Kuli English Podcast

017 Two Tips for Telling Stories

• Chris • Season 1 • Episode 17

Share episode

In this episode, I talk about my main two tips for how to tell stories in English: put in feelings, and put in checkpoints!

Hello everyone and welcome back to Kuli English Podcast, it's me, your host, Chris. So today is Friday, August 1st, and this episode is episode 17, and it's going to go up on August 5th, which is a Tuesday, because remember, there are new episodes every Tuesday for Kuli English Podcast.

So today, I want to start out by talking about something that one of my students told me.

So I am like a freelance English teacher, and sometimes I teach private lessons for English, and something that one of my students told me is, and this is, there's kind of two parts to this, but the first part was, Chris, your English is so easy to understand. And when I heard that, I was like, oh, that's nice, that's really nice. Like that's like my goal.

Okay, so as an English teacher, my job is to try to help students understand English, and you know, if the English that I say is easy to understand, then that means I'm doing a good job. But there's a second part to this, okay? So the first part was, Chris, your English is easy to understand, but, and then here comes part two, but I don't really understand when other people are speaking English. So like that student, you know, we meet every now and then, and I talk, and then we talk, and things are okay, but then when they actually go out into the real world and do stuff and talk to other English speakers, then sometimes they don't really understand.

And so that kind of sucks, like I know that that must feel a little bit disappointing, because you know, if you spend all this effort trying to learn English, like you study vocabulary, you watch videos, you study, and then, you know, you go out in the real world, and you're like, okay, so I can do this, I can do this, and then, oh, I don't understand. And then, you know, sometimes when you don't understand stuff in conversations, like you kind of get into this like passive mode. So passive, meaning like you don't really do anything, and you just say, oh, yeah, okay.

And maybe you don't really understand, or maybe you're not interested, but it's just too awkward to say anything else, so you just say, oh, yeah, okay, uh-huh, yeah, and sometimes you laugh like, hehehe, like an awkward laughter. 

And I super know how that feels, because I've been through the exact same thing in Japanese. Like sometimes some people are just really easy to understand, and then that kind of gives you this confidence, where you're like, oh, yeah, I'm getting good at this, but then like you meet someone else, and they're just like really hard to understand, and then like the confidence just goes right back down to like pretty low, and you're like, oh, no, okay, so, mada mada da ne, like, oh, it's not yet, I'm not good yet.

And so actually, I think my response to this, I have like kind of like a bunch of different thoughts on this, but one of the main things is I should mention that in this podcast, I speak with like what I call Kuli English level, and Kuli English level is like actually, it's not that low, okay, it's actually pretty high, because if you listen to like the speed at which I talk, it's not that slow, okay, so there are other podcasts and other like YouTube videos, and the way that they say stuff, it's really slow, it's really, really slow. 

It's like, today, I went to the convenience store and purchased a banana, and they say like so slowly, but it goes like so slow that I think it's kind of boring, so I don't want to do that. And then also, if you like look at the words that I use, I try to avoid using really hard words, but at the same time, sometimes I do use like kind of weird words that aren't the easiest version, and that's just because, I don't know, it's part of like the spirit of Kuli English podcast, it's kind of the energy, so if I make everything too easy, then it's maybe, I think it's not that fun. So actually, the level of Kuli English podcast is like, I would imagine if there was a Japanese person who like, I think most people that grew up in Japan, they don't care about English, and then they go to like probably, you know, high school or college, and at some point, they're like, oh, shoot, I realized that English is actually like useful for me.

And then they want to learn English so that they can travel abroad or something. And if you have traveled abroad for, I don't know, let's say like maybe a year or two years, and then you come back to Japan, then probably like Kuli English level is probably about right for you. And if you are in Japan and you have never been abroad, my guess for the average level is Kuli English podcast is a little bit hard for you.

And, you know, that's OK, because, you know, like sometimes you want to challenge yourself with harder stuff and that's good, or sometimes you're like, no, it's too hard, so I'm just going to quit. And that's fine. I don't want you to to like feel tired on this.

But back to what my students said, I think actually I wanted to spend this episode talking about certain tactics, tactics meaning like tricks or like strategies that I use to try to make my English easier to understand. And again, these are all my personal recommendations. So, you know, I'm not like an expert on public speaking.

That's not my job. OK, my specialty in college was something else. Electrical engineering and computer science, it has nothing to do with like language stuff.

