Transcript of AE 684 – WWP: The Wren & The Spider

Man, guys, what's going on? I thought I would do a little impromptu episode here, sort of walking with Pete style episodes, although, I am definitely not walking at the moment, I am inside. It is almost 8:00 at night. Pitch black outside, no moon. No moon at the moment.

So, very dark evening, but yeah, I wanted to tell you about today, I had a really good day, really good day. Really relaxing day, and there was just a little moment that I had at the beach that I sort of wanted to share with you because, you know, I think in today's day and age, in today's world, it's just flat chat, right? It's flat out like a lizard drinking.

It's just really fast paced, and I find myself a victim of the modern world in terms of being in my head constantly and just it's just thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking. Working, working, working, eating, doing this, doing that, doing that. So, anyway, what happened today? I went out, each morning, I usually go to each morning, probably about lunchtime, by the time I've gotten up, had a shower, you know, I hung out with the family a little bit, hung out with Noah and Kel, had my first morning coffee, watched the news, read a little bit, by the time I've done all of that, all that jazz, everything like that, I normally go down to the shops and I go into a little cafe on the main strip, the main street of The Terrace, which that's the name of the street here in Ocean Grove.

It's called the Terrace, the main street. And it's been really lovely, I've started, you know, going to this same cafe every single day, trying to support them throughout this difficult period, because those guys can't, they can't sell meals inside their establishment, they just have to do takeaway. That's all they're allowed to do.

I think, you know, they've got the maximum of five people or whatever it is that are allowed inside their building. So, ever since sort of Covid lockdown quarantine began in Australia, I just thought, you know what? Each day when I go out and I normally drive down to the beach, sit in a car and work for an hour or two each day that I do that, I'm going to go past my favourite cafe in Ocean Grove, and it's called Olive Pit, right?

The seed inside of an olive, Olive Pit is the name of the cafe. Shout out to them. Thank you so much, Terry, from the Olive Pit for keeping me sane, keeping me dosed up on caffeine throughout this period. But, yeah, I've developed a good relationship with those guys, really friendly and obviously now know them on a name basis. So, I go in there all the time, get my coffee, have a bit of a chinwag, have a bit of a yarn with Terry or whoever's on the coffee machine the morning or the midday that I turn up there.

Then I get in the car, drive down to 14W, it's called 14W because it is a beach west of the mouth of the bay. So, we've got Port Phillip Bay here where it's a huge bay in Victoria and Melbourne is inside of this bay, so is Geelong, but the beaches to the west of the bay along the coast get numbers, so that you can, you know, every single entrance to the beach has a different number.

So, it's, you know, 1W, 2W, 3W, 4W all the way to, you know, hundreds of W's when you go down the Great Ocean Road. So, I normally go down to 14W in Ocean Grove, park my car, there's a nice little car park there up on the sand dune overlooking the ocean. So, you can see all these people surfing, you can see the waves coming in and breaking on the shore. If it's really low tide, it's really beautiful because there's some sort of rock pools and everything down on the on the sandy, the sandy beach there.

And you can see people walking their dogs, walking past on the track on the sand dune as well as on the beach itself, because that main beach there is a dog beach, up until I think 14W is probably where you have to turn around or put your dog on a leash and go round the main beach. So, I think the main surfing, swimming beach is not allowed. You're not allowed to have dogs there.

But yeah, so each morning it's really sort of, it's been interesting because it has changed a little bit during quarantine. People, there's fewer people on the beach in the mornings, but I think they'd probably be more people over the entire period of the day because there's people locked up at home all the time. And I think you're only allowed to go outside for exercise, and so people are really making an effort to go for a walk, to go out, to walk the dog, to go for a bike ride, everything like that every day.

And obviously with a lot of us not working, there's a lot more people in Ocean Grove that would otherwise normally be at work. So, it's interesting to see how society is kind of changed and that there's sort of less traffic on the beach. In the mornings, like foot traffic, people walking around during that sort of Goldilocks period where everyone used to go to the beach before they went to work.

But now there's more people throughout the entire day. Anyway, I digress. So, I normally get my coffee, got my computer, have a book or two or one in Portuguese, one in English. Sit in the car, I open the windows a little bit on either side just to let a bit of the air in and the sound, I love smelling the sea breeze as it comes in through the windows and to be able to hear the waves, I really like hearing the waves coming in through the window, especially on days where they're sort of separated.

The waves are more rhythmic and they curl really nicely. And, so you get this sort of crashing periodically as opposed to just white noise in the background. Those days are really nice, where you have that like, "Pooofff!".

And then you can you can hear the wave wash back down the beach and then "Pooofff!" again, those days are amazing. So, anyway, today I was down there and I thought for the podcast, I'll try and record some ambient sound to put behind me speaking. I thought I'd give it a go for the expression episodes. So, I took down my little handy recorder, my Zoom HN4. Took it down to the beach, put the dead cat on it. That is the fluffy protector that goes over the microphone so that you don't hear wind all the time, right?

You know, if you're out and about and you're trying to record a video on your phone, you'll know that there's that wind sound because you don't have protection from the wind blowing past the microphone. So, I put that on there, I set this down like I sort of walk down the sand dune a little bit over the grass edge and sat right on this sort of rim, edge, knoll of the sand dune where the beach was right below me, probably about 10 or 15 metres below me. And I could just see everything, so for those of you who don't know Ocean Grove very well, it's kind of situated on this beach that goes all the way from the mouth of the bay, Port Phillip Bay from Point Lonsdale.

It goes about eight kilometres from Point Lonsdale, then you reach Ocean Grove, and then I think that goes another four or four or five, maybe six kilometres, and you reach Barwon Heads and the bluff in Bonehead. So, it's kind of like this U shape, this kind of shallow U shape. So, when you sit at 14W and you see the ocean, you're effectively right at the centre of that U, so you can see the beach curling forward out to the ocean on either side of you.

If you look towards the bay, you can see it. And if you look towards the bluff in Barwon Heads, you can also see it kind of curling forward. So, it's a really beautiful position to be in. So, I had this little spot there. I'd gotten out of the car, walked down there, and it's sandy right on the top of that dune there. There's plants all around it, but there's this little patch of sand that was really warm from the morning sun that day that had, like, warmed it up. So, I sat down, set up my recorder, started recording and sort of set it aside maybe, you know, five metres in front of me so that I wasn't breathing over the top of it or, you know, flicking through pages on my book, moving around, because it's really sensitive.

The microphone can pick up all sorts of sounds in the background, you know, people talking, dogs barking, everything like that as well. So, I set that down, set that recording, and I thought, I'll sit here for 15 minutes and just read my book whilst I wait for the recording to be made, and it was incredible.

This is what I was talking about, I guess, at the start of this episode. Normally, I sit in my car and it's relaxing, it's nice. But despite only being 20 metres away from where I was today on the dune, you're still really detached from the environment. You're kind of in this little capsule of a car, right? So, it was just beautiful today when I went down there and I was really sitting much closer to the beach up on this little mound effectively, you know, 10, 15 metres up, so I could see all around me.

