Andrew: If you're a regular Culips listener, you'll know that my wife and I have been knee deep in the process of renovating a little old house that we're planning to move into in just a few months. Now, I haven't talked too much about it, because let's face it, home renovation can be a little bit boring to hear about week after week after week. But I've got a couple of stories, a funny story, and also a story that's culturally interesting to share with you today that I just had to tell. Welcome to bonus episode number 47 of the Culips English Podcast. My name's Andrew and I'm here to be your English study buddy for the day.

So, if you're looking to improve your English skills, you've come to the right place. Not only will I be sharing some entertaining tales with you today, but I'm also going to teach you a great idiomatic expression that you can add to your vocabulary and use in your everyday conversations. And along the way, I'll give you some updates about what the Culips team and I were up to this week. Now, if you want to follow along with my renovation stories, we've got a free transcript of this episode that's available for you to access.

You can find it just by following the link in the description for this episode, or by visiting our website Culips.com. The transcript is a fantastic tool to help you understand everything I say. And you can use it to challenge yourself by listening to the episode first and then reading the transcript to confirm what you didn't catch. Or if you'd prefer, you can read and listen at the same time, whatever works best for you. So, without any further ado, let's listen to my stories about renovating my house and I hope that you'll enjoy them. Here we go.

The house my wife and I are renovating is really small. There's only three rooms in total, a bathroom, a bedroom, and a main room that's essentially going to be our kitchen, our dining room, our living room, and also the future Culips studio all in one. Because the house is small, every millimeter of space is important and carefully planning out how the space will be used is really important to us. We've been thinking every detail through thoroughly, even very small minute details that you wouldn't think are important like where we'll store the vacuum cleaner, or where will we put the coffee machine?

All of those need to be thought about because if we don't have a designated place for everything to be stored, then the house will feel disorganized and cramped due to its small space. But for the most part, we've been able to find solutions to where to put everything fairly easily. Thankfully, we don't own too many things, which has made everything a lot easier. But there has been one appliance that's caused us quite a headache. And that is our oven. Our oven believe it or not. After getting married, my wife and I bought an oven when we moved in together. Now it's just a little oven.

It's slightly bigger than a microwave. But it's great. We love it. It works as both a microwave and a convection oven. Originally, my wife wasn't so sure that we actually needed to buy an oven. She didn't have one growing up. And when you cook Korean food, you don't really need an oven. By the way, for those of you who are new to Culips, my wife is Korean and we live in Korea. But as a Canadian, I was adamant that we buy one. Ovens are a staple of Canadian homes. And I grew up baking and I wanted to be able to bake some muffins or cookies or maybe roast vegetables here in my home in Korea as well.

So, we ended up getting an oven and I think it's one of the best purchases that we made. We use it almost daily, and it's been fantastic. And even my wife uses it all the time. Now although the oven isn't big by oven standards, it is big for our little house and finding the perfect location for where it should go was a top priority for us. Originally, the design company that we're working with plan to incorporate the oven into the kitchen cabinets, and the plan looked great. When I first saw it, I was really pleased with it.

It was super sleek and nice and neat and tidy looking. And my wife and I were very happy with the built-in look. But then one of my friends who's an electric engineer saw the plans for the kitchen and asked us if we had double checked the safety requirements for the oven. He told us that building the oven into the cabinets like that could be a huge fire risk, and that the last thing we'd want for our new house would be for it to burn down in an oven fire. And that really freaked us out.

So, we looked in the oven manual, and sure enough, for the oven to be operated safely, there needs to be a considerable amount of open space around the oven on all sides. So, on the top of the oven, and on the sides of the oven, there needs to be some empty space. So, it was back to the drawing board. And this started probably the longest single design decision that we had to make for the whole house. Where in the heck do we put the oven? We went back and forth with the design company exchanging ideas and drawings and sketches. My wife and I even got into a fight about the oven placement.

Don't worry, we're good now, everything's fine. I think in any creative project, you're bound to butt heads and disagree with your collaborators from time to time, right? It's to be expected. And in the end, we did find a solution. But we had to make a huge change to the whole design of the kitchen, just because of the oven. We changed the whole way that the cabinets and the cupboards would look just so we could find a safe place to put the oven. Well, that happened over a month ago. And since then, we've moved on and I hadn't even really thought about the oven at all since then. That was until last night.

Something went down last night. You see, last night my wife went out with a couple of her girlfriends for dinner. And that meant that it was just me and Pinky, our dog home alone for the evening. It was a boys night in, if I could call it that. So, I was on my own for dinner. And I wasn't really in the mood to cook. Luckily, in the fridge, we had some leftovers from the previous night's dinner. So, I decided to just put those in the oven to reheat them so I could eat the leftovers. And that's what I did. I put the leftovers in the oven, set the timer, and waited for the oven to do its magic.

