Now Hear this.

Author: Literacy Waitākere

  • Walk on by

    I was on my way to the swimming pool early this morning. It was still dark. As I was walking along, I noticed something in front of me on the footpath, so I stopped to check it out. This is what I saw.

    It was a man lying on the pavement. My first thoughts were: Is he OK? Does he need help? So I had a closer look. There was no blood, no vomit, and no sign of injury. The way he was lying with his arm under his head for a pillow led me to believe he was just sleeping.

    One of his shoes was lying beside him, and the other one was still on his foot. His backpack was lying beside him, too.

    I don’t know why he was lying there, but I guessed that last night he had been at a bar and had too much to drink. He looked peaceful enough, so I decided to leave him alone and went on my way. I hope he was OK.

    There’s a song with the same title as today’s post. You can listen to it here.

  • Something to crow about

    This is an eye-catching advertisement at a bus stop. Ads want to attract your attention and make you look at them. When you look at the ad above, what’s the first thing that grabs you? I don’t know about you, and I can only speak for myself, but the first thing that caught my eye was the colourful birds near the bottom … the white cock, the brown hen and the little yellow chicks.

    Another thing that drew my attention was the 2O logo in the bottom right-hand corner. There are many different internet providers in New Zealand, and that company is one of them. This ad is trying to get you to give them your business.

    But maybe you’re asking yourself this question right now: “What have farmyard birds got to do with a telecommunications provider? What’s the link? How are they connected?”. Well, the answer is in the white words in ALL CAPS at the top of the ad.

    There’s a saying in English that goes like this: Birds of a feather flock together. Everybody knows that proverb. It means that people who believe a certain thing, or people who like a certain thing, for example football fans or music fans, usually stay together.

    In this ad, the company changes the word flock to save. The company is saying that it saves money for many people, and you should join them. You should flock to them and save money by getting good rates.

    Is it a good ad? Maybe yes, maybe no, but when you stop to look at it, or when you question what it’s about, the ad has done its work. It has successfully attracted your attention.

    SOMETHING TO CROW ABOUT

  • They’re worth a look.

    It was a VERY hot and sunny day today (25°), but it felt much hotter. Despite that, I went out in the hottest part of the day to walk around central Auckland. Here’s why.

    From now until the 23rd of March, you can see 20 street sculptures of kiwi, the national bird of Aotearoa New Zealand. You can see them if you follow the map below.

    Screenshot

    Kiwi are nocturnal birds, meaning they come out at night, but in these pictures, they’re standing under the blazing sun.

    At the beginning of my walk, I was walking towards the sculpture below when I saw an older woman standing in front of it. At the foot of each sculpture, it clearly says in capital letters: DO NOT CLIMB. This grandmother was taking a photo of her granddaughter. Where was the little girl? Sitting on top of the kiwi! The kiwi is even pointing to the words with its beak! Somebody needs reading glasses or reading lessons!

    After the 23rd of March, the sculptures will be up for auction, and the money raised will go to help preserve the kiwi, which is endangered.

    A few years ago, there was a similar street exhibition, but that time, it was owls, not kiwi. When the exhibition ended, the owls were auctioned, and this one was bought by someone who lives near me. It’s just sitting in their garden for everyone to see and enjoy.

    And years before that, I remember another sculpture exhibition that was for cows. The one below was bought by a company that is across the road from my house. It’s a small world.

  • The Sound of Silence

    There’s a famous song by Simon and Garfunkle with the same name as today’s post. If you don’t know it, you can listen to it here.

    But why am I telling you that? Well, after my swim this morning, I was sitting in the sauna with my eyes closed, enjoying the heat and the silence.

    Then I heard the door opening as someone came in, but I didn’t open my eyes. When this person sat down next to me, I could tell by the way the bench moved that he was a big guy, but I still kept my eyes shut. 

    He didn’t speak, but now and again, I could hear a very small noise. It wasn’t all the time, just on and off. It was like a small fly was trapped behind the wall and was beating its wings trying to escape.

    The noise wasn’t loud, but it was loud enough to annoy me, and it was annoying me because I couldn’t figure out what it was. So I decided to open my eyes.

    I looked at the big guy next to me, and he was wearing waterproof headphones like the ones below in the sauna. I don’t know what he was listening to, though. It wasn’t music, so maybe it was a podcast.

    Life today is very noisy: traffic, people having conversations face to face or on the phone, TV, radio, advertisements, muzak in supermarkets and lifts, the list goes on. Nowadays, it’s very hard to find silence unless you actually go looking for it.

    Personally speaking, I like the silence in the sauna, but that’s just me. It calms me and helps me clear my mind. But if other people want to be different, that’s OK. The noise wasn’t a big deal, so live and let live is what I say.

  • It’s a small world!

    This is the small pool where I swim in the Tepid Baths in central Auckland. I usually just swim silently, keeping myself to myself, but this morning, I didn’t.

    In this pool, as you can see, there are only four lanes. When I got to the end of my lane, I stopped for a rest. There was a woman in the lane next to me, and she was talking to a woman in the lane next to her. I didn’t know the woman next to me, but I know the other woman. She’s Japanese, and she swims there regularly.

    I didn’t hear what the woman in the lane next to me said, but the music in her voice sounded familiar. We all started swimming again, and later I talked to this woman when she was also having a rest at the end of her lane. I said, “Excuse me, are you Irish?” because I thought she had an Irish accent.

