Can I tell you about something that just happened to me, I mean, literally, this just happened to me about five minutes ago. If you're a loyal Culips listener, then you'll probably know that I am right in the middle of marathon training right now.

I'm planning to run a marathon with one of my friends at the end of October. And as a part of my training, I have to run three to four times a week. Well, the run that I have to run today, in fact, I'm planning to do it after I finish this recording, is the long run.

Each week, there is long run and that is what is on my schedule for today. And as you can probably guess, by the name, it involves running for a long distance, and today's run is going to be 26 kilometers. Now, running that distance in the hot summer is very unpleasant.

And lately here in Seoul, South Korea, where I live, the temperatures during the day get to around 30 to 35 degrees Celsius, anywhere in that zone. So, as you can imagine, you don't want to be running 26 kilometers in the blaring summer, heat, and humidity, right? Well, I completely agree with you.

So, there are two options you can do to get around this, that is to run very early in the morning, or very late at night. And while I've been training for this marathon, I've done both. I've woken up early to go running in the morning.

And I've waited until around 9pm at night when the sun is down, and the temperature drops a little bit to do that as well.

Now, they each have their advantages and disadvantages, but I tend to like running at night better than the morning, just for the fact that if you're running a long run, like the run that I have to do today, 26 kilometers, that means that you have to wake up really early in the morning, because already around 7:30am, it gets really hot here.

So, if you want to do a run and totally avoid the heat, that means you have to wake up like 5:30 in the morning. And that is just a little bit too early for me to get up and go to a long run. So, for today, I'm planning to wait until maybe 8pm until the sun goes down, and it cools down a bit.

And then I can go outside and run in at least a little bit more comfortable conditions. Well, knowing that I have to run this long run has been in the back of my mind all day. As you can imagine, it's one of those things that you're kind of like, "Ugh, ugh, ugh!"

It's always replaying in the back of your mind, "Oh, I have to do that long run later, I have to do that long run later." And it just keeps repeating and repeating and it's something that I've thought about probably about 100 times today.

And for that reason, I'm looking forward to just finishing the run, so I don't have to think about it anymore. So, I'm planning to go do that run as soon as I finish recording this episode for you all.

But to be honest with you, my legs don't feel like they're in perfect condition today, they feel a little bit achy and sore and painful. And so, because of that I wanted to do some stretching, and some foam rolling ahead of my run.

So, I just went outside into my yard to do this. And this is where the crazy thing happened that I want to tell you about, OK? So, I went outside, I'm in my yard, I'm on my foam roller. And for people who are not really into exercise, maybe you don't know what this is.

But essentially, it's just this circular tube that's covered with a very hard foam material, and you put it on the ground, and you roll around on this tube. And the idea is that it kind of works out some of the tension and the knots in your muscles. And it's really painful to do.

It's a very unpleasant thing to do, usually, but it really does help bring some relief to your muscles and works out some of the tension that is stored in your muscles. So, it's a good thing to do. So, I went out to my front yard, and I was rolling around on my foam roller.

And I was thinking about my hometown while I was rolling around on my foam roller and doing some stretching outside. You know, I told you that I thought about this long run 100 times today. I've probably also thought about my family and my hometown 100 times today as well.

That's because there's a huge forest fire burning in my hometown, which for those of you who don't know is called Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. If you go on to Google and you type “West Kelowna forest fire”, then you'll be able to see some videos and some images of this fire.

And the fire started very suddenly. In fact, I just heard about it this morning my mom sent me a message and said that there is a new fire that is pretty close to where my parents live, to my parents’ house not too, too far away. But even worse than that is that it's very close to where many of their friends live.

So, these fires in Canada, I'm sure many of you have heard about Canada's forest fire season this year, it's been especially bad. As you probably are aware, Canada is a huge country. And it's got many, many, many forests.

And during the summer when it's dry, and there's not that much rain, many forest fires happen. And they've made a lot of international news, especially this summer, because the smoke from Canada's forest fires have been blowing south into the USA and causing a lot of air pollution in the USA.

