Happy Monday! Welcome to the start of another new week. My name's Andrew and you're listening to bonus episode number 24 of the Culips English Podcast. Thank you for joining me for this English study session. Here at Culips, we kick off each week with a bonus episode. And in each bonus episode, I share some stories from what's going on in my life, I give you some Culips updates, and I teach you a useful expression that will help improve your English vocabulary. There's a totally free transcript that accompanies this episode, and you can get it just by clicking the link in the description for this episode, or by visiting our website Culips.com and then clicking the podcast menu and selecting the bonus episode option. The website version of our transcript is interactive, which means that you can follow the words as they're being spoken, and you can also click on any word or sentence to hear it be played again. So, if you haven't checked out the interactive transcript yet, I recommend that you do that. In my opinion, it's a great learning tool. And also on our website, you'll find hundreds of other audio lessons that are designed to improve your English fluency and help you reach your English-speaking goals. So, if you're looking for great English learning content to study with, we've got you covered and you can find all that you need on our website Culips.com.

Well, I'm really happy that I'm able to release a bonus episode this week. For a moment there, I thought I wouldn't be able to. And the reason for that is I usually work on Culips from Friday to Sunday, and sometimes on weekday evenings as well, but for the most part, I dedicate my weekends to working on Culips. But when I woke up on Friday morning, I felt terrible. I had a fever, I had a headache, and I had muscle cramps in my upper body, which was really weird. I don't get sick very often, but if you're a regular Culips listener, you'll know that I had a pretty bad case of Covid back in late August, and I was really sick for a few weeks back then. So, when I woke up on Friday, I was like "Oh no, not again, if I've got Covid again, I'm gonna lose it!" And I spent most of Friday in bed, and I wasn't really able to do much of anything. I thought that maybe I could just sleep it off. And to sleep something off means to just sleep until you feel better when you're sick. So, I thought I could sleep it off, and thankfully, that seemed to work. When I woke up on Saturday, I felt about 75% better, not 100% better, but 75% better. The fever and the headache went away, but I still had some slight muscle aches in my upper body. So, I went to a clinic just to make sure it wasn't really Covid and to get some medicine, and by the end of the day on Saturday, I felt 100% back to normal. So, it was thankfully just a 24-hour bug, I suppose.

By the way, do you have that expression in your native language, 24-hour bug? We use the word bug here, B-U-G bug, to describe illnesses that are not serious, but that are highly contagious and spread from person to person to person quite easily. So, if you say something like, "I caught a bug at the office", it doesn't mean that you trapped a spider or a beetle or a mosquito or something like that, right? Because bug can also mean insect it doesn't mean that it means that you caught a cold or a flu from one of your coworkers or clients at the office. So then, a 24-hour bug is an illness that only lasts for a day and then goes away similar to what I had. And it's my guess that I probably caught a bug from one of my students at the university. I work with hundreds of students each week and sometimes they come to school sick. So, it's likely that that's what happened.

Now speaking of students, sometimes they get sick, right, like I mentioned, and sometimes they come to school sick, which is not ideal. And other times they don't come to class when they're sick, which is a better option I think, when you're sick you should rest and put your energy towards getting better, especially these days with Covid still out there. Anyways, over my years of being an instructor I've noticed that one of the most common illnesses that causes students to miss class is because they're sick with a stomach issue. They've got a stomachache or diarrhea or nausea or something like that and they have a stomach or digestive issue that causes them to miss class. Now in medical English, the kind of English that is very specific and you'll hear doctors use, or you'll read in books, this kind of illness is called gastroenteritis. So many of my students will call me on the phone before class and say something like, "Andrew, I'm so sorry, I have gastroenteritis and I can't come to class today." However, they'll struggle with the pronunciation of gastroenteritis because it's such a big and challenging word. Even for me as a native speaker, I find this to be a big and challenging word. But they use this word, because that's what they see, when they search in the dictionary. That's what they'll find in the dictionary. But as I'm sure you guys know, sometimes the dictionary or online translators aren't very good representations of how people actually speak in the real world. And in real everyday English, we rarely use this word. Maybe when we're talking to the doctor, or when the doctor is talking to us, we'll hear this word, but I think that's about it. In reality, English speakers are way, way, way more likely to say something like stomach bug, stomach flu, or even food poisoning. So, this is just a tip for you in the future, which by the way I hope you never have to use, I hope you never get sick with a digestive or stomach problem in the future. But if you do, it's more natural to say that you have a stomach bug, or a stomach flu, or food poisoning than it is to say, gastroenteritis.