But, you know, this is also based on my like personal experience. And after coming to Japan, I thought a lot about language stuff. I spent a lot of effort learning Japanese.

I spent a lot of effort teaching English. So like you can take, you know, my two and a half years of experience and I'll try to give it to you in a way that's like actually something that you can use. But of course, you know, like some stuff doesn't work for everybody.

So if you try to do something that I do and it doesn't work for you, then, you know, like I'm sorry. But if it works for you, then that's great. And I think it's also just good to think about it and to think about, OK, is this something that I can do or is this something that I want to do? And, you know, we can see how that goes.

So let's go ahead and get started with that. But after the short little music break.

All right, so let's go ahead and get started.

So what I want to do in this episode is I want to talk about a couple different strategies that you can use to try to make your English easier to understand. And again, these are my personal recommendations. And what I want to do to show these is what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about a couple different stories.

They're all like really tiny, tiny stories. And I'm going to show you the version of the story without using the tactic. And then the second version of the story, which is I actually do the tactic or like the strategy, the recommendation.

So the first recommendation that I have to make your English easier to understand is to really focus on the feelings. And what I mean by that is like, if you are talking about some story where you were really happy, then make sure you talk a lot about how happy you were, like how happy were you? Were you like very happy or like kind of happy? And a lot of these things, it doesn't even actually change the actual words that you say. It's just the way you say it.

So it's kind of like if you want to tell people this story about how happy you were, but you aren't sure how to use your English words to make it into like a properly grammatically correct sentence and stuff, then it's OK because you can compensate. You can make up for it by just putting in more feeling. And let me give an example of that.

So I'm going to talk to you about Gong Cha and I'm going to tell you two different versions of the same story. So the first one is I'm going to try to just keep it very simple and focus on the plot. And it's not really going to talk much about my feelings.

So I'm going to talk about Gong Cha and Gong Cha, if you don't know, it's like a bubble tea store. So they sell like milk tea, also called bubble tea. And Gong Cha, I always order the exact same thing every time I go.

I always get the taro milk tea and I get it medium or large, and then I get it with a reduced sugar and I get it with reduced ice. And if you get zero ice, then you have to pay a little bit more. It's 80 yen more because you get more liquid.

And then I add milk foam and sometimes I add boba. And then when I get that, that's my favorite drink. And every time I drink it, it's really good.

And sometimes I show my friends and I have them try it and they don't think it's that amazing, but I think it's really good.

So that's that's the first version, OK? It was very calm. I didn't put that much feeling into it, but I did talk about my feelings, OK? I said like, oh, this is really good.

I always get the same thing. But I didn't say like, oh, I always get the same thing. And now let me actually give you the version where I actually put a bunch of feeling into it. 

And when I do this, I want you to think about how would your reaction be versus if you met the first version? OK, so version one, Chris, where I just talked very calmly. And here's version two. 

All right, so I'm going to talk about Gongcha.

And by the way, if you don't know what Gongcha is, Gongcha is like a bubble tea place. So they sell like tapioca, they sell bubble tea. It's the same thing. 

And I always get the exact same thing when I go to Gongcha. I know there are a lot of different drinks, but I always get the same drink because I love that drink. It's my favorite drink, probably my favorite drink in the whole world. 

And I always get the same thing. Let me tell you what it is. It's taro milk tea.

And then the most important part is you have to add milk foam. Milk foam is like the sweet thing. It's kind of salty.

It's a wonderful mixture of sweet and salty. And you put that into the drink and it's just pure heaven. It's really, really good.

And every time I get it and then I stab it, I call it like the first stab. You know, just think about it. I'm imagining like this stab, stab it in.

And I'm really excited. OK, like this is really exciting for me. And then the first sip.

Oh, I love that first sip so, so much. It's the best drink ever. And if I'm ever having like a tough time, that drink, it's going to revive me.

I'm going to be reborn and I'll be really happy.

OK, so so that's the second version. OK, and so like what is the difference there? Like I kind of talked about different things.

So the first version I talked about exactly what do I order? I go to Gong Cha and then I talked about how much ice I get, like how sweet I get it. And I talked about how like what toppings I got. But I didn't talk about how much I love it.

I talked about it a little bit. I was like, oh, yeah, this is my favorite drink. But it was very calm.