I could hear voices, I could hear dogs barking and playing on the beach, kids laughing in the background, the waves crashing in, it was low tide. I could see the rock pools. And whilst I was sitting there, I was reading my book and I just felt so relaxed. It was so good to sort of be back in nature, even though, you know, there are people around me. It was so nice to be sitting there feeling the warmth from the sand on the top of this sand dune, you know, warming up my legs as I was sitting in the sand with my legs crossed, reading my book and just feeling the sand with my hands going through my fingers and everything.

It was just a really beautiful moment. And so I was sitting there reading my book, and this is the first time I've ever seen this, but there was this, what I saw out of the corner of my eye. As a little thread, it looked like a really thin string moving through the air and I thought, you know, oh, that's where it's going to catch me in the face.

And when I looked at it, there was something on the end of it, on the end, closer to the ground, and it landed right in front of me. And it was a really small spider. Now, being a biologist, I'd heard that spiders sometimes let silk out of their abdomens into the wind and they can use this, like, sort of kite, to pick them up like a kind of parachute where the wind can pick up the silk still attached to the spider and cause the spider to disperse, right?

Sort of fly away into the wind, land somewhere else safely, disperse, find a new home, find more food, find mating partners, everything like this. So, I was sitting there reading my book and this little spider landed right in front of me in the sand. And then effectively, I don't know if it wound the silk in, but all of a sudden it was sort of up and moving around.

And I was just watching it go over these tiny little bumps in the sand that I'd made with my... With my shoes, with my footprints, but which would have been effectively as big as the sand dune that I was sitting on compared to the spider. Now, whilst I was sitting there sort of watching this this spider running around, I could hear these little chirps from small birds, which are called Superb Fairy wrens.

If you've come to Australia and, especially, I think, their distribution is in the southeast of the country, you will have seen these really small, charismatic birds that are, you know, they could you could probably fit five of them in your hand, but they're always on the ground. They're really quick, and the males have this really superb blue colouration when they're mature on their head.

So, they're bright blue. It's almost iridescent, so that when they move in the light, you get these different colours of cyan, bright cyan blues, two dark navy blues. And, so I could hear these little birds flying around me, fluttering around me because they live in these sort of bushes on the sand dunes and they eat the insects and everything that they can sort of capture as they fly around and move through these bushes.

So, I could hear these guys chirping and I thought, you know, they're not going to come near me. So, I probably won't see them, but I could hear them there. I could also hear things like seagulls and some of the cormorants making sounds in the background as well. But these little birds started chirping and making a lot more noise, It started getting louder, and I realised that they were within a metre or so of where I was, flying around.

And they I'd obviously been sitting there still enough, watching this spider, reading my book, relaxing in this cross legged position for probably 20 minutes or so, and the birds were treating me like a tree or a rock, right? They didn't see me as a threat. And so all of a sudden, they were flying really close to me. So, I saw this female and the females are kind of this light brown, drab colour compared to the males, which are these, you know, which are this really bright blue colours in order to attract the females, I guess, and to also, you know, signify that I'm a male, I'm in this area, stay away.

This is my location, so I'm looking down. I looked back at the spider and all of a sudden this beautiful bright blue male just appears right in front of the spider and just picks it up in its beak swallows it. And I was like, wow, I couldn't believe it. It was literally within a foot of where I was, you know, 30 centimetres away. And it was just sitting there on the ground for a good, you know, it seemed like probably 10 seconds or so.

Just looking at me, it was probably more like one second, but yeah, he was right next to me. And I it made me appreciate that moment. And that's why, I guess, I wanted to sort of share this with you guys, because I haven't had one of those sorts of moments in nature for a long time, because I've just been caught up with working with being a new father, with reading, studying, with doing everything that I normally do.

And I had just really realised in that moment today whilst I was sitting on this warm sand dune watching nature just take its course around me, I realised how much I missed that and how important that is to get out there and enjoy, enjoy our natural environment when you can, you know, take a break, turn off, switch off from social media, from, you know, everything else that's going on that's just distracting us from enjoying those sorts of moments and sort of refreshing.

So, anyway, I just wanted to share that with you, guys. I thought to be a nice way of me telling you about my experience today and also sharing a bit of biology and local geography, I guess. But yeah, I hope you enjoy this episode, guys. And if you ever come past Ocean Grove, make sure that you go to 14W and cheque out the little dune there with the patch of sand because it's a pretty peaceful place.

AE 665 – WWP: Let’s Talk about ‘Tiger King’ transcript powered by Sonix—easily convert your audio to text with Sonix.

AE 665 – WWP: Let’s Talk about ‘Tiger King’ was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best audio automated transcription service in 2020. Our automated transcription algorithms works with many of the popular audio file formats.

What is going on, guys? I thought I would do a Walking With Pete episode inside today, so I'm not outside walking. I have just nip down to the shops and done some shopping for the family, you know, grab some formula for Noah. What else did I get? Some chicken, bananas, all that jazz. You know, the stuff that we need for the next few days and a coffee for me, which is good. I normally go down to the beach and sort of enjoy my time down there to just sort of wake up, relax, do a little bit of work, some reading.

Read the book that I'm currently reading at the moment. As you know, I'm trying to sort of get much more deeply into Australian history as I love sharing that sort of stuff with you, guys. So, that's where I normally go and do my morning reading down at the beach there in the car park, sit in the car. You know, don't even get out of the car, all that. So, yeah, that's what I've been up to this morning and I thought I'd put up a request recently to ask you guys which episodes you like best of Aussie English, because I'm sort of trying to work out which ones to focus my attention on. So, we've got the expression episodes, the Goss episodes, interview episodes and then Aussie Fact episodes.

And it's interesting, seems like it's about an even spread where everyone seems to like all of them equally, or at least there are an equal proportion of people who like each of the episodes. So, thanks to all you guys on Instagram, Facebook and everything that got back to me that told me what you thought of these episodes. But yeah, it's interesting because I look at the stats on the podcast platform where I upload everything and they don't all get the same number of listens. And so it's always hard for me to know, are certain episodes listened to or downloaded more because they are more interesting because you guys enjoy them more?

Or is it because they're more complicated and you need to listen to the multiple times you need to download them multiple times in order to fully understand what's being spoken about or talked about, right? So, maybe interview episodes and the Goss episodes are good examples of that, where you listen to them multiple times, whereas the expression episode where it's just me talking or the Aussie Fact episode you listen to, you know, say once, because it's easy to understand and follow.

So, yeah, I'm always stuck between those two extremes. I can't tell, do certain episodes get downloaded less because they're easier and do other episodes get downloaded and listened to more because they're more complex? Or is it because you don't like certain episodes and you do like other episodes? So, that's the sort of position that I am stuck in. Anyway.

