I Got Kicked Out! (Conversation)

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you Hello, my lovely learners, and welcome to Easy Stories in English, the podcast that will take your English from okay to good. and from good to great. I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show. Today's episode is a conversation about going to a ball and getting kicked out of an office. As always, the transcript and PDF are available at easystoriesinenglish.com and you can find the link to that in the description. Now, as you can hear...

my voice is not doing so well. This is, I think, a combination of factors. One, it's very hot. So despite me drinking... endless amounts of water, I am probably a bit dehydrated. Two, it's hay fever season in London. Hay fever is seasonal allergies. allergies you get to pollen that trees and grass and plants release. And hay fever is usually worst in cities because of the kind of plants that are put there in parks.

and London is particularly bad for hay fever, and there seems to be a lot of pollen around at the moment. I also smoked a little bit. Last night, I helped my friend finish off his cigarettes. I was really doing him a favor because he's trying to quit smoking. But also, the main factor is the heat, really. It's just... unrelentingly hot. It's been around 30 degrees most days for the last week. We're going to have a bit of a reprieve on Tuesday after I record this.

a bit of a rest. It's going to go down to like 23 degrees Celsius, but then it's just going to go back up. And I've talked about it before, I think, but 30 degrees in London. is not the same as 30 degrees in many places. For one, we have no air conditioning or very little air conditioning. Certainly we don't have air conditioning in the vast majority of homes. Two...

Most of us live in Victorian houses that were built to keep heat in, not to let it out. And three, with all the concrete there is in London, it just absorbs the heat and then slows down. releases it throughout the day. So even if it's quite cool and clear in the morning, by the evening the whole city is going to be breathing heat out at you.

And it's not very nice. So if you're watching on YouTube, you can see the time in the dark, even though it's half past 10 in the morning. And that's because I can't open the curtains. If I open the curtains, the sunlight will come through and make it even hotter than it already is. This is something a lot of British people don't actually understand or something that a lot of people have only learned in the last few years, but in really hot weather.

If the sun is coming into one side of the house, you actually want to close the windows and curtains on that side to prevent more heat from coming in. Essentially, you want to keep the air inside. house cooler than the air outside. To be honest, it doesn't make a massive difference because my room tends to just absorb the heat and then it takes a very long time for it to cool down. So...

I have a little thermometer in my wardrobe and I think it's like 27 or 28 degrees in my bedroom right now. So if I seem a bit less... excited and enthusiastic than normal, that's why.

Having said that, I'm going to light some incense. I've been very stressed recently and one of the things that really helps me feel at home and calm down is lighting a bit of incense. So incense is one of those words. I'm going to let you hear me like the incense. It will be a bit of ASMR. We've had a lot of ASMR on the podcast recently.

incense is one of those words that I always think people will understand in English, but they don't. I actually talked about it a few episodes ago when I talked about the fact that I've started lighting incense.

In many languages the word for incense is basically smelly stick or nice smelling stick. So it's a little stick, a little bit of wood that you burn and it releases a lovely smell into the air so i have a few boxes of incense here they're imported from india i believe i have opium incense jasmine incense we're going to be burning jasmine incense today

And I have Dragon's Blood Incense. Now I bought the Dragon's Blood Incense because it sounds really cool. Like Dragon's Blood. Wow, that must be cool. It doesn't smell that nice. I think my favourite one that I've had so far was... What was it? It was Copal or... I don't remember, but I have high hopes for the Jasmine. Okay, so smelling the Jasmine stick, it smells very good.

Although it smells quite medicinal, I guess. I guess the jasmine incense. Yeah, it smells a bit like medicine to me. I don't know. Well, it's very flowery, and I do like the flowery ones, but... i don't want such like a um i like more of like a woody deep dark smell so i guess i'll put the plates here So you can see me light it. And then I'll put it on the side. And hopefully.

I won't set myself on fire as I light the incense. I have some very nice matches here by the way. Matches are the little wooden sticks that you brush very fast to create fire. If you're listening on the podcast, you'll hear it lights and you'll probably guess what it is. But I have some very nice matches here that my cousin gave me because my cousin smokes a pipe. and he smokes cigars so he has these very fancy matches for lighting cigars and they they create fire in a really satisfying way

And actually you can see if you're on YouTube, these matches are black, which looks really cool. Okay, so let's go. There we go. Easily lit. Sometimes I have to... try lighting a match like 20 times. Sometimes I've had to give up on lighting a match because I just couldn't do it. There we go. It looks a bit like a birthday candle. I have this little incense dish.