I remember reading earlier in the summer about New York City having some of the worst air quality in the world, because of the smoke from Canadian forest fires that were on the east coast of Canada, the eastern part of Canada.

But of course, I'm from the western part of Canada, British Columbia is the most western province. And it's a huge, huge problem, everyone. Every summer, Canada burns, and especially my home province, British Columbia burns, you have these massive forest fires each and every year.

And it's just because Canadian summers are very, very dry, some other factors involved as well, climate change, and then maybe all it takes is one lightning strike, and then you have this huge forest fire. Or maybe it only takes one person being careless with a cigarette, and then you have this huge forest fire.

So, a massive, massive issue in Canada. And unfortunately, there's this huge fire burning in my hometown right now. And like I said, the fire is pretty close to where my parents live, and very close to where I grew up. And where many of my friends' parents still live. So, this forest fire is on my mind.

And I was thinking about it while I was outside in my yard, foam rolling and stretching. And so, in my mind, I thought, we just need some rain, we just need some rain. We need Mother Nature to help out and bring some rain to the situation and help put out the forest fire naturally.

I don't want to diminish or put down in any way, the important role that all of the brave firefighters play, who are out there around the clock fighting this fire and trying to protect the people who live in Kelowna and their homes. And they're doing a great job of course, they're working super hard.

But I was thinking it would be great if we got some rain to help out as well. And can you guess what happened in that moment, I'm not even joking, this is the crazy thing that happened. When I thought of the word rain in my head, I felt a raindrop fall on my head at the exact same time. No joke.

And then about 10 seconds later, it just started pouring rain. And right now, actually outside it is raining. And the reason why this is kind of crazy thing is that it is a sunny day here in Korea today.

And this is just a freak little rain cloud that was passing over and I think this deluge will be finished in just a moment or two. It looks like it will just be a quick short summer shower kind of rain situation here. But I thought that was really weird timing!

I thought of the word rain, and exactly at that same time rain started to fall. So, I hope this is maybe a good omen and we'll get some rain in Kelowna as well. And everyone that's listening out there, if you could send some good thoughts and some good energy towards the forest fire situation in my hometown, that would be much appreciated.

And I hope this forest fire will be under control soon without too much damage and without too much loss of life or property.

So, with that introduction story out of the way, everybody, why don't we jump into today's episode. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Andrew, and I'm a Canadian living in Seoul, South Korea.

And in each bonus episode, I tell you some stories about my week, what I got up to or what I've been thinking about.

And for each episode, there's a 100% free transcript that comes in a PDF file, or there's an online interactive version that's great for studying with if you're using a computer or smartphone or tablet to study and we'll put the link for that transcript in the description for this episode so that you can find it easily.

And I hope you'll find it useful for studying along with me here today. I wanted to follow up on last week's bonus episode quickly, "The Mushroom Mystery". Do you remember that one?

In that one, I read a news story to you about poisoning in Australia, where three people passed away, and one person is in critical condition after eating some very, very poisonous wild mushrooms. And many people messaged me over the last week and asked me for more details and more updates.

Well, everyone, I want to let you know that there's a pretty interesting discussion happening about this story on our Discord server. And you can find some updates, there are some really interesting updates to the story, as well as you can see what other Culips listeners opinions are about this story on our Discord server, which again is free to join.

And we'll put the link for that episode in the description as well so that you can join our server and find the updates and participate in the conversation. But for today's episode, what I'm going to do is try something a little bit new.

And I want to walk back through my past week, day by day by day and just tell you briefly about what I got up to each and every day. Now I have a tendency, I'm not sure if you've noticed this about me or not. But I tend to be a Chatterbox.

I think the name of the Culips series, you know, we have a series called Chatterbox and it's very fitting because I myself am a chatterbox. And chatterbox just means someone who speaks a lot. So, I talk a lot.

And for these bonus episodes, often the goal that I have in my mind is to talk just for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes maximum. And then by the time I finished the episode, and upload it, well, it's 40 minutes or 50 minutes long. So, I'm going to try and not do that today.