I think after sort of asking you guys about that, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing because it seems like people enjoy all of these episodes and for all of the reasons that I create them, right? They like the expression ones because there are the expressions that I teach you as well as I have a few little exercises in there for pronunciation. They like the Aussie English Fact episodes because they get to learn about Australian history, Australian culture and different aspects of Australia. They like the Goss episodes because they hear about current affairs and the news with my dad and I, you know, both talking as we would normally speak in a conversation.

And then they like interview episodes because they have different accents, people from different places, different countries, you know, in different areas in Australia talking about different topics. So, I guess I have a good spread currently and that you guys are enjoying them. So, I'll keep doing what I'm doing.

Aside from that today, I sort of wanted to get on here to give you guys my two cents to have a rant about Tiger King. Now, I wonder if you guys have seen the Tiger King TV series that's on Netflix at the moment. I just binge watched it. And I guess before we get too deeply into it. Spoiler alert. If you haven't seen this TV show, it's effectively about the big cat industry in America where people in America's insane, right?

You can buy tigers, you can buy lions, you can buy leopards, you can buy cougars. You can get all these animals that pretty much nowhere else in the world you can buy. And, so it's all about the big cat industry in the U.S and these eccentric, crazy characters, these these crazy people who are involved with the big cat industry one way or another. So, I'm going to talk about it. I recently binge watch the entire season. It was insane. But yeah, before we get into it, spoiler alert. If you want to go and see this, go watch it. Turn this episode off, because I'm going to be talking about what happens throughout the series.

If you want to watch it, stop this episode. Go and watch it because it's just mind blowing it. It is like a slow train wreck. It is like a slow car accident. It is disturbing, but it is fascinating. And you just can't turn it off. It's just it's just mind blowing. I tell you what, guys like I've never seen anything like it. Anyway, so let's get into it. Let's get into it.

So, there are a whole bunch of different characters here, right? I sat down the other day, we're obviously in quarantine. I'm stuck inside with my wife and with Noah. They're stuck inside with me as well and so each night we've been sort of watching different things on Netflix. Recently, we've been trying to get through Narcos, which is a really good series about the the drug war in Mexico and in Colombia, in parts of Central and South America and their interaction with the US, the United States.

And so they were effectively hunting people like what is named Felix Gallardo, I think his name is, and the other one is, you know, Pablo Escobar. You'll know about him, anyway, it's an interesting series. So, we've been watching that sort of one episode at a time and I'd been sort of keeping an eye out for something to watch next, after we finished the Narco series and so Tiger King had been coming up and getting all these really good ratings on Netflix kept being shown to me.

People kept ranting about it online. And I sort of saw a little bit and was like, you know what? I watched the trailer, I watched the trailer, and it was really interesting. And I was like, I don't want to hear anything more about this until I got a chance to watch it. Now, I sat down the other night with Kel to try and watch the first episode and she tapped out within 10 minutes. She couldn't handle it. She was like, this is too disturbing. So, I ended up watching the entire thing in, I think I probably watched one episode two nights ago and then last night I watched all of it.

So, the other six episodes or seven episodes, however many there are. And yes, so she turned off, she was like, I can't watch this because it's about the big cat industry in the US, usually the southern states, so places like Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Miami, those sorts of states where they have very lax laws, very relaxed laws with the kinds of animals you can have, their guns, you can own all of that sort of stuff. The US, I think, generally, tends to have that kind of pattern geographically where the eastern states, I want to say, were eastern and western states are the states on the coasts like, you know, the East Coast with New York and the West Coast with California, they tend to be more conservative in terms of their views of guns and cats, you know, owning cats and pets and stuff like that, I believe.

But they're more relaxed in terms of being able to buy drugs like cannabis, where as the sort of central and southern states like Oklahoma, Florida and Texas tend to be much more conservative in terms of, say, religion and libertarian in their views of the government. And so don't want the government to tell them what they can or can't do and they can buy things like, you know, crazy guns and big cats and, you know, all sorts of stuff that you would just never see anywhere else in the world.

So, yeah, this is set, I believe it's said in Oklahoma, at least based on the primary character, the protagonist of this TV show who is named Joe Exotic. And so his surname isn't actually Exotic, but he changes it to that. And this guy is just, he's off the planet, man. He is a completely different character and it's almost like this weird oxymoron. How would you say? Like, it's a very weird juxtaposition. It's a weird situation where southern states tend to be very conservative in terms of religion and politics.

And this guy, Joe Exotic, is both, he's two sides of the same coin, right? So, he's very conservative, he's a libertarian, he owns guns, he owns big cats. He wants the government to leave him alone. He's a bit of a redneck, so a bit of a what you would call a bogan in Australia. He's got a mullet, you know, that's bleached white. But at the same time, he's a gay man. He is incredibly flamboyantly, openly gay. He has multiple husbands, so he marries these two other men. And yeah, they're just two sides of a coin you don't normally see together, right?

Like you don't normally see people living in places like Oklahoma who are gun toting, big cat owning libertarians who are also incredibly flamboyantly gay with multiple husbands. So, for one, the protagonist of this TV show, he is just a crazy, crazy character. So, he owns this huge park and animal park and he has something like, you know, 200 different tigers and lions. He's got bears, he's got apes, he's got monkeys, he's got venomous snakes. It's just insane. You know, he's got this huge park, thousands of visitors come and they can see these animals and that's how he effectively makes his business.

Now, throughout the course of the series, they show that this guy is breeding cubs and selling them to other parks. And he's involved with these other parks around the country, all over the place who are doing similar sorts of things where they have, you know, crazy animals like tigers, elephants, lions. They're breeding them, they're using them in shows, and so there are a few other characters like Bhagavan Antle was one, Doc Antel from Myrtle Beach Safari. There was another guy called, where's his name here? Tim Stark, who's from a place called Wildlife in Need.

And they just have these crazy, huge zoos and, you know, animals that you would just never imagine owning privately in places like Australia or anywhere else in the world. So, Joe Exotic is this character where he's a narcissist. He's just seems to be a bit of a psycho. Like he seems to be very full of himself, he's just...he runs for president, he ends up running for governor, he's got his own TV show on the Internet. It's just nuts.

But effectively, so he's breeding these cats up and it shows, the series kind of gives you a look behind the scenes of how these cats are traded in their lives and how the industry is kind of pretty dark in terms of breeding these cats, and then using the kittens in order to be patted or have photographs taken with customers, with people who come to the zoo to see the animals. And so there's one really disturbing scene where they have this really young cub, I guess it's a tiger cub, and they're just like Joe Exotic is walking around, putting it right next to people's faces so that they can get a quick photo.

And he's obviously charging the money for this, but he's just walking from person to person, placing the cat on the left side of the face, you know, and then photo taken and then he does it again, photo taken.