Now unfortunately, because I did get sick for a little while last week, I ended up failing my Sober October challenge. It's true, I failed the challenge. If you've been listening to the bonus episodes we've been releasing throughout October, you'll know about the Sober October challenge I'm participating in right now. But there are three parts, or sometimes we could say three prongs, three prongs to this challenge. A prong is what we call one of the little spiky parts on a fork, you know how a fork is divided into like four or five little metal pieces or spikes that we use to pick up food with? Well, each one of these pieces is called a prong, P-R-O-N-G. And we also use this word prong to talk about things like my Sober October challenge, where there are three equal parts to the challenge. So anyways, my Sober October challenge, it has these three prongs to it. And they are: not drinking any alcohol for the month, burning 500 calories through exercise each day, and doing 100 push ups each day. And when I was down for the day, on Friday, down for the day, means unable to work or do anything. I wasn't active, I was down. I couldn't do anything on Friday. So, when I was down for the day, I wasn't able to do the exercise or the push ups. And actually, the next day as well. On Saturday, I wasn't able to do the exercise or the push ups. So, that brought the exercise portion of the challenge to a close, unfortunately ending in failure. But what can you do? I tried my best and I think I did pretty well. It's a shame that I couldn't make it to the end of the month, but sometimes life just gets in the way. And the best thing that you can do in this situation is just pick up where you left off and keep going. So, that's what I'm going to do.

Let's move on to a more pleasant topic. Yesterday was my father-in-law's birthday. So, we had a family gathering to celebrate. We had a nice meal together and we ate grilled eel again. You may remember that we had grilled eel last time we had a family get together. But it was just so good that we decided to eat it again and everybody in the family really enjoys it. After the meal, my father-in-law made an announcement to the family, and he told us that he's going to be moving his workshop to a new location. He's an electrician and he runs his own business. So, he needs a workshop in order to do his work. He then asked if we'd like to take a look at the new workshop. And of course, we were down. We said, "Yeah, we'd love to!" So, we went, and we checked it out and it was really cool.

It was in a kind of place that I've never been to before or even heard of before. And I think in my home country in Canada, we don't really have this kind of place at all, or at least if we do, I've never seen one. So, my father-in-law's new workshop is in this 20-story tower. From the outside, it looks like an apartment building, actually. But inside instead of there being apartments or offices, like in an office tower, there are workshops and labs and different kinds of industrial businesses that occupy all the spaces in the tower. In Canada, we do have what are called industrial parks, and probably in your country as well, there are industrial parks. These are areas usually on the outskirts of a city, where there are many massive warehouses and big industrial businesses. But this was my first time seeing a much, much smaller version of an industrial park with many small industrial businesses, all located within one tower. According to my father-in-law, there are over 500 small businesses operating in the building. So, I thought that was pretty cool.

By the way, the word industrial is used to describe businesses that produce or make something. So, when you think of businesses like factories, maybe oil, or gas, or chemical, or mining, these kinds of businesses, these are all industrial businesses. And they're different from commercial businesses like shops and restaurants, where the focus is on selling something. Anyway, I enjoyed the tour of the industrial tower, and congrats to my father-in-law on the new workshop. After getting married last year, one of the cool things I've gotten to experience is exactly this kind of thing. If I were just a single Canadian English teacher working in Seoul, I'd never get to go to this kind of place and take a tour of it. But now that I'm married to a Korean woman, and I have a Korean family, I get to tour and see some of these kinds of places that I'd never have access to otherwise, or I'd never even know exist. So, it's kind of a nice perk, and I think it's pretty great.