I don't want to make this episode go on for two hours or anything like that. But I want to walk through my Monday to Friday from last week, and just share with you some of the highlights about what went on in my life. I had a jam-packed busy week last week.

And so, I think I have lots of things to talk about and share with you. So that's the plan for today. So, let's start by rewinding and going back to Monday of last week. Here's what I got up to.

So last Monday is what's known as a sandwich day here in South Korea. And I didn't know what this meant sandwich day I read about it on the internet.

And at first, I thought it was a day promoting sandwiches and I got really excited like "Oh are there free sandwiches that are being given out on Monday to celebrate sandwich day?"

But no, it wasn't that kind of sandwich day, OK? A sandwich day, at least here in South Korea, refers to a day that falls in between a weekend and a public holiday. So, Monday was a sandwich day because Tuesday was a public holiday.

So that means Monday was sandwiched in between Sunday, which is a weekend day, a day off, and Tuesday, which is a public holiday, which is a day off for many people as well.

And so that means that many people end up taking Monday as a holiday as well, regular company workers will get, you know, a certain amount of holiday days per a year that they can take off.

And they often like to take a sandwich day off because that means well you could have for example, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday off by just taking one of your vacation days off, right? So, it's kind of a good strategy for office workers to get the most out of their limited vacation days.

So, that is what my wife chose to do. She took Monday off so that she could have the four-day long weekend. And my mother-in-law also took the day off so she could have the four-day long weekend. And so, my wife invited my mother-in-law over to our house, so we could have lunch together.

So, my mother-in-law came over for lunch. And she didn't come empty handed. I love this about my mother-in-law, she never ever comes empty handed. She always brings us lots of amazing food to eat.

And so, when she showed up at our house, she had her hands jam packed full of bags and inside the bags were… guess what? Can you guess what a Korean mother-in-law would bring to your house? Kimchi of course! So, she brought many different kinds of kimchi for us.

Four different types of kimchi, I think? Including one type, which I'm not even sure what the name of this is in Korean. And I think this is my first time eating this kind of kimchi, but it's made from the plant part of sweet potatoes. So, I'm gonna have to find out what that kind of kimchi is called.

But it's very refreshing and perfect for the summer. So, thanks to my mother-in-law, shout out to my mother-in-law, for bringing the kimchi over. She also brought steaks over. So, I was just amazed. So happy! Kimchi and steaks, what an amazing present from my mother-in-law.

So that was very, very nice to receive. So, after my mother-in-law arrived at our house, and we put the kimchi and the steaks away, we went out to eat lunch at our restaurant in our neighborhood.

And in fact, we had a little bit of trouble finding a great restaurant to eat at, because the restaurant that we intended to go to was closed. We asked my mother-in-law, what kind of food she wanted to eat, and she told us what she wanted to eat. And so, my wife and I were like, perfect.

We know this great place where they serve that kind of food. And then we went there, and it was closed. I guess the restaurant was also taking advantage of the sandwich day. So, we couldn't go to that restaurant, we had to kind of wander around for a bit until we found a different place.

But it was great, we had a nice lunch together and hung out together. And of course, it was nice to hang out with my mother-in-law there for a bit. After lunch, we came back to our house, and I brewed some coffee, and we sat around and had a coffee.

And then my mother-in-law and my wife went out and they, I don't know, went shopping or did something together. I don't know exactly what they did to be honest. They just spent some time together because I didn't take the day off. It wasn't a sandwich day for me. I had to do a bunch of things for Culips.

So, I did some Culips work while they went off and enjoyed the afternoon together. And I think that was pretty much all I got up to on Monday. Other than that, there was nothing really special that happened. So that was Monday.

Let's talk about Tuesday now. Ugh, Tuesday. Tuesday was definitely the most difficult part of my week from last week, without a doubt, 100%. But before we get into why it was difficult for me, I want to tell you about the public holiday here in South Korea that happened on Tuesday.