And so it is just this crazy, you know, business setup where they're really exploiting these animals to make a profit. It's just insane. And so enter this other character whose name is Carole Baskin. And her sort of side of it, she comes from a place called Big Cat Rescue, where they're sort of the opposite side of the coin. They are all about taking care of the animals, they're a sanctuary, you know, they're kind of against these people who are breeding the animals and using them to try and make a lot of money, make a profit.

They're all about sort of rescuing the animals and taking care of them, because the issue in America is they have something like between five and ten thousand tigers, which is more than there are in the wild. And a lot of these people can buy these animals. You can buy them for about $2000, which is less than my parents paid for their Labrador.

You can buy a tiger in the US, right? To grand, $2000. That's a laptop. But the people buy them. And then after six months, they don't realise how quickly these animals grow and the amount of food that they need, the enclosures they need and so they end up having to get rid of them, putting them down, giving them away or, you know, sending them to places like Big Cat Rescue. And so this woman is also off the planet.

She's totally crazy in terms of how much she loves big cats and so everything she has, like leopard pants, leopard shirts, you know, the pattern of the cats, like tiger pattern, leopard patterns on pretty much every single thing that she owns. Her bike has spots on it. It's just crazy. So, she's the complete opposite of Joe Exotic. Joe is doing this because of ego, he wants to make money, he's just this crazy character, and Carol is the complete opposite where she wants to rescue her animals and she's playing the, you know, I care about animals card. She's very I'm a humanitarian. I give a shit about these animals way more than these other people who are exploiting them.

But the interesting thing is and you know, you kind of ask yourself that question during this TV show, who's worse? You know, the people like Bhagavan Antle or Joe Exotic who are exploiting these animals for money, or the people like Carol Baskin, who also have their own zoos with these animals where people can also pay to see the animals, and she's also making a lot of money from this business and is, you know, on social media, on YouTube, making videos very much in the media's eye. So it's really interesting in terms of trying to work out who the good guys and who are the bad guys.

The other crazy thing in this story is that it just gets weirder and weirder the more you watch. Caroline Baskin marries this guy who is a multi-millionaire and like 20 years older than her. So, she meets him when she's like 20, he's like 40 something with a family, he just leaves the family and ends up running off with Carol, marrying her and setting up this this sanctuary, the Big Cat Rescue, everything like that with the many millions of dollars that this guy has.

He's involved in some shady stuff down in places like, I think, Costa Rica, where he ends up wanting to leave Carol and go and live there. But he just disappears, so without a trace, he just disappears one day. And he is just a very, very bizarre situation where people are all thinking that Carol is the one who did him in. They all think that she probably fed him to a tiger and, so characters like Joe Exotic leap on this and start, it's just insane. Joe Exotic pays guys to write music for him.

And then he makes these music videos where it's him pretending to sing the songs. And he makes one song about how Carol Baskin has fed her husband to tigers. I think he calls it 'Here, kitty, kitty', It's just insane. It's just insane. And so he just goes on these tirades, you know, attacking her, saying that she's a murderer, that they're going to find the body. He's, you know, on his TV show at one point and has this mannequin dressed up as Carol and just pulls his gun out and shoots the mannequin in the head inside a building, like with his handgun. Just insane. Just insane. So, the show just goes through all of this, all of these relationships between these people.

Joe learns from one of his idols, who is Bhagavan Antle, Doc Antle, who has this huge fortress effectively set up. He has all these houses, he has this zoo, it's all in one place. He gets all these women to work for him and he effectively treats it like a harem where he is this, you know, overweight 50, 60 year old man. And he has something like three different women, you know, wives that are, I guess, in relationships with him to varying degrees.

They interview women who have left and they're like, yeah, he pressured us to have sex with him and, you know, get involved in a relationship with him like that in order to be able to work at the park and, you know, work with these big cats. And so you see all these people who get involved with with these parks and they just seem to be the strangest kind of people. You know, they... It's just insane.

Joe Exotic really admires Doc Antle and the life that he has set up. And so copy's him, he ends up marrying two different men. One of them's called John Finley and the other one was, his first name was Travis. And it turns out that both these guys aren't actually gay, but that Joe Exotic is doing all these drugs, things like meth and cocaine and cannabis, and because he has all the money, these guys want to stay and have access to those drugs and the lifestyle with guns and big cats that they just accept being in a homosexual relationship with Joe Exotic.

And so one of them ends up running off with one of the women who work at the place and the other one ends up committing suicide, as I think, I think it was a joke. So, and it was caught on video where he was sitting there talking to one of the guys who works for Joe Exotic and pretends to put the gun to his head, saying there's no clip in the gun, so it can't go off and then shoots himself in the head and kills himself.

It's tragic. But then the crazy thing is, so Joe exotic has his heart broken, you know, his husband, one of his husbands left months before that or years before that. And then his other husband has committed suicide, whether accidentally or intentionally. And then within two months, he's married to another guy that he's found online who's incredibly young. Joe's like in his 50s and the next guy that comes along, as, you know, late teens or early 20s anyway. So, just an absolutely insane TV show that I wanted to tell you guys about and share it with any of you guys who've been watching it to see your view of the TV show.

Because it kind of ends with the sour taste in your mouth. I guess, the ending is that Joe Exotic brings these people into his park who are kind of shady criminal characters that have a lot of money. Joe's feeling the pinch because he's been taken to court by Carol. He's been ordered to pay a million dollars to Carol for breaching her copyright and, you know, doing all these malicious things to her and her brand.

He brings these guys on, he does all these things like changing his name, trying to move the business around so that he doesn't have to pay money. The ironic thing is that the only way for him to pay Carol money, and this is the woman who has the Big Cat Rescue place that is against exploitation of animals, the only way for him to pay her is to exploit animals. And so, again, it's one of these situations where you're like, who's good guy? Who's the bad guy?

Do all these people just want money and fame? Right? It's just crazy. So, he brings on all these people. He ends up losing his park and he gets involved with some of the workers there and they sort of capture him in a plot to hire one of the workers to kill Carol Baskin.

And so the FBI get involved. They do an undercover case and they end up putting him in jail for, at least, first trying to kill Carol and then they find another 20 or so offences that he's done with animals, including shooting some of his cats that got too sick and he didn't want to have to pay the bills for the vet and a bunch of other things.

And so he ends up going to jail for 22 years. Just crazy. Just crazy. So, yeah, I would get on here and tell you about this series that I've seen because there's just nothing else I've ever seen like it. It's just insane. Never seen anything like this series. And I just don't know what to make of it. You watch it, an episode after episode, you're just left thinking how much further down hill can this go? Like it's just a derailed train. It's just crazy. And then also you see all these different characters and how complex they are, you know?

Are they good? Are they bad? Are they narcissistic? Are they doing it for themselves? Are they, you know, addicted to drugs and trapped in this lifestyle? Are they doing it because they just love the animals?