I got a round incense dish. So, or I guess an incense holder is the word. It's basically the thing that you put the incense stick into. But there are lots that are long. And that makes sense because then the ash falls down and it is easy to collect. The one I have, I put on a little plate because it's a round dish. I put a little plate underneath it to catch the ash. When the incense burns, it lets out ash, but it doesn't do a very good job. So I do have bits of ash all over my table.

which is not perfect, but there we go. That's life. Okay. So I've been up to a lot recently. So I decided today I'm going to record two conversational episodes and I'll release one. when you're hearing this, and then you'll hear part two next week. So I'm basically just going to do like a big life update. As I'm recording this, it is the 12th of July. I am moving out of my flat in 15 days, and then I'm going to stay with a friend in South London. And two weeks after that, so 29 days from now,

I will be flying to China on the 10th of August. So as you can probably imagine, I've been preparing. I've been madly preparing. And it's coincided with starting a new job. going on holiday, lots of very difficult things or just stressful, busy things happening at once. Lots of nice things, but things that take up a lot of energy.

So a lot has happened in a short space of time and that's what I'm going to tell you about today. So a few weeks ago I went to Cambridge. You might remember that I studied at Cambridge University. I've been back to the city of Cambridge a few times since graduating, but this time I was going for a ball. A ball, like a big party.

In some fairy tales, like Cinderella, they all go to a ball. A ball is a place you might meet a handsome prince who will love you for your whole life. In this case, that did not happen. Sorry, spoilers. No prints for me. But basically, many of the Cambridge colleges do a Mayball at the end of each year. It's called a Mayball, although they all happen in June for some reason. And it's basically just a really big party for students and alumni. So alumni are ex-students.

And most of these balls in Cambridge are very formal. You have to wear very fancy black tie, like a tuxedo, a fancy suit, essentially. But the one I went to was a bit different.

I went to King's Affair. Now, King's is one of the bigger Cambridge colleges, or at least it's one of the older ones. Actually, it's not that big in terms of number of students, but King's... is the college i studied at because when you go to cambridge you study in a college there are i think 32 colleges for the whole university so it's kind of like a mini university within the university

And King's Affair, which is King's College's May Ball, is a bit different. It's much more relaxed. It's a bit cheaper. And it's a fancy dress party. So you have to dress up in a costume. So the theme for King's Affair was shahmat, which means checkmate in chess. So checkmate is what you say when you are one move away from... taking your opponent's king i believe i'm not very good at chess but basically when you're about to win you say checkmates and it comes from this

Persian phrase, shahmat. I think it's Persian. Anyway, so the theme of the ball was kind of chess, ancient Persia, ancient India, all of those things. So anyway, I originally had no intention of going to King's Affair, but my friend who didn't go to Cambridge... has always wanted to try a May Ball. So I said, OK, let's give it a go. Why not? I could get tickets as an alumnus, as a former student. So I booked the tickets and off we went to Cambridge.

Now, before the ball, I was in Cambridge alone for a few hours. And I really realized while I was there how crazy busy I've been and how unsustainable. in some ways, my life in London has been. Like I'm rushing between teaching in a school, teaching online, going to yoga classes. I have long commutes. I'm always in like a loud, overstimulating city.

Cambridge is not a quiet city by any means. If you're in the city centre, it's very condensed. It's a very small city centre with tourists, students. business people, people who work on the science parks in Cambridge. So it's very, very busy around rush hour in Cambridge. But even so... compared to London it felt so peaceful and I just went and lay down in one of the parks and watched the birds and listened to the relative silence.

and appreciated the fact that I had more than a few meters space between me and the next person. Because in London in the summer, if you're in a park, it's very hard to find. a lot of space, right? You're usually pretty packed in because everyone wants to go to the park in the summer. Now, alongside this lovely relaxation, I did also experience a lot of memories.

I didn't have a great time when I studied at Cambridge. I struggled a lot with making friends, adapting to study routines as a student. I was still... going through a very difficult process of figuring out who I was as a person and also kind of finding my independence from my parents. So I had a lot of regrets and... painful memories associated with Cambridge. For a long time, I thought I would never go back at all, or if I went back, I would never go back kind of for any university events.

