Thursday, January 29, 2009

#952 Abilities, Living Off Campus, Fire Station Fire, Viable, Business In Niseko


Show 952 Thursday 29 January
Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.


Hi, I’m Sarah, welcome to The Daily English Show.

The video I recommend today is called: Abilities.

It was the winner of an amateur journalism contest on YouTube. I think it’s an interesting story. It’s about a community in the United States called Camphill.

This is how someone in the video describes Camphill:

The idea of Camphill is to really create intentional communities with and for people who are developmentally disabled. Don’t be taken aback by the word disabled. Everybody has abilities and those abilities can create a very strong and viable and vital community.

In the Acadia Report today, more comparisons of living on and off campus.



The Acadia Report

Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada

This student said she prefers living off campus. Why?

Because you’re not stuck with Sedexalls (?) /Chartwells and their food.

You get to decorate your room how you want to.

I’ve found it’s cheaper. It’s definitely cheaper.

You can have parties at your house.

You can sleep in late. And you’re not bugged by fire alarms going off at 2 am in the morning.

You’re not at the beck and call of RAs and SRAs if they want to have a meeting or some form of get-together in the lounge area in the middle of the week.

If you can come home late, there’s no problem for you to walk in and put loud music on because you probably don’t have roommates … if you’re living off campus in a one bedroom, in a bachelor.
If you do have roommates you’re probably friends with the person, so you know who you’re living with, you’re not with a total stranger.

Living off campus also gives you the opportunity to cook your own food so you don’t have to be subjected to, well, what meal hall considers edible.

You can buy lots of stuff and put it in the apartment to decorate it to make it look homey just like how you would at home, back in your own place, wherever you came from. You can take all that stuff with you when you leave. You’re not subject to have the place looking exactly how you had it when you left.

If damage happens you do have someone you can call and they have to fix it right away. You’re protected by the tenancy act so if your landlord’s being an idiot you just have to call them up and they deal with them for you. I don’t know I just like living off campus better.



STICK NEWS

Kia Ora in Stick News today a fire broke out in a fire station in Nagoya, Japan.

Yesterday a firefighter was cooking dinner for the crew at a fire station. His coworkers were out on a call so he was at the station alone. Then he was called out. A fire department official said in his haste to respond to the call, he forgot to turn the stove off. Ten fire trucks from other stations put the fire out.

And that was Stick News for Thursday 29th of January.
Kia Ora.





TDES Niseko Snow Report
at Niseko Yurt Village

with Rudy

How many seasons have you had in Niseko?
This is my third winter in a row here in Niseko.

How have the conditions been recently?
Recently? Ahhhhh it’s been epic. Epic. Epic. Unbelievable. In my three years here I … last week, I think on Wednesday, I’ve never seen an, a one day, overnight dump of snowfall like that before and it’s just, the past few days I’ve had my best days ever here in Niseko. Just amazing.

How does Niseko compare to the mountains in California?
The mountains there, it’s more of a, a typical mountain range that you see and so the elevation is higher and it’s steeper. Um, and there’s a little more terrain. But the snow is a little bit heavier, a bit wetter, and a little less reliable. They don’t get as much snow, but sometimes they get big dumps. Whereas here it’s … the mountain’s pretty mellow, but the powder’s real deep and dry.



Word of the Day

Today’s word is viable.

adj. that can be done; that will be successful

People often talk about viable options.

If something is not a viable option it means that, yes, it’s an option – we could do it, but if we did it we wouldn’t be successful.

I found this example online:
An E-tagging system is not a viable option for the monitoring of asylum seekers.

That was in a letter to the editor of an Australian newspaper and the letter explains why they think that option wouldn’t be successful.



conversations with sarah
#596 Almost double!

Step 1: Repeat George’s lines.
Step 2: Read George’s lines and talk to Sarah.

George Has the economy affected business in Niseko?

Sarah Yeah, I think it has. Apparently lots of Australians cancelled their trips this year.

George Have lots of companies gone bankrupt?

Sarah I don’t think lots have … but maybe a couple. I’m not really sure.

George Is it really expensive for Australians to come to Niseko now?

Sarah Well, it’s almost double what it was last year.

George Almost double!

Sarah Yeah, so, for example a glass of beer is usually around 500 yen. So Australians used to say: Oh, it’s only about 5 dollars, that’s really cheap. But now, they’re like: Oh, 10 dollars for a beer …

George Yeah, that sounds like a lot more.

Sarah Then again, I think some people who go on holidays to ski resorts have so much money they might not care if the prices doubled or tripled.



notes

RA - Resident Assistant
SRA - Senior Resident Assistant

left - I think she meant "arrived"

epic - an informal word meaning great/awesome/excellent etc

dump - (informal, slang) a lot of snow / to snow heavily

mellow - when describing a person, mellow means "relaxed" ... here Rudy is using it to mean "not very steep"



links

today's news
today's STICK NEWS pictures

music

show start
artist: Boom Tschak
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: More Chocolate, Please
from: Former Yugoslavia
MySpace

The Acadia Report start
artist: DJ iPep's
album: Home Mix 2007
track: Concerto
from: EVREUX, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

nsr start
artist: Zeropage
album: Ambient Pills Update
track: Is It Real?
from: Switzerland
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

WOD start
artist: DJ iPep's
album: Home Mix 2007
track: Game Toy
from: EVREUX, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

cws start
artist: Wolfgang S.
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: Dynamite
from: Belgrade, Serbia, Former Yugoslavia
artist site
MySpace

qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack2
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

qa bgm
artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: Dispersion Relation
artist site
YouTube channel

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