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Mark: How about you?

What’s new in your life?

Jill: Well, no new additions.

Mark: No new additions.

Jill: No pets.

Mark: What’s the matter with you?

You’ve been married now what, a month?

Jill: Two months now, actually.

Mark: Two months.

Jill: Two months!

No, nothing’s really changed.

We’re getting new appliances this weekend.

Mark: Well, that’s a start.

Jill: That’s about it, I guess.

Chris just decided two days ago, all of a sudden, we need new appliances.

So, we’re getting a new

Mark: Springtime, time for a new stove?

Jill: I guess he’s bored and so we’re getting a new dishwasher and new oven and stove and new fridge.

Mark: Wow!

Jill: This weekend it’s being delivered.

Mark: That’s pretty good.

Jill: Yeah, he doesn’t mess around.

Mark: No!

Jill: When he told me he thought about doing this, this was about two days ago, and, apparently, things are getting delivered this Sunday, so.

Mark: Now is that a green light for you to go out and go buy something else that you want?

Jill: Well, not really because I generally do that all year round and that’s kind of his point that I just spend money all the time.

You know, every week I’m coming home with something new, so.

This is not actually for him either it’s for ‘us’.

Mark: Right.

You mean you’re not buying stuff for ‘us’?

Jill: Not generally, no.

The bigger purchases I usually leave up to him.

Mark: Right. That’s a good thing to do, yeah.

Jill: But no, I’m happy.

That’s fine with me.

I mean they were the original appliances and I think our condo is now about 18 years old, so it was time to get new ones.

I mean we got a new washer just about a year ago and these are just going to be much nicer, stainless steel as opposed to the white.

You know, they were getting a little bit

Mark: Just newer and more features.

Jill: More modern and an oven that is self-cleaning.

Mark: Oh nice.

Jill: Our oven was getting pretty disgusting and neither of us were motivated to clean it.

Mark: I was going to say, you can clean non self-cleaning ovens, you know that?

Jill: Yeah, you can.

So, anyway, now we have an excuse not to ever clean our oven.

Mark: Right.

Jill: So, yeah, we’re just completely spoiled here, obviously, that we have all these amazing appliances.

Mark: I was going to say, we have a self-cleaning oven too but it doesn’t seem to work, the self-cleaning cycle or thing part of it.

Jill: Actually, I’ve heard that.

Mark: So, we just don’t clean it.

Jill: Well, I think that’s probably the worst job, worst chore, is cleaning an oven.

Mark: Spraying that, whatever you call it,

Jill: toxic whatever and then leaving it.

Mark: I know, leaving it sit.

Jill: And then you have to get in there and scrub with an SOS pad, well, at least in our oven you do.

Mark: Oh yeah, in any oven.

I mean the stuff just gets baked on there.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: What’s amazing to me is I’ve done that before which

Jill: You’ve cleaned an oven before?

Mark: Yeah, I know it’s surprising, isn’t it?

Jill: I never have.

Mark: I can’t remember where I did that.

I try to avoid household chores.

I think maybe in college when we had to cleanup our

Jill: Your dorm or something.

Mark: Not a dorm, our apartment or whatever we were renting there.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Anyway, I’ve done that before.

It was not fun.

Jill: It’s a miserable job.

Mark: And trying to get in the oven and you’re crouched in the thing.

You know, brutal.

Jill: Yeah, it’s brutal, so now we don’t have to deal with it.

Mark: That’s good.

It’s nice to get new appliances.

That’s always fun.

Jill: Oh yeah, that will be great.

Mark: Probably more energy-efficient too.

Jill: Yes, that’s right, energy-efficient and yeah, there will be a number of things that are better about them.

And then the only other thing is I’m just fixing up our deck, our roof-top deck, which is quite large and quite nice.

Mark: It sounds pretty nice.

A roof-top deck somehow sounds nice.

Do you have a nice view looking off of it?

Jill: We go up some stairs and we open it and we’ve got a gorgeous view of the north shore mountains, all the buildings downtown and then also the ocean, so it’s a fantastic view.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: And it’s a big deck.

It’s not like a little tiny deck it’s very big.

Mark: Which is so nice; to have a big space.

Jill: Yeah.

We’ve got a barbeque and table and chairs and I actually want to get a few nice teak chaise lounge chairs to put out there and then I definitely want to do some nice flowers and plants this year.

We haven’t done them for a couple years because we’re not home very much in the summertime on weekends and it’s full sun up there so things need to be watered all the time; everyday sometimes in the middle of the summer here because there is never any shade up there.

Mark: Right.

Jill: So, I don’t know if things will survive but I want to at least try and spruce it up a little bit with some color.

Mark: At least if you are able to water it.

I mean, being in full sun like that they’ll look great.

Jill: Oh yeah and I’ve been doing some research and I’m only going to, obviously, get the plants and flowers that do well in full sun.

Mark: Right.

Jill: Not stuff, you know, like hostas.

And things that need shade, I just won’t plant up there.

Mark: No, yeah.

Jill: So, that’s about it.

Mark: Now we just need a little hot weather so that you can enjoy your deck.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: So we can all get out and enjoy the weather.

It’s been kind of cool this year.

Here we are middle of June and, I don’t know, what did it get up to today 15?

Jill: I think it was supposed to get up to 18 or 20, actually.

Mark: Oh, really?

Jill: But to be fair, June, and I’ve always said this and even the meteorologist on the news the other day was saying this, that June is not a month you should count on in Vancouver for being nice.

Mark: Absolutely not.

Jill: It’s a very unstable month.

There is always a lot of rain.

It’s not a hot month and in May we had quite a bit of nice sunny weather.

That last week of May and the first few days of June we were actually breaking records because we had so much hot, beautiful, sunny weather.

Mark: When you say ‘so much’, we had like

Jill: Well, a week and a half.

Mark: four days.

Jill: No, it was more.

Mark: A week and a half?

Jill: You forget.

Mark: Okay, there were four hot days and six days that were not raining.

Jill: Like 25 degrees. No, no, you don’t remember.

Mark: Any of you that are planning on visiting Vancouver, if you are looking for nice summer weather

Jill: July and August.

Mark: Yeah, mid July to the end of August even into the middle of September.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: That’s when we have our nicest weather.

Outside of that, you are almost guaranteed at that time of year to have beautiful sunny weather.

Jill: March, April.

Mark: And then in Vancouver or B.C., this area is just such a phenomenal place to be when the weather is like that.

The rest of the year we just kind of grin and bear it until it gets nice again.

Jill: April and May, I mean, April-May you get some nice weather.

There are always some nice days.

Mark: For sure.

Jill: But you can’t count on long stretches of nice weather.

Mark: No.

Jill: You certainly can’t say, oh yeah, you know, April and May are really nice months because there will be some nice days but there could also be a lot of rain, so your best bet is July or August.

Mark: Although, I seem to remember years past like this spring was particularly cool.

We’ve had much nicer April and May and June, well June, we’re still in.

It hasn’t been that bad really, I exaggerate.

Jill: But it’s been, except for the first few days of June, kind of cloudy or some rain almost every day this month so far.

Mark: And cool.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Like the other day, yeah, you had four blankets on in the office instead of your usual two.

Jill: No, I had two blankets and my heater.

Mark: Yeah. So, no, no, but the weather hasn’t been great this year but any day now.

It’s supposed to get hot next week.

Jill: Yes and if you recall last summer, June was absolutely terrible like usual; rainy, cloudy every day.

I think I was still wearing my long johns to work to keep warm.

July came and July was just scorching and it was

Mark: like someone turned the heater on, yeah.

Jill: Everyday sun and August and went right in to October where we had water shortage problems.

Mark: Did we last year?

Jill: We didn’t so much over here but they did on the island.

Mark: On the island they had that.

In Tofino they ran out of water. They were trucking it in.

Jill: That’s right, that’s right, which is a real tourist town in the summer.

Mark: Which is really silly considering how much rainfall we get here in the wintertime, but if you don’t store it then you don’t have it when you need it.

Jill: Yeah, that’s right.

Mark: People here always assume it will rain but if it doesn’t rain for a while then you run out, which they did.

Jill: They did, yeah.

Mark: And they rely on tourism there.

On Vancouver Island where we are going for our outing, a big part of their economy now is reliant on tourism and they basically had to send people home.

Jill: Well, people couldn’t even take showers or anything at one point.

They just literally were out of water.

Mark: All the hotels shut down which is amazing, yeah.

Jill: It was a pretty big disaster for them.

So, yeah, I’m hopeful that I think we’ll get another warm, hot, dry summer after this month is over.

Mark: Well, somebody told me, who was reading the Farmer’s Almanac or whatever, that’s what it says is coming: a long hot summer.

I’ve heard that.

I don’t know if that’s wishful thinking or what it is, but.

Jill: Well, I know people who swear that the Farmer’s Almanac is right.

I don’t know.

Mark: For those who don’t know, the Farmer’s Almanac…I don’t really know much about it… It’s a book that’s put out by I don’t know who that predicts all kinds of different things.

I’ve never actually seen one; I’ve just heard it talked about.

Jill: No, me either; yeah, the elusive Farmer’s Almanac.

Mark: Yeah, but definitely it’s a book that’s published.

I even think you can get it in bookstores.

Jill: People talk about it.

Mark: Presumably, farmers go by it.

They plan their harvest or crops or whatever by what’s written in the Farmer’s Almanac.

I don’t know how they predict stuff.

I don’t know if it’s scientific or if it’s hocus-pocus, but

Jill: Well, we’ll see won’t we this year?

Mark: We will see.

We will see.

Anyway, I think that is going to do us for today.

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Mark: Other than that, we had some things we were going to talk about today but they are slipping my mind at the moment.

Oh, I think we were, yeah, we were going to talk about my latest addition to my family.

Jill: Gordie.

Mark: Gordie, my dog.

Jill: Named after your street, Gordon.

Mark: That’s right, but it’s just a good name for a dog.

Jill: It is cute.

Mark: No offense to any Gords who happen to be listening out there.

Jill: It’s a good people name too.

Mark: It’s a good people name too; that’s right.

Like Gordie Howe, one of the most famous hockey players that ever played for

Jill: Canadian.

Mark: Canadian, yeah.

Anyway, so yeah, we got a new puppy about a month or so ago and we’ve been having lots of fun.

The kids have been having lots of fun.

Some early mornings, although Jill doesn’t think it’s that early but it’s early for me.

Jill: Mark comes to work yawning now sometimes and he’s not-you’re not really a yawner, usually.

Mark: No.

Jill: You know and you do a lot of exercise and you’re in good shape and stuff but when I saw you yawning the other day you  (said) blamed it on the dog.

You and Kindrey take turns getting up with him in the morning because it’s like a baby.

He gets up and he needs attention and it’s earlier than your kids wakeup and earlier than you normally wakeup.

You told me it was 6:30 and I didn’t have any sympathy because to me 6:30 is really not that early in the morning.

Mark: 6:30 is very early.

It’s not normal to wakeup too early, you know that.

Yeah, no, the dog has to go out for a pee at 6:30 or whenever he wakes up.

Jill: But when you first got him you said it was about 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning.

Mark: Yeah, that was really bad.

It was like 4:30, 4:45, 5:00 for a few weeks anyway.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: He’s been pretty much at 6:30, sometimes 7:00, sometimes 6:00, but around 6:30 most mornings which really isn’t that bad especially in the summer when it’s light out so early.

I mean, at least he’s not waking up when the sun comes out at 5:00 or whenever it comes out, you know.

Jill: Yeah.

I think I heard my mom got a dog a couple years ago and I’m pretty sure somebody told her, whether it was a vet or whoever I’m not sure, that with the puppies, the babies, they can only go a certain amount of time before they have to go pee, right?

They can’t hold it all night long because their bladder is not fully developed yet but, apparently, with each month they are able to hold it an hour longer.

So when they are three months old they may only be able to hold it for three hours at a time; although, Gordie goes longer than three hours.

Mark: Oh, yeah, he’ll go from like 10:00 to 6:30.

Jill: Yeah, so that’s not bad, actually.

Mark: That’s pretty good.

He’s pretty good about going to the bathroom, like better than any dog I’ve ever heard of in terms of he’s only gone pee in the house like four times.

Jill: Wow!

Mark: And he’s never gone poo in the house.

So, like he seems I don’t think he’s got a like he must have a big bladder, I don’t know, but he’s really good.

Jill: Oh, that’s good.

Mark: We haven’t had problems there.

I remember when we had a dog as a kid, we had newspaper in the kitchen for quite a while that he would be going on.

That hasn’t been a problem with Gordie.

By the way, Gordie is a half Black Lab, quarter Golden Retriever, quarter Flat-Coat Retriever.

I don’t know what a Flat-Coat Retriever is but

Jill: Me either.

Mark: Anyway, that’s what he is.

So, he’s a mutt but he’s great.

Jill: He’s very, very cute.

Mark: Cute, fluffy dog.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: He hasn’t started shedding yet because he’s just a puppy so he’s still cute.

Jill: Yes, exactly.

But, actually I noticed, you brought him into the office the other day for a couple of hours and he definitely smells like a dog already even though he’s just a puppy.

Mark: Yeah.

My wife, Kindrey, she takes, everyday pretty much, she’ll walk the kids or walk with the kids halfway to school and there’s a park there with a stream and woods.

Other people bring their dogs there and they just have a big dog party in the woods, in the creek and jumping in the water.

He comes back from that and he’s just beat.

He has to sleep for

Jill: He’s exhausted.

Mark: Oh, yeah.

Jill: He has to have a nap for a couple hours.

Mark: He has to sleep for a couple hours, for sure.

Jill: Oh, that’s great though.

Mark: The more they are in the water too that starts to get them

Jill: Smelly?

Yeah, yeah, that’s for sure.

But he’s really, really cute so I can see why, you know, you can love them so quickly.

Mark: Totally.

You know, I remember loving my dog when I was a kid and not really, yeah, he was a little bit stinky, but you don’t really think about it.

Jill: No.

Mark: And then when you don’t have a dog for so long and dogs come up to you, you’re kind of like yeah, kind of a cute dog, but ah, that’s kind of a stinky dog.