And I think if you talk about it like that, it's fine. You don't have to change it. But like the second version where I threw a bunch of emotion into it.

OK, so it took much more effort. The second version took much more effort. If I'm really tired, I'm probably going to use the first version and talk about it.

But like if I have the energy, I can put a bunch more feeling into it. And then it becomes a much more exciting story. So I said kind of the same stuff.

I said, you know, what is Gong Cha? Gong Cha is like a tapioca place and they have bubble tea and I always get the same thing. And then I spent a bunch of time talking about like I kept praising it. OK, so I'm like, mecha kucha hometeru, I'm saying like, oh, this is really good.

There's so many other options, but I always get the same thing. And I didn't say it just once. I probably said it like twice or maybe three times.

And imagine somebody who hears this. They'll be thinking, oh, this person, oh, they said the same thing again. OK, so this is not new information.

I already said I like it. And then I have all these other parts where I'm like, oh, I'm so excited to stab it. And when I drink it, I'm so happy.

And all this, it's not really new information. OK, it's the same information. I said from the beginning that I like Gong Cha.

And then I said, oh, I really like it. Oh, I really like it a lot. And, you know, it's not actually new information, but it has so much feeling in it that in my opinion, I think that's the more interesting one to talk about.

So if I want to become friends with people, which is, you know, like a nice thing, it's nice to become friends with people. Then you want to talk in a way that's like really easy for them to understand. And not just easy to understand, but if you also put your feelings into it, it's putting feelings into something I think is always something that's generally good for making friends.

Like it, it doesn't really matter what the language is, the feeling everybody knows feelings. Right. So it doesn't matter where you grew up.

You know what it's like to be happy. You know what it's like to be sad. And you know what it's like to really like a food.

Like, these are feelings that everybody, even if you can't say it in that language, you can probably communicate it by saying like, mm, mm, mm, yum. Like, like noises will make it pretty far and like hand motions. So when you tell these stories, you should use all of your power.

Okay. So not just your English power, but also you're like the power of, you know, your, your body moving and then like your face moving and then also the power of your emotions. So if you are okay with sharing your emotions, when you're talking about something and Gongcha is a really easy one, because when you talk about how much you like a food, I don't think anyone's going to be like, oh, that's really embarrassing.

I can't believe he likes Gong Cha. People, people don't really care about that. And it's probably actually the opposite.

They probably think it's pretty fun. If you talk about, oh, I love this. I love this.

I love this. You say like three times, they're like, ah, okay. So this person really likes it.

So that was one of the examples to make it easier to understand. Um, it's like, it's more fun and when it's more fun, they pay more attention. And if you say the same thing over and over, as long as it's putting in a lot of feeling, I think it's fine.

So that's tip number one. And, uh, let's go and take a short little break here and then we'll come back with another tip.

All right.

So let's go ahead and move on. Now I'm going to give you my second technique or the second tip. Now tip two is to do checkpointing.

Okay. And what is checkpointing? Checkpointing is basically taking a pause in the middle of your story to just make sure that everyone understands what you're talking about. And this is especially useful for if you're telling like a complex story, or if you're kind of, if you are talking really fast, then it's good to take a little pause.

And then you kind of pause and you say, oh, does everyone understand so far? And then you continue. And, uh, now it's not like, um, you're actually saying does everyone understand so far, but actually what you do is you just don't continue the main part of the story. And you talk about like some other side things like side, side stuff.

Maybe you talk about your feelings. Maybe you talk about the same thing that you already mentioned before, but you put a bit more feeling into it. Uh, so it, it's not actually that repetitive.

And, uh, let me go ahead and give you an example of this. So again, I'm going to tell you some story and it's like a true story about something that makes me happy. And, uh, I'm going to do both versions.

So the first version is I don't use any checkpointing and the second version is like with checkpointing, which I think makes everything easier to understand. So here we go. I'm going to talk about showering.

Okay. So this is no checkpointing and, uh, like checkpointing. When I checkpoint, like my hands are going to come up, but in this first version, I won't do any checkpointing.

So I'm going to talk about showering. 

And, uh, so something that makes me happy is, uh, like, uh, if I'm taking a shower, sometimes, uh, it's really bad, but sometimes I run out of like shampoo. And then if I run out of shampoo, then it sucks because I have to go and get after like, leave the shower and go get more shampoo.

