If you are driving through the city of Tipton in the state of Indiana, you may want to avoid (to keep away from) this restaurant and gas station. The other people in your car may thank you.

“To get gas” means to put gasoline in your car or vehicle. It also means to have too much air in your intestines, the tubes that move food around in your body. I think you know what happens when you have too much gas. If you have too much air in your stomach, you may burp. If you don’t know about burping, listen to English Cafe 58. Jeff demonstrates and shows you very clearly what can happen.

~ Lucy

Meet our wonderful web designer and webmaster: Adriano Galeno!

Adriano is a native of Brazil, but he and his family now live in Canada. He has a degree in computer science (the study of computers) and has been working with Internet-related projects for the past 10 years. Even though he is very busy in his important day job (main occupation), he still finds time to help us with our website. Adriano and his wife, Maria, have two beautiful daughters–Marina and Victoria.

Adriano’s latest podcasting project is the Brazilian Pod Class, a podcast for anyone interested in learning Portuguese. He works with a veteran (very experienced) teacher of Portuguese to create beginning lessons for listeners. Check out (go see) his website at www.brazilianpodclass.com.

Comment from Ali from Iran:

PS: I’d like to also express my discontent (unhappiness) about your site. I am a Persian native and live in Iran, but your site seems likely to be closed to our country. We have to use proxies (substitutes) to browse your site. I hope political atmosphere and canard (false information) about our public nation will not affect your trust.

Response:

We want everyone to have access to ESL Podcast, no matter what country they live in. We at ESLPod.com are not blocking Iran or any other country. We have had other Iranian listeners tell us about this problem, and we investigated (researched) by contacting our hosting company (the company that owns the computer servers we use). After looking at the information provided by these listeners, our hosting company tells us that our website is being blocked in Iran, not the U.S. We are not sure what the real situation is, however. We only have the information that our hosting company gave us.

If you are in a country where you are having difficulty accessing our website and you have a workaround or another way to gain access, please post a comment here so other listeners can use that information.

Thanks to Ali and our other listeners who are listening to ESL Podcast despite these hurdles (difficulties).

Background: An article recently in the New York Times had the following headline: “GM Workers Begin Walkout Over Contract Impasse.” This is a good example of how a little background knowledge (information you know about a topic) can be useful in understanding more English. In the US, car manufacturers are one of the dwindling (decreasing) number of businesses where most of the workers are still part of a union (a group of workers who form an organization and negotiate their pay together with the company). The car industry (business) in the US has lost a lot of money in recent years, and the number of jobs has decreased. The union wants higher wages (the amount of money you get per hour) for its workers. For more information on unions in the US, listen to ESL Podcast 252 – A Workers Strike. In the Learning Guide for that episode, you can read about the major (important) unions in the US.

What the Headline Means: G.M. stands for (is an abbreviation for) General Motors, one of the largest car manufacturers in the world. These workers have been trying to come to an agreement – a contract – for several weeks. Now they have decided to have a walkout (when workers decide to go on strike, to stop working). This is the first national strike against G.M. since 1970. To walkout over means to leave because of something.

The key word in the headline is impasse. An impasse is when you and someone else can’t agree to something, even though you have tried and tried to come to an agreement. G.M. and the union of workers, the United Auto Workers (UAW) have not been able to agree on a contract.

Notice the initials “UAW” on the sign above. The words “Local 22″ refer to the local union organization that these men belong to. These signs are called picket signs, and the line that the workers form (make or create) in front of the business they are striking against is called a picket line. Companies often try to hire non-union replacement workers when a union goes on strike. These replacement workers are said to be crossing the picket line.

~Jeff

Just a quick note to thank all of those who sent me emails and posted comments about the 15th anniversary of my 29th birthday. I really do appreciate it. When someone wishes you a happy birthday or congratulates you on some happy event, you can respond by saying, “Thank you for the well wishes!”

I was reminded yesterday of a funny version of the traditional Happy Birthday song that we used to sing as children. It goes:

Happy birthday to you!

You belong in a zoo.*

You look like a monkey

And smell like one too!

*zoo = a place where animals are kept for people to look at

Thankfully, no one sang that to me yesterday.

~Jeff

Join us in wishing Dr. Jeff McQuillan a very happy 29th (??) birthday–again!

“Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday, dear Jeff,

Happy birthday to you!”

Welcome to the ESL Podcast blog! This blog is to keep you up-to-date with all of the latest news from ESL Podcast. This blog will also allow us to talk about things we don’t have time to go over (discuss) in the regular podcasts.

If you have a question or comment, you can submit them to us by posting (putting on the website) a comment. To avoid spam (unwanted messages sent to many people), we will need to approve the comments before they are posted, so please be patient. That may take a few days.

There are a lot of things that we want to talk about on the blog, and we hope you’ll come back to the website frequently (often) to read the newest posts (messages). The blog will also have information about things that are happening here at the Center, with the podcast, and with us–Jeff and Lucy.

Thanks for visiting our blog!