Jill: Now your hands smell.

Mark: Now your hands smell and you don’t want them slobbering on your pants, but now that I have a dog

Jill: it’s a different story.

Mark: It’s a different story, that’s right.

Jill: Yeah, they are just part of the family I think for most people.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jill: So yeah, he’s great.

He’s mellow and calm.

He doesn’t bark.

He doesn’t jump up.

He’s just amazing for a puppy.

Mark: He’s exceptional, isn’t he?

Jill: Like I say, exceptional like the rest of your family.

Mark: Well, that’s right.

Yeah, no, we really lucked out though, I think.

We have other friends that have puppies and yeah, I mean, you’re just rolling the dice.

Jill: Yes, you don’t know what you are going to get.

Mark: You don’t know what you’re going to get and I think his litter, they were like that.

They were just calm and well-behaved.

I think the people we got the dog from they own both the mom and the dad and they decided to have puppies once just to see what it was like, so they are not a breeder.

Jill: Oh and sometimes when you go to a breeder there is, you know, they can be puppy mills where they are breeding them far too many times in a year and that’s when problems really start to arise.

Mark: That’s right.

They are breeding them too often and they have too many puppies around and they are just kind of let to run wild; whereas, I think these puppies kind of got really mothered and there were kids and they were all over them.

They took them out all the time to pee outside and so I think that just from the start they probably got more attention than they’d get at a breeder.

Jill: Right.

Mark: And so I think, I don’t know, maybe that’s part of it and probably the dog’s parents are probably calm; although, certainly when we went out there to visit the puppy the dad had his paws up on the fence barking at us because he kind of knew what we were doing.

He’s protecting his family, right?

Jill: Oh yeah.

Mark: Gordie’s dad is big!

It’s like a, I don’t know, five-foot fence and he’s got his paws up on the top of the fence and he’s barking over the top of it.

Jill: Wow!

Well, Gordie looks like he might be quite big.

He’s grown a lot just in the last couple of weeks even since I saw him last.

Mark: For sure.

I think he’s not going to be small.

Jill: No.

Mark: Kindrey went out there and she thought she picked the runt of the litter.

He was like half the size of his brothers and sisters, but then we subsequently found out that the runt doesn’t always mean they are going to end up being the smallest.

Sometimes the runt can end up being the biggest.

It just means they didn’t get as much to eat inside the mom but very often they catch up once they get their fair share, so.

Jill: So he just may be a hundred pound dog one day.

Mark: Oh, I don’t think he’ll be a hundred pounds but

Jill: No, most Lab and Retrievers aren’t that big.

Mark: Yeah, he’ll be just probably a good sized, Lab-type size.

Jill: Big enough to take on a run or on a hike.

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

Jill: But not so big that it’s kind of out of hand.

Mark: Exactly.

Yeah, so, anyway, that will be it’s fun, it’s fun.

Jill: Now you have a new member of the family for 12 or 15 years.

Mark: I know and it’s amazing how fast they grow.

For all you dog owners out there and I know many of our Linguist members in Japan are probably wondering where my dog pictures are on my blog; I apologize.

I’ve got to get some up there for you to see.

Jill: But you won’t have him dressed in any fancy kimonos?

Mark: No, I won’t.

Jill: Like some of our Japanese members do with their dogs.

Mark: That right.

Boy, I can’t remember who it was now, but it’s amazing some of the detail in the kimono outfits that she makes for her dog.

Jill: Little, little dogs.

Mark: Dogs.

Jill: Dogs I think, yeah.

Mark: I think so, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, that’s a lot of fun.

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Mark: Well, here we are again for another EnglishLingQ podcast.

Mark Kaufmann here with Jill Soles.

Are you still Soles?

Jill: Officially.

Mark: I don’t know that I ever got the word on that.

Jill: Officially I am, yes.

I haven’t changed my name.

Mark: Alright.

We were just actually talking with… we had a bit of a powwow in the middle of the day here in the office.

Jill: Friday afternoon.

Mark: Don’t tell anyone, but talking about the company outing that we’’re going to be having in August.

We thought maybe that would be a good thing to talk about today; just what we do and why we do it.

This year we are going to Vancouver Island.

Maybe, Jill, you can explain where we’re going.

Jill: Okay.

We are going to Vancouver Island which is a large island I think bigger than several European countries.

It’s quite large where there are just a lot of different resorts and different places for people to go and stay for the weekend or camp or whatever so we’re going to a nice oceanfront resort called Tigh-Na-Mara there.

You take a ferry from Vancouver that takes about an hour and a half on the ferry to get to Vancouver Island.

We are going to go to this resort where we’ll have a game of golf; a round of golf.

It’s right at the beach so, you know, you can spend it’s a beach that when the tide is out it goes out about a kilometer.

Mark: It goes out a long way.

It’s a phenomenal beach for kids; whatever it’s called, Rathtrevor Beach.

It’s actually part of a provincial park I think.

It’s sandy and shallow so it’s great for kids.

The water on a hot day gets quite warm and around here the ocean really never gets that warm so if you have a shallow beach where the water has a chance to heat up on a hot day it’s really nice. So, that is nice.

Jill: And it’s full of sand dollars.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: There are sand dollars all over the beach that kids like to collect and clams as well.

Mark: Yeah, for sure.

As the tide goes out all the clams and sand dollars and gooey ducks which are a kind of oyster all kind of I think people we’ve gone out digging for them before when we’ve been there, have we not?

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, it’s fun. It’s great there.

I also want to mention that Vancouver Island isn’t actually a resort island.

Jill: No.

Mark: I mean there’s a lot of I guess more than anything, the forest industry is very big there.

It’s a big island but, obviously, heavily forested with beautiful coastlines and beautiful scenery.

For that reason, a lot of people do go there on holiday.

Jill: Right and the capital city.

The capital of British Columbia, the province that we live in is over there — the Victoria.

Our parliament buildings are over there so it’s not just a tourist destination, for sure.

Mark: But a lot of people do.

I mean the ferry lineups to go over to Vancouver Island in the summertime on the weekends and the long weekends can be hours, for sure.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: So, yeah, we’re looking forward to going and we were talking about what sorts of things we should be doing.

Jill and I were pushing for a karaoke festival.

Jill: Accompanied by a little bit of alcohol just to get people a little bit loosened up.

Mark: You always need a little bit of alcohol when you’re going to be karaoke or we should pronounce it properly for all our Japanese listeners–karaoke.

They won’t know what we’re talking about.

Yeah, it’s funny, speaking of karaoke, how popular it is in Japan and in Asia.

Here it was kind of popular for a while and now you just don’t see it as much I guess.

Jill: About five or ten years ago, I think, actually, several friends, several different groups of people I knew did go to karaoke bars in the lower mainland here in Vancouver quite often but I don’t know.

You’re right; I don’t think it’s so common anymore.

I think it was just kind of a fad; something that was cool for a few years and now it’s

Mark: Which is really a shame.

Jill: Oh yeah, such a shame!

I miss those times.

Mark: But I think it’s fun especially after having spent time in Japan where you do it a lot.

We did it a lot and it’s fun, it’s fun.

It’s fun especially when there are people that you know and, you know, none of us are professional singers so it’s good.

Jill: Yeah, so we’ll probably have some karaoke and then I was also saying we should have a poker tournament or some poker games one night.

There will be a lot of us and poker has become very popular.

Mark: Well, yeah, maybe it’s replaced karaoke.

Jill: I’m okay with that.

Mark: Yeah.

Honestly though the poker thing, I’m amazed at how popular it is.

Like, no one used to play poker at all.

Jill: You turn on the TV and there’s poker on TV all the time.

Mark: Yeah, you know, maybe guys would get together once a year and play a little poker.

You know, yeah, I played it on the team bus or in the hotel.

We’d play a little bit but now it’s on TV.

Tournaments, prize money, people playing online and having friends over and playing poker; I’m amazed.

Like, it’s just a total craze.

Jill: Oh, we had a big poker game on Christmas night last year.

Mark: You did, eh, yeah?

Jill: Nine of us after Christmas dinner, we broke out the poker chips and had a poker game, so. It’s really fun though.

Mark: I mean everybody plays now, yeah.

Jill: And it’s really, you know, Texas Hold’em anyway, I think the most popular version or game of poker that people are playing nowadays, is really quite simple.

I mean, I shouldn’t say that because I know there is probably technique involved and skill and all of these different things but, you know, even if people don’t really know what the hands are you can write it down.

Everybody can have a piece of paper that tells them, you know, what hands are worth and you only have two cards in your hand, you know, so it’s really not that difficult for anybody to learn to play it.

Mark: Right and especially when you are sharing most of the same cards it kind of makes it a bit more social, I guess.

You know, you kind of know what everybody is doing and you can see what people are trying to get or you guess at what they are trying to get.

Jill: Yeah, yeah, it’s fun.

Mark: Yeah, it’s fun.

Yeah, as you say, Texas Hold’em, all the big tournaments and on TV and whatever, that’s the game that they are playing all the time, so that’s the most popular game right now.

Jill: Yeah.

I don’t know if maybe it’s become so popular because of Vegas and all the gambling but that’s been around a long time, so I don’t know if there is a correlation.

Mark: I have no idea why.

I mean, partly, all the Internet gambling makes it easier, I guess, but that doesn’t really explain why people are playing it more.

I guess it’s a good social game that everyone can play together.

Everyone can play and hat’s a big advantage.

That’s maybe why golf is so popular too.

Pretty much, everyone can play golf.

People aren’t prevented from playing because of their age or their size or their, yeah, their ability.

Yeah, I mean, if you can walk and hold a golf club then you can at least get out there.

Obviously, some people are going to be better golfers than others but you can be out there and trying and having a good time.

Jill: Or be like me and just walk around the course with the people that are playing golf and just enjoy the scenery and, you know, be their caddie.

Mark: Well, that’s right and you’re probably having a better time than they are because you’re not frustrated.

Jill: Oh, for sure.

Mark: Yeah, no, I know and the poker is the same way, everyone can play and some people are better than others and there’s a big luck factor involved and it’s fun.

Jill: Yeah, yeah, so, we’ll see how that turns out.

Hopefully, we’ll get some games going.

Mark: That’s right.

We are talking it up that we’re going to make it try and liven it up a bit and just try and do more things sort of together where in the past at these outings people have tended to arrive and then disperse and kind of do their own thing

Jill: with their family.

Mark: with their family, yeah.

Jill: The point of this company retreat or outing is to be sort of a team-building thing.

That’s the point, right?

Mark: Spend some time with your coworkers away from the office, right.

Jill: See them as real individuals.

Mark: Right.

Jill: Real people not just a coworker.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: So, we’ll see how that goes.

We’ll give you a report later on.

Jill: After the August long weekend.

Mark: That’s right.

Want to study this episode as a lesson on LingQ? Give it a try!

Steve: Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hi, Steve.

Steve: You know what, Jill?

I don’t know where you were born and where you were brought up.

Did you grow up here in Vancouver?

Jill: I did, in North Vancouver.

I was born, actually, in a small town called Golden.

Steve: I’ve been to Golden.

Jill: Yeah, small town in British Columbia but we left when I was a year old.

Actually, my mom left with us and my dad is from there and his whole family lives there so he stayed.

Steve: Oh, okay.

Jill: So, we grew up in North Van but always went back to visit.

Steve: I’ve been to Golden. I mean, the scenery there is just spectacular.

Jill: Yeah, it’s beautiful.

Steve: Spectacular.

That whole area from Golden to Revelstoke, the snow, the quality of snow they get, the rocky mountains, the peaks, the skiing, I mean, it’s really spectacular country.

Jill: Lots and lots of trees everywhere.

Yeah, it’s beautiful.

Steve: And it’s nice in the summer too.

Jill: Very warm.

Steve: And it’s very warm; hot.

Jill: And very dry.

Steve: Dry and hot.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: So, no, it’s spectacular; it’s spectacular country.

Oh, I see, so you grew up in North Vancouver?

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: And gee, but that’s kind of tough that, I guess, so your mom left.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: So, your mom had to bring you up?

She had support, I guess?

Jill: Yeah.

Well, my mom’s whole family lived here.

She has six brothers and sisters and then my grandparents and we were always very close.

We first lived with my grandparents when we moved back for a year, so.

And my dad did come down, you know, once a month to visit us and we went up there for all the holidays.

So, actually, we thought it was really cool because, you know, my dad had a big ranch and we had horses and we had dirt bikes and we got to drive vehicles when we were 12.

Because he had all this land we could just drive, so we got to do all these things that none of our friends ever got to do.

Steve: So your dad was a rancher up there?

Jill: Well no, not really, he actually owned a sawmill for many, many years.

Steve: What was the name of the sawmill?

Jill: Soles; Soles Lumber Limited.

Steve: Alright.

Jill: He just bought a ranch at one point.

He was never really a rancher; he just bought it just, I guess, for whatever reason, but had 1,200 acres on this ranch.

So, you know, we would go for walks through the forest with the creeks running through and horses and so it was really great.

Steve: Oh, yeah, and especially in the summer.

Jill: Oh, yeah.

Steve: To be up there it must have been

Jill: Oh, it’s light until 11 at night and it’s just …you don’t hear any sounds.

You don’t hear any noises and you see all the stars in the sky.

Steve: So you went horseback riding too?

Jill: Yeah, I grew up riding horses.

Steve: Oh really. So, do you like to ride?

Jill: I don’t; not any more.

I used to just bug him solid when I was up there because when I was little I was too young to go by myself and I couldn’t saddle the horses up myself so he always had to come and he was always so busy working.

So, I was always bugging him to take me riding.

And then when I was, I don’t know maybe 13, I went to a camp for a week; a riding camp.

And it was actually English riding though, where you do some jumping and stuff and I had always done western riding with the big horn on the saddle.

And then when I was about 14-15, I just completely lost interest and I think I’ve been on a horse one time since then; just no desire anymore.

Steve: Really?

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: You know, that’s very interesting.

I guess I always try to relate everything back to language learning, but people go through periods where they like to do certain things and then they don’t like to do certain things.