And after about 10 minutes or so I went to go get my food and eat my dinner. After I took my food out of the oven, I put it on the kitchen counter, and I noticed something weird with the oven. The front LCD display was turned off. And usually, it's always on and you can see the time displayed on the front of the oven. But there was nothing. So, I was like, "Hmm that's weird." I clicked a few buttons, and I turned the knobs and dials on the front of the oven, and absolutely nothing happened. The whole oven seemed to be dead. So immediately, I just felt stressed out and I was like, "Ugh come on, great!"

We just figured out where to put this oven and we spent so much time debating and arguing and going back and forth with the design company about where to put it, and then it dies on me. Just fantastic! So, I went into problem solving mode, and I tried to fix the oven. But I couldn't really do anything right away because the oven was still extremely hot. And I had just used it to heat up my dinner, so I couldn't really pull it out and give it a good inspection right away. So, I decided to just eat dinner and give the oven some time to cool down before I tried to figure out what the problem was. So, I ate dinner.

And of course, the whole time that I ate dinner, I was thinking about how much trouble I would be in with my wife, if I actually broke the oven somehow. Not that it was even my fault. But I knew if I couldn't fix the oven, and I had to report the news to her that it was broken, that she wouldn't be too pleased with that news. So, figuring out how to fix the oven before she got home was going to be essential. So, while I ate, I pulled out my phone and I went to YouTube to watch some tutorial videos about how to problem solve some common issues with ovens.

And then once I finished dinner and the oven cooled down, I got to work. Now I'm not a very technical person, and I'm not really a handy person and good at fixing things. But I at least know one thing and that is the first step when problem solving any electronic appliance is to make sure that the power cord hasn't become disconnected. So, I thought maybe Pinky had walked along the wall and pulled the cord out accidentally, something like that. Now that would have actually been awesome because it would have been a super easy fix, right? Just plugging the oven back in.

So, I double checked the cord, and it was still plugged in. But just for good measure, I unplugged it and plugged it back in, and still nothing on the oven. So, great! Then I thought that maybe I had tripped the circuit breaker. The circuit breaker is that little box in your house that controls the electricity. Sometimes those can turn off automatically when you use too much energy at once. So, I double checked the circuit breaker, and everything was fine there. And then I thought, well, maybe the power outlet itself had broken somehow, I don't know how, but I thought maybe it was broken. So, I unplugged the oven again.

And I plugged it into a different power outlet. But still nothing. So, I was stuck. And although this process of elimination was giving me some information about why the oven wasn't working, and I was able to narrow down the cause of the problem, I still felt more frustrated than happy because it seemed like the problem was going to be harder to fix than I originally thought. So, the next thing I did then was to look in the oven itself, I opened the oven door, and I took a look inside using my phone as a flashlight.

And I thought, who knows, maybe some food was stuck on one of the heating elements inside the oven itself or something like that. And maybe that could cause the oven to automatically turn off just to prevent a fire? I don't know, that was my line of thinking. And I thought maybe all I needed to do was clean the oven out to get it to work again. But when I looked inside, the oven was spic and span, and nice and clean, and there was nothing at all stuck to the heating elements or anything like that. So, at this point, I was getting a little worried, it seemed like there was probably a big problem inside the oven itself.

And that would be too difficult for me to fix on my own. So, thoughts of how to get the oven repaired started racing through my head. I'd have to call the customer service center and schedule a repair. And then I would either have to pay a repair person to come to my house and take a look at it. Or maybe even worse, would be I would have to take it to a service center to get repaired. And that would be a nightmare because we don't have a car. And an oven is not exactly something that you can easily carry with you on the subway and bus.

So, I'd have to take a taxi to the service center, and then pay the taxi fee and use a bunch of my free time to do that. So, either situation seemed just terrible. Overall, it was just super annoying. So, I went to the manufacturer's website to browse through the information there. First of all, to check the manual and just see if there was something I could do. And then to find the phone number for the service center. So, I navigated to the troubleshooting section of the website. And there was an entry for what to do if your oven didn't power on at all, which was the problem that I was having.

And there was only one troubleshooting tip written there. And it said, double check that the oven is plugged in. So helpful, right? I had already tried that. But actually, it did turn out to be helpful because at that moment, I remembered that the oven wasn't directly plugged into the wall, it was actually plugged into a power bar, and then that power bar was plugged into the wall. And then I recalled that the power bar had some little breakers of its own built into it. And maybe, just maybe, it was the power bar breaker that had flipped and automatically cut the power off to the oven.