And, uh, so it's just really nice when I have enough shampoo. So when I'm almost out and I think I'm out, uh, I just pump it a little bit more and then I have shampoo and then I'm like, great. Well, now I have enough shampoo and I can switch it out afterwards.

So that's, that's, um, that's, that's the version without checkpointing. And maybe you already understood that, um, because it wasn't that complex, but you can imagine if I was telling like something, you know, more interesting, something more intense, something with much more feeling to it. Um, then it could be a little bit harder to understand, but now let me tell that, but it's going to be even easier to understand when I checkpoint.

And when I checkpoint, I'm going to put my hands up. Uh, I guess if you're listening to this podcast, uh, and you're not watching the YouTube version, then you won't see the hand, but, um, I'll, I'll explicitly say, okay, start the checkpoint and then I'll continue. 

So I'm going to talk about showering.

So when you shower, uh, well, I shower every night and some people shower in the morning, but I shower at night and something happens every now and then that's just really, really terrible. Okay. So now I'm going to start the checkpointing.

Every now and then you run out of shampoo and when you run out of shampoo, it sucks. I'm still checkpointing. My hands are still raised here.

It sucks because then I have to go out of the shower and by the way, I'm putting more feeling into this. I have to go out of the shower and then I have to go get the shampoo from the cabinet or wherever the new shampoo is. And that, that sucks.

And what sucks even more is sometimes the shampoo has like wrapping on it. Okay. There's wrapping on it and I have to open the shampoo and I can't do it with my hand.

So I have to go get the scissors and that's even worse because the scissors are in the kitchen. So it's just, it's terrible. Okay.

So when you run out of shampoo, it's really terrible. That's checkpointing. And I finished the checkpoint.

So now my hand's coming back down. 

And so something that really makes me happy is when I think that I have to go get new shampoo, but then I just do one more pump and actually I have enough shampoo. And I think *sigh* - the hand comes back up, I'm checkpointing -

Sigh, I don't have to go out. I don't have to go and get all this stuff. I don't have to go out into the cold.

I don't have to like come out all bicha bicha, all like wet and go get the scissors. I'm okay. I'm so safe.

And that makes me so happy and hand comes down. I'm done checkpointing. So, um, in that version, I don't know if you understood that version because it was a little bit complicated, but I had kind of two main checkpoints.

Number one was, I was talking about how like the situation sucks when you have to go get a new shampoo. And in the first version, without the checkpointing, I just kind of talked about it like, yeah, sometimes you have to go get it and it's bad. And then that was it.

It's very short, very, very short summary. That's fine. If you want to go kind of fast, but the second version, it, I take a lot of time and I put a little bit more emotion into it because during the checkpoint, it's kind of like.

You can kind of entertain people during the checkpoint and you put some feeling into it. And then you talk about some other things that are related to those feelings. So I was talking about, oh yeah, it sucks.

Oh yeah. It sucks so much because I have to go get the shampoo and then I have to go get the scissors and it's, oh, it's so terrible. And then, um, that's like part of the performance, right? So then it's not so boring, but at the same time, it's also easy to understand because what is the main part of the story? The main part of the story is like, uh, I like, I'm happy when I think, I have to do something that's mendokusai, something that's troublesome, and then actually I don't have to, and it's like, ah, it's such a relief. And that's like the main part of the story. So by checkpoint, what I do is I add this little checkpoint to make sure that people understand just how bad, just how much it sucks to have to go get new shampoo.

And I'm like, I really play that up and that allows me to like checkpoint and that allows me to put in a little bit more feelings. Um, and then I think it makes it easier to understand. And, uh, I, I wish I could come up with a better example.

Um, but, uh, you know, I've already done this episode a couple of times, so maybe it was a mediocre performance, but I'm going to actually, I'm going to move on. Let's take a short little break here and then I'll come back and I'll, I'll come, I'll tell you some more stuff.

All right.

So let's continue. Let's continue into the, you know, Chris's like training for how to speak better English or how to tell more interesting stories. But, uh, so this one's tip number, actually, maybe you can do the checkpoint one again.

Um, so I want to do another example with checkpointing and, uh, this one is kind of like mixing both the checkpoint thing and the adding in feelings. And, uh, I, I thought this one might be a better example than the, than the, the shower one that I talked about. So again, I'm going to talk about the same stuff.

Okay. Here's the first version without those two things. And then the second version, I'm going to put a bunch of checkpointing and a bunch of feelings into it.