I mean, they often talk, for example, in the case of young kids who play sports…it might be a girl that’s into whatever, basketball or gymnastics, or boys into hockey…and some of them burn out.

Jill: Yeah and they could be very good.

Steve: They could be very good and all of a sudden at the age of 14 they’re no longer interested.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Very often the parents, they put so much into it.

They see their child as this future ballerina or whatever it might be

Jill: an NHL star.

Steve: And the child loses interest.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: It’s the same with language learning.

I confess now that I tried very hard to get my two boys, Mark and Eric, interested in language learning with, you know, no real success.

And then, Mark, because he played hockey professionally in Europe and then in Japan, he got interested.

So when he was in Italy and then he was in Austria and in Switzerland and in Japan, wherever he went, he tried to learn the language.

And, you know, I’ve talked recently on my blog, thelinguist.blogs.com, about how in our school system we sort of treat everyone in the classroom as if they’ve all got an equal interest in learning languages.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So they all get the same treatment and they get a treatment that’s, basically, if they aren’t very interested in languages, it’s going to discourage them.

It gives them a lot of seemingly meaningless things to do and it teaches them meaningless things.

And, you know, if it were only possible to nurture sort of an interest in language with young children and somehow allow them the freedom to explore so that they maintain that interest.

And at some point, some of those kids, perhaps a larger percentage, will take that interest, you know, right to the extent that they are going to learn to be fluent in the language.

But we don’t do that, we’ve got to force it.

Jill: We force it on them.

Steve: We force it on them and some of them won’t continue. Well, so what?

So, you know, you were interested in horses and then you were no longer interested in horses, big deal; one way or the other.

Jill: I had different interests.

Steve: You had different interests.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Now, if your father or your mother had said “no, we want Jill to be a horsewoman and she’s got to do it”, you know, that wouldn’t have helped either.

Jill: No.

Steve: No.

Jill: I wouldn’t have enjoyed it and I probably would have been angry and bitter with them and, you know, who knows?

Steve: And what you have now is you have very pleasant memories

Jill: yes,

Steve: of the time that you enjoyed horses.

Jill: It’s not a negative experience.

Steve: Right.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: And I think education has to be that way.

There has to be more of an opportunity, especially for children but even for adults, to explore and discover things on their own.

And the challenge in education is how do we stimulate that interest, how do we make it easier for them to cultivate that interest, but we shouldn’t be trying to force something at people.

Jill: Right.

Steve: And I think that’s where you know, how many people have a pleasant recollection of their language studies in school?

Jill: You know, I don’t know anybody who does, honestly.

In Canada we were always made to learn French.

Steve: The English speaking population.

Jill: The English speaking population were always made to learn French.

I think it probably varied, depending on the school, what grade you started at but at a certain point, you had to; it was mandatory.

Do you know that I have not spoken to one person who was forced to do that who actually likes French?

They all hate it.

They remember very little aside from the basic “Hi, my name is” and “How are you?”

You know, other than that, they don’t remember.

And French is a beautiful language and I’m not just saying that because I speak it because I have very negative memories of learning French too.

I didn’t enjoy my time learning it.

Steve: So you didn’t enjoy the French you learned in school?

Jill: I didn’t.

Steve: No.

Jill: I didn’t.

Steve: It’s a bit artificial isn’t it?

Jill: Yeah, I didn’t enjoy it.

I didn’t actually even enjoy my university courses very much, but I do still believe that French is a beautiful language and I do still want to improve and use it.

But, I think that most people have a negative experience.

Steve: Of course now you have French on the LingQ System, so.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: Hey, you can go to town and enjoy it.

Jill: That’s right; that’s right.

Steve: Yeah, I mean, I’ve mentioned this on my blog, I think I want to do this experiment.

Take some children, maybe six or seven, and have a program in the schools which is called “Languages” and using a system like LingQ, allow the children to, say, look at a map of the world and on that map will be the languages that are available.

In other words, we have, you know, audio books, like stories to listen to or to read, or we have videos, little short videos, in these languages and use a system line LingQ so that they can save words and keep track of the words that they’re saving.

So, they keep a little score and maybe tie it to “Snakes and Ladders” or some little game; make a game out of it.

And so that all that we ask of them to do is that they will, in each year, explore one or two languages.

Listen to it many, many times and children like listening to the same thing over and over again.

I mean, children say “read me that story again. “

Jill: Oh, and they’ll watch movies a hundred times.

Steve: A hundred times, so they’re ideal.

And, of course, if they will listen to the story over and over again and gradually learn the words and so then one year they might do Swahili and the next year they might do Spanish and the following year they might do sort of Indonesian, it really doesn’t matter, but they are expanding their mind; they are expanding their mind.

I think that with a program like that, when they are say 15 or 16, they will be better language learners and at that time if they decide to learn French, they’ll learn it in two years and so that they don’t need 10 years.

Jill: They’ll have learned some of the techniques.

Steve: They will have learned some of the techniques; their brain will be more flexible.

Their brain will not resist the fact that different languages have different sounds, have different structures and so forth.

I would like to do that as an experiment.

The new approach so that we don’t teach French, one language, like arbitrarily decide

Jill: you have no choice and this is how it’s going to be taught.

Steve: Exactly.

Of the thousands of languages in the world, we decide which language you are going to learn.

Whereas it should be, there are all kinds of languages out there, which one do you want to explore?

And next year you can explore another one.

All we ask is that when you do decide to explore one, stay with it.

So, you have to listen over and over and do these other things, for which I think LingQ is very suitable.

Jill: Yes.

Steve: So, anyway, that will be our next project.

Anyway, so once again, the transcript for this podcast will be available at… and I should say it will be the lingQ.com because very soon we’ll be moving to the lingQ.com but also at thelinguist.com.

You can also hear it at EnglishLingQ.com and we hope that you find the discussion interesting and with the transcript you can read and listen and, hopefully, improve your English at the same time.

Thank you very much, Jill.

Jill: Thank you.

Study the transcript of this episode as a lesson on LingQ, saving the words and phrases you don’t know to your database. Here it is!

Steve: Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hi, again.

Steve: Where have you been recently that’s been interesting?

Jill: For the better part of April, I was traveling throughout Central America.

There are seven countries; I think we spoke about that before and I went to five of them.

Steve: Now, Jill, you know, I think of the sort of backpacker, you know, wearing the same shirts and underwear for six months, trekking around India, eating, you know, off the floor of a truck, whatever and then I think of you; not the same.

Jill: No.

Steve: Not the same.

So, how did you fare in Latin America?

Because I know you went into the bush and you were in somewhat rough places.

How was it?

Jill: It was great.

It was so, so great.

I’m sure there were times that I was maybe not so happy.

Looking back, I have nothing but fond memories.

But, we did break it up a bit.

We started in Costa Rica and the first four nights we stayed in a very nice, luxurious, beachfront boutique resort, so that was beautiful and we ended in Belize where we also stayed in a nice hotel on the beach.

So, that’s kind of my style; more my style.

Chris, you know, he kind of likes the backpacking around which I don’t mind either, so we had a bit of both.

We spent about maybe two weeks or just under two weeks backpacking around and staying in a lot of places for one night or two nights.

So, just moving around a lot, taking a lot of buses, you know, getting up in the middle of the night to catch a bus, stuff like that.

That was all fine, actually; I didn’t even mind that.

Steve: But I gather you had an encounter with some of the local wildlife of the small variety.

Jill: Yeah.

Yeah, in Costa Rica I got stung by a scorpion which wasn’t a pleasant experience.

It felt like a bad bee sting.

It wasn’t extremely painful but it was just gross to see this big bug crawling.

Steve: How big was it?

Jill: Well, to me, I thought it was about a foot long but, of course, Chris said, you know, no.

It was really I think it was about two to three inches, so it wasn’t huge but much bigger than what we’re used to seeing here in Vancouver.

They are just not particularly attractive looking creatures and the fact that it had stung me and all the rest didn’t make me too thrilled.

Steve: You didn’t like it?

Jill: No, it was a little scary, but it was all okay and by that night the mark was gone, nothing hurt and it was fine.

Steve: How about the food down there?

How did you like to food?

Jill: The local food was fine.

It consisted of a lot of chicken cooked in a variety of ways: barbequed, grilled, fried, you know, all different ways and rice and often beans and sometimes it was quite tasty and other times it was quite bland, it just depended.

You know, some restaurants were better than others.

Steve: Right.

Jill: But, we didn’t eat a lot of that, you know.

You travel nowadays and there’s just everywhere has pizza.

That’s just everywhere, even in small little villages, so we had pizza probably four times.

We were pretty sick of pizza actually by the end, to say.

And we had, you know when we were on the coast there was always lots of seafood, so we would have lots of seafood.

Steve: Now, how do they make the seafood?

Jill: We got things that are very similar to here; you know, snapper or just grilled.

Steve: Do they fry it in a frying pan?

Jill: A variety of ways.

You could get it a variety of ways.

It was almost always very good, actually.

Steve: Oh, okay and was it expensive?

Jill: Belize was really expensive; it was the most expensive.

It was very expensive.

In fact, a lot of things were more expensive than in Canada.

Steve: But how do the locals

Jill: I don’t know.

I had a talk with some of them and I said how because their income is obviously not as high as ours and they just said they just, you know, they just make do; they get by.

Steve: How about language?

You speak a few words of Spanish; I guess you used it occasionally.

Did you mostly have to communicate in Spanish or in English?

Jill: Yes.

In Costa Rica, especially at the first resort we stayed, everybody spoke English really well, actually.

That wasn’t a problem.

In Nicaragua and Honduras there was were some people who knew a little bit of English, but more often than not, we communicated primarily in Spanish.

Chris’s Spanish is quite decent and at least we can understand most of the time if people slow down.

Some people just won’t slow down for you.

That happened the odd time.

Most people were very gracious, but sometimes they just wouldn’t or, you know, just like with English or any language, there are people who speak the language better than other people.

You know, they enunciate more clearly; they speak with less of an accent or whatever.

So, sometimes people were real easy to understand and other people we just couldn’t understand no matter what; we just couldn’t.

But for the most part, we communicated in Spanish and then in Belize they all speak English.

English is the native language.

Steve: Oh, right you are.

That’s British Honduras.

Jill: Yeah, it was a British colony.

Steve: How evident is I know you saw some of the old Native American ruins, but how evident is that culture in everyday life down there?

Jill: I would say in Guatemala where the main Mayan ruins are located it’s still very evident.

Fifty percent of the population is full-blooded Mayan.

That’s what they think anyway; 50 to 60 percent, so they still speak the Mayan language.

Steve: Really?

Jill: It’s their first language before Spanish.

They’ve got, you know, traditional clothing on, very dark skinned, so there it was very interesting.

In the other countries there wasn’t really that element.

So, Guatemala was where it seemed very, you know, native.

Steve: Right; okay.

Were there any things that you identified as native food or was the food more or less the same in all the countries; the chicken with the rice and the beans?

Jill: Yeah, the food was more or less you know, even in South America it’s pretty much chicken and rice.

You know, “pollo” that’s what is served.

Chickens are easy to have.

You know, everybody can have them.

You don’t need a lot of land so I think chicken is pretty standard fare.

Steve: Alright; okay.

Were you in the ocean at all?

Jill: Oh, yes, that was wonderful.

Steve: What was the water like?

Jill: Well, in Costa Rica you could go the Caribbean or the Pacific side.

We went to the Pacific side which was fantastic; huge waves, excellent surfing.

I learned to surf.

The water is really warm.

It’s not a clear color being the Pacific; although, Hawaii is on the Pacific and is.

So, it’s not like it’s great snorkeling there, but warm water, great surf and long beaches with nobody on them so it was fantastic.

Steve: Wow.

Jill: In Belize that was on the Caribbean so that was spectacular water; warm and crystal clear.

They have a second biggest barrier reef there in the world there so the diving and snorkeling was amazing.

We went snorkeling and we were snorkeling with sharks and dolphins.

Steve: With sharks?

Jill: Sharks.

These ones were quite big but they aren’t aggressive.

They swim away from you.

Steve: You believed that?

Jill: Yeah, well I tried to touch one.

Steve: Did you really?

Jill: I kept trying to get close but they just swam away.

Steve: Well that’s pretty brave of you.

Jill: Well, I was pretty far away still. But yeah, stingrays and

Steve: But they can sting you the stingrays.

Jill: Yeah, yeah, they can but they’re pretty docile, generally, and they sort of stay back and there are moray eels and it was fantastic.

Steve: My goodness. And was there a lot of, sort of, vegetation on the ocean floor?

Jill: Well, yeah, it’s a coral reef; a barrier reef so lots of coral.

In Belize they have conch, big conch shells everywhere on the ocean floor and that’s one of the main foods that they serve at the restaurants there is conch.

I never knew you ate conch but I guess it’s just like another shell fish.

Steve: Sure.

Jill: So, big beautiful conchs.

We would just dive down and pick up a conch and they were just everywhere.

It was really amazing, yeah.

Steve: So, you were on the beach, you were in a resort, you were in the jungle, I guess.

Jill: We were in the cloud forest in Costa Rica, yeah.

Steve: in Costa Rica. You visited the Mayan ruins.

Jill: Yes.

Steve: That must have been quite the trip.

Jill: It was. Actually, one interesting thing too, in Costa Rica in the cloud forest and, of course, this is a very old forest, old growth, and we were in there and we saw a couple different types of monkeys and amazing birds, quetzals, which are the national bird of Costa Rica and they are very difficult to see.

They are the most beautiful birds I’ve ever seen and we saw those.

We also had one big tree collapse and take down three other trees with it in the forest just while we were standing there.

We just heard this noise and looked and right in front of us, I mean not right in front of us, a bunch of big trees just fell over.

I mean, it’s part of the natural cycle of things but it was quite something to see.

Steve: Sounds interesting.

You know, we should say that this is going to be transcribed and the transcript will be available in the library of The Linguist which is soon to be the LingQ library so people can read and listen at the same time.

And, of course, they should go to the LingQ blog which is EnglishLingQ.com.

