Food for thought...

Food for thought...
_"Who are you, anyway?"
_ "Just someone who knows, from personal experience, how attractive it can be to think you can save somebody else by loving them."
_"I could have sworn we just met," Madeleine said. "And that you don't know anything about me."
Henry stood up. With a slightly offended air but undiminished confidence, he said, "People don...'t save other people. People save themselves." He left her with that to think about.
The Marriage Plotby Jeffrey Eugenides

Monday, 18 August 2014

Life on the Road - Listening



(1247) Listen and work on the Vocabulary Quiz and Comprehension Quiz.



Work on the go - Todd continues talking about his daily life as a web creator living on the road - Listen and circle the correct option. Then work on the vocabulary and comprehension quiz - (1248) 

Julia: So talking / walking of working overseas, how does that work? How do set that mind / kind of lifestyle up?
Todd: You mean like the nomadic lifestyle?
Julia: Yeah, yeah, when you want to travel and just be free / three and
Todd: Well, it's interesting. Like I think people get the wrong idea about working that type of life, being like a nomad. First of all you're actually not a tourist and in a lot of ways / way you're not a traveler. Like I actually worked and oddly enough, you know when I was just traveling and just living / leaving from city to city and working digitally from / for my computer, I put in more than forty / fourteen hours a week. I actually probably put in maybe fifty or sixty because I had so much time. I had nothing to do usually so I would / could work usually five to six days a week and usually ten hours per / a day. So the first thing /think is that you work a lot and because you work a lot, you have to look for places / spaces that are conductive, conducive I'm sorry, that are conducive for working. So the first thing you need is you need a hotel or like usually a short term apartment because it's usually best to say / stay in one place for about a month and you need a pace / place that has a good desk and a good chair. I cannot emphasize the importance of a good chair. A good chair is actually so much more important than cable TV or a nice bed or a pool or whatever because you're going to sit in the chair all the time. So when I would travel, I would go to a hotel and the first thing I could / would ask is can I see...
Julia: The chair?
Todd: Can I see the chairs in the room and if I didn't like the chair, I'd say like look I'm going to be here / there for two weeks I'll stay but you gotta get me like a nice / dice chair. So that was one thing. So usually you want to get like a short-term housing. You look on the internet, you know, two weeks at a time and usually you can find something cheap / cheaper. You usually want to be in a major city because you need to have internet and that is the most important thing. You'd be surprised at what countries have fast internet. Like Vietnam really fast and you can work wireless from the beach. I used / use to sit on the beach with my laptop and have high need / speed wireless in some of the cities in Vietnam.
Julia: Wow.
Todd: Yeah, it's amazing. You know, Thailand, Bangkok, it's surprising / surprisingly not that fast. So Bangkok wasn't that fast but if you went to a smaller city like Chiang Mai, the internet wasn´t / was really fast.


(1249) Todd talks about his time as a digital nomad, working without a permanent residence.Listen and fill in the blanks:




Julia: What about meeting people? What about like a _____________     ____________ or just basic human interaction? ____________ does that work?
Todd: ____________ you meet lots of people but there´s a couple ____________ things you need to do. One is I usually ____________ away from anything touristy or where the tourists are ____________ people just assume you're a tourist and nobody will ____________ to meet you. The best place to meet people ____________ is a gym. So in every city, I would ____________ to, I would sign up for a gym for ____________ weeks or one month and you always meet people ____________. So gyms are great, you meet people right after ____________. You kind of feel like you're in a normal work ____________. Parks, you meet a lot of people in parks. ____________ go to where the local people are, maybe a ____________ court or libraries, stuff like that, so usually places ____________ people are actually trying to do something productive, ____________ study or exercise or whatever, you meet people.
Julia: That ____________ going to be my next question. What about your ____________? How do you maintain a health when you're living ____________ kind of...
Todd: Well, yeah, you gotta eat well and you gotta ____________. I did go to the hospital in Chiang Mai because a dog bit me. Yeah.
Julia: Oh, no. Did you have to____________rabies shots?
Todd: I had to get a rabies shot and it was ____________ cheap so in most countries healthcare is really cheap. ____________ healthcare is excellent, I mean absolutely fantastic. And you ____________ Vietnam it's cheap. You know even in big places____________Taiwan or Korea, you know, you'd be surprised like it's not that ____________. You just got to go to the hospital and ____________ sew you up.
Julia: And language problems? Did you ever have any language ____________?
Todd: No, usually not. I mean like I lived in Thailand for ____________ years so I can speak Thai but like Taiwan ____________ spoke really good English. I went to Korea, didn't ____________ a word of Korean. I stayed there for six ____________ working from there and everybody was so nice. A ____________ of gestures so I got by and actually I ____________ getting on the plane to go home from Korea ____________ I realized I didn't know even how to say ____________ and no in Korean or one, two, three, four, ____________ and I was in their country for five weeks, ____________ weeks. So, yeah, the Koreans were very nice.
Julia: Good.
Todd: So have ____________ sold you? Would you like to give it a ____________?
Julia: Yes, I would but I, my problem is like ____________. Like if I'm not given a schedule, if I ____________ have deadlines, if it's all up to me, I, ____________ know, I'd just spend all day at the beach and ____________ for a massage, maybe do some shopping, go to a ____________ , or something. I can't see myself working when I ____________ like I'm traveling and on holiday. I don't know.
Todd: ____________, that's the catch.
Julia: The mindset, I guess yeah.
Todd: Yeah, ____________ the hard part.


Once in the page, look for a Vocabulary quiz and a comprehension quiz, (next to the audio notes) work on that too! 

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