Because there are lots of events for alumni, but I haven't really been to any since graduating almost 10 years ago. Most of all, I had a deep sense of inadequacy. like not being good enough because i originally went to oxford to study chinese but i dropped out after a year because the course wasn't what i wanted

Again, I was still trying to figure out who I was. And so I changed to Cambridge to study linguistics, which I thought would be better for me. But in many ways, it was worse. Like, I still really struggled there. so I felt a lot of shame about that and I had a particularly bad depressive episode in my last year of being in Cambridge so anyway going back to Cambridge going back to Kings having this time to myself you know

A lot of these feelings came back up, but I was really in a place to process them. So I kind of I went to my hotel room. I had a cry. I wrote in my journal and I did a shamanic journey. I've talked a bit about shamanic journeying. It's basically you listen to like a drumbeat, like boom, boom, boom, and you have a vision and you talk to your power animals, your spirit animals, and they give you advice. If it sounds very strange.

It is. But anyway, I talked to my power animal, who is an otter, a very... adorable sea creature that swims very fast. I asked him for advice about how can I make it through the next few months until I leave for China because I'm so stressed. There's so much going on. I'm just overwhelmed. And he gave me really good advice. So, you know, when you're in a car and it's raining.

and the windows of the car are covered in drops of rain, maybe it stops raining, right? And you have all the drops of rain on the window, and they're still, and then very slowly one of them moves.

and then as it moves it hits another raindrop and then suddenly it creates like a a cascading effect like a waterfall and all the raindrops combine and suddenly go down and it's very relaxing to watch or at least i find it very relaxing to watch so he said treat every day like a droplet of water on a car window right just like every day is just like one of these drops of water sometimes it will move slowly sometimes it will move very quickly

But just take that kind of relaxed, contemplative attitude. Like, don't... rush don't think too much about the next day or the next week just go one day at a time and that's what i've been doing um I have literally been saying to myself every day for the past week or so, okay, it's... this number of days until I move out and move in with my friend in South London and it's this many days until I fly to

China like I'm counting down day by day and it feels realer by the day. Through this process I was able to feel a lot less stressed about my situation. And I also, you know, reflected a lot on how much I've changed since I was a student. Moving to China was not something I was ready for in the past. And I was kind of able to forgive my past self, right? Like I recognize that I made a lot of mistakes and I could have done things a lot better.

But also I was really trying my best. I guess what's changed is that. I now accept that life has a lot of pain and a lot of suffering, but if you just accept it and acknowledge it and sometimes even embrace it, it's fine. you know i've become so much more resilient so much stronger since i was a student so yeah

So what about the ball itself? Well, me and my friend, before I went to Cambridge, sorry, I'm mixing up the timeline a lot. We went together to buy costumes. And we decided to go to Camden Markets. If you've ever been to London, you've probably been to Camden Market. It's incredibly popular with tourists. Camden is an area that was originally...

Very very alternative very popular with like punks and goths. It was kind of this edgy street culture place where you get like piercings and tattoos and a lot of really alternative shops now it's become very very corporatized

When you walk through Camden Market, there are still many interesting and different shops. There are some really good antique shops, some really interesting clothes shops, but for the most part, it's all been... bought up by big companies and you're just kind of wading through a sea of tourists as you're there. So I was a bit skeptical about whether we'd find a good outfit, but in one of these good shops, in one of these vintage shops, we did indeed find the pieces of an outfit. Well...

It wasn't just in the vintage shop. I also got some stuff from this shop called Little Katmandu. So it's like a Nepali shop. So my friend was kind of dressed like a medieval bishop. because a bishop is a chess piece. And then I was kind of dressed as his Persian hand servants, his Persian man servants. It was a bit of a loose concept, right? I'm going to put up pictures on YouTube and I'll put pictures in the transcript as well, of course. So when we got to the party...

we were quite happy with our outfits, but we were a bit like, are these going to be good enough? You know, like, are they close enough to the theme? What interesting outfits are we going to see? Will people judge us? And let me tell you.