So, thank you very much, Jill.

Jill: Thank you.

Steve: Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hi, again.

Steve: Where have you been recently that’s been interesting?

Jill: For the better part of April, I was traveling throughout Central America.

There are seven countries; I think we spoke about that before and I went to five of them.

Steve: Now, Jill, you know, I think of the sort of backpacker, you know, wearing the same shirts and underwear for six months, trekking around India, eating, you know, off the floor of a truck, whatever and then I think of you; not the same.

Jill: No.

Steve: Not the same. So, how did you fare in Latin America?

Because I know you went into the bush and you were in somewhat rough places.

How was it?

Jill: It was great. It was so, so great. I’m sure there were times that I was maybe not so happy. Looking back, I have nothing but fond memories. But, we did break it up a bit.

We started in Costa Rica and the first four nights we stayed in a very nice, luxurious, beachfront boutique resort, so that was beautiful and we ended in Belize where we also stayed in a nice hotel on the beach.

So, that’s kind of my style; more my style.

Chris, you know, he kind of likes the backpacking around which I don’t mind either, so we had a bit of both.

We spent about maybe two weeks or just under two weeks backpacking around and staying in a lot of places for one night or two nights.

So, just moving around a lot, taking a lot of buses, you know, getting up in the middle of the night to catch a bus, stuff like that.

That was all fine, actually; I didn’t even mind that.

Steve: But I gather you had an encounter with some of the local wildlife of the small variety.

Jill: Yeah. Yeah, in Costa Rica I got stung by a scorpion which wasn’t a pleasant experience.

It felt like a bad bee sting.

It wasn’t extremely painful but it was just gross to see this big bug crawling.

Steve: How big was it?

Jill: Well, to me, I thought it was about a foot long but, of course, Chris said, you know, no.

It was really I think it was about two to three inches, so it wasn’t huge but much bigger than what we’re used to seeing here in Vancouver.

They are just not particularly attractive looking creatures and the fact that it had stung me and all the rest didn’t make me too thrilled.

Steve: You didn’t like it?

Jill: No, it was a little scary, but it was all okay and by that night the mark was gone, nothing hurt and it was fine.

Steve: How about the food down there?

How did you like to food?

Jill: The local food was fine. It consisted of a lot of chicken cooked in a variety of ways: barbequed, grilled, fried, you know, all different ways and rice and often beans and sometimes it was quite tasty and other times it was quite bland, it just depended.

You know, some restaurants were better than others.

Steve: Right.

Jill: But, we didn’t eat a lot of that, you know.

You travel nowadays and there’s just…everywhere has pizza.

That’s just everywhere, even in small little villages, so we had pizza probably four times.

We were pretty sick of pizza actually by the end, to say.

And we had, you know when we were on the coast there was always lots of seafood, so we would have lots of seafood.

Steve: Now, how do they make the seafood?

Jill: We got things that are very similar to here; you know, snapper or just grilled.

Steve: Do they fry it in a frying pan?

Jill: A variety of ways.

You could get it a variety of ways.

It was almost always very good, actually.

Steve: Oh, okay and was it expensive?

Jill: Belize was really expensive; it was the most expensive. It was very expensive.

In fact, a lot of things were more expensive than in Canada.

Steve: But how do the locals

Jill: I don’t know.

I had a talk with some of them and I said how because their income is obviously not as high as ours and they just said they just, you know, they just make do; they get by.

Steve: How about language?

You speak a few words of Spanish; I guess you used it occasionally.

Did you mostly have to communicate in Spanish or in English?

Jill: Yes.

In Costa Rica, especially at the first resort we stayed, everybody spoke English really well, actually.

That wasn’t a problem.

In Nicaragua and Honduras there was were some people who knew a little bit of English, but more often than not, we communicated primarily in Spanish.

Chris’s Spanish is quite decent and at least we can understand most of the time if people slow down.

Some people just won’t slow down for you.

That happened the odd time.

Most people were very gracious, but sometimes they just wouldn’t or, you know, just like with English or any language, there are people who speak the language better than other people.

You know, they enunciate more clearly; they speak with less of an accent or whatever.

So, sometimes people were real easy to understand and other people we just couldn’t understand no matter what; we just couldn’t.

But for the most part, we communicated in Spanish and then in Belize they all speak English.

English is the native language.

Steve: Oh, right you are.

That’s British Honduras.

Jill: Yeah, it was a British colony.

Steve: How evident is I know you saw some of the old Native American ruins, but how evident is that culture in everyday life down there?

Jill: I would say in Guatemala where the main Mayan ruins are located it’s still very evident.

Fifty percent of the population is full-blooded Mayan.

That’s what they think anyway; 50 to 60 percent, so they still speak the Mayan language.

Steve: Really?

Jill: It’s their first language before Spanish.

They’ve got, you know, traditional clothing on, very dark skinned, so there it was very interesting.

In the other countries there wasn’t really that element.

So, Guatemala was where it seemed very, you know, native.

Steve: Right; okay.

Were there any things that you identified as native food or was the food more or less the same in all the countries; the chicken with the rice and the beans?

Jill: Yeah, the food was more or less you know, even in South America it’s pretty much chicken and rice.

You know, “pollo” that’s what is served.

Chickens are easy to have.

You know, everybody can have them.

You don’t need a lot of land so I think chicken is pretty standard fare.

Steve: Alright; okay.

Were you in the ocean at all?

Jill: Oh, yes, that was wonderful.

Steve: What was the water like?

Jill: Well, in Costa Rica you could go the Caribbean or the Pacific side.

We went to the Pacific side which was fantastic; huge waves, excellent surfing.

I learned to surf.

The water is really warm.

It’s not a clear color being the Pacific; although, Hawaii is on the Pacific and is.

So, it’s not like it’s great snorkeling there, but warm water, great surf and long beaches with nobody on them so it was fantastic.

Steve: Wow.

Jill: In Belize that was on the Caribbean so that was spectacular water; warm and crystal clear.

They have a second biggest barrier reef there in the world there so the diving and snorkeling was amazing.

We went snorkeling and we were snorkeling with sharks and dolphins.

Steve: With sharks?

Jill: Sharks.

These ones were quite big but they aren’t aggressive.

They swim away from you.

Steve: You believed that?

Jill: Yeah, well I tried to touch one.

Steve: Did you really?

Jill: I kept trying to get close but they just swam away.

Steve: Well that’s pretty brave of you.

Jill: Well, I was pretty far away still.

But yeah, stingrays and

Steve: But they can sting you the stingrays.

Jill: Yeah, yeah, they can but they’re pretty docile, generally, and they sort of stay back and there are moray eels and it was fantastic.

Steve: My goodness. And was there a lot of, sort of, vegetation on the ocean floor?

Jill: Well, yeah, it’s a coral reef; a barrier reef so lots of coral.

In Belize they have conch, big conch shells everywhere on the ocean floor and that’s one of the main foods that they serve at the restaurants there is conch.

I never knew you ate conch but I guess it’s just like another shell fish.

Steve: Sure.

Jill: So, big beautiful conchs. We would just dive down and pick up a conch and they were just everywhere. It was really amazing, yeah.

Steve: So, you were on the beach, you were in a resort, you were in the jungle, I guess.

Jill: We were in the cloud forest in Costa Rica, yeah.

Steve: In Costa Rica.

You visited the Mayan ruins.

Jill: Yes.

Steve: That must have been quite the trip.

Jill: It was. Actually, one interesting thing too, in Costa Rica in the cloud forest and, of course, this is a very old forest, old growth, and we were in there and we saw a couple different types of monkeys and amazing birds, quetzals, which are the national bird of Costa Rica and they are very difficult to see.

They are the most beautiful birds I’ve ever seen and we saw those.

We also had one big tree collapse and take down three other trees with it in the forest just while we were standing there.

We just heard this noise and looked and right in front of us, I mean not right in front of us, a bunch of big trees just fell over.

I mean, it’s part of the natural cycle of things but it was quite something to see.

Steve: Sounds interesting.

You know, we should say that this is going to be transcribed and the transcript will be available in the library of The Linguist which is soon to be the LingQ library so people can read and listen at the same time.

And, of course, they should go to the LingQ blog which is EnglishLingQ.com.

So, thank you very much, Jill.

Jill: Thank you.

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Steve: Hello, Jill.

Jill: Hello, how are you?

Steve: Not too bad.

Jill: Good.

Steve: Jill, since the last time we spoke, you’re a married woman.

Jill: I am, yes.

I know, it was over a month ago that we last spoke and I guess a lot has changed since then.

Steve: Yes.

You know, it’s interesting; we will talk a little bit about your trip to Latin American, Central America, which sounds very interesting and I think people are interested in that subject but, first of all, I would like to ask you about marriage and children.

Nowadays, women seem to get married later and they have children later.

Jill: Women and men.

Steve: Well yeah, it kind of takes the two.

Jill: Yes, but men used to be younger when they got married.

Steve: Right, but it becomes, in a way, more of an issue for women than for men because women have this so-called biological clock which, in theory, the men don’t have.

So, this is one of the reasons why the birthrate in many countries has dropped in so-called advanced countries or the wealthier countries.

Jill: First world countries.

Steve: Yeah, it seems the wealthier a country is, the fewer children they have.

Jill: Right, the poorer the country, the more children people have.

Steve: The question I want to ask is, first of all if it’s not too personal, how many children do you intend to have, if all goes well?

Jill: Yeah, if all goes well, I think probably two; maybe three.

Definitely, I want more than one and I don’t want more than three so two or three.

Steve: Do you think that most of your friends, your girlfriends, do they want to have two or three children?

Do some of them just want to have their professional career?

Is your attitude typical amongst your friends?

Jill: Most of my friends I have to say, actually, a couple already have children or one child and most of my close friends do want at least a couple of children.

I do have one sister-in-law and another friend who are more focused on their career.

Although they love children and they are very good with children, it’s hard for them to think of, you know, giving up the lifestyle that they have to raise children and if they did have children, they would definitely want to go back to work.

That’s what they think now anyway.

Steve: I think it is a little easier now to work and have children and probably we should make it even easier.

Now, obviously, for a small company like ours, we are not going to start a daycare center here on the premises for 10 employees but we are quite flexible; people can work from home.

Everyone has a computer and high-speed access which the company pays for and people regularly say “I’m working from home today” and we do tend to accommodate people who have to take their children here or take their children there.

Jill: Right, yes.

Steve: And I think the workplace will become more flexible.

Jill: Well, and actually, I read several months ago an article, I think in the newspaper, that was talking about a few big companies here in Vancouver… not all Canadian companies but gaming companies such as Radical and EA [Electronic Arts] ,and talking about how they have started, because of this situation of both parents having to work or wanting to work, they’ve started allowing different schedules.

So, one woman, for example, comes in at 6 in the morning and stays until 2 and her husband gets the kids to school and she’s off in time to pick them up from school.

Others go in later and stay until 8 at night and I think some bigger companies are doing things like that or providing daycare services so that it’s easier.

Steve: There was an article in the paper here the other day saying that in Denmark they have increased the birthrate because the health system there is more generous in paying for various, you know, technologies related to helping older women have children.

Jill: Oh, that’s interesting.

Steve: Whereas in Canada, these can be quite expensive and they are not necessarily covered by the health system.

So that whereas women, perhaps, traditionally felt that their childbearing years ended at the end of their 30s or into their early 40s and that was it, now it’s possible to have children later than that.

If women have a career and are professionally very active up until their early or even mid 30s and they then decide to have a family, the idea that the national health system helps them to have children, if they for whatever biological or medical reason would normally have difficulty, you know, that’s not a bad thing to do.

Jill: No.

Steve: That’s not a bad thing to do.

Jill: Seems to me that Europe is always sort of on the cutting edge of things like that.

There is often technology there for quite a few years before it comes over to North America.

Steve: Well, it’s not so much that the technology comes from there; I think a lot of the technology is developed in the United States.

But, what’s interesting in Denmark is that the state health system will pay for these technologies so they are not considered just an optional procedure

Jill: That only wealthy people can afford.

Steve: That’s right.

I think people in developed countries are concerned about their aging population; their declining birthrates.

Denmark apparently has a birthrate of 1.9 per thousand or whatever which is quite high per family.

I don’t know what the number is, but replacement is two so at 1.9 they’re not bad.

Jill: No.

Steve: Korea is like 1.1; Italy is 1.2; I think Canada is 1.5 or 1.6.

Jill: Japan is very low.

Steve: Japan is very low.

I think it’s also an attitude thing.

I know in talking to some of our French learners the feeling there is that young women now are more interested in having children.

That this whole idea that the women felt that well, I’m not going to have kids; I’m going to have my career.

I think societies’ attitudes are changing and it’s almost as if there’s a sense now that gees, we can’t just

Jill: It’s important to have children.

Steve: We need kids.

Jill: You need to carry on.

Steve: Well, that’s right.

It’s almost as if the sort of western, including Japan and Korea, modern, call it secular non-religious lifestyle, is essentially a suicidal lifestyle in the sense that those communities don’t reproduce themselves.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So that over a sufficient period of time they won’t be there anymore.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So, anyway, that’s good.

No, I think we should do more to make it easier for women to have children and to bring them up and yet maintain their, you know, professional careers and so forth.

Jill: And, I mean, part of the problem I know here in Vancouver is there are a lot of women… I know  and my mom was one of these women… who would have loved to have stayed home with her kids but simply couldn’t afford to.

It was just not possible to survive on one income living in such an expensive city and that is definitely the case I think for a lot of people today.

Sure, living in smaller communities and things like that can be cheaper, but it’s just often a necessity.

Steve: And it is true, I think, you know, as attitudes in our society change, there are a lot of women who work who don’t need to work; right.

There are a lot of two-income families where actually one of them makes enough money for both.

Jill: And by the time they’ve paid for daycare too, often they don’t even take in very much from the other person’s salary.

Steve: That’s right.

But it always was I think the case that if a woman is at a party somewhere and someone says “And what do you do?”

And she says “Well, I stay home and look after the kids,” then that was kind of like a loss of face or something.

Jill: Right.

