I've jumped off a cliff before how high was the cliff oh my I don't know I would say was it like Grand Canyon

High of course not that's crazy no but I yeah it was pretty high it was a cliff and I jumped off assisted by my lovely life jacket I feel I can do anything I'm all good it's a I really think that my lack of swimming is like a confidence issue or just wanting to be in control like having my feet on the ground I feel strange about completely surrendering to the elements like the air when you're diving off or the water you know cuz to float you would have to do that right to give yourself

up to the water and I don't know how I feel about that mhm but you you there is some amount of control when you're paddling under um under under the surface and uh the up thrust helps to keep you up so it's just a matter of relaxing and just it's like dancing is it now I think that um I think that once you have the skill set then you'll know how to work along along with the water and work along with the air um if you're diving for instance but without those skills I would like

to keep my feet firmly planted on the floor thank you very much on the ground thank you very much