So, I got excited, and I rushed to the kitchen. I pulled out the little cabinet where we store our oven and our coffee machine on, and then I checked the power bar. And when I checked it, that is exactly what had happened. So, I was very, very relieved, I let out a huge sigh of relief. And I flipped the switch on the power bar and the oven sprang back to life. It was working again! I couldn't believe that it was something just as simple as a flipped breaker. And all of that stress and worry was for nothing at all.

I did feel a little bit stupid for not checking the power bar sooner, but I was just focused on finding a more complicated solution to the problem that I didn't even think of the power bar. So, as I moved the cabinet and the stove back into its original place, I couldn't help but feel thankful that I didn't have to go through the hassle of scheduling a repair or taking the oven to a service center. That would have been just an absolute nightmare, not to mention a big waste of time and money as well. So, with the oven back in action and functioning correctly, I was able to continue with my evening.

And as I did the dishes and cleaned up from my dinner, I just imagined the oven and its new spot in our new house ready to help us create delicious memories in the years to come.

Construction on our house renovation started about two weeks ago. Since the house was in such a bad condition, when we bought it, we're essentially rebuilding the house from the ground up. We're keeping some of the exterior walls and the foundation. And to be honest, that's about it. Everything else is going to be rebuilt. Now, a few of the jobs that need to be done are unfortunately particularly noisy. Tearing down the roof and rebuilding it, tearing up the concrete floor and redoing it. And all of the other demolition jobs that need to be done are not only noisy, but they also create a lot of dust.

So of course, my wife and I, we feel really bad about having to impose on our new neighbors like this, right? We're new to the neighborhood, but right from the get-go, we're creating a lot of noise and dust. So, it's not the greatest way to join the neighborhood. Now the good news is the house is super small. So, the construction actually won't last too long. But despite this fact, it'll still be noisy and dusty for at least a few days.

So, what's common here in Korea in this situation, and I'm wondering if this is the same in your country where you live — if it is, you can let me know in the comments for this episode — but what's common to do here is to go around to all of your neighbors and introduce yourself and tell them about the construction project, apologize for the inconvenience it will cause, and to give a small gift as a gesture of saying thanks for having to endure the construction. Now I actually was aware of this part of Korean culture already.

Because in the last apartment that I lived in, before I got married, there was an old, abandoned house that was directly across from my apartment building. And that house just sat empty for a long time. But then eventually, the house was torn down. And now there's a new apartment building that was built on that spot. So, the developer of that construction project came to my apartment, and he gave all of the people that lived in my building a bottle of shampoo and apologized for the noise and the dust from the construction project.

Now, in retrospect, that seemed to be actually a pretty small gift, considering that that construction project lasted for several months, and even started early in the morning on the weekends. And on top of that, I don't know if you've seen a photo of me or not, but I'm pretty much bald, I don't have too much hair. And I don't have to worry too much about shampooing. But anyways, it was better than nothing. And obviously, I'm just joking about the gift. To me, it was really the gesture that counts. And I appreciated the heads up and the explanation about the construction project that was going to be happening.

So, a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I went to our new neighborhood to do exactly this, to greet our new neighbors and to apologize in advance for the construction noise. My wife prepared a cute letter and a little gift package for each neighbor as well. And since our house is pretty much surrounded by these kinds of small apartment buildings that are called billa, or I guess in English, we'd say villas here in Korea, it means we have a lot of neighbors. Each villa building has anywhere from maybe 10 to 15 apartments or so inside. So, we have to prepare a lot of letters and a lot of little gift bags.

But I'm not going to take any credit for doing that at all. My wife did all of the assembly and she prepared the gift bags and the letters. I think the only thing that I did was print the letters out. But anyways, we did go together to meet the neighbors and to distribute the letters and gift bags. In last week's bonus episode, I referenced a comedy bit by the stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco called Doorbell. Now in that joke, he talks about how people would react to when the doorbell rang when he was a kid compared to how they react these days.

And he jokes about how these days when the doorbell rings, you essentially pretend that you're not home and you just freeze and wait for who's ever are at your door just to leave. And to be honest, I'm like this myself. I think if my doorbell randomly rings unexpectedly, I'm usually not opening the door. Anyways, I was expecting that the exact same thing would happen to us when we visited our new neighborhood. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened. We went around to all of the neighboring buildings around our house. And out of all of them, only one person actually opened their door.

Pretty incredible out of all of the places that we visited, we only actually got to meet one neighbor. Anyway, the neighbor that we did meet seemed really nice. And he mentioned that he works during the day, and that the construction wouldn't be a big problem for him. And of course, we were very relieved to hear that. And unlike the building that was constructed across from my old place a few years ago, we're not going to be doing any construction on the weekend. So thankfully, we're not going to be waking up anyone on a Saturday morning, or anything like that.