Steve: But I think attitudes are changing and I think people in society now have more respect for someone that says “Well, I look after the family and I’m very busy doing it. “

Jill: Yes, that”s right and I”m happy to do it.

Steve: And people kind of say “Good for you; we need someone to do that. “

Jill: It’s a tough job.

Steve: It’s a tough job and, of course, it is also a less stimulating environment than, you know, going to work.

But, of course, occasionally I’ll go to a party and I’ll meet some man and I’ll say “What do you do?”

And he says “I”m a househusband. “

Jill: Really?

You’ve had that happen?

Steve: Twice!

Jill: Wow!

Steve: So, yeah.

Jill: I thought that was only in the movies but that’s great.

Steve: No, I’ve had it twice; I’ve had it twice.

Jill: That’s great.

Steve: I don’t think society has yet fully accepted the househusband.

Jill: Well, and I think it is still rare that a woman makes more than her husband, in most cases; not all, of course.

And so, I think that’s just where it has always made sense that the person who makes the most money is going to continue to work and that’s typically the man.

Steve: Right, although, as you say, it doesn’t have to be but it very often is.

It’s almost like a vicious circle.

I think one of the reasons why women often make less is that the employer kind of halfway expects that somewhere down the line

Jill: they are going to leave.

Steve: And, statistically, they do.

I mean even in something like medicine, a very high percentage of women doctors, which are a higher and higher percentage of graduates from our medical schools, they don’t work as many hours as the men.

Jill: They do part-time.

Steve: They do part-time and they end their careers early so, I mean, there is some truth in that.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Of course, there are other reasons too, but we don’t want to have the women earning too much money.

I mean that’s come on now.

Jill

Jill: You’ve got to keep them under your thumb, ha?

Steve: Well, you know, you have to be a little sensitive to the position of the man.

Jill: Right

Steve: So, if the woman makes more than the man, how do you think the man feels?

Have you thought of that?

Jill: They’ve just got to get their egos under control.

Steve: Well, it’s easy for you to say that but, you know, if the woman makes more he can’t boss her around.

Jill: Not all men are interested in bossing around!

Steve: I’m not really, but no, that would be a big comedown.

But, she would have to pretend to make less.

If she were really smart, she would pretend to make

Jill: she would let him still think that he was the breadwinner.

Steve: That’s right. I mean the women control the money anyway.

Jill: We control everything, pretty much.

Steve: Well, that’s right. I haven’t a clue where my money gets spent.

Fortunately though, my wife is more frugal than I am so it’s probably a good thing

Jill: that she’s in control.

Steve: She knows what’s happening.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Well, okay. Well, we’ve talked a little bit about family-type things and it’s been interesting.

Maybe the next time we talk we’ll talk a little bit about Central America.

Jill: Perfect.

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Steve: Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hi, Steve.

Steve: How are you today?

Jill: I’m great thanks, how are you?

Steve: Good.

We were talking about houses.

We were talking about your plans that eventually you’d like to move away from downtown Vancouver; move to a house on the north shore, North Vancouver.

You were saying that the price of land, the price of building materials, the price of construction, has gone up and that one solution might be to go jointly with your brother and sister-in-law and you and Chris.

Is your brother also handy when it comes to fixing things up?

You mentioned that Chris is an engineer and he’s very handy.

Jill: He’s very handy.

My brother’s name is also Chris so this may be a little bit confusing.

But, my brother Chris, he’s okay.

He’s not nearly as handy and I think the bigger difference is that he just doesn’t really enjoy it, whereas my husband Chris does enjoy it.

He loves doing those sorts of things.

So, he’s good though, he can work with Chris and my husband can give my brother direction and, you know, he will help out for sure.

He’s not lazy; it’s just not fun for him.

Steve: Because we were talking about the cost of the building trades; of trades people, plumbers, electricians, carpenters.

I mean, there are certain things that people do themselves like even me and I’m not very handy but I’ve done quite a bit in terms of fixing up; not where I’m living now but the previous home.

When I was in my 30s I spent, it just seemed to me, forever fixing.

Jill: Painting?

Steve: Well, I redid because we didn’t have sufficient insulation.

We had a post and beam house and it had very little insulation so I went in and I put two-by-fours along all the beams and then I put insulation up and then I put paneling underneath the insulation so that when you looked up at the ceiling you saw this wooden paneling, but we had added four inches of insulation.

I mean, it’s a huge ceiling.

Most of the time I was looking up at the ceiling breathing the insulation fumes.

Jill: Oh, not good.

Steve: Or nailing the paneling, you know, more or less upside down and it was…I mean, and if I wasn’t doing that it was something else.

So, when I got to the stage where I could afford to buy a new home…I am not interested in lifting a finger, okay?

But, I think we all have to go through that period.

Jill: We all have to start somewhere.

Steve: Start somewhere.

And so, certainly, carpentry is something that’s a little easier to do and even dry walling but, boy, it’s so hard to do a good job.

Jill: Chris can do a good job.

Steve: Really!

Jill: Well, he’s so meticulous.

Being an engineer, he’s very meticulous about everything he does, so.

He just helped his brother-in-law build a staircase, rip out floor and build a whole staircase in his home in two days.

Steve: Right.

Jill: And it looks great so he’s very handy, thankfully.

Steve: I’m just going to take this call and then we’ll continue.

Steve: Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hi, again.

Steve: I had to take that call.

You know, that was from…and we’ll tell our listeners what it was about.

The Export Development Corporation in Canada is a government corporation that provides financing for and also insurance for export.

We use them for our lumber business.

This lady phones and wants to do a survey and, you know, I told her I was not interested.

We get a lot of this kind of thing.

People phone up and they want to take 15 minutes of your time to do a survey.

Jill: Yes, yes.

Steve: Personally, I think that is a tremendous imposition.

Jill: They do it at dinner time.

Every night we get phone calls.

Steve: I think they’re getting paid to do the survey.

If they pay me, I’ll do the survey.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Otherwise, I’m not interested.

I didn’t used to be that way but I get so many of these people.

If you want to pay me, I’ll give you the information for my time, that’s fine; otherwise, no.

Anyway, so that was an interruption.

Getting back then to fixing up homes.

So, Chris is very handy?

Jill: Very handy, yes.

Steve: Obviously, electrical.

Does he will he dabble in electrical?

Jill: He will, he’ll dabble in pretty much anything.

Steve: You’ve got to know what you’re doing there.

Jill: If he doesn’t know he will read up on it and he will figure it out.

Steve: Okay, because I mean, if you do something electrical to your home do you have to have it inspected?

Jill: Yeah.

I mean, there are codes you have to follow.

Steve: Okay, but it’s one thing to follow the code or think you are following the code.

If I’m building a house, for example, my electrician, who is a qualified electrician, when he’s finished doing all the wiring there is an electrical inspection.

When you are building a new home there are various levels of inspection.

Inspection of the framing, inspection of the plumbing, of the electrical and so forth and so on and if you don’t pass, then you have to fix it.

I’m just wondering, when a homeowner does something to their own home, I know they need a permit for certain things…for an extension to the house…but what about the electrical?

I mean some people, …maybe Chris is very careful.

But, I’m sure there are other people who will do things to their electrical system that might be quite dangerous.

Jill: Well, people do.

I think people do stuff all the time to their homes that maybe they’re not technically supposed to do, but who’s going to know; who’s going to find out.

Steve: Right.

Jill: I think most people or I hope most people are smart enough to know that something like the electrical system can be extremely dangerous.

I’m not saying that Chris would ever try to redo the whole electrical system.

He wouldn’t do that.

He would hire an electrician because he’s concerned about safety.

But, if there is something minor that happens, he’s not afraid to look around and see if it’s something he can fix but he would not undertake a whole project like that, no.

Steve: I don’t know; he’s an engineer.

Maybe he’s better than the average electrician for all I know.

Jill: And actually, my brother is also an electrical engineering tech so he’s got a ton of knowledge with electrical systems as well so, between the two of them, they could probably figure it out.

Steve: Good; alright.

So, but that sounds exciting!

Have you been out looking for potential heritage homes that you might be able to buy?

Jill: Not really.

We haven’t we’ve looked on the Internet on MLS a Website.

Steve: MLS, Multiple Listing Services or Service.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Which is where you can go and see all the homes that are listed in a given area?

Jill: Right.

Often there are pictures of them and the price and all that sort of thing so, you know, we look on there quite regularly.

We haven’t really gone to look at anything yet because until we’re really ready to buy something else and to move, there’s not a lot of point in going and looking.

So, maybe within the next year, probably, we’ll look.

Steve: Yeah.

It’s interesting; you were saying earlier that you think that younger people who want to live closer to downtown Vancouver will probably not be able to live in single-family homes.

That you are seeing already in North Vancouver and in West Vancouver and in other areas that single-family homes are being replaced with multiple-family homes; not necessarily high-rise, although there are also high-rise developments going in.

High-rise apartments, 10-stories, 15-20 or more stories, but there is also a lot of what we call “medium density” housing which can be, as you referred to, a duplex or a triplex or a fourplex, there are also townhouses which are medium density developments.

There are four-story apartment buildings, six-story apartment buildings so that I think there is a bit of a movement to medium density; although on the north shore, it’s still overwhelmingly single-family.

Jill: Yes.

Steve: And I think that there is some resistance to this greater density so that the town planners talk about yes, we need to have higher density; higher density is a good thing.

It’s good for the environment because it reduces commuting time and so forth and yet, the people who live in these communities, they resist.

They resist the medium density.

They don’t want because, typically, areas are zoned for…in other words, this zone, this area, is designated as a certain, you know, density level.

This is single-family so you can only build single-family.

This is multiple-family; this is high-rise; this is commercial or industrial.

Jill: You’re not allowed just to build whatever you want.

Steve: You can’t build whatever you want.

You can’t build a factory amongst a bunch of homes.

Jill: No.

Steve: You can’t just put a store anywhere so there are regulations. This is called zoning.

Very often a developer will want to go in and buy 10 homes and put up some kind of a multi-family, medium density or a higher density housing project.

Very often the people who live around the area are opposed to that.

So, this is very interesting.

You have the theoretical town planners at some level think it would be a nice idea if everybody lived in an apartment so then they’d all bicycle to work and we wouldn’t pollute as much.

So, we have all of these kinds of generalities but when you talk to people who actually live there, they like living in their single homes and they resist any move to change those zoning regulations.

Jill: Yeah.

Yeah, some people do for sure but I mean I do know other people too who would like to live on the north shore but can’t afford a single-family home and want to move into a duplex or a triplex or a fourplex because that’s the only way they’ll be able to afford to live over here.

I think the other thing too that we were talking about with younger generations, it’s not only necessarily that they can’t afford to live in single-family homes, there are a lot of people who do not want single-family homes.

I know a lot of younger people like that.

They don’t have an interest in a big yard.

They don’t want weekend work.

They don’t want to take care of a big yard.

They are happy to live in a condo, be downtown, and be where all the action is; everything is taken care of for them.

They don’t have to worry about when a new roof gets put on, dealing with it, they just have to pay their money and you pay money for your own home as well.

Steve: Right.

Jill: So, there are lots of people who just want that.

Steve: For sure and so there is a demand for that kind of dwelling.

There is a demand for that kind of dwelling.

But, we have this other factor which is sometimes called “the NIMBY” factor, not in my backyard.

So, you know, and it comes up all the time.

For example, whether it be, let’s say, a sewerage treatment facility or a facility to treat garbage, we’ve got to do it somewhere.

Jill: Right.

Steve: But not in my backyard.

So don’t come around where I live and do it.

People can be quite selfish.

Jill: Right.

Steve: You know, they have these half-way houses for people, let’s say, who have been in trouble with the law and now they come out of prison and, in a way, we want them out of prison because it’s expensive to have them in prison and it’s not a very good environment so, they have a half-way house.

Do you want a half-way house for people who have been in prison and who might be reformed drug addicts and do you want that in your neighborhood?

No.

People say not in my backyard.

Jill: Right.

Steve: And so, in a way, it’s similar.

People who live in a quiet neighborhood and they all have their own homes and they like that.

And when they understand that there is going to be a medium density housing development so all the people who like to not worry about a house and they like to party and they like to have a good time and they all drive cars, and so these people are going to move into their neighborhood and they say no, we don’t want that.

Jill: Yes.

Steve: So, there’s a constant struggle between…there is a market for that.

I’m sure there are a lot of people who would like to live in medium density housing on the north shore.

I’m sure there are a lot of developers who would be happy to develop that kind of, you know, housing for them.

And yet, you have the residents who are resisting it and somehow the municipal government would like to have more housing so they can get more revenue.

Jill: More taxes.

Steve: More taxes, so they want to encourage this thing.

And so, anyway, this is the kind of stuff that I’m sure goes on in every community around the world and gradually, growth does occur but it’s not necessarily an easy process.

Alright, I think we’ve kind of talked about that subject for quite a while.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: EnglishLingQ.com.

It would be really fun to hear from other people about the housing situation where they live.

We hope that we have covered a lot of the terminology that relates to housing and dwellings and real estate and fixing up your home and so forth.

Jill, I hope you find your nice heritage house.

Jill: Dream home!

Steve: I expect to hear that you’ve become an expert electrician and dry waller.

Jill: Oh gosh, no.

Thank you.

Steve: Alright, EnglishLingQ.com.

Thank you very much for listening.

Jill: Thank you.

Steve: Bye, bye.

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Steve: Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hi, Steve.

Steve: EnglishLingQ.com, again.

Jill and I were talking the last time about houses and places to live.

You were telling me that you and your brother and sister-in-law and your husband were thinking of living in the same house which, for many people, would be a formula for trouble.

Jill: Disaster!

Except for I think in many countries in the world it’s very common to live with your extended family.

Steve: Right.

Jill: But in Canada, it’s not so common in North America.

Steve: No, not so common.

So, but I’m sure you’ll be successful in doing that.

What kind of a house would you want to buy?

Jill: Well ideally, we would like some sort of heritage house; an old house probably, you know, 80-90-100 years old that has a lot of character.

We really like character.

Chris and I, we don’t like really brand new really ultra-modern homes, generally.