It's just, it's just crazy. It's just crazy. So, I was left after this whole series, you're just left gobsmacked. You know, awe struck. You just they're kind of like, I don't know what I just saw. And I'm going to have to sit and think about and digest this series for a few days to come. So, yeah, I guess that's probably also why I wanted to make this episode and talk about it with you guys.

Yeah. I think the biggest thing that I sort of took away from it was just an overall sense of feeling sad, sad at how the animals are treated first and foremost. Sad that, you know, there are more tigers and lions in America than there are potentially in the wild, at least with regards to tigers. I don't know about lions, but definitely tigers. The lives they live are just horrible. Then all of these people who I guess they get started loving the animals. You know, we see some early videos of Joe Exotic and people like Carol Baskin and they get in there for the right reasons. They care about the animals, they want to educate, but then how much they kind of just go off the deep end and end up extremes one way or the other. And, you know, in it for themselves, wanting money, wanting fame, craving that sort of stuff.

You then get to see the people who want to work for these big cat zoo owners and how, you know, Carol Baskin has this huge army of volunteers, none of whom she really knows, and they don't get paid. And then Joe Exotic has all these people working for him for like $100 a week. You know, it was like effectively slave labour.

Again, another crazy aspect of America not having the minimum wage and people being able to be paid like $2 an hour. And yeah, you just feel sorry for all of them. You feel sorry for these women and these guys were in relationships with these, you know, eccentric, bigger than life characters who get sucked in to their lifestyle, their personalities, and just get, you know, kind of chewed up and spat out at the end.

So, it was an interesting series, guys. But yeah, I thought it would be a good chance to get on here and talk about it. Have a sort of just informal chat with you guys. Talk about a topic that I definitely have never talked about before on the podcast. Give you a chance to hear different expressions and vocab and also learn about American culture.

Some of these strange aspects of American culture and the way in which we in Australia would view those aspects, you know, gun ownership, marry multiple people, although I'm not sure that's legal in America, owning big cats, you know, private zoos, just insane. So, with that, guys, hopefully you enjoyed this episode. I'd love to know from you guys what you think. You know, put a comment somewhere. Let me know what you think of this TV show, if you've seen it. Who was the good guy? Who was the bad guy? And I will chat to you soon. Peace!

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WWP - What's been going on in my life recently.mp3 transcript powered by Sonix—the best automated transcription service in 2020. Easily convert your audio to text with Sonix.

WWP - What's been going on in my life recently.mp3 was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best way to convert your audio to text. Our automated transcription algorithms works with many of the popular audio file formats.

What is going on, guy? It is 10pm on a Friday night and I thought I would sit down and have a little heart to heart with you guys, have a little chat. Give the update, give the news about what's going on in my life, where things are headed and what I'm wanting to do with Aussie English. So, it's been a good year. I guess I'll start with New Year's, you know. We'll start at the beginning of the year. So, New Year's came around and I thought, you know what?

I've put on way too much weight, over the last two years are probably gained 10 kilos since moving to Canberra with Kel, you kind of fall off the wagon, right? You stop, you know, doing the behaviours that you were doing previously. The hobbies you were doing, you know, I used to go to the gym every day when I was single, I used to go and work out, I would do Jiu Jitsu. I would run, I would do all this stuff when I was living in Melbourne. In those circumstances, whilst studying often because I was trying to escape from the desk and studying all day, so I would go and work out, but once moving to Canberra with Kel, you know, I kind of had to trade those things off and we moved around Canberra a whole heap, so it was sort of hard to get set up.

And then after six months, as you guys know, the Brazilian Embassy no longer had funds to pay for Kel's visa, and so in order for her to get on a visa, in order to stay in the country, she had to quit her job, that she'd worked so hard to sort of get secure, and then on the job, she was working really hard, she had to quit it, moved back to Melbourne and study Business. So, that's why we're back down here in Ocean Grove, which is near Melbourne.

And she's up there once or twice a week studying away, doing some business and marketing stuff in the CBD there, although I think that's now from home, considering the Corona virus, you know, had to bring that up. Sorry, again, guys. Sorry if I've been talking about that way too much on the Goss episodes, which I hope you're liking. It's just that obviously that's pretty much all it's in the news at the moment.

And there always seems to be something crazy happening, right? You know, people bulk buying toilet paper, fighting in supermarkets over groceries, stripping the shelves bare like all sorts of crazy stuff's going on, like bussing in to rural towns and buying all of their supplies out of their stores, it's crazy. Anyway, I'll try and avoid talking about that as much as I have recently, although, obviously, it's probably still important to mention and keep you guys updated if you're not already watching the news.

And if you want to keep updated on that stuff, guys, make sure to check out ABC YouTube channel. They always have a live stream with the news 24/7. So, go check that on ABC on YouTube. Anyway, so I gained too much weight, I haven't been training, which is why I've gained weight and I've also let my diet go, I was probably drinking too much beer, I was eating too much food and it's one of those things where you start eating junk food and it's like a treat initially, and then all of a sudden it's every day or every other day and then every day and all of a sudden you're eating ice cream and desserts all the time and you gain weight.

So, this year for my New Year's resolution, I thought, you know what, I'm going to stop drinking completely and I'll stop eating junk food completely. And so that has lasted until probably this last week. I started drinking a little bit of red wine because Kel likes to drink red wine, but she doesn't like to drink alone. And I have nothing against wine, wine is not the end of the world. So, I don't mind having a glass or two of that a week with Kel. So, I'm back on the wagon. Off the wagon? No, I've fallen off the wagon.

That's the expression with not drinking. So, I'm back on...God, even I get confused. Yeah, fallen off the wagon. So, I'm no longer not drinking. However, I have continued with my good diet and I haven't been eating that much junk food, if any. I think the closest thing I've had is a few chips, a few deep fried chips.

Sometimes when we go out, if I end up choosing a dish that comes with them, I've tried to stop eating burgers and I chocolate wise, the only thing I've had is dark chocolate like 80 per cent, 85 per cent Lindt dark chocolate, that stuff is the bomb. That stuff is awesome! So yeah, I lost about 5 kilos, I'm down to, I think probably 85, maybe 84, 85 now, almost got to 90 kilos. I was pretty ashamed of myself cause I've never passed 90 before.

So, I'm going to try and lose weight. That's, you know, the thing. But the most annoying thing with obviously the Corona virus is that I literally started at the gym, started training maybe two or three weeks ago, just as the Corona virus first got to Australia and started becoming a more obvious threat. And then they were like, you know, we're not going to let the Chinese students come back to Australia where suggesting that gyms can close and restaurants don't have 100 people, all that sort of stuff.

So, I was like, oh God, now I'm in a fall off the wagon with exercise because I won't be able to go to the gym, or if I do go to the gym, I'll be likely to contract an illness of some kind, the flu, even if it's not Corona virus. So, I have to decide what's going on now. I guess, I've bought hand sanitiser, not not in bulk. Not in bulk. Don't panic.

