Learn Australian English in this Walking with Pete episode where I recap the year 2019 and tell you about Aussie English’s plans for 2020!

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.