There are some that are beautiful that we really like, of course, but we do like the style with the porches and a lot of dark wood and stuff like that.

So, there are a lot of beautiful old heritage homes.

The problem with them is they need a lot of work.

Steve: I was going to say, I mean, a heritage home sounds very nice, but people today are very conscious of energy issues and, of course, we have this great discussion of global warming and just the fact, even leaving aside global warming, that the energy costs are going up and typically older houses are not very well insulated.

Jill: Right.

Steve: They have poorer windows; the walls are not properly insulated.

It can be quite expensive to maintain, to heat or to maintain an older home.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: The other thing too is you don’t know what’s in the walls.

There could be some problems with it, so how do you deal with all of this uncertainty?

Jill: Well, you have to I mean, thankfully, Chris is actually very knowledgeable when it comes to a lot of this sort of thing.

He’s an engineer too, so he really looks into things and figures things out and is interested.

He does a lot of home improvements himself for his friends and stuff like that because he enjoys it.

And so, I think definitely, you would install double pane windows.

You would definitely have the electrical looked at; probably, it would need to be updated.

Steve: When we say the electrical, you mean the electrical systems or the wiring.

Jill: Yes, the wiring throughout the house.

Steve: Yes, throughout the house.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: Right.

Jill: Plumbing would probably have to be looked at.

Steve: When you say looked at, before you buy the house or after you buy the house?

Jill: Well, before.

You would definitely want an inspector to come in and have a look and, you know, give you some advice.

Steve: And now these people exist.

I mean, inspectors will come and inspect a house on behalf of the buyer of a house before that person commits to buying the house.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So that’s quite a common service to have an inspector.

Jill: Right.

Steve: For the structural aspects as well as for plumbing and electrical, what do the inspectors look at?

Jill: Well, you know, I’m not entirely sure to tell you the truth.

I think they have a look at everything; I’m not sure.

And, you know, some inspectors are better than others so you want to be there.

You want to know a little bit about what’s going on when they are there so that you can ask some questions and maybe not just leave it up to them completely.

Steve: I’m sure Chris would want to be there.

Jill: Oh, yes, he would be there for sure grilling the poor guy.

But, no, I think most heritage homes that have not had some work put into them in the last, you know, 20 years, need work and you would have to buy it with that in mind that you would probably be spending $1 or $200,000 to update it and make it more livable.

So, that is a consideration because often these old heritage homes are on very big lots so they are very expensive.

Obviously, we can’t buy something very expensive and then put in another couple hundred thousand dollars into making it even better.

Steve: Right.

Jill: So, I mean, that’s what we would like, but who knows if that’s what will happen.

Steve: Is there a lot of that kind of thing going on?

Are there many people buying older homes and fixing them up?

Jill: Yeah, I think it’s become quite popular again; going back to hard wood, natural hard wood.

You know, people are ripping up carpet now that is covering hard wood because it’s in fashion again.

You know, you have the big molding in these old homes, usually big crown molding, which people are paying a lot of money to have in their new homes.

Steve: We might explain that too.

Moldings, of course, refer to the woodwork that’s molded, therefore.

Jill: Or the frame or the boarders kind of around the wall.

Steve: Well, that’s right.

It deals with it can be the crown molding,

Jill: baseboards,

Steve: connecting the ceiling to the walls and it will have a fancy pattern which is supposed to represent, I think, the tops of the old columns from Greek architecture.

You also have a baseboard which is basically the corner of where the floor meets the wall.

There are all kinds of fancy names, plinths and I don’t know what.

Jill: Oh, I don’t know either.

Steve: Then, of course, you have the molding that goes around the doorframe,

Jill: window casings and door casings.

These are all things you do not need to have in homes and it’s much cheaper to build a home without those things and the home is just fine, but they are very attractive so a lot of people want them.

Steve: I mean after all, nowadays, I mean, yeah, you could live in a shack; a one-room shack.

You don’t even have to have a separate room for the toilet for that matter; it’s probably cheaper to have everything in one big room.

So, yeah, we do spend money on things to make the homes more comfortable; to make them more pleasant.

I know that nowadays, even in very relatively, I would say, inexpensive homes, it’s not uncommon for people to want granite kitchen countertops.

Whereas 20 years ago, everything was Formica; everything was…call it fake, you know,

Jill: like plastic substances,

Steve: plastic, synthetic material; nowadays, people want real.

Jill: They want real rock and granite and tile ceramic.

Steve: That’s right and, of course, the trouble is…and we were involved in building a house, you know, 10 years ago…of course, each individual item; it doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

Well, yeah, we can spend a little more money to have a granite countertop; it’s not so much.

But, we would like to spend a little more money to get better windows; per window it’s not so much.

Jill: A little bit more for appliances.

Steve: We want the better quality fridge and maybe my wife wants a better stove for her cooking and, pretty soon, you add all of these things up and it is just a fortune.

Jill: Yes, yes.

Steve: It adds up very, very quickly.

Jill: Yes.

I mean I think the cost of materials right now is very, very high so it’s certainly not cheap to do this.

Steve: I am amazed, actually.

When we built our home you could build a very good home with granite.

I mean, a granite countertop was kind of the thing you had to have.

Obviously, wooden floors, good quality kitchen appliances, good quality double-glazed windows with this argon gas, you know, between and what they call special ultra violet, you know, whatever coatings they put on the glass; the whole thing.

Jill: So that the sun doesn’t ruin your furniture when it’s coming in?

Steve: Well, A: it reduces the heat gain so that you have a window facing the south and the west which is designed to reduce heat gain and the windows that face the north and the east are designed to reduce heat loss.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Okay?

So these are some of the things that you can because depending on how the coatings are applied and which surface because there are actually four surfaces.

If you have two panes of glass in your window, there’s the outside surface of the outside pane and the inside surface of the outside pane and then so forth and so on.

So, depending on where you apply what coatings you can get different functions.

Jill: It’s keeping heat in your home better or keeping it out.

Steve: Out; depending whether you are facing south and west or east and north.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So, with all of these things, we were able to build a house for $120.00 a square foot.

I think today to build the same house is at least,

Jill: $300.00.

Steve: Yeah, it’s amazing to me!

So, it’s not only the cost of land that’s gone up, it’s the cost of building and the reason for that is that Vancouver has been such an active construction market that what we call the trades people, the carpenter, the electrician, the plumber, the painter,

Jill: the framers,

Steve: all of the framers, the people who lay your floors, the drywallers…, because people who put up the gypsum board…and, of course, in building the trades are all, you know, very much divided into different specialty skills.

So, even for drywall, you have one group of people who come in and put up the gypsum board and they typically have to be quite strong because the gypsum board can be 4 feet x 8 feet, 4 feet x 10 feet, 4 feet x 12 feet and those are not easy to pick up.

Jill: No.

Steve: So, they tend to be stronger people and they have dedicated tools for that activity.

Then you have the people who come in and they put the mud on and they put the tape on and they sandpaper it and they get this very smooth finish,

Jill: which is quite a difficult thing to do.

Steve: Very difficult.

And so those people tend to be more detail-oriented and so they have to give you a very, very smooth finish so that when the painter comes in that he can do a good job and so they are all specialized.

All of these trades people, because it’s supply and demand, it’s like anything else, now that Vancouver has been in a very strong construction market for year after year after year, the wages of these trades have just gone up and up and up and it’s difficult to even find people.

Jill: They are so busy.

Steve: They are so busy and if you don’t have a large project they come around, they have one look; they say okay, I’ll send you an estimate and you never hear from them again.

Jill: Yeah, if you just want your bathroom re-plumbed or painted or whatever, they are not interested because they have so much work that they can just pick and choose who they want to work for.

And so, yeah, wages have gone way up and then materials are very expensive.

Steve: So, it’s tough for young people.

Jill: Well, I think the younger generations, you know, maybe my generation and younger, will not be living in single-family homes for much longer.

I think the trend will be…we’ve already seen it actually in North Vancouver where lots of single-family homes are being torn down and there have been triplex complexes put up.

Steve: Right. In other words, three homes.

Jill: Three homes that are

Steve: We talk about a duplex which is two homes and a triplex or triplex which is three homes, yeah.

Jill: Or fourplex or whatever which is…they can be quite large, but they are all attached so almost more like a townhouse.

And that’s going to, I think, start to be more of the trend because the average family is just not going to be able to afford a house with land.

Steve: Or, some people move further out.

Jill: Or they move a long way out of the city and then commute for two-three hours everyday to their job.

So, that’s an option which some people choose but I’m not interested in that.

Steve: No, for sure.

Okay, well, maybe we should end today’s conversation here.

We’ve talked again about houses and renovating houses and construction costs and so forth.

Again, this is all available at EnglishLingQ.com.

We hope this is useful to people in their language learning.

Go to EnglishLingQ.com and please work on your language and we hope you enjoy what you are listening to and let us know if you have any comments.

Thank you.

Jill: Thank you.

Study the transcript of this episode as a lesson on LingQ, saving the words and phrases you don’t know to your database. Here it is!

Steve: Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hello, again.

Steve: Yeah Jill, you know, obviously, you just got married so you are a different generation from me.

I have a house which I bought a long, long time ago, but what’s it like for a young family starting up here in Vancouver?

Obviously, people like to have a nice home of their own.

Even if it’s an apartment they want to have their own home.

How affordable is housing?

How is the cost of living versus people’s income both for you and Chris now that you’re starting up or your friends?

Jill: Well, I think Vancouver is quite expensive.

Certainly, it’s the most expensive city in Canada.

It used to be Toronto and Vancouver has surpassed Toronto.

Different areas of Vancouver, West Vancouver which is where we are located, The Linguist Office, is very expensive and then also some areas right in Vancouver quite close to where I live.

We have a condo there but we could never afford a house.

Steve: Now, why don’t you begin by explaining what a condo is?

Jill: A condo is a condominium, so basically, an apartment.

I think here we probably refer to apartment more when you are renting, maybe.

Steve: Well, I think condominium suggests that it’s joint ownership.

Jill: Right.

Steve: The whole apartment block or building is owned by the people who live

Jill: in the building.

Steve: So, they don’t just own their own…as I understand it they don’t just own their own little apartment, they own a share in the whole building.

Is that how it works?

I know they can buy and sell their own apartment, but aren’t there sort of strata title and committees that you sit on governing common, you know, facilities and stuff like that?

Jill: Right.

I mean, there are certain areas that are common like if you have a courtyard, you know, things like that.

So, maybe they need to clean it up or decorate it with flowers or whatever so everybody pays a strata fee and when things need to be done, they take the money that’s been paid and use it.

If a new roof needs to be put on the building, you know, everybody pays but you pay based on how large your place is per square footage.

So, if you have a smaller place you pay less.

Steve: But it was my understanding, you know, whereas if I own an apartment and I rent apartments out, then I own the building.

I understood that in these condominiums you have a form of ownership that is called a “strata title” so that you own a percentage of the building and that is why you get involved in talking about what you are going to do in the common areas and so forth.

Jill: That might be true; I’m not sure.

I don’t really have a lot to do with that.

Steve: Right.

Jill: Chris bought it 11 years ago and I just moved there two years ago, so he pretty much deals with all of that and I don’t know a lot about it.

Steve: Okay.

Jill: I know we specifically own the part that we own but you could be right about the common areas.

And so, yeah, I mean we live in a condo that is actually a good size condo compared to a lot.

Steve: Okay, what’s a good size? How big is it?

Jill: Ours is about 850 square feet.

Steve: Which is 85 square meters roughly for people who

Jill: And it’s only a one bedroom so it’s quite a big one bedroom.

There are a lot of new condos being built nowadays; a lot that are one bedroom that are only 600 square feet or even smaller.

I’ve been looking around at different condos recently just to see what’s out there, how much things cost and, actually, most condos that are 850 square feet like ours is a two bedroom and some are even three bedrooms, so it means the rooms are very, very tiny.

So, ours is quite open; there’s a lot of open space and we have a big deck that looks over the ocean and at the mountains so it’s really beautiful.

But, to be able to afford a house with land, you know, a lot of land, with property in the area that we live is really not feasible.

It’s probably not going to happen unless we were able to buy a place with friends or with my brother and sort of have a duplex or something.

Steve: Is that something you’ve considered?

Jill: Yeah, yeah, we are considering that.

If we do that though we will probably move back to North Vancouver, a different area, which is where I grew up because that’s where my brother and sister-in-law want to live.

Steve: Now, let me just get this straight here.

You would buy a house together with your brother and sister-in-law and you would divide it into two homes.

Jill: Right.

Steve: And you think that’s going to work fine?

Chris gets along with your brother and sister-in-law?

Jill: Oh yeah, it would be completely fine.

My brother and I have always been really, really close.

Like we never disagree; we hang out together.

My sister-in-law is an exceptional person; everybody loves her and gets along with her and Chris just goes with the flow.

He just I mean, it wouldn’t be a problem.

I know for some people it wouldn’t work, but for us it definitely wouldn’t be a problem.

Steve: Oh, so that’s interesting.

Now, let’s talk a little about numbers because A: it’s interesting and B: numbers are often difficult for people when they learn another language.

Jill: That’s true.

Steve: Because it seems that the numbers in your own language are so hardwired in your brain that it’s very difficult to get onto numbers in another language.

Do you mind telling us how much, not necessarily yours, but how much is a little condo, 850 or 600 square feet which is 60 square meters, in downtown Vancouver in the fashionable area where you live amongst all the fancy coffee shops and sushi restaurants and so forth?

Jill: Well, ours is worth about between $400,000 and $430,000 and it’s 20 years old so it’s not a new building.

I mean 20 years is not really old, but not new and it is only 850 square feet.

Many places in Canada you can buy a nice large home for that amount of money.

Steve: Right.

Jill: So, that’s kind of what ours is selling for or would be listed for.

Steve: Right.

Jill: When I have been looking at the condos, the newer ones that have maybe three bedrooms but really aren’t a lot bigger, maybe 100 square feet bigger, are close to $550 or $600,000 which is a lot of money for not having a yard.

And I know, I think we are spoiled here in Canada.