So, every August, August 15th is a day called Gwang Bok Jeol here in South Korea. And it celebrates Korea's liberation. And I think in fact, the English definition of this day is National Liberation Day. And it's just a great holiday celebrating Korean independence.

If you're not familiar with the history of Korea and the colonial period of Korea when Korea was occupied by the Japanese, well, I would really encourage you to read about it. It's a part of history that's really unknown to many people, I think but also a really important history.

And just a great day to celebrate Korea's liberation. And I love the name of this day. It just almost gives me shivers thinking about it. The name in Korean, like I said is Gwang Bok Jeol, and if you translate that gwang means light, and bok means restore, and jeol is like a word that refers to holiday or festivity.

So, if you were to translate this, literally, it's like the day the light was restored. And I think that is just a really beautiful name in itself. And it gives me shivers just to think about what it must have been like when independence was restored to Korea, back in 1945.

So, a very important holiday here in Korea, that we celebrated on Tuesday. And I had the day to myself, because my wife met up with some of her friends.

And, again, they did something that I'm not too sure about what they did, they probably went out for lunch and had coffee and went shopping, those kinds of things that you do when you hang out with your friends. But for me, I went running, OK? And this is why Tuesday was a difficult day for me.

Because as you know, because I told you at the top of the show, I'm in the middle of marathon training. The marathon that I'm going to be running is happening at the end of October, which means that I don't have too much time left to get in shape and get ready for this run.

I'm about five weeks, I think this is week five of my training that I'm in right now. So, I've been really working hard, and I've been following my training plan exactly as it's been laid out. I haven't missed a day or missed any workouts or exercises. It's been really good training so far.

And on Tuesday, the run that I had to do was the worst kind of run. It is interval training. And so, interval training is where you alternate between running really hard and running really fast, and then taking a few minutes to recover, and then you do it again, you run really hard and really fast, and then you slow down and recover.

And you'd have to do this, well, five or six times. Now, up until this point of my training schedule, whenever I've had to do an interval run, it's always been just a short distance.

So maybe I'll have to run for 300 meters, or 400 meters, or 500 meters, or run for a specific amount of time, run for 45 seconds, run for a minute, and then you recover for a minute, OK, or run for 500 meters, and then walk for 250 or 300 meters, that kind of interval.

And I have this great watch, a Garmin watch, where I can set it all up all of my intervals on the watch, so that when I have to run, or I have to jog, or I have to walk, then it will just beep, and I know exactly when to do it. So, it's fantastic, it's really easy to do the intervals this way.

But on Tuesday, the interval training was ramped up, and it went from being, you know, run for a minute, recover for a minute, or run for 250 meters recover for 250 meters, it changed, and the distance was ramped up to 1.6 kilometers, 1600 meters.

So, I had to run as fast and as hard as I could for 1600 meters, and then I had three minutes to recover. Now, usually when I go running, I just go on to this amazing network of paths that they have here in Seoul that are along these different little rivers and streams, and they connect up to the Han River.

And it's fantastic, I can start on the little path that's by my house and go to this huge network of paths through there. So, it's a really amazing place to run. But it's not so great for this kind of interval training. Because often there are many people walking or biking on these paths.

And it's great for you know, jogging, but when you're doing really hard, fast running, sprinting almost well, then it's not the greatest because there are many people in the way and just seeing some guy run at full speed down the path looks very out of place.

It's a place for leisurely exercise, it's not a place for hard, hard training. So actually, I think the best place to do this kind of interval training is a track, a running track. And unfortunately, there aren't too many tracks near my new house that are open to the public. There are two universities that I live in between.

And both of these universities have tracks. But they're not open to the public. They're open to students only. I've been to one of the universities before, and even though it said students only on the sign, I noticed that there were many foreign students running there.

And I thought, well, maybe I can blend in, and people won't notice that I'm actually not a student, because there are many other Westerners running on this track. And of course, you know, I don't look like a student. I'm 20 years older than them. But I kind of just snuck in and did some running on this track.