I'm just having to use that more often. So, yeah, that's where I've been at health wise. And just trying to get fitter, trying to be more active, because I think once you start having children, if you don't get your house sorted out, if you don't get things in order in terms of exercise and diet, I think like my family, my my parents, sort of what happened with them, they lost their healthy diet and their rigorous exercise regimes once they started having young children because they were more focussed on that and working full time.

So, I tell you what, that is definitely a struggle. I didn't appreciate just how hard it is to balance things when you have a family. You know, when you have your first child. So, that has been something that I've tried, I'm trying now to wrap my head around and, you know, get a grasp of get a hold on. I'm trying to keep up my exercise every single day, do a little bit of something, if not go to the gym, try and eat well, eat healthily, as well as make sure that I'm giving Noah the healthiest food possible.

You know, maybe a treat every now and then, but give him the healthy food and also manage my time where I'm working as much as I can on Aussie English during the day, but also taking breaks, hanging out with the family, trying not to forget to go out of my way to spend time with Noah. Not just in the evening because he goes to bed early, and yeah, if I just spend all day at work, I would probably never get to see him before weekends. So, that's where that is.

I've been reading a lot more too. I'm trying to improve my Portuguese, I think like a lot of you guys, I hit a plateau, I speak it at home most of the time, although English is starting to creep in a bit more at the moment because Kel wants to speak a bit more English, I think. And yeah, Portuguese is probably at the level of English in terms of talking about everyday things in the house, right? Not having the most crazy sophisticated conversations, but, you know, asking do you want some groceries from the shops? or Do you want me to change the diaper? Do you want me to go to the gym? Do you want to go out? Whatever it is, all those sorts of easy things to talk about.

I think English and Portuguese is probably at the same level now, but I've definitely noticed that it's always the same stuff that I'm talking about. So, I have to come up with a plan of attack to expand my Portuguese to really take it to the next level. And I think a lot of you guys probably understand being stuck at that sort of upper intermediate, advanced, beginner advanced area, I guess beginner advanced.

It's just the beginning of the advanced area in a language where if I don't do anything more in Portuguese, I won't have a hard time getting by if I was to go to Brazil or Portugal or meet people and have simple conversations. But I'm not 100 per cent satisfied with that. I know I can do better, right? I know I can put more work in and really improve.

So, the plan of attack that I guess I've come up with is to read as much as possible, but then also discuss more complicated new topics with Kel as much as possible, and that is kind of what made me decide to begin the Goss episodes that I hope you guys have been enjoying. It made me begin those with my dad because I was noticing that Aussie English was sort of the same staff quite often, right?

I would try and talk a little bit about my life in the expression episodes and then we'd go through the expressions and I would try and talk about different, different things situations, but I was like, you know, if I talk about the news or current affairs or I have another speaker on the podcast who can talk about their life experiences, it's going to give you guys access to a lot more advanced vocab as well as, you know, heaps and heaps of different topics. And you'll hopefully get to develop your own opinions about those topics as well as learn to talk about them at the same time.

So, that was why I decided to do that, and because I wanted to have multiple people on the podcast, so you guys had to get used to hearing two people having a conversation instead of me behind the microphone, either, you know, going off dot points, reading out sort of off a transcript for the Aussie Fact Episodes or just as a stream of consciousness like now, where I'm just sort of peeking off the top of my head, but it's just one person. You don't have interruptions, you don't have spontaneous conversation, a spontaneous exchange. So, that's why I think the Goss episodes are really important.

But I want to get your feedback on those, obviously. I keep sending out emails and asking you to reply and let me know what you think. And fortunately, well, fortunately, whatever all of the responses I've had have been positive so far. So, I really appreciate that, guys, but I'm trying to come up with a way of making them more palatable. I guess, that is making them more consumable, so that you guys can consume that content more easily, because at the moment they're either on the podcast, as you know, the first 25, 30 minutes of the episode or they're the full hour episode, give or take, that's on the Premium Podcast, When you sign up for that.

And I'm thinking about trying to divide the episodes up into lessons that, you know, cover each of the topics, the major topics that we talk about in each episode so that, you know, if in one episode we talk about five different topics on the news, you don't have to sit through the entire thing. You can click through the different lessons if you want to learn about different vocab.

So I'm trying to think about how I can do that and turn those into lessons with vocab and interesting expressions. It's just all a lot of work, it's a lot of work to try and do that, so again, I guess that comes back to me working out my time management and maybe outsourcing and trying to get someone to help me with that. But that's where currently things are.

I'm also thinking about putting together an app with my team, Praveen and Amit. So, those guys are based in India and they've been working really hard probably for the last two or three years now behind the scenes in Aussie English. So, I want to give a big shout out to both Praveen and Amit. I really appreciate all that they've done.

You know, without them, this isn't possible because they're doing all of the behind the scenes technical I.T. stuff that I just cannot do on my own. So, I really appreciate their help. And yeah, we're thinking about putting an app together. So, we want to create an app, but I'm going to have to save up because I think that is going to cost somewhere between 5 and 7 thousand to organise, mostly in terms of time.

But I get the feeling it's going to be the most useful use of my resources, but the most useful thing for you guys, because I think a lot of you are accessing the content on your phones, but you have to use different podcast players or apps or you have to use the website via Safari or Chrome or something on your phone.

So, I'm going to try and save up some money and put that aside for the application, so that you can access everything. The free podcast, the courses, the Academy and the Premium Podcast, all of that stuff via an application on your phone. So, hopefully that's coming this year as well. In fact, I just had a chat with Praveen and Amit about that and they're going to get me a budget and a plan together and hopefully we'll move forward with that.

So yeah, that's sort of where things are. What else? Or I just met Alex, the winner of the Aussie English competition. So, that was really cool. I got the car ready and I took that into the station to give to him yesterday. So, the Geelong Station, got to meet him there.

He was a lovely guy, he's from Russia. He just got to Australia to Canberra on I think it's a 190 visa, aand he brought over his wife and five year old son. So they, I guess, uprooted their lives in Russia and moved over to Australia just in time before all of the Corona virus stuff that I think came into place an hour ago, in fact, an hour ago, 9:00 p.m. on Friday night, right?

Where all international travel travellers can no longer come into Australia. So, anyway, Alex, again, I'm so glad that you got the car. I'm so glad it's going to help you establish your life and get set up in Canberra. I know you're still looking for a house and everything. Unfortunately, I couldn't give away a house, but I hope that goes well in Canberra.

Good luck, mate. But yeah, I hope you guys took part in the competition. And again, I'm sorry if you guys missed out on winning any of the prises. It was really hard for Kel to decide who was going to get first place, second place and third place with the criteria being that I just wanted to make the biggest difference possible to three people's lives as I could.