The first one. Okay. So I'm going to talk to you about TV.

Okay. So I like watching TV and, uh, something that really makes me happy is, uh, if I like stay up late and watch TV, like, I know it's not good for me, but, um, if I decide to do it and then the next day I like wake up and I feel kind of tired because I stayed up too late watching TV. Sometimes I think to myself, oh, well, at least this is something that I decided.

I'm glad that I could decide this. And it makes me happy to know that I have that right.

So, um, just to be clear about that, um, that last part that I have this right, is like, this is something that I can do.

This is something that I have the ability to do. Um, so that whole thing, it didn't really have that much feeling and it didn't really have much checkpointing, but now I'm going to tell the exact same thing, but I'm going to add, it's going to be a little bit longer because I'm adding an extra checkpoint in there. But during the checkpoint, I want you to think, is it worth putting this in there? Okay.

Does it make the whole thing more interesting or is it something that's not useful? Because sometimes if you put too much checkpointing, it's like, okay, I, I don't know what this guy's trying to say. He's just checkpointing all day. He's just talking about random stuff.

Uh, but I, I, in my opinion, I think the second version is better and let's go and start with the second version. 

So I'm going to talk about TV. Okay.

So does everyone have that? Has anyone ever like watched TV, like really late and then, you know, hands coming up, I'm checkpointing. It's like, you know, sometimes you're watching TV and it's really late. And you know, you're supposed to sleep.

Okay. By the way, the feelings are coming in. You know, you're supposed to sleep.

You know, that if you sleep early, it's better for you. And then if you stay up late, then you're not going to sleep well. And you're going to feel bad the next day.

And I have that too. I have the hands coming back down. I feel that too sometimes, but sometimes I feel that and I still watch TV anyways.

Like I just decide, okay, I'm just going to watch and then I watch and I have a great time. Okay. When I, when I decide to do that, there's something about me.

That's like, and now I'm talking about feelings. There's something about me. That's like, I decided to do this.

And because I'm doing something that I decided, I feel like I'm like treating myself well. And then at night, of course I sleep. And then the next morning I wake up tired, but I always think the next morning.

And by the way, here's another checkpoint. I always think, ah, at least I did something that I said I wanted to do. And I'm so glad that I listened to my own like desire.

Okay. Hand comes down, checkpointing done. 

So, so this, this whole thing had kind of two parts of checkpointing, right? So the first one I was talking about, like, oh, does everyone else understand this feeling of when you're watching TV and you want to watch more, but you shouldn't, you're supposed to sleep.

And then, so that's like checkpointing there because I want to make sure that everyone understands this feeling. If I just continue, sometimes people, maybe they weren't listening or maybe they didn't understand. But, um, by checkpointing, I make sure that everyone feels this and kind of understands, or at least sees it from my point of view for this.

And then at the end, um, I also have like a little checkpoint part to, uh, to really, I guess, make sure that people understand, which is like the next morning when you wake up, um, like I think back to myself and this is like, kind of like the main goal of what I'm saying. I'm like kind of summarizing it and summarizing it like again and saying it again, like a second or third time. And I said like, oh yeah, like I'm glad that I decided to do this.

And then I did it anyways. And I feel like I'm doing what my heart wanted me to do. And that's like a little extra summary.

So again, that's not new information. I've already said that before I said like, oh yeah, the next morning I, I do that. And then, uh, I'm so glad that I had the right to do it.

It feels right that I could do it, but by like slowing it down there and kind of checkpointing and adding in a bit more feelings, like, I feel like that one's a little bit more charming. It's going to be a more interesting story for people to listen to. And, you know, part of like the process of making friends, uh, sorry, part of the process of like, uh, learning English, um, is probably making friends as well.

Like, uh, the back and forth and like speaking in a way that allows you to make friends is kind of helpful for your English learning too, because if you make friends in English or if you make friends that speak English, then you speak more English and you get better at it. So that was a, that was a little checkpoint tip there. And then, uh, now, uh, should we take a little break? I, I don't know.

I should've checked the time. Let's take a short little break and then I'm going to continue with the last part, which is like not even a tip, but it's just kind of for fun and then we'll kind of wrap up after that. So this is the last break.

Alright, so now we're into the final stretch of the podcast, so there are no more breaks after this. We're just going to go bam, bam, bam, we're going to keep going forward. So let me do a short little review here.