And it was OK. Nobody said anything. And it was fine. So, I've been to one of the universities before, but I decided to check out the other university track. And it's, yeah, several kilometers away from my house. And so, to get there, I decided to ride my bike.

So, the plan was ride my bike to the university, run around the track, do the interval training, and then ride my bike back home. So, I went into the little shed that I have in my yard, and I brought my bike out, and I went to ride my bike, and I noticed my tires were flat.

So, no big deal. I can go pump up my tires, but I couldn't find my bike pump. I have no idea where it is. It must be somewhere. But after moving to this new house, I'm not exactly sure where it is. And you know, in this kind of situation, I could probably ask my wife exactly where it is.

And she'd be able to tell me in two minutes, but of course she was out with her friends. So, I puttered around the house looking for my bike pump, my tire pump, and I couldn't find it.

So, I gave up on that idea of riding my own bike and decided instead to ride a ddareungi, which is a public bike rental system here in Korea. It's awesome. You just download their app and then you can pay around 80 American cents, so a very cheap price, and you can borrow one of their bikes for an hour.

Now there are ddareungi rental stations all over the place and I have one really, really close to my house. So, I just opened the app and scanned one of the QR codes on the bicycle, and I was able to rent it. So, I was off to the races.

I got on the ddareungi bicycle, and I rode over to the university that I wanted to visit, so I could run on their track. Now, again, the sign said students only, but it was a public holiday. And there were only some other kind of middle-aged guys running around on the track.

So, I thought, hey, of course, you know, if somebody asks me to leave, I'll leave, but I thought it would be OK just to use their facility. And so that's what I did. So, it was time for interval training. And it sucked. It was not a fun run. Usually, I enjoy running. But this interval training was really, really hard.

The first mistake that I made was going in the middle of the day. Like I told you before, the best time to run here in the summer, is in the morning or at night, but I couldn't run at night because I had a plan to record some Culips episodes with Kassy at night.

And in the morning, to be honest with you, I slept in a little bit, so I had no other option than to go at about three or four in the afternoon is when I went and it was maybe about 32 degrees and really, really sunny, and humid. And there was no protection from the sun on the track.

It was just in a wide-open area. So, the sun was beating down. But I like a challenge. I like it when there's an extra level of difficulty. I don't like things to be easy, I like them to be a little bit difficult. So, I was up for the challenge. And I completed the workout fine, it was OK, I didn't die or anything like that.

But it was really difficult. And for about the hour where I was doing these intervals of running 1600 meters. So that's four laps around the track, and then resting for three minutes. I did that for about an hour and I hated every minute of it. Except for the recovery, the three-minute recovery period was OK.

But you know, during that three minutes of recovery, you're just dreading — you're just watching your watch count down until the next run session. So anyways, that was very unpleasant. But then after about an hour, I finished, and it was time to go home.

And of course, I had to rent another bicycle to ride back home. So, I went to the nearest ddareungi station that I could find to rent a bike to ride back home. And I was under a little bit of time pressure because I had to meet up with Kassy to do some Culips recording.

So, I hustled from the university track to the nearest ddareungi station to rent one of these bikes. But there was a problem when I got to the ddareungi station. Can you guess what it was? There were no bikes available. And I was in kind of an isolated place. Usually there are ddareungi stations all over the place.

But this university is a little bit removed from a big population zone. So, there was really this one station only. And I guess because it was the public holiday, there were many people who wanted to go out and ride bikes. So, I got stressed out.

I was like, “Oh my gosh, I'm going to be late for meeting up with Kassy!” So, I messaged her, and I said, "Kassy, I'm going to be a little bit late. Is it OK?" And of course, she's very easygoing. And she said, “No, it's fine, Andrew, take your time.” But still, I feel bad, right?

You don't want to be late for your appointments. So, I was stressing out about that and thinking about how can I get home as fast as possible. In fact, this ddareungi station was right beside a busy highway. So, it's not like I could have even flagged a taxi down. A taxi wouldn't have been able to stop on that road.

