📙 Part 2: Describe a piece of equipment that is important in your home

This episode's vocabulary

Barring (preposition) - except if a particular thing happens.

Come in handy - to be useful.

Cumbersome (adj.) - awkward because of being large, heavy, or not effective.

Profoundly (adverb) - deeply or extremely.

Self-repair (verb) - correct faults without needing outside help.

Up and running - if something, especially a system or a machine, is up and running it is operating.

Hacked off (adj.) - unhappy, tired, or annoyed, especially because of the situation you are in.

To lug (verb) - to carry or pull something with effort or difficulty because it is heavy.

Grind someone's gears (idiom) - to make someone mad, or to piss someone off.

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Questions and Answers

M: Rory, are you all super ready to give us the story?

R: Yes.

M: Okay, bring it on baby, bring it on.

R: Well, I definitely couldn't get by without my laptop. I think it's the only electronic device I use every single day without fail. Maybe barring my phone, but my phone comes with me everywhere. I usually just treat my laptop like a desktop computer, to be honest with you. It's just me who uses it. But it comes in handy for just about everything from organizing my photo albums, to writing my posts, and creating media for social media in general. And it also just serves as a platform for all of my social media and events and video conferences with my family and friends. I had a near miss recently, which taught me the value of just how crucial it is to have it in good working order when the keyboard died on me. And it was impossible to type without this sort of cumbersome USB plugin. I've used USB products in the past, but it's usually been to add something. Here it was more serving the purpose of a replacement. That made everything about a million times less efficient. And I wasn't best pleased to be honest with you. I thought it would be like that forever until I got home and miraculously began to work again. I'm not sure if it was the cold or something else. But I was profoundly grateful when it just seemed to sort of self-repair and got itself back up and running again. If I had to keep carrying on like that with the plugin, I would probably have been really hacked off. And indeed, I might have to buy another one to be honest with you. It's not really pleasant when you have to, like lug a keyboard around separately to a laptop that already has a keyboard, it just doesn't work well. So that kind of frustration just really grinds my gears to be honest with you. But yes, so I'm back to like I said, my normal level of usage with it. And I'm really pleased if that's the case.

M: What would you do if it broke down?

R: Um, I'd take it to a repair shop or one of our friends is a technician so he could maybe have a look.

M: Thank you, Rory, for your answer!

R: No problem.

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