Learn Australian English in this Walking with Pete episode where I tell you about what’s going on in my world and what’s planned for Aussie English in 2020!

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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!