So, I was kind of stressed out. But just as I was trying to figure out what was happening, somebody came up riding a ddareungi bicycle to return it. So that was perfect timing. However, there are two different types of ddareungi bicycles.

There are regular-sized bikes for adults, and there are smaller-sized bikes for kids or teenagers or whoever needs a smaller-size bike. So of course, the bike that was returned was not the adult-sized bike, right? Of course, my luck, you know, it has to be one of the small-size bikes.

But still, I thought it can't be that bad riding one of these smaller bikes. So as soon as it was returned, I grabbed it. I rented the small bike, and I was late, so I was really trying to push it.

And I'm wondering if you've ever seen a clown riding one of those little miniature bikes that they ride sometimes you can see that at a circus. That's how I felt. I felt like a clown riding this little toy bike like the bike was just way, way too small for me.

And every time I pedaled the bike, my legs came up and hit my arms and it was really uncomfortable. And like I said, I was trying to go as fast as possible because I didn't want to be late. So, I was really just pushing it and going as fast as I could, but I must have looked ridiculous.

And on top of this, I was completely covered in sweat from my run, I was completely drenched from doing this intense workout in the hot sun. So, I must have looked like a crazy guy just riding this minibike, dripping sweat, going as fast as I could.

But thankfully, I didn't have to observe that, I was just living it. Anyways, after riding the bike for about 10 minutes, it became very uncomfortable. And so, what I decided to do was at the next ddareungi rental station that I passed, is just to hop off the bike and exchange it for a full-sized bike.

And that's what I did. So, I didn't ride the bike all the way home. Instead, I jumped off midway and switch to one of the bigger bikes. And that was much better. So, I was able to get home fairly comfortably. And amazingly, I was only one minute late from my recording date with Kassy.

So that was perfect. I didn't have to, you know, make her wait for too long. And we recorded some brand-new Culips episodes together, that will be coming out very soon. This was the first time recording with Kassy since she's been back from her trip. She went to Scotland and Europe over the summer.

So, we took a break for several weeks while she was gone. But now she's back and it was great to connect and record with her again. And we'll be excited to share all of those episodes with you all in the near, near future. So that was my Tuesday after exercising and after recording, you can imagine that I was beat.

So, I just took it easy for the rest of the evening. And in fact, I think I was in bed by 10pm.

It looks like what I feared would happen happened. I originally intended to tell you about Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, but after telling you only about Monday and Tuesday, we're already at the time limit for today.

So, I think what I'll do is revise the theme for this episode. Instead of telling you about my Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I'll just tell you about my Monday and my Tuesday. And if you're curious about what I got up to on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, well, then you can just let me know through our Discord server.

And maybe I can tell you those stories sometime in the near future. But of course, always before I let you go, I want to focus in and tell you about a useful vocabulary expression that you heard me use while I was telling you those stories.

And I hope by learning about this expression and adding it to your vocabulary, well, then you'll be just a better English user in the future. You'll be able to understand this expression when you hear it later while you're having conversations or watching movies or TV shows or podcasts even.

And you'll be able to use it when you're speaking to make your English sound more natural. And to express yourself more clearly, more specifically, and with more precision. And now it's time for this week's vocabulary lesson.

So, the expression I want to teach you about today is a phrasal verb and it is ramp up. Or I guess in the dictionary form, we would say to ramp up. And to ramp up means to gradually, and slowly but surely, make something bigger or increase the intensity of something, or for something to grow and grow and grow little bit by little bit by little bit.

So, I used this expression earlier when I was talking about running intervals. Did you hear me use it? If not, that's OK, because we're gonna rewind and go back to that part of the episode again, just so you can hear it used in a natural context as it just flowed naturally out of my mouth.

So, we'll listen to that sentence a couple of more times. And then we'll come back, and we'll discuss the meaning of ramp up and how you can use it in a natural way in your own sentences. So, let's rewind, go back and listen to that part of the episode a couple of more times. Here we go.

So, I was talking there about running intervals and how my interval training has ramped up over the last few weeks. It started off pretty easy when I first started training for a marathon, and now after five weeks, it's really difficult.