But aside from that neighbor, we weren't able to meet anyone else. So, for the other people, we just put our letter and gift in their mailbox and hoped that they would see it and not be too angry or upset with us for causing a little disturbance in the neighborhood. So, we don't know exactly what will happen. But we hope that our little effort will make the trouble from the construction easier for our neighbors. And we're excited for the day when the construction is finished, and our house is ready, and I'm sure the neighbors will be too.

I've got a couple of Culips announcements for you. First up, I want to let you know about our live stream event that will be happening on Tuesday, April 4 at 8pm Korean Standard Time. The live stream is an exclusive bonus for all Culips members. So, if you're a member, please, please join us for the stream. And I'm going to be opening the live stream to any Culips members who would like to call in and talk with me, and I'm hoping I'll be able to have a little chat with many of you.

The topic for this stream is how to study English with Culips and I'll be sharing some ideas about some different ways that you can learn English with Culips content. But more importantly, I'm really excited to hear about how you all study and learn with Culips. So, this is going to be a great opportunity for the member community to come together and share our tips and tricks and study routines with each other. And I'm really, really looking forward to it. To join the stream, just log into your Culips account and follow the link from the dashboard.

And second announcement. OK, so we released a brand-new Chatterbox episode last week, and it features my cohost Anna and me and we talked all about the topic of burnout. Now burnout is that feeling you get from being overworked or overstressed or overtired. And it's a real issue that so many of us are dealing with these days. I found the conversation to be really interesting, and I hope you'll agree and find it not only to be interesting, but also beneficial for building your English skills.

And of course, there's an interactive transcript and helpful study guide for this episode that you can get if you're a Culips member. So just visit our website Culips.com. And you can not only study with that episode, but you can also find all the details about how to sign up and become a Culips member there.

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

A little earlier, I told you a story about my oven and how my wife and I spent a lot of time thinking about where we put the oven in our new house. And I said that during that process, my wife and I butted heads over it. Did you notice that part of the story? Well, if not, it's OK. Because I'm going to zoom in and focus on that part for a moment. Because to butt heads is the key expression for this episode. You know what, let's rewind the tape. Go back to that part of the story again and listen to the expression used in context a couple of more times, and then we'll talk about exactly what to butt heads means.

So, let's do that now. Here we go.

All right, now that we've heard that part of the episode and context a couple more times, let's talk about exactly what to butt heads means. So, the idiom butt heads means to argue, disagree or have a conflict with someone. I want to be clear about the spelling for all of you who are not following along with the transcript right now. So, the spelling of butt is B-U-T-T. OK, B-U-T-T. And it's not the kind of butt that you're probably thinking about. OK, in this context, the word butt is used as a verb, and to butt as a verb means to hit something hard with your head, believe it or not.

So, then the expression to butt heads is used to describe a situation where two or more people have a disagreement, or an argument, or are in conflict, especially when all parties involved are stubborn and unwilling to compromise. Now, this expression comes from the animal kingdom, where animals like rams, and goats engage in head-to-head combat by smashing their heads against each other.

So, this is the image that pops into English speakers' minds when we hear this expression, just like two rams can butt heads when they fight, two people can metaphorically, of course not actually, metaphorically, butt heads when they have a disagreement. So, then my wife and I butted heads during the planning and design process of our house renovation, which just means that we disagreed over some things. And I think you can agree that that is a normal part of any creative collaboration.

So now that we know what to butt heads means, let's take a listen to some example sentences to learn about how we can use it in a natural way. I've got three examples prepared for you. So, let's take a listen to the first one now. Here we go.

Let's break this example sentence down. In this sentence, we hear the speaker say that he used to butt heads often with his brother when he was younger. So, this just means that he fought and argued and disagreed a lot with his brother when he was younger. But now since they're grown up, he and his brother have a much better relationship. And I think anybody with siblings can probably relate to this example sentence because it's very, very common for brothers and sisters to fight and butt heads when they're young.

Let's break this example sentence down. In this example sentence we hear about two people, Sarah and Tom, and they always disagree politically, they have very different political beliefs. And because of that, they're always butting heads, they're always disagreeing and arguing with each other. And if you eat dinner with them, then it means that the dinner is not very peaceful, because they're always arguing at the dinner table.

Let's break this final example sentence down. In this example sentence we hear one team member talking to his team about a project that they're all working on. And it sounds like they're just starting the project out and that team member wants to make sure that everybody knows exactly what their role is, what job they're going to be doing, and that all of their tasks are clearly defined, so that there is no conflict, so that they don't butt heads and argue with each other and just end up wasting a lot of time.

That brings us to the end of this week's bonus episode. Thanks so much for listening, and congratulations on finishing another English study session here with me today. Have a fantastic week. And I hope I can see many of you on Tuesday for the live stream. So, I'll talk to you then, goodbye!