Before we even got into the party, just walking past the queues of people, because we paid for a queue jump so we could skip the queue, but walking past the queues of people waiting to get into the party, looking at their costumes, it was... immediately obvious that we were two of the best dressed people there and I have to say I don't know what was happening but those kids were not dressed to theme

or they were dressed to theme, but it was a very lazy interpretation of the theme. There was a lot of just black and white, like a chessboard. A lot of, oh, I've got a suit, but I've painted a chessboard on my face. A lot of cheap, like, night outfits. And then there were some people dressed as like Harry Potter students, which first of all, I didn't think Harry Potter was popular with Gen Z because all the undergraduate students would be Gen Z, right?

I didn't think it was popular with Gen Z, but also the link between Harry Potter and chess is just, I mean, there is a link because they play wizard chess in the first book, but it's a very weak link. So I... I was disappointed. But on the plus side, we got many compliments on our outfits. I had a really nice furry hat. It was made of Tuscan wool. And I had a blue velvet cloak that I could...

spin around in. Was I hot? Absolutely. Was I hot? Was I giving the party everything it needed? Definitely. Most definitely. So... I went to King's Affair when I was a student 10 years ago. And at that time, the theme was subterranean, as in underground. So some people came dressed as like underground monsters. Many people came dressed as tube stations, like London tube stations. So I dressed as...

barking, which is a tube station, a metro station. And I had a sign for the tube station around my neck. And then I just dressed like a dog because dogs bark, right? They bark. So I was barking. So it's not like my outfit 10 years ago was amazing. And I don't remember how good the outfits were generally 10 years ago. But this year they were not very good, I have to say.

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A big party mixed with a fair. So they have loads of decorations up related to the theme. They have a music stage with live musicians. They have a bunch of food stalls with different kinds of food. They give out free alcohol. This year, which they didn't have last time, they had bumper cars or dodgems. So dodgems or bumper cars are these little cars you get into and you ride around and like bump into.

um other people who are in these cars so you have like a little area where you drive the cars around and hit each other There was a helter-skelter, which is like a little tower that they build out of woods. And then you go to the top of the tower, you sit on a rug, and you go down a slide. on the outside of the tower. I don't know if helter-skelters are really a thing in other countries. They're popular at British funfairs. They're quite dangerous, I think.

But yeah, so you climb up this little tower and then you ride down in a spiral. And my friend actually hurt himself on the helter skelter because it was a bit of a rough landing and he had to go to the medical room and get a big plaster. uh there was like a photo booth in the party which we didn't use because there was a big queue for that there was shisha shisha also known as hookah uh it's like i don't really know how to describe it

I think it's Persian originally. It's basically like smoking, but instead of smoking a cigarette, you have this big thing and you're all smoking from pipes.

And it's flavored. So usually it's like mint flavor or strawberry flavor, some kind of flavor. So it's like a weak flavored tobacco and you just sit around and smoke shisha. For some reason, the shisha... industrial complex has invaded cambridge because the only times in my life i have smoked shisha was when i was a student at cambridge or attending events in cambridge it's like all of the may balls and all of the garden parties have

shisha i don't know if these shisha companies in cambridge have just decided like students love shisha But yeah, you get Shisha at all of these events. And finally, they had this underground part of the college where they had kind of like a nightclub section. So in theory, it had all the ingredients for a great party.

But what became very quickly apparent when we were there, aside from the less than brilliant costumes, was that kids these days don't know how to party. Now, I've heard a lot of things about Generation Z. They don't drink as much as older generations. They don't smoke as much. Well, I guess they vape, but they don't party as much. They don't have as much sex. In general, Gen Z is the most conservative, abstinent generation in a really long time.

And I really felt it at this party. It's kind of hard to describe because obviously parties are like an atmosphere, they're a mood. But every time I felt like the party was heating up and people were about to let loose. and really have fun, it kind of died down again. It's not that people were on their phones all the time. It just felt like a lot of these kids were lacking like the social skills necessary to have a really good party.

So an example is there was this one girl we saw who had a cool costume and she had these like tears on her face. And I asked like, oh, like, are those, how did you make those tears? And she's like, oh, they're bits of silicone. And I'm like. We talked a bit about that and we were chatting. And then at some point, she just kind of stopped talking to us and turned back to her group of friends. And it was like she had decided, OK, conversation's over.

or we were talking to a group of people and then suddenly one of their friends came over and said oh we're going to this room and took them all away and didn't say like oh do you want to come with us they were like bye you know and like I guess I've socialized enough in like nightclubs and parties to know that like, yeah, if someone has sort of joined your group, it's polite to maybe like bring them along. You need to find like a natural way to end the conversation.