So, each week, it got a little bit more difficult and a little bit more difficult, it ramped up. So, I think this expression is actually very easy to visualize, because you can just think of a ramp. Now a ramp is a kind of road that connects a low place and a high place. You could think of a highway ramp.

Maybe you have to drive up a highway ramp to get onto an elevated highway. So, it's a road that would connect, you know, just a smaller road with a higher elevated highway. And it's kind of like a gradual hill, right? So that is a ramp that is a highway ramp.

We also have ramps very often in front of businesses, for people who are maybe in a wheelchair, they can't walk upstairs. So instead, they have to go up a ramp. And the ramp is just a sloped path that gradually takes people from a low place to a high place.

So just like a ramp is a road that you can follow to take you from a low place to a high place gradually and little by little, well, when we ramp something up, it means that we increase the intensity of it a little bit by little bit, just like my marathon training plan has increased the intensity of my interval training week by week by week.

This expression does have a kind of casual tone to it. But just because it's a casual expression, doesn't mean that it is inappropriate to use in formal situations. In fact, this phrasal verb is used often to talk about business and the economy.

You'll often hear it used to talk about manufacturing in particular, when companies are producing products, often they will ramp up production, especially before sales or holiday times.

And I think especially in the fall to winter, you'll hear this use often when it's like Black Friday, a huge sale day in North America. And also, around Christmas, when there are many people who do a lot of shopping and buying gifts to give to their loved ones.

Well, in order to meet this increased demand around the busy holiday shopping, many companies will ramp up production of their products.

It means they will slowly but surely increase the amount of products that they are making so that all of the shoppers who want to buy those products can find them in the stores. So now that we know about the meaning of ramp up, it's time to learn with some example sentences. I have three prepared here for you.

So, let's listen to the first one now. Here we go.

Let's break this example sentence down. So, in this example sentence, we hear that a company is planning on ramping up hiring. Ramping up hiring. So, this means that they are gradually going to hire more and more people. Why? Because they're expanding into new markets.

So, the business is expanding. Maybe they are opening new stores or new offices in different locations and new cities or new countries. And because of this, they need more employees. So, they're going to ramp up hiring, which means they will be hiring more and more people in the future.

Let's break this example sentence down. So, in this sentence, we hear from a student who says that he is going to ramp up his study hours because he has an exam that is coming up soon and he wants to get an A+ on the exam.

So, he is going to ramp up his study hours, which means slowly but surely week by week, he is going to increase the amount of studying that he's going to do. And I think this is a great strategy for increasing the amount of doing anything that you want to do.

I'm using this ramping up strategy for my marathon training. But you could also use it for studying for an exam or studying English even, right? Often if you decide to just totally change your habits and your lifestyle and do something very, very intensely starting like tomorrow.

Well then, you'll burn out and you'll find it really easy to quit, right? But if you make small changes to your lifestyle and just ramp up the intensity of your exercise or your study, for example, then it's much easier to make changes this way.

Let's break this example sentence down. So, in this example sentence, we hear from a band member who is talking about a battle of the bands competition. Battle of the bands. Do you know what this is? Battle of the bands is a kind of competition that many high schools and universities run.

And it's just a concert where you have many different bands perform. And often the audience gets to select which band they liked the best. So, it's kind of competition to see who can perform the best. Battle of the bands. And in fact, I participated in one of these in high school.

So that's a kind of fun memory that I have from high school. So anyways, the band member in that example sentence said that his band is ramping up their practice schedule, so they can prepare for the battle of the bands.

And so that just means that gradually, you know, day by day, week by week, they're planning on practicing more so they can be ready for that battle of the bands competition.

All right, we made it to the end of this modified episode. We didn't quite make it all the way to Friday. But at least I hope you enjoyed some of the stories from my Monday and Tuesday last week. And so, I want to say thank you for joining me.

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So, I think I'll leave it at here for now everyone. Have a great week, take care, happy English studies of course, and I'll talk to you next time, bye!