So yeah, anyway, that was just a little something that I could do to give back to you guys who've supported me and allowed me to do everything with my family and lived the life that I currently live. So, yeah. Massive thanks to you guys. Massive thanks to you guys. Trying to think what else is going to happen this year? What else is being planned? I guess holidays and everything like that. We were thinking of going to Brazil at the end of the year, we were thinking of, we'd bought tickets for, I think, the end of August and we were going be there for three or four weeks.

But now, obviously, everything is up in air, you know? It's up in the air. We don't know what we're going to be doing. We don't know what the state of affairs is going to be in six months, let alone let alone a month, right? So, yeah, I don't know if that's going to go ahead or not. Hopefully if it doesn't, we get a refund. But yeah, I was looking forward to going overseas and I think domestically too, you know, in Australia we probably can't go on too many holidays around the place as everyone is sort of self isolating.

So, it is pretty interesting. I have no idea what to expect of the next few months. Hopefully all of the countries around the world, not just Australia, kind of curtail this virus and the degree to which it's spreading and killing people. But yeah, I guess in this time, guys, I hope all of you stay safe and healthy and just take care of yourselves and your families.

But that is probably about it. To be honest, with an update on everything, all aside from everything that I've gone through, I'm also just trying to read and learn a lot more about Australian history so that I can interview more people on the topic. And I have actually recently interviewed four different women, all Australians.

So, I'm looking forward to releasing those interviews, but I thought I haven't got enough women on the podcast recently, so I went out of my way and found a whole bunch of women, one of them is a scientist and science communicator from Melbourne Uni. The other was an actress from the US, she moved there from Adelaide and is currently a full-time actress. There was a realtor who helps people rent their houses, and the fourth one was an English teacher who's married to a Frenchman and is just about to move to Canada.

So, I thought it would be cool to talk about her experience ending up in a relationship with a foreigner, as well as moving to a foreign country and raising children bilingual. So, keep an eye out for those episodes, which will be up in the next few weeks and months. But aside from that, guys, I guess I just want to say thank you so much again for all of your support.

I know that a lot of you guys are probably in a similar position to me, probably worse in terms of not knowing what the future holds currently with study, with work, and yeah, I just hope everything goes well. I hope you're all good, I hope you all get through it and all of your families get through it unscathed and healthy. But with that, guys, thanks for joining me, I really appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed this episode where I got to sort of give you guys a heart to heart. Tell you what I've been up to, what the plans are, and I'll talk to you soon, peace out!

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AE 631 - WWP- 2019 Recap and Plans for 2020.mp3 transcript powered by Sonix—the best audio to text transcription service

AE 631 - WWP- 2019 Recap and Plans for 2020.mp3 was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best way to convert your audio to text in 2020.

My God, guys, 2020! Hold on, hold on. I'm back, I'm back, don't panic.

Guys, it is 2020. Are you pumped? Are you excited? So, today I'm doing this Walking with Pete episode inside because I tried to do it outside and walked around recording the episode, talking for about 15 minutes by myself, only to discover later that the recording was atrocious.

It was horrible. For some reason there was lots of background noise, it just hadn't picked up my voice very well. The...how do you say it? Lavalier. I always think lavalier or something in French. The Lavaliere mike wasn't working very well, so obviously I have to do the episode again. I don't want to put you guys through horrible audio, at least as much as I can avoid.

So, there are a few things I wanted to talk to you about today. I guess, I wanted to talk about 2019 and sort of wrap that year up. I want to talk about how my Christmas and New Year's were and I also obviously want to talk about 2020 and what is planned, what we have ahead. So, 2019, what a great year!

So, I guess at the start of 2019, KeL and I had been married for about a month, maybe a month and a half. We had moved into our house less than a month before 2019 began. That was amazing. You know, we got a four bedroom house down here near my parents, near my sister and her family on the coast, near the beach. You know, back in my old home town, my old stomping ground where I grew up. It's great to be back, but yeah, got the house. What else did we do after that? We're pretty much smashed out working on Aussie English all year round. And obviously, for the first half of the year, Kel spent those six months getting bigger and bigger and bigger with Noah on the way.

Come the middle of the year, obviously, Noah was born. He popped out after some troublesome time at the hospital. That was an arduous three days there, definitely for Kel, a little bit less for me, seeing as I wasn't giving birth. But yeah, that was definitely a process. Far out! I tell you what, we thought we were going in there, we would smash it out, we'd get it done really quick. We ended up, I think, staying the night in a birth suite. Kel was going through contractions, but they weren't close enough. So, in fact, no, she had had her waters break. She wasn't going through contractions yet. The next morning she was meant to be induced. They took an extra five hours from when they said they were going to induce her at 7 am and arrived, I think at like 1:00 pm.

So, maybe six hours and then finally induced her. Then we stayed all night until the early next morning, trying different things to get the birth progressing and Noah was finally born on the morning of I think it was a Sunday. So, we came in on the Friday stayed Saturday and then it was late Saturday night or very, very early Sunday morning that he was finally born. And then she had to stay all of Sunday. And then we went out by Monday. And yeah, it's very weird feeling when you just get to leave the hospital holding another human being and, you know, you don't have to register with anyone, and you don't have to ask permission. You don't need to tell the cops, you don't need to do it, like they just let you walk out, right? And you drive home.

And I remember there was a funny point there, where Kel was like, before giving birth, Kel was saying 'maybe we can get the car seat after after the birth', and I was like, 'Kel, how are we going tp get Noah home?'. Because it just hadn't clicked to her, obviously, that we're going to have another person with us that will need to put in a safe seat in the car to drive home.

So, yeah, far out. The first few months of that were pretty, pretty full on, definitely way more full on for Kel, as she was having to get up at ungodly hours every single night to feed Noah. So, while probably the first two months were like that, it got better and better and better. So, he was requiring a lot of breastfeeding during the night and then it got sort of fewer and fewer feeds and he would sleep longer and longer periods. He started getting into a routine. Breastfeeding was hard at first for Kel, but it got better. And then, yeah, I guess speeding, speeding all the way forward to where we are now, Noah is about to turn seven months. He's a cheeky little guy, but he sleeps almost completely through the night. And today we have just gotten back from a suburb nearby, Warn Ponds, which is near Geelong, and we drove in there because they've got this huge warehouse for baby stuff and we've bought a little playpen.

So, I call it the prison because this is where we can put Noah now, because only yesterday did he start crawling. Now, sorry to talk all baby stuff, but obviously this was a big 2019. A funny thing with babies learning things, it's it's almost like they spent all this time trying, trying, trying. So, Noah has been trying to crawl for months now, probably two months. He's been trying to move. You know, he can roll over, he's getting really good at that, but he's been finding it difficult to move forward or move backwards and, you know, actually propel himself under his own control and strength.