But essentially that in a party like this, it's very normal to move fluidly between groups and to kind of create new groups based on who you're talking to. But these kids didn't seem to get that. And then the nightclub bit, the dancing was like, it felt like people were dancing for 15 minute TikToks. It was like someone would dance a bit, get really into it and then stop. talk to their friends, go on their phone.

Whereas when I go clubbing and I really enjoy it, it's because I release myself. Like I fully give into the music and I enter like a trance state. And it felt like it was impossible to enter any kind of like.

rhythm or trance for the whole party because everyone was too distracted, too anxious, too disconnected. And I think the highlights, the interaction that really made this clear for me was we were talking to like a languages student who was probably second year I think and I said to him I was like don't you feel like your generation is lacking a certain joie de vivre so joie de vivre

is a French phrase that means joy of living, right? And we use it to mean just like the joy of life, like having a positive energy in your life. And I was like, don't you think your generation doesn't have that? And he said, well, I think it's perfectly fine to be middle of the road. I think it's fine to just be normal. And I thought that was so interesting because I'm like, one, you're wearing quite an elaborate outfit with a lot of makeup.

But two, you're studying at Cambridge. Like this is widely regarded as the best university in the world. And you're saying like, oh, I just want to be middle of the road. Like it seemed very strange to me. Like it seemed like a... A very strange attitude. And I think maybe it is this generational thing of me being a millennial. Growing up, we were told like, you can do whatever you want. You're special. You're unique. Follow your dreams.

Whereas Gen Z has grown up with climate change, with social media, with a terrible economy. So they look at the world around them and there's almost this conformist attitude of... Well, what's the point in trying to stand out? That's just unrealistic, right? I should just try and be happy and normal and fit in. And I think social media plays a huge role in that. I think also in terms of this party.

Because, what, we're five years out from COVID, so none of the students organising this party would have attended a May ball before COVID. Therefore, they don't know.

what these parties were like before covid so they haven't essentially like had that experience to give them expectations and to train them in like how to create that atmosphere so i have a lot of sympathy Like I really understand, like it's difficult and it's kind of crazy in a way that COVID could have such a long lasting effect on even quite trivial things like this.

But at the same time, guys, come on, go out and party. Put your phones away. Lose yourself in the night. It's just so funny because... when i go clubbing in london i haven't been loads but when i go clubbing in london now i really realize like everyone here more or less is like 30s and 40s like clubbing has become this like old people thing

in a way. Obviously, there are nights that cater to younger people, but there does seem to be this huge generational shift in what is considered a good time and the way that people celebrate. Anyway, I'm really glad I went to King's Affair. My friend was also fascinated from like a kind of anthropological perspective. And it was really helpful because I'd had all of those feelings coming up of inadequacy and regret.

It really reminded me, oh, undergraduates are stupid. Undergraduates are stupid. And also, yes, when I was at university, I did spend a lot of time hanging out and partying and not studying as much as I should have. But that was probably a good thing in many ways because I experienced possibly the last era of that before things became really...

stale and locked down because of COVID and social media. So in a way, I really got the best of both worlds, you could say. But anyway, I think it's time I come to the reason you're all here.

You want to know what I got kicked out from and why I got kicked out. Don't worry, I didn't get kicked out of the party, although that probably would have made the night more interesting. I'm not getting kicked out of the country. yet. And I haven't been kicked out of my job. But I did get kicked out of an institution.

So part of the reason my life has been so crazy in the last month is because as you probably know I split my teaching between teaching in schools in London and then teaching online. And because of the travel times between my home and school, because I like to go to my yoga classes, which are in central London, I often try and teach my online classes somewhere in town, somewhere in London. and not at home. And...

In my last job, that was fine because I could just use one of the empty classrooms in the afternoon. But because I'm quite new at my new job, I didn't want to push things. Things are quite busy because it's summer school. So basically I just...

needed somewhere to use in the interim while I was kind of settling into new routines. Anyway, while I was doing all the paperwork for going to China, I had to go to this legal office, I had to go to a notary office, basically a lawyer's office, to get some of my documents authenticated.