    She looked at me and said, “No, I’m French,” and then she added, “but my husband is Irish!” I asked her which part of Ireland he came from. It was Kerry, in the south-west of Ireland, so I told her I was from Belfast in the north-east of Ireland, opposite ends of the country.

    I said earlier that there are four swimming lanes in the pool, so the Japanese and French women made two, and me from Ireland made three, but there was another woman in the fourth lane. I know her because she’s also a regular, and she’s from Scotland. Four different nationalities in the one swimming pool at the same time.

    https://www.ireland-information.com/images/map-of-ireland-big.jpg

    Ireland, where I come from, is a small island with just over 7 million people. 

    The world is a big place and it has over 8 billion people, but as the swimming pool proves, it’s still a small world.

    Ireland map: https://www.ireland-information.com/images/map-of-ireland-big.jpg

    World map: https://pixabay.com/photos/earth-globe-planet-world-space-11015/

  • When? ……… Then.

    It’s Wednesday morning, and I’ve just come back from an early swim. I like the swimming pool I go to for three main reasons:

    1. It’s within easy walking distance of my home.

    2. It’s not usually busy when I go.

    3. The staff are always very friendly.

    When I was leaving the building, I said goodbye to the lady at reception, and she said it back to me. But as I was walking home, I was thinking to myself what else we could have said instead of simply saying the word goodbye. And this is what I thought:

    Me: See you Friday.

    Her: OK then.

    Or we could also have said this:

    Me: See you Friday.

    Her: OK then.

    Me: Right, see you then, then.

    And just in case you’re wondering, that wasn’t a mistake. There are two thens in the last sentence.

    Then is a very simple and very common word, but it can have two different meanings.

    One meaning refers to a time, for example a particular day (Friday), or a part of a day (tomorrow morning or this evening), and the other meaning is a word we use to end a conversation and to show that you agree, for example, a teacher might say at the end of the class “That’s it for today then”.

    So in “Right, see you then, then“, the first then refers to Friday, and the second then shows that it’s a date.

  • Something for Nothing

    Early last Saturday morning, I walked into the centre of Auckland to go to the weekly Farmers’ Market. The city was very quiet.

    I was walking down High Street near to my favourite book shop, Unity Books. As I said, it was early and all the shops were still shut, but as I was passing the book store, I saw a woman inside through the glass door, and she had something in her arms.

    She opened the door and she set it down on the step outside. It was a small box of books, and the notice said FREE! She went back inside and locked the door behind her.

    I looked at the books, picked one up and flicked through it. I liked what I read, so I put it in my backpack. This is it.

    Before I walked away, I tapped the door, and the woman looked my way. I smiled at her, held up my free book, and gave her the thumbs up sign to say thanks. She smiled back at me. It was a good start to the day.

  • Say Cheese!

    As I was walking past a cafe, I saw this in the window. There are three wooden boxes with some cutlery in them. You can’t see what kind of cutlery because they’re pointing down, but looking at the handles, I think there are two knives in the box on the left, the middle box probably has forks, and there are spoons in the other box.

    There are some paper napkins in the middle box. You use a napkin to wipe your mouth or your fingers when you’re eating, or you can use it to mop up any liquid that you might spill. There are words on the napkin that say the same thing.

    But there’s another word on the napkin that is cut off. You can only see the top half of the capital letters. The bottom half is hidden by the cutlery box. Can you guess what the word is?

    Here’s the first clue: the café wants you to have a good time and be happy when you visit them, so it wants you to do this. If you need a second clue, look at the title of this post … it’s what people say before they take a photo. And if you’re still not sure, follow this link.

  • Just Do It!

    If someone gives you an order, or tells you what to do, and you do what they tell you, then you obey them. If you don’t do it, you disobey them, and if you do that, then you are disobedient. Sometimes children, especially young ones, can be disobedient, but adults usually aren’t. Now look at this picture.

    I saw this while walking home from the supermarket this morning. It’s a pink flamingo scooter lying on its side. You can see some words in capital letters on the underside of the deck (that’s the flat part of the scooter where you stand when riding one). Before today, I didn’t know that there was anything written there, but you live and learn.

    These words ask the rider to park the scooter in an upright position so that the next rider can easily hop on. However, it looks like the last rider of this scooter was disobedient.

    BTW, this scooter company uses the colour pink since that bird is pink because of the food it eats. Take a look at the words below. They all end in the letter o. In English, if there’s more than one, we add either “s” or “es” to make the word plural. Only some of the words in the photo add “es”. Which ones?

    Screenshot

    Later on, I saw another upended scooter from another company, but this time, there was no writing on the underside of the deck.

  • Take it easy!

    This billboard caught my eye today. It was the pink that did it.

    The big pink thing is a flip-flop or a jandal. People wear them in hot weather or at the beach. Some people wear them all year round. There are some words on the sole of the shoe. The last word is interesting. It sounds like vay-kay, and it’s spoken English for vacation.

    Now look at the wider picture.

    Look at the bigger billboard in front of the Sky Tower. Can you see a word that means the same as vacation? (CLUE: the last letter of the word is cut off.)

    Now just to check if you have been paying attention … What does the bold it at the end of paragraph one refer to? (CLUE: the phrase has three words.)