Yesterday, he finally worked out how to do it, or at least a little bit. He went to bed where he had a nap after he'd been, you know, shoving himself around a little bit forwards and backwards. And then when he woke up, all of a sudden, he could just crawled. So, it was very bizarre and Kel I realised we had to go out and get a playpen or a prison, a baby prison, to keep him under control because he had started crawling around all over the house now. And, so you can't turn your back on him without him disappearing in some direction. So, to keep him out of all of our stuff, we've got a fence. We set it up just now and put him in and he seems to not know the difference. He doesn't know he's a prisoner yet, right? Probably the best kind of prisoner.

So, yeah, we did that. The rest of the year, far out, we've just been at home working on being a family and raising Noah really and saving as much money as possible. We're trying to buy a house, we want to save up for a house. You guys may have listened to the recent episode I did with James maybe a month or two ago, where we were talking about putting together a deposit and wanting to get my parents to be guarantor for Kel and I, so that we could buy a house.

Now, we went through that process after recording that episode and the banks wouldn't lend us, they they would lend us barely anything. You know, I think it was like a hundred thousand dollars or something like that, it was close to nothing. And the reason for that is because my income report for the last, or my tax return for the last two years, they average those and my average income was something like fifty thousand a year, right? So, that's less than the average Australian makes.

And on top of that, to compound things, Kel doesn't have a job currently that she's getting paid for. She's got more than a full time job with Noah, but she doesn't have a job where she's got an income. And, so our family incomes obviously not enough to get a decent loan. So, long story short, in a nutshell, we're probably going to have to wait until the middle of this year to do the next tax return. And then, hopefully, the income will have increased enough that I'll be able to show the banks or show a mortgage broker or something that we're, as a couple, where earning enough money to now get a better loan and then buy a house.

The only problem with this, you know, getting trapped in the rental market, as I'm sure lots of you guys know already, is that you spend a lot of money on rent. And so it's it's been really difficult to save up money, right? We've been trying to cut expenses recently, you know, not go out as much for restaurant meals or, you know, go into the pub or going to cafes, we were doing that less and less and less. And we're trying to save as much money as possible to put together a deposit. And yeah, it's just very difficult when you have to pay rent and you got expenses. You got a baby, but, you know, hopefully it'll all come together this year. Hopefully we'll see what happens.

The difficult part, though, is that house prices keep going up, at least in Ocean Grove where I am. So, the average house here is probably seven hundred thousand, probably more, and so, yeah, it's very difficult to get together a 10 or 20 per cent deposit, right? 70 or a hundred and forty thousand dollars, and be able to get in to the housing market.

So, aside from that, moving on to Christmas. Christmas was good. I definitely...what would you say? I was very gluttonous, I think, during Christmas. I ate a lot of food. I drank a lot of drinks. Both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. So, we definitely indulged a little more than we should. Me more so than Kel and definitely more so than Noah. He's still not really on any junk food at all. But yeah, it's been a big a big Christmas.

Lots of different family, family gatherings, family parties, which has been interesting. So, if you guys, I don't know how you celebrate Christmas, if you celebrate it wherever you guys are. But here for me, as someone who's not religious and who's most of my family isn't religious, we still celebrate it because it's a common holiday here in Australia where you just want to get together with the family, you want to show that you're thankful. You know, it's kind of like Thanksgiving, I guess, for us. But Thanksgiving is an American holiday. So, yeah, lots and lots of little parties, catching up with people, exchanging gifts.

Noah had his first Christmas. He definitely got a tidy haul of presents from the family. Everyone seemed to give him heaps of gifts, both new and second hand. And yeah, I don't know. Santa didn't really bring us anything too crazy. Not that I can really remember. Mostly loads of food and drink and a little bit of money to spend on Noah. So, yeah, it's been a good Christmas. We had New Year's Eve the other night where we spent that with my family and some family friends and my parents place. And I watched the fireworks on the news before going to bed because I was pretty wrecked. And it was interesting because a lot of the other fireworks around Australia in the East Coast at the moment, you guys will know, there's loads of bushfires, and so a lot of the fireworks were actually cancelled, but the Sydney fireworks continued, so they didn't disappoint.

Over a million people standing around Sydney Harbour waiting to watch the fireworks over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House and everything, because that would have been a bit iffy. I think if they had decided to cancel, to cancel those fireworks. So, yeah, we brought in the new year. And my biggest thing, I guess, is I tend to try and have some kind of New Year's resolution. So, a New Year's resolution, obviously, you guys will probably know what this is, but it is where you make a resolution, you decide that you want to do something to make a significant change, you know, could be eating less, could be going to the gym, could be spending more time with the family, could be working harder. You know, it could be anything.

But I tried to have the New Year's resolution of eating healthily for a year. So, I mean, I', going to try not to drink any alcohol. I mean, I'm going to try not to eat any junk food. And I'm going to try to lose ten kilos this year, hopefully in the first half of this year, but we'll see how that goes, right? New Year's resolutions are notorious for not being held to, people tend to fall off the wagon, I think, after a few months, usually. But we'll see how we go.

So, yeah, aside from that, Aussie English did really well last year. Guys, you know, big thanks to all of you guys listening to Aussie English, buying the courses, purchasing the subscriptions to the podcast or to the academy guys.

We have like six hundred members in there now, which is absolutely amazing. I've got bigger plans. I want to improve things, I want to make things more about Australia, you know, give you guys more culture, more history, more current affairs. On that note, on the current affairs note, as in with regards to current affairs, I've spoke to my dad yesterday about potentially co-hosting an episode once a week or once a fortnight on Aussie English, where we can chat together about current affairs. I'm going to try and do that this year. That'll be a good change, I think, where we can keep track of what's happening in the news, what's happening in Australia, and discuss that with you guys listening, so that you guys can form opinions about these issues or events or things that are happening and you can learn vocab about those things and then you can also have the ability to discuss them with other Australians or with other friends.

So, hopefully, that's going to be a lot of fun and goes forward. Apart from that, their other plan is to get an application together, so you can access the Academy and the podcast on your phone. And what else? What else, what else? I want to release some more courses and I just want to keep improving the podcast and make it better and better and better.

So, this is the part where I ask for your help, guys, where I ask for your feedback. If you have any suggestions for how I can improve the podcast and make it better, better help you, better educate you, better teach you about Australia, better teaching English, whatever it is, if you have any ideas for how you would like the podcast to change, what I should keep doing, what I should do more of, or what I should suddenly, you know, include to really help you even more, please send me an email at theaussieenglishpodcast@g-mail.com, ok? You can email me there at anytime and I want your feedback.

Aside from that, send me a comment on Facebook or wherever you see this podcast posted or send me a message, even if it's on www.AussieEnglish.com.au, even if it's on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube wherever it is, ok? So, get in contact with me if you have any feedback for how I can improve Aussie English and help you improve your English and life in Australia 2020.

That's probably enough for this episode, guys. So, I hope you've enjoyed it. I wish you a very, very happy new year and hope that it brings everything that you deserve and that you want in your life this year. So, with that, guys, thanks for joining me and I'll chat to you later. See ya.

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