And this office was in a co-working space. So you might have heard of co-working spaces. The most famous one is WeWork, but essentially you pay a subscription and it's like a big communal office that many different people and many... different companies use so you pay for a co-working space you can go there you can work on your laptop they have kitchens they have meeting rooms and so on

And the notary office I went to was in a co-working space in Covent Garden. And I won't say the name of this co-working space because I don't want to get into legal trouble. Although I did just say where it was, so. Whatever, if they tried to take me to court, I'll be in China. So anyway, I realized after going into this notary office a few times, I could just work here.

And nobody would care because as far as I could tell, they never check your passes. They never check that you're actually paying. So basically when you walk in, there's like a reception with several little booths on the right hand side. And these booths is literally just a table and some chairs.

but they're very soft and they're very good for doing online meetings because they kind of isolate the sound a bit and they have some plug sockets. So I thought, well, look, these booths are usually empty. Usually nobody is using them. I can't use the Wi-Fi in the co-working space because I'm not paying for it, but I can just come here, plug in my laptop and use my mobile data, create a Wi-Fi hotspot and connect my laptop.

to my phone data and just teach here. And that's what I was doing for about five weeks. And actually I even, you know, started to get to know some of the receptionists, like they would say hi to me and stuff. But eventually, one day after finishing a class, I was putting my stuff away. And one of the receptionists came up to me and said, oh, hi, I'm blah, blah, blah. I don't think we've met before. Did you sign in today? Have you got a pass with us?

This was the moment I had been dreading, right? Because I knew deep down that, okay, I'm breaking the rules. And maybe if I was doing it for a week. You know, I could feign ignorance. I could pretend I didn't know because genuinely the first time I came in there, I assumed the reception must be free to use because it was so easy to go and use it and not get challenged.

But I was dreading that this day would come, and indeed it did. And I decided to feign ignorance anyway. I said, oh, oh, I thought this space was all just free to use. Oh, I'm so sorry. And to her credit, she was very nice and very British about it. And she said, oh, that's OK. Just make sure you book a room next time or you get a pass. You know, we have very affordable passes.

So implying that, you know, I could leave and then buy a membership and come back and use it and they wouldn't mind. But deep down, I was like, girl. We both know I'm never coming back in here. You know what I mean? Like, the subtext was clear. Like, get the hell out of here, you cheap little nasty cheating s***. slime i don't know uh so yeah so i was very politely asked to leave and i was essentially kicked out and i've not been since

You know, if I could afford the membership, I would pay for it. But it costs minimum £220 a month. And that is simply not worth the amount I make. And it's really frustrating because... I would just teach my online classes from a cafe, but all of the cafes in central London are always really busy. It's quite hard to find a place with a plug. The Wi-Fi is usually terrible. And then...

Often students can't hear me very well. So it's just not reliable. Now, fortunately, I've now sorted out a situation where I will be able to use empty classrooms at my workplace. But yeah. I got kicked out of a co-working space and to be fair, it could have gone a lot worse. I was being quite cheeky, but there we go. So what lesson have I learned from this? Because obviously it's really important. when we make these mistakes in life, to reflect and really...

find the meaning in it, find the lesson that can be learned so we can be better people. And the lesson I've learned is if you're going to use a co-working space without paying, wear a disguise. I should have shaved my moustache. I should have taken off my glasses. I should have changed my haircut. I should have worn a really big coat.

I should have spoken with a Russian accent. I could have done so many things to bamboozle them. I could have done so many things to confuse them and make them think I was a different person. but I didn't because I hadn't learned my lesson. So now you know if you are going to sneak into a co-working space, wear a disguise.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Easy Stories in English. Tune in next week. Come along next week for more life updates. If you were hoping to take a class with me, if you were hoping to book some online lessons with me, Too bad. I am completely full up. I had to stop accepting new students a few weeks ago. You can, of course, buy my books at easystoriesinenglish.com slash book.

and self-study personally i think self-study is the best way to learn a language teachers can really help you but ultimately you can bring yourself so far with dedicated learning so definitely have a go at my books if you haven't done them already i may be teaching online classes again in future but i'm not really sure so keep listening to the podcast

I guess. And join the email newsletter at easystoriesinenglish.com slash email because there you will find out first when you can book classes online. See you next week!