Before we get to the vocabulary lesson, I'd like to share some Culips updates with you quickly. Last week, we released a new Real Talk episode, where Kassy and I teach you about how to call 911 to get help from the fire station, police or hospital if you're in an emergency situation. I think this is an essential skill for anyone to know how to do, especially if you live in an English-speaking country. Or if you plan to visit an English-speaking country in the future. You never know when an emergency could occur, and you want to be prepared in that situation. So, if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I highly recommend that you do, and you can find it on our website Culips.com or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. I also want to remind all Culips Members that our monthly live stream will be happening on Tuesday, November 1st at 7:30pm Korean Standard Time. And I really hope that many Culips Members can join me for it, it's going to be a good time. And to do that, all you need to do is log into your Culips account and follow the link from the Dashboard.

And now it's time for this week's vocabulary lesson.

I wrap up each bonus episode with a short vocabulary lesson where I teach you a useful expression that will help you improve your English listening and speaking. And today, I want to teach you about the expression: to lose it. To lose it. To lose it. Did you hear when I said this earlier in the episode? If not, it's OK, because I'm gonna rewind and play that part for you a couple of more times. So, let's listen to it now.

So, when I woke up on Friday, I was like, "Oh no, not again. If I've got Covid again, I'm gonna lose it." So, when I woke up on Friday, I was like, "Oh no, not again. If I've got Covid again, I'm gonna lose it."

OK, can you guess what lose it means from the context of that sentence? Well, if you guessed to become angry, or be unable to control your emotions, then congratulations because you're exactly right. Here, the it means control. So, you lose control. Control of what? Control of your emotions. So then, if you lose it, it means that you can't control your emotions anymore. And as a result, you become angry. Or maybe you break out in tears, or you start yelling or screaming, or you become violent, or something like that. And we usually use this expression only to talk about negative emotions, not positive ones. So, it would be weird to use lose it to talk about breaking out in a huge smile, or joyous laughter, for example. So, to summarize, lose it means being unable to control your negative emotions. And as a result, you become angry, hysterical, distressed, or another extreme negative emotion like that. As always, I've prepared some example sentences for us to learn with. So, let's take a listen to those three example sentences, right now. Here we go!

Example sentence number one 
I almost lost it when a car cut me off on the highway. I almost lost it when a car cut me off on the highway.

Let's break this example sentence down. In that example sentence, the speaker says that he almost lost it. OK, he didn't lose it, he almost lost it. So, what does this mean? Well, he almost became very, very emotional. And in this context, I think, very, very angry. Why? Because a car cut in front of him cut him off on the highway. And this kind of anger that we experience when we drive, we have a name for in English. Do you know what we call it? We call it road rage. So, I think the driver in this example sentence almost lost it and experienced road rage.

Example sentence number two 
My wife and I were enjoying a nice dinner at a restaurant, when a gentleman at the next table totally lost it after learning that the soup of the day was sold out. My wife and I were enjoying a nice dinner at a restaurant, when a gentleman at the next table totally lost it after learning that the soup of the day was sold out.

Let's break this example sentence down. So, in this example, the speaker and his wife, they're just having a nice meal at a restaurant and suddenly, some guy at the next table loses it. He totally lost it. He became very angry and irrational, maybe yelling and screaming at the waitress. Why? Because the soup of the day was sold out, which is a very silly reason to lose it over, but it does happen from time that people get set off or they lose it because of very small things. Here, set off means become very, very angry or go into a rage because of some small thing. That small thing sets you off, it makes you explode. So, I guess that's what happened to the gentleman in the restaurant in this example.

Example sentence number three
Jeff's boss completely lost it on him after he forgot to complete some important paperwork. Jeff's boss completely lost it on him after he forgot to complete some important paperwork.

Let's break this final example sentence down. In this example, we hear about Jeff's boss. Now, Jeff forgot to do some important paperwork. And as a result, Jeff's boss got very, very angry. Angry at who? Angry at Jeff, K? We actually hear a small variation of the expression to lose it because now it's a phrasal verb, "to lose it on someone" and that means that when you lose it and that anger or that rage is not just in general but specifically directed towards one person. So, Jeff's boss completely lost it on him, completely lost it on Jeff. It means that Jeff's boss became very angry at Jeff because he forgot to do this important task.

That's it for this bonus episode everyone. Congratulations on making it to the end and completing another study session with me. Great work as always. It was fantastic to be here with you today. Take care everyone and I'll talk to you in the next episode, goodbye.