We’re very used to having big houses and big yards and so that’s what we expect and that’s we think we should have and we need.

But I realize, you know, having been to different places in the world now, it’s very uncommon in other parts of the world for people to have big homes with just one family living in 3,000 square feet or 2,000 square feet.

Steve: Right. Again, just for our listeners, whenever we have thousands of square feet or hundreds of square feet, we just divide by 10 and we get roughly the square meterage.

Jill: Right.

Steve: So, you’re saying that your apartment, which is a condo a condominium, is about 850 square feet or 85 square meters and it would sell for $400,000 to $430,000.

The newer ones would cost probably as much or more for a smaller unit.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: And while it’s nice to be downtown because there’s nice restaurants and it’s very lively and so forth, at some point, people do aspire to move into a house because I think the Canadian dream is to have a home with a garden and maybe a dog and the kids can run off and play on the street and so forth and so on.

I was going to make one other point by the way, the reason of course…no, and you made the point that for $400,000 in smaller towns in Canada you can buy a very nice house, 3,000 square feet you said, again, 300 square meters, with nice trees and a nice garden and so forth.

But, of course, downtown Vancouver is the place to be.

Jill: Right.

Steve: There is a saying in the real estate business, because we are talking about real estate, real estate which is the term for the buying and selling of land and houses and so forth, in the real estate business, realtors, people who deal in real estate, they say that everything depends on three factors: location, location and location.

Jill: That’s right!

Steve: Okay, so the cost of land and therefore of housing, depends on three important considerations: location, location, location.

Jill: It’s all about location, in other words.

Steve: It’s all about location.

Now, you’re saying that you and Chris would like to move into a house, have a little more room and so you are considering moving into, it’s not a suburb but it’s an area of Vancouver that’s not right downtown, North Vancouver, which is across the ridge.

Jill: Right, which is also very expensive and one of the nicer areas in the Vancouver area the Vancouver region.

Steve: But why

Jill: No, go ahead.

Steve: No, I was going to say why is it so expensive?

Jill: Well, it’s beautiful.

I mean, this part over here, North Vancouver and West Vancouver, is right at the mountains.

I grew up in a house where I could just walk into trails and go hiking or bike riding or running; quick drive to one of three local ski hills, plus some homes have a view of the ocean and downtown and even if you can’t walk to the ocean from certain places, it’s certainly not a long drive right down to the ocean and then it’s also very close to downtown.

Steve: I mean this is the thing; again, you talk about location.

Jill: Yes.

Steve: It’s a desirable location because you’re 20 minutes really

Jill: From downtown.

Steve: Unless you hit the peak rush hour and then it might be 35 minutes but a lot of the time you’re 20 minutes from downtown.

Jill: That’s right.

Steve: From North Vancouver we say North Van, West Van, North Vancouver, West Vancouver you can take a ferry across, the sea bus as it’s called and yet the lots are very sort of natural and it’s not the same kind of grid-like setup that you have in other parts of Vancouver.

There are large trees so it’s really very, very pleasant.

Jill: Right, and the yards, the lots, are much bigger.

Even homes we’ve looked at over in the area that we live, of course it’s much more densely populated where we live, all of the homes are on much, much smaller lots.

Unless, I mean, there are big mansions over there that are on huge lots, but the average home is on a lot a third of the size of the average lot over here and more expensive.

Steve: You know, Jill, maybe we’ll stop it there.

Next time we can pick up the same subject and talk a little bit about how we live in these homes and so forth.

But, I think we should remind people here that this is EnglishlingQ.com where we have these conversations and we also transcribe them and the transcripts are available at EnglishlingQ.com.

We do this in order to help people learn English but, in particular, we hope that people will import this content or come and join thelinguist.com where they can access this content in the library and use a lot of our very effective learning methodology so that they can learn words and phrases because to learn a word you have to see it and hear it many, many times.

In our system every time someone saves a word they not only get the meaning, we create many examples from their listening and so people gradually increase their word power and, of course, in language learning we here believe that vocabulary growth, word power, is the most important consideration, much more important than grammar.

If people can increase their vocabulary by listening to and reading enjoyable content then they can enjoy themselves and increase their vocabulary.

And, of course, it’s our hope that our conversation is of interest to some people.

Everyone has to live somewhere so hearing about how we live here is of interest and, of course, one day we might want to hear about how people live elsewhere and maybe hear that in their language.

But at any rate, EnglishlingQ.com here is the Website.

Thank you for listening and we’ll pick this up the next time we meet.

Jill: Alright, see you next time.

Steve: Okay, bye, bye.

Jill: Bye, bye.

Study this episode and any others from the LingQ English Podcast on LingQ! Check it out.

In episode 2 of the English LingQ Podcast Jahrine is joined by fellow LingQ team member, Eric. Having both lived in Japan, they talk life in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Jahrine: Hello everyone.

And welcome to the English LingQ podcast with me, Jahrine.

I will be speaking to Eric another member of the link team.

Hey Eric, how’s it going?

Eric: I’m good.

How about yourself?

Jahrine: I’m pretty good.

Thank you.

Uh, we thought it would be fun to talk about Japan because both Eric and I .Lived in Japan for a number of years, different times, different places that, um, yeah, an amazing place.

I want to know from you, Eric, what were your reasons for going to Japan?

How long were you there?

Actually, first off, I don’t think I know that.

Eric: I was in Japan for, uh, almost three years, uh, from 2015 to 2018.

Um, yeah, just about three years.

Um, I got my Work Holiday Visa and I just, uh, jumped on a plane and went to Tokyo.

Jahrine: Oh, nice.

Tokyo, the place to be.

What were you doing there?

Eric: So after getting the Work holiday Visa, that meant I was able to work in Japan.

However, I didn’t have a job lined up.

So when I first got to Japan, I lived in Tama, um, which is in Tokyo, but it’s in the outsk… uh, outskirts of Tokyo.

And I found a teaching job, uh, took me about six weeks.

Um, I found a teaching job in a nearby local station, still outside the main center of Tokyo.

And I started teaching and I did that for about a year and a bit.

Um, so it was quite an experience I was used to being in Tokyo in the center of Tokyo when I visited before, but living outside, near Tama, um, it was, uh, it was cool to see, uh, more of the local side of the busiest city in Japan.

Jahrine: Yeah.

What kind of age ranges were you teaching when you were teaching there?

Eric: So it was a private school and it was more of a conversation um, I guess class.

So I would have a variety of students from… I’d have one class that was quite young, maybe seven or eight.

Um, and then I would have some other classes that were probably high school students.

They were around high school.

Um, and then there were adults, so it had quite a mix.

Um, but for the most part, I would say, eh, half of it was kind of like a classroom setting.

The other half was just conversation.

Jahrine: Right.

So like an eikaiwa type…

Eric: Exactly.

It was a really small, uh, school.

So we only had, uh, maybe, uh, at a time, like two or three classes going on at once.

Jahrine: Okay. And what did you do after, after the teaching?

So a year and a half of teaching.

Roughly.

Eric: Yeah.

So while I was teaching, I found a internship at a startup in more of the center of Tokyo.

So they were located in Ebisu and I joined them.

I was still teaching because my teaching was part-time it wasn’t full-time so I still had a day or two to work at this internship.

Um, and that’s kind of where I started transitioning into, uh, out of teaching.

And I did that internship and taught, uh, for probably about a year.

Um, and then after that, I was able to find a full-time job at a design company in Shibuya and, uh, Yeah, it was pretty cool.

It was short-lived, I mean,  I only lasted four months.

Not because of my bad, uh, bad.

No, I didn’t get fired or anything.

I don’t think.

But, uh, I got, yeah, I got super lucky because it was, um, what happened was, um, I was hired to do, uh, help with the content of a project that this company was working on.

But the manager of this project was my boss that hired me and ended up quitting.

And so the project was pretty much cut and I was just there.

I would come to work and I would just sit there and do absolutely nothing, get paid was great.

I mean in Japan, you can’t really get fired.

What they try and do is, well, they didn’t do this to me, but there’s stories that people have tried or companies will isolate you until you probably find uh, find something new or just can’t take it anymore.

I don’t know.

It’s kind of interesting.

Yeah.

It’s kind of a, you can read about it online, but for me in my, in my case, um, it wasn’t anything like that.

I just had nothing to do.

Um, I would come to work, but this was actually.

Uh, three months in.

So I was doing work for the first three months, the last month when, um, I was, uh, uh, just didn’t have a project to do.

I was looking for a new job and I got really lucky.

I found a job fairly quickly, full-time at a startup that, um, that created the Ili Translator device, which is a hardware product.

Um, and yeah, within a few weeks I got out of the previous company and jumped into the new company full-time so yeah, the transition was quite, uh, it wasn’t so bad.

I was kind of lucky that I just kept looking every day to, uh, to find a new job.

Jahrine: So that’s interesting.

You did, you did the teaching thing, which is what a lot of foreigners do when they go to Japan and then you moved into tech.

That’s um… I don’t know.

I don’t, I mean, I, I taught in Japan for three years and I don’t know if, I don’t know if anyone, everyone I know basically who stayed in Japan or was in Japan, they were teaching.

That was it.

That’s the main, the main occupation.

But that’s interesting.

So I want to ask you then, because as you were working for a tech company, one of the things that I was most surprised by when I went to Japan was, you know, Japan has this, kind of people think it’s a very technologically advanced place and in many ways it is.

But I think one of the things I was surprised by is how, in other ways it isn’t.

So as an example, uh, when I was teaching, I had to fax my kind of like a time sheet every week, the end of every week on a Friday from my high school that I taught at, I had to fax in my time sheet with my personalized hanko, which is like a stamp with your name on it.

And that blew me away that I was, I’d never faxed before.

So I had to learn how to use a fax machine.

I thought nobody used fax machines anymore, but they’re actually.

Well, they’re quite widespread in Japan.

I don’t know about now.

I left to Japan in 2012, but, um, what are some things that surprised you about, uh, about Japan when you got there?

When you worked there?

Eric: Yeah, the hanko, the stamp was kind of interesting.

I think they’re trying to get rid of it.

Um, the government is because it’s like, and my opinion is just a major inconvenience in some sense.

I mean, I think it’s cool, but I also think that, uh, I mean, it’s okay.

It’s not bad.

It’s what it is.

It’s uh, it’s part of the culture.

So in terms of old technology, yeah, they use faxes.

Um, personally, I didn’t see too much of that though.

Um, the company. I mean the school I worked at, um, we just had a set schedule because it was so small that we just did everything in-house.

They just printed out sheets and you would just put in your schedule on Excel.

Um, and then the design company was more, uh, forward thinking.

Um, so they didn’t have anything like that, that I saw.

Um, and the hardware, a hardware company that last company I worked at.

Um, to be honest, didn’t really do…maybe they did some faxing, but in terms of what I had to do, it didn’t involve any old technology really that I can think of.

But in terms of, yeah.

Technology-wise yeah, they still use fax machines.

It feels like Japan yeah,  they’re high-tech in Tokyo, but in some sense, they’re stuck in the eighties in some way, like, uh, because they, they advanced so fast in the eighties during the, I guess the bubble period that, um, they kind of just, I think stopped innovating in some sense.

Um, but maybe they don’t really need to, I don’t know.

The trains are all excellent.

Um…

Jahrine: very true.

Eric: But yeah, but yeah, I don’t think I don’t.

Yeah, I can’t off the top of my head.

I just thought Tokyo did things really conveniently.

Like when you go to a restaurant, you don’t have to sit down and place your order,

you can put a, uh, punch in your order through a ticket machine at most fast food restaurants.

That’s, that’s really helpful.

Um, the Compass Pass the, uh, I forget the… the Suica I think it’s called, um, yeah, the card that you use to ride trains that was convenient.

Um, you don’t have to, you can just charge your card and you can just go and hop on.

Um, yeah, but in terms of the old technology, nothing really stood out so much.

Uh, but I guess it just depends where you work.

Jahrine: Yeah, for sure.

How about the language then, uh, for you?

Did you learn any Japanese before you went, did you study while you were there?

I know you’re studying now on LingQ.

Doing really well.

Eric: Oh, um, so yeah, when I went to Japan, I didn’t speak any Japanese really.

I, I knew like some words, but no, I didn’t speak anything.

Um, and when I was there, I didn’t study at all.

I did not.

Yeah.

It’s kind of funny.

Like I did not, I don’t know when I came into, when I went to Japan, I didn’t think I would be there longterm.

Like I was like, okay.

Two to three years, which is why I didn’t study.

Um, because I was just focused on looking for a job and that took off.

Took some time.

And then when I was working, I just wanted to hang out with friends and check out Japan for what it is.

Um, so I didn’t really have time to study.

I didn’t have the motivation actually.

I did… all my friends spoke English.

I didn’t really have a need to speak Japanese.

Uh…

Jahrine: And you were in Tokyo where lots of Japanese people speak English too, I guess.

Right, so…

Eric: Yeah if there’s enough English to go to get around, um, Uh, just because, yeah, it was a short term kind of goal.

If I were to live there for, I don’t know, five plus years.

Yeah.

I probably would have studied, but, um, at the time, no, I didn’t start studying until I joined LingQ, which is when I got back from Japan…

Jahrine: So when you got back.

Yeah, I, um, I didn’t really study before I left for Japan and I did study while I was there.

Um, And then a bit when I got back, but not anymore.

I really would.

I should.

I never really got to a comfortable, conversational level, but I can understand quite a bit.

And I love the language.

I think it is such a beautiful kind of melodic language.

I love watching Japanese movies and TV shows still.

I do need subtitles.

Um, but yeah, it’s a, it’s a really cool language.

Um, how is your language, your Japanese study going now?

Eric: Oh, it’s good.

Good.

So, um, yeah, no, I’m conversational now.

I would say, um, I can read, uh, quite a bit of material.

It’s going to take me a long time to get comfortable though.

I think reading, I really want to get better at reading.

It just takes time.

I read podcasts, which is my favorite kind of content, because it feels like the person’s talking to you and you’re learning a lot of, uh, everyday, uh, vocabulary.

Um, novels.