So yet again, this is kind of checkpointing, but I'm going to do a little review of the first two things that I talked about. Number one, put some feeling into it. If you put some feeling into it, it's kind of fun.

It's always nice to put feeling into it, I think. If you have the energy, you can put energy into it. And if you don't have the skills of English to be able to say it in a clean way, if you put more feeling into it, it probably helps and makes it a little bit easier to understand.

And then tip number two, tip number two is to do checkpointing. So every now and then when you talk about stuff, especially if it's complex, make sure that you take a short little break. And like, I say a break, but you actually, you keep talking and just kind of review the stuff that you talked about.

Or maybe you talk about like your feelings at that point so that it's really easy for someone to understand your point of view.

And so now what I want to do is sometimes students ask me, sorry if I've already said this before, this is like my third time recording this version, but sometimes my my students ask me, hey, Chris, so when you speak with us, like you say that you use a different kind of like attitude of English, right? And I'm like, yeah, so that's like it's like even easier than the podcast level. So the podcast level, which is what I call Kuli English level, um, when I speak with students, sometimes it's even slower.

And then, uh, people often ask me, okay, can you try saying something like full speed, like something that you would say to a native friend? And, uh, it's kind of hard to do that for me because like, I don't know why. I think it's like subconsciously I always try to match like the appropriate level of like English, what's in front of me. So, you know, if they're speaking English to me and I don't really understand their English, then I automatically go to like super easy mode.

Uh, and then if, you know, they are a native speaker, then it automatically just goes to the native mode, but I figured, okay, so, you know, just for fun, let's go ahead and throw one of those versions in here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to just tell you something as if I'm talking to my native friend. Uh, so, you know, my native friend who understands all the slang, all the recent like stories and stuff, uh, they know that like I live in Japan and stuff like that, so I don't have to actually explain that much.

It's different if I'm talking to like a friend that I haven't seen in like a really long time, maybe I haven't seen them in like five years and they're going to be like, oh, Chris, how are you? And I'm going to be like, oh, I live in Japan now. They'll be like, what? And then, so at that point, then, you know, you got to talk about like big life stuff, but if it's like a friend that you have seen every now and then, and they know a lot about you and you guys talk every now and then, then, uh, then you can, then you'll see the hardest version of English, which is like really sloppy, just whatever. So, uh, as I do this, I'm going to pretend like I'm like talking to like my friend who, by the way, is not here.

Okay. There's no other human near me, so it's kind of hard for me to pretend, but the while I do this, you can kind of pay special attention to how I think, um, I think it's not as like when I speak with other native people, it's not as clear. I think, uh, I kind of stutter a bit more and, uh, the, the story isn't very clean, um, because it's not really as rehearsed, but anyways, let's go ahead and get started. Alright here we go. 

So this is like, uh, not Kuli English level, but like native Chris sloppy level. Here we go.

So, uh, I, I want to tell you about what am I going to talk about? Sorry. Uh, oh yeah, I'll talk about that thing. Okay.

So, uh, okay. So you know how like, sometimes people like, they always say like, you know, fries and like ice cream are really good. Uh, like you mix them or whatever.

And, uh, so that, that kind of food combination, I've actually done my own fair share of like research into that. And by research, I just mean like I tried a bunch of stuff and there's something that I found probably like a couple years ago, and I think this one is something that I'm really proud of and I've gotten a bunch of compliments for this, but basically when you make like Japanese curry, not Indian curry, Japanese curry, when I make Japanese curry, uh, what I like to do at the end is I get a bunch of like cheesy potato chips. So think like, you know, Doritos or like Cheetos and Cheetos, it should be the crispy one. It shouldn't be the puffs. And then, uh, you put them in like a Ziploc bag and then you crush it.

You crush it. All right. You crush it.

And then you have like these little tiny crispy bits and then you spray it all over the curry. And I think it's really good. It's like a really nice texture thing.

It's kind of like the role of like crispy onion shallots. Uh, if you've ever had those and, uh, not only by the way, no checkpoint here, I'm not going to talk about it. I should checkpoint here, but I'm not going to, and then, but there's also something that I found out recently, uh, or like I discovered it after I came to Japan and that is like a, I went to the, like the local supermarket and then I was just looking at ice cream and there was this one ice cream that says like the deep South and I was like, Oh dude, deep South yee-haw, I got to get that.

