Now Hear this.

Tag: Auckland

  • No Drama!

    In the space of five minutes today, I saw two animals that I had never seen before, and you can see them below.

    The one on the left is a cow, and the other one is a llama, originally from South America. It has a double “l” at the start, but you only pronounce one of them in English.

    Now, you’re probably asking yourself how come I’ve never seen a cow, and how I saw a cow and a llama in the middle of Auckland. Those animals don’t usually walk around the streets.

    Well, I lied, kind of. I didn’t actually see the real live animals in the flesh; I saw images of them. This is the first one I saw.

    The llama is on a sunshield. To me a llama always looks funny because of its very long neck, but I found this sunshield funny because of the words. Drama and llama rhyme, and in English “no drama” is another way to say “no problem” or “no worries”. This llama looks like it’s not having any dramas!

    So that only leaves the cow, and here’s where I saw the “cow” … on the side of a car belonging to a New Zealand dairy company. 

    Its brand animal is a cow, but that’s not why I took the picture. This car has a personalised number plate, and it’s the sound in English that a cow makes. I found that funny. 

    cow image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Cow_%28Fleckvieh_breed%29_Oeschinensee_Slaunger_2009-07-07.jpg

    llama image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Llama_%28Lama_glama%29_%2819692833269%29.jpg/1600px-Llama_%28Lama_glama%29_%2819692833269%29.jpg?20210311191712

  • Go on! You know want to!

    My neighbours did their washing, and hung it out to dry. I was walking past their clothesline when I noticed one of their tea towels. It was hanging upside down, and at first, I didn’t understand it, so I stopped and had a closer look before taking this photo.

    In the middle there’s a big, tempting éclair filled with cream and jam. You might not be able to read the capital letters at the top of the tea towel (the bottom in this photo), but they say: THE FATKINS DIET.

    When people go on a diet, they try to lose weight, so they avoid things like cream and sugar, but this éclair has lots of both. If you eat too many eclairs, you’ll get fat.

    Most English speakers would think this tea towel is funny, but not because they’re laughing at being fat.

    Here’s why they might think it’s funny. There’s a famous diet calledThe Atkins Diet, named after the doctor who invented it. Someone thought it would be funny to put an F in front of his name to make Fatkins and print it on this tea towel. Ha ha!

    There are other words at the bottom of the tea towel (the top in this photo), but they’re smaller, so they might be hard to read. That’s why I’ve turned the photo upside down here. It’s strange to see the sky and the clouds and the roof at the bottom and the ground up above.

  • 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

  • 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.

  • Happy New Year!

    It was recently the lunar new year … the Year of the Snake. This is a very special time for people with an Asian background. According to the 2023 census, 31.3% of people in Auckland said they were of Asian ethnicity. And among people who live in the centre of Auckland, 50.4% also said the same. Big numbers!

    One way to mark the occasion in Auckland is this three-metre tall lucky cat or maneki-neko in Aotea Square. Here’s hoping it’s a very lucky year for one and all.

  • Figs and Flock

    Every Saturday morning, there’s a farmer’s market at Britomart in the CBD. Last week, I went there to buy something, the same thing I buy once a week in summer. There’s a stall that sells fruit and vegetables, and when figs are in season, that’s what I buy.

    Supermarkets sell figs, too, but they only sell them singly, one at a time, and they’re expensive. Sometimes, they can ask between $3 and $5 for one! But at the farmer’s market, you can buy a big punnet of them. As you can see in the picture below, they come in a 3-litre ice cream container. 

    The figs are big, and there’s maybe a dozen per punnet. If I was buying twelve single figs in a supermarket, I’d pay over $30. That’s expensive! Last year, the guy at this stall was selling punnets for $15. This year, the price has gone up to $20, but it’s still good value.

    Figs have a short season, so it’s a good idea to enjoy them while they’re here. Just like people.

    As I was walking home, I saw the windows of this empty shop, but I didn’t know what it was. I thought HOKA was the company name. In the window on the right, I thought the top shape was a big, white bird, and birds land when they leave the air and come to the ground, so I thought maybe it was a pet store.

    But another way to say landing soon is coming soon. I took the picture in January, so next month was soon. But I still didn’t know what HOKA was.

    The window on the left asks us to join the flock. Well, flock is the name for a group of animals, for example a flock of sheep or a flock of birds, so again, I thought it might be a pet store.

    But flock has another meaning when it’s a verb. It refers to when people go somehere in large numbers, so I guess the shop wants lots and lots of people to go there and buy stuff.

    But it’s not a pet store. I checked on the internet, and if you don’t know what HOKA sells, follow this link.

  • And stuff like that

    I was walking home from the supermarket, and he was walking towards me on the same side of the street. He was alone. He was wearing a backpack, and he was holding it by the straps. It was early in the day, so he was going to work. He was talking, but he wasn’t talking to me. He was on a call.

    As he came closer to me, I heard a snatch of what he was saying. This is what he said: “The people paint their houses beautiful colours and stuff like that.”

    Because I’m a language teacher, I started to think about his words. I only heard a little bit of his conversation, but I knew he was talking about a holiday overseas.

    He said the people. If he was talking about this country, I think he would just say people. And when he said the, I think he meant everybody, not just some people, so there are many colourful houses.

    You can find pictures of lots of colourful houses in other countries on the internet, but I haven’t seen anything like that in Auckland. Yet.

    But back to the language. I found the man’s last few words interesting: “… and stuff like that”. 

    Stuff  is a general word that can mean many things. In this case, the man knew the person he was talking to. He knew that the other person understood him, so he didn’t have to give any more details.

    And stuff like that is a useful phrase that is similar to you know what I mean or etc. or I don’t need to give you any more details.