WRITTEN TRANSCRIPTION OF THE PODCAST:

Hello and welcome to my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. My name is Dagmar Tomášková, I am an English tutor and coach and I created this podcast for English students who want to get better in their oral comprehension. As always you can find the transcription of this episode and vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast.  I am really sorry for my voice, I have a cold. But nothing can stop me from recording this episode.

Today it will be kind of a special episode because today I want to try something a little different. When I ask my students about their goals with English, more often than not it is that they want to be able to have a conversation with a friend and understand what the other person is saying. So let’s practice, I can be your bestie for a few minutes but I will not only talk but also give you a lot of collocations and idioms that you could hear or use while having a friendly conversation. To distinguish these parts, I will always play some music in the background, so you know that is not part of the original conversation. 

Maybe you will find out that you don’t want to be my friend by the end of this episode. And…I would understand that. Are you ready to get into the role? Let’s go.

Hey you, how have you been? – here I am asking in the present perfect tense because it signalises that I am asking about a period that started in the past and is still ongoing – I want to know what you have been doing since the last time we saw each other until now.

Yeah, you look great, did you get a haircut? No? Well, your hair looks…nice. 

How have I been? So nice of you to ask. It has not been very good. Why? Oh, you are so nosy! Well, let me tell you about my last week because it demonstrates perfectly my life right now.

I am starting this new period of my life, you know. Everything in my life changed in February so I had to move to a new apartment and just start again. But I have been having some health issues for the last two years but now it is getting worse. It always comes and goes. I won’t go into detail, I mean, you are my friend but we are not so close, who even are you?

I am kidding, you are my bestie.

In a nutshell, which is a phrase we say when we want to say something in a simplified way, my stomach is doing everything just not its job. I have a lot of pain, I feel overly full all the time, I can’t really eat the way I am used to, usually, I have to lie down in-between all my English conversations and overall I can’t function like myself. Last week, it had been about a month since these intense problems started but on Monday I finally felt like myself again. I thought that it would get better. After a month I felt like I could move well, I was getting hungry and I could enjoy my food. Wow! Well on Monday, our hot water stopped working. Can you believe it? Actually, it stopped working on Sunday evening but I started dealing with it on Monday. I had to figure out why. 

Do you know how much I know about boilers? I know they exist. And that is about it. – We say “That is about it” when there is nothing more to say and it is everything.

So when I was looking at it, I had no idea what was wrong. I called a repairman. He told me that he didn’t manage this brand of boilers. Okay, I called another repairman. I was a little annoyed because I couldn’t really be without my hot shower at the end of the day. By then, it was the only thing I could look forward to. The second repairman asked me about the brand and the type of boiler. Great question. The type of boiler…it was white, that is for sure. Thankfully then he asked me if the tube of the boiler was white or silver and when I said it was white, he knew what type of boiler it was. Yeeyy! 

Anyway, turned out there wasn’t enough pressure in the boiler so he told me what to do and I fixed it myself. I mean, I only had to twist one little handle and that was it but I still felt really good when I did it. I am a repairwoman!

Monday was beautiful again. Hot water was back in the house and I felt good. On Tuesday, I felt good again. Two days in a row! What a treat! – you can use this phrase to express a pleasant surprise. For example – aww, you bought me ice cream? What a treat! – but as the day was coming to an end and I was on a roll with my conversations, my wifi started to malfunction. Then, during my group conversation, it completely disconnected so I had to turn on my data. No problem! I mean, it was a small problem but nothing monumental. But that problem continued into Wednesday. 

On Wednesday, physically, I felt quite well once more! Oh my god, the third day in a row, I felt like a goddess. But… The wifi wasn’t working! And as my work depended on my working internet connection, I was getting very irritated. It was a great comedy, me and my flatmate were trying to get the passwords and login information from the ex-flatmate as the internet was still in his name and we were calling Vodafon. 

Why is it so hard to get hold of any human when it comes to customer support? – to get hold of someone means getting in touch with someone – it took us like hour and a half to actually speak to a human. It turned out there was some central bug and the signal was not working as it should have. The guy at the customer support promised that it would start working sometime during the day.

Anyway, I was getting pissed and I literally started packing to go to my parents’ house because I had more work in the afternoon and I was not in the mood to cancel all my work plans.  To be pissed or to get pissed is a very very informal way to say that you are angry or that you are getting angry- But just as I was one foot out of the door to catch my train, the wifi started working! I had to make a split-second decision whether to go or to stay. I decided to stay. – A split-second decision is a decision that you have to make very quickly. In a second.

Finally, all the technical issues were resolved and I could go back to my normal life. 

I woke up on Thursday aaand…my stomach issues were back. Great, welcome again, I missed them. Actually, I didn’t. Not even a little bit, but they were back anyway.

Yeah and I actually started feeling a little bit under the weather, I think I was starting to catch a cold. On Friday, I woke up and on top of my stomach issues, I also felt a sore throat and by the weekend, it turned into a full-blown cough and runny nose. But thankfully I had to already lie in bed because of my stomach so I didn’t really have to cancel my plans or anything.

So yeah, that was my week, once again thanks for asking. Are you still listening?

Now, think about your last week. What would you like to tell me? How were you? What were you doing? 

Try to think about it now with these phrases that will help you in an informal conversation:

• in a nutshell
• can you believe it?
• That is about it
• Anyway…- we use that one when we start talking about something else and then we return to our original topic
• What a treat!

Don’t be shy, speak out loud and talk about your week. Or record a voice message for yourself and you can listen to it later and see if you hear any mistakes. It is a great practice, I do it sometimes in French.

Thank you for being my friend and thank you so much for listening to this episode and don’t forget that you can find the transcription and vocabulary list in the notes. Please give it a five-star rating if you liked it and I will see you next time, bye-bye.