So I got the deep South ice cream and I also picked a flavor that I don't even know what it is. So you probably also don't know what it is. And by the way, I'm imagining I'm talking to my native friend and they don't know what it is.

But you probably also don't know what it is, but it's a boysenberry. So have you ever had boysenberry? Cause I haven't. I don't know what it is.

And then, uh, I tried it and it was actually, it was actually really good. Like the deep South knows how to make ice cream. Like yee-haw is yummy.

And then, and then, uh, so not just ice cream, we got to put some kind of like nice food combination on it, right? Because I'm talking about how I invented a nice food combination and the nice food combination is, uh, there's some like Japanese cereal, it's like the equivalent of like cornflakes and actually it might be the same brand. I don't really know the packaging looks kind of different, but if you mix the cornflakes stuff and there's like these dried strawberries on it and you mix it with the boysenberry, by the way, I still don't know what boysenberry is. Uh, it's actually a really nice mixture.

Cause it's like ice cream. It's got a little bit of crispy. And I think that is actually, I invented that based on the, the curry.

So the curry with like the crispy cheese stuff, it was based on that. And then that's it. That's, that's it for, that's it for that story.

I don't know how much you understood, but, uh, there are some parts that I really should like clarify. And this is because I know that most people who are listening to this don't have the same context, but, um, number one, deep South, like a deep South, deep South just means like, you know, from the South, I guess. Um, and in the US this is like a cultural thing, but in the US, uh, people from the South, they usually have like a different way of speaking.

And, you know, people from California, it's a bit different. They're like Valley girl accent. And the people from the South, the accent is like a bit more, it's called the Southern accent.

So it's like, well, how are you doing over there? We ain't going to get, get down on their deck, back to, I can't really do it. We ain't going to get down to that rodeo. We're going to go with something like that.

Um, but there's like this, basically this idea of, uh, like the South has like a certain way of speaking. And so when I said deep South, I don't know if you caught this. If you didn't catch it, like you can ignore it.

I'm sorry. But, uh, when I said deep South, I also said Yee Haw and Yee Haw is like a serifu, it's like a, it's like a catchphrase that Cowboys say, and Cowboys are from the South. So when I said deep South and I say Yee Haw, it's like, uh, I don't know. It's like a really small joke.

It's not even really a joke. It's just two words that are associated. And, uh, if you don't know what both of those are, you might get thrown off, thrown off, meaning like, you're not going to understand what the heck this person is talking about.

Like, he's talking about ice cream. He's talking about, you know, putting some stuff on it. And suddenly he's like deep South, Yee Haw, what is that? And, uh, this is going to throw you off because like, if you already know what it is, then you'll think, oh, okay.

It's a stupid joke. And then you move on. You just don't care.

If you don't know what it is, you're going to be thinking, oh, what is that? Is that like something related to the ice cream? Is this something that I need to know? And the worst part is if you hear this and you think, oh no, my English is not good enough. And that's not the case at all. Okay.

It's just because you have no idea what this dumb joke is. So you missed out on a joke that's not even that funny, and then you shouldn't let that like prevent you from focusing on the next thing. So you should always be trying to listen to the new thing. And if you don't understand it, it's okay.

Don't care. Just move on. And that's what I always recommend for people who listen to this podcast as well.

If there's something that I say and you don't understand, it's okay. Just like let it be unknown and then try to move on and try to understand. And that's really good, really good practice for in a situation where you really need to listen to something and understand what's going on.

Just because you don't understand one part doesn't mean that you can just stop and be like, oh no, I don't understand it. And then you give up on listening. You really should listen to the other parts and then you might be able to piece it back together.

And of course, if it's something that's really, really important and you need to understand all of it, then you, of course you go back and you clarify. You say, sorry, I didn't understand this part. Can you repeat that part again? Okay.

So we had a little fun there. You got to hear like the native sloppy Chris version as opposed to the podcast, Chris version. So I hope you had fun.

And, uh, again, well, I'm not going to review about the tips again, but just remember, you know, feelings and checkpointing, these are the tactics that I recommend, and these are also like personal tactics that I use in like my everyday speaking.

So with that, thank you so much for listening to the end. And, uh, I guess, yeah, something about subscribers, something about support or something about follow, but, uh, you know, follow if you want, subscribe if you want, and we'll see you next time on Kuli English Podcast.