Okay.

So I like, I I’ve read a couple novels.

Uh, they can be quite difficult, like 20% of the words are unknown.

So I’m just doing a lot of, uh, LingQing on LingQ.

I could just look up words.

Yeah.

If I can find a novel, that’s not too difficult, but just enough.

That’s perfect.

I found one.

Um, and I went through that and I read that novel.

It was the first novel I read and it was, it was good.

Uh, I understood pretty much what was going on.

You just get a ton of new words that pop up to you.

But, um, of course when you read a novel, it’s a little bit different how then, uh, compared to when you speak.

So that’s why I would say podcasts with transcripts and YouTube channels with a transcripts as well.

I think are the absolute best.

I mean, when someone’s picking a topic and they just stick cause they stick to the topic too.

So you, you get a really good understanding.

While in novels, I found sometimes when you’re starting out, it’s a little bit difficult to see who’s talking.

When there are several people in the story and the conversation.

So, um, but it’s, uh, instead of novels, I found manga, uh, to be quite useful.

I don’t read it as much now, but you get pictures and that really helps a lot to understand what’s going on.

So, um, novels to me is probably a little bit, uh, towards the intermediate level.

Um, but yeah, no, I would say, uh, yeah, I’ve been studying for, I don’t know, two years, but it’s probably like 1200 hours I put in, um, I think 2000 hours and I will be quite okay.

Um, but I don’t really think like that.

I just keep doing it.

So I’d like to go back to Japan.

It’s probably one of the main reasons why I really want to go back to Japan, um, is because I can actually use the language now and it’s just going to be a, quite a different experience.

So it’s like, that’s my motivation.

Um, I had no motivation to study when I was in Japan, but once you, once you get to a certain level and you just start being able to understand.

Well, my case, the more I was able to understand, the more I wanted to learn.

So cause you get more content, you can start understanding.

Jahrine: Right?

Right.

What, uh, I think a lot of people listening maybe will be, are interested in Japanese culture or maybe learning Japanese.

So what some of the podcasts you mentioned just now that you’re listening to mainly podcasts, what are some that jump to mind?

The, your favorite content?

Eric: So there’s a podcast called let’s talk in Japanese.

That’s a really good one.

There’s uh, transcripts as well.

Um, there is a YouTube channel called Sayuri Saying she’s a good teacher.

She makes videos on a variety of topics and she has her own transcripts in the YouTube clos captions.

So those two, I would start off.

Um, they’re not for beginners, like they are late-stage beginners because they’re a hundred percent in Japanese.

So.

Once you learn hiragana, katakana and some Kanji, I would say after three, four months, those podcasts are quite helpful.

Um, and then after that you could get into a little bit more advanced podcasts.

Um, there’s a lot out there.

Um, but for the most part, those two let’s talk in Japanese and Sayuri Saying they’re quite good.

Jahrine: Okay, excellent.

I will put, um, I’ll put the links to those in the description so people can check them out.

So you’ve been away from Japan now… you left in 2018, did you say?

Eric: Yes, I left in 2018.

Jahrine: Okay.

So

two.

Okay.

So what, uh, what are you missing most about Japan?

Eric: Um, the food’s really good.

The food is excellent in Japan, I would say, well, I know because of the Corona situation, this doesn’t really apply right now, but going out and going to a lot of restaurants at night, um, I know right now everything closes earlier because of the virus situation.

But, uh, once that’s over, I mean, Japan is going to go back to how it was before that.

And I really like, you can pretty much get lost and have a good time in Tokyo.

Um, Tokyo is an interesting place.

It’s kind of like its own world.

And in every station, there are a variety of different places you can go check out, um, around the station.

Um, every station has its own world.

I would say, just from street culture to, um, beer culture, to anime culture, you get different experiences and there’s something for everyone.

I would say for sure.

Jahrine: I always felt pretty overwhelmed.

I lived in Sendai, which isn’t, which is in the Northeast of Japan.

And, um, you know, it’s like, I think it’s a population of around 2 million.

So nothing on Tokyo.

I always found, felt quite overwhelmed when I went to Tokyo.

I loved it, but I felt that I could only be there for a couple of days and then I needed to go back to my kind of semi-country city up there… I thought Sendai was the perfect size anyway, but um, yeah, I have to agree with you with the food.

I really miss the food and not just restaurants.

I talk about this with my husband all the time, who I met in Japan, in Sendai.

Um, we miss the Seven Eleven bento boxes.

So good.

This is, you know, a plastic bento box and some rice and some, whatever, you know, little fried pork and all kinds of little treats and it’s delicious.

And it’s so cheap.

And I think I ate that, those for dinner a lot on my way home from teaching when I was teaching at night, especially, um… yeah.

I really, really miss the food.

Eric: The

food’s great… yeah.

Luckily in Vancouver we get a good variety of sushi.

Jahrine: We do.

That’s that’s very true.

There is.

Um, I live in North Vancouver.

There’s a sushi place down the street that I could walk to and it’s-Japanese-run and it is just like being in Japan.

It’s great.

I’m really fortunate for that.

Eric: And speaking of the, yeah, the convenience stores they’re open 24/7.

For those that don’t know they’re open 24/7.

You can buy anything.

You can buy alcohol, which is insane to me.

Um, coming from Vancouver, you can, um, yeah, and then they have the, quite a big selection.

They have those giant jugs of sake, which look like giant water bottle, like for the water containers.

It’s pretty funny.

Jahrine: Yeah.

300 yen bottles of wine… it was terribly.

I was.

You know, straight out,  fresh out of university when I went there, didn’t have any money.

So our weekends were fuelled, my friends and I, by these 300, I think they were called Mon Frere

Eric: oh, that sounds very, that sounds very high end.

Jahrine: It was, you had a hangover the next day after that, but 300, 300 yen.

What is that in Canadian?

Eric: That’s about um, that’s like $3 American, so like $3.50.

Jahrine: For a bottle of wine.

Eric: Wow.

That’s cheap.

Yeah.

I saw the one cup sake, which is like a dollar tastes like gasoline when you drink it.

Me and my friends we were… like we were just doing a few of those in the beginning, but then we just stopped because it was, it was not good.

Um, and then I was going to say the Chu-Hi, the strong zero, the infamous drink for those who’ve been to Japan, probably know.

Did you ever have a strong zero?

I had one, but I knew about it prior.

I don’t, I stay away from them.

They’ll they’ll just, they’ll give you a bad hangover and you see a lot of young people drink them.

Cause they’re so cheap, but they’re just packed with sugar.

Jahrine: It’s so sweet.

Yeah.

It’s basically like, yeah.

It’s Alco pop.

Eric: Yeah.

Pretty much.

Jahrine: Times a million.

Yeah.

Super, super sweet.

Yeah.

That’s a huge drinking culture in Japan.

Actually.

I can think of, I think you see the images of people passed out in the streets, the salary, man, I know you’re living in Tokyo.

You must’ve seen this.

I, one image comes to mind for me in Sendai.

I remember walking home at the early hours of the morning, one Friday, Saturday night.

And there was a man in a suit, a salary man.

And he had his McDonald’s bag and he had his milkshake just kind of propped to his chin and a little, little trickle down his chin.

And he was fast asleep and his, you know, his wallet, his keys, his phone are on him, I imagine.

I don’t remember seeing them… totally safe.

Nobody called the  calls the police or anything.

It’s just, it’s just a hardworking salary man having a good night out.

He’s deserved it, passed out drunk in the street.

That is another thing that surprised me, actually, about Japan.

I don’t know if you knew about that before you went there.

Eric: Oh, well, I’ve been in Japan a couple of times before, so I’d seen it already.

So when I moved there, it didn’t.

Yeah.

It was just something I’ve already seen, but no, yeah.

It’s pretty funny.

If for those who don’t know, you can check it out on, you can just Google there’s an Instagram page called the Shibuya Meltdown.

And I think they’re just pictures of salary men.

Just, just, uh, from a long night.

So it’s, it’s it’s yeah, that’s another thing it’s just.

It just goes with the territory and it’s quite safe in Japan.

So you can kind of leave your wallet out and no one’s gonna take it.

Um, hopefully, but, uh, yeah.

Jahrine: Yeah, it’s happened.

I had a friend who dropped, um, her purse and I think hours later we went back and someone had just put it on a little wall next to it where she dropped it.

It’s…so, so safe.

I mean, it’s not… also had a bike stolen from outside my apartment.

My husband did, but, um, but I’d like to tell the story of that.

The police were incredible.

Um, so the bike was left outside.

No lock.

We reported it.

The police came.

For a stolen bike.

Now, two police officers, they came in and they asked us questions.

They took measurements outside our apartment.

I’m not really sure what that was all about.

They drove us to the police station and asked more questions and then they took it really, really seriously.

So yeah, it is a really safe, it’s a safe culture.

And when there is a crime it’s taken seriously.

Eric: Yeah.

Bikes get stolen actually often.

That’s what I thought.

Uh, when I was there, they get misplaced.

Um, and also when you have a bike, one thing that I learned the hard way is you gotta make sure to park, in the designated areas, my bike got, I guess, towed, you could say so many times that I had to go pay a fee, pick it up.

I ended up realizing that by one of the stations where I would drop off my bike there’s underground parking just for bikes.

So.

That’s always something to look for.

Um, it’s cheap and you can leave it there overnight.

Um, but, um, yeah, if you have a bike, just make sure you can’t leave… just make sure you don’t leave it on the street, um, or anywhere for a long period of time.

Otherwise there’s people that will come and just snatch it from you and you’ll have to find out.

Yeah.

Then you’ll have to find out where it is and it’s usually at a different station and then you have to go and pick it up and pay a about 6,000 yen.

I think that’s how much it costs.

Yeah.

Jahrine: That’s quite expensive.

Eric: It’s yeah.

Especially if you do it several times, like I did.

Yeah, not fun.

Yeah, I guess

Jahrine: with so many bikes, because there are lots of bikes, uh, in the cities, in Japan and just everywhere in Japan, there have to be solid rules.

Otherwise it’ll just be a mess.

The Japanese love rules.

Eric: The rules.

Yeah.

Every rule.

Yeah.

Everything is…there’s so many examples, but yeah, you just got to be quiet on the train.

I had one guy, he just smacked my phone, even though I probably shouldn’t have been talking, but he just was like, I was like, Oh man.

Okay.

Yeah, just an old, pissed off.

Uh, I don’t know how old he was, but yeah, on the, on the train foreigners, don’t realize you need to put your phone on manner mode.

Um, and, uh, What other rules are there?

There everyone stands on one side, uh, when you’re going up the stairs.

Well, it’s kind of like here, but they follow it more rigorously.

And, um, what other rules are there.

There’s just so many different rules, like lining up is very, uh, taken seriously.

So you got to make sure you’re in the right spot at the right time.

Um, And things like that.

Don’t tip

Jahrine: don’t tip taxi drivers.

I learned that the hard way.

Eric: Oh really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can tip, well, you don’t have, you can tip, but you’re not, it’s not a culture thing.

Jahrine: Yeah.

I, well, I went to, I visited in 20… 2008.

No, no, no, no.

I left.

I left.

I went in 2008.

It must have been 2006.

So I did a Tokyo trip and then two years later, I moved there to live for three years.

And I remember, uh, going into a cab for the first time in Tokyo and then trying to tip the cab driver.

And he was just very confused and then kind of annoyed and I felt terrible.

I didn’t know any Japanese and I was.

Afterwards.

I feel like I should have known that before I went, but I didn’t.

So that’s kind of a good tip if any…

anyone is planning to visit Japan or live in Japan for sure.

Um, also, uh, what else, what are the tips would you give visitors or people who would like to live in Japan?

To live in

Eric: Japan?

Um, make sure you have an understanding of certain processes, like opening a bank.

It was so weird.

You have ti open a bank, but to open a bank you need a cell phone and to get a cell phone, you to open a bank.

So yeah, figure that one out.

I tell people research.

I was lucky.

I had a friend that translated everything.

Some of the other things, if you’re there long-term is moving is, can be quite a bit of a hassle because you need to tell… you need to walk.

So speaking of you were saying fax machines, here’s something that I found quite annoying was.

You can’t email the city to say, you’re moving to another city.

You need to go there in person and fill out all these forms within 14 days.

So you always have to go in person to do certain things.

Um, and even if you’re moving from one place to another, that’s quite a ways away.

You still, I found you still had to go.

So just make sure those things are, uh, something you’ve researched, moving, changing jobs.

Um, health insurance.

Um, yeah.

Um, and I would say those are the, kind of the things that I learned while there, I didn’t really do much research.

I just went once I got my visa, um, it worked out in the end, but, um, uh, if you don’t have someone or you don’t speak Japanese, I would say, just look online.

Um, and also one other thing that it wasn’t really a problem.

It was just really annoying once I got back to figure out was, uh, when you leave… well in Canada, for instance, when you mov to Japan, you need to declare to the CRA that you’re not a resident anymore.

And I never did that.

So my taxes were, I had a lot of questions with taxes, but it was all fine in the end.

Um, But I would just make sure prior to that prior to moving to Japan, if you’re in Canada or whatever country, just let the, uh, tax agency, your government tax agency, uh, know that you’re going to be a resident in Japan.

Um, so that those are just like some of the major things that I would look into otherwise.

Um, yeah.

Uh, there’s, there’s a lot of surprises in Tokyo that, uh, That will just happen.

But for the most part, you can find a lot of answers online.

It’s easy now.

Yeah.

That’s

Jahrine: true.

Especially now yeah , lots of blogs and podcasts and all kinds of things.

So.

Cool.

Well, I think we could talk for a really long time on

Japan.

We have had lots of experiences, but we’ll stop it there.

And, um, Yeah.

If anyone listening, um, or watching, if you’re watching on YouTube has any fun stories from a visit to Japan, or if you live there, please let us know in the comments.

And also if anyone has any tips on good content as if you’re learning Japanese.

As Eric mentioned some podcasts, um, maybe have some, you know, some good YouTube channels.

It’s always good to share the content.

Uh, so you can pop that in the description as well.

Uh, thank you very much, Eric.