📙 Part 2: Describe a time that you showed something new to others

This episode's vocabulary

To compromise (verb) - to lower or weaken standards.

Point-blank (adverb) - saying something very clearly in very few words, without trying to be polite or pleasant.

Learning curve (noun) - the rate of someone's progress in learning a new skill.

Housewarming (noun) - a party that you give when you move into a new house.

The general public (noun) - ordinary people, especially all the people who are not members of a particular organization or who do not have any special type of knowledge.

Disparate (adj.) - different in every way.

To bring someone/something together (phrasal verb) - to help people or groups to become friendly or to do something together, especially when they would not usually do this.

To set (something) up (phrasal verb) - to prepare something for use, especially by putting the different parts of it together.

Fragile (adj.) - a fragile object is easily damaged or broken.

To trip up (phrasal verb) - to fall because you hit your foot on something, or to make someone fall by putting your foot in front of the other person's foot.

Keen to do something (collocation) - very eager to do something.

User-friendly (adj.) - if something, especially something related to a computer, is user-friendly, it is simple for people to use.

Precarious (adj.) - in a dangerous state because of not being safe or not being held in place firmly.

To show off (phrasal verb) - to behave in a way that is intended to attract attention or admiration, and that other people often find annoying.

Questions and Answers

M: Rory, give us your story.

R: Well, a few weeks ago, I bought a new projector from my living room. It was my attempt at compromising because I absolutely point-blank refused to have a TV in-house, but I wanted to have something to display things whenever I had parties or guests. And it worked pretty well, to be honest, though, learning how to use it and where to place it was a bit of a learning curve. In more detail, I brought it out at my second large housewarming for different groups of my friends. I'd already done one before for my really close friends, but this was like one for the general public, so to speak. And the groupings were very disparate, so it was probably a good idea to have something that brought them all together, like this projector. In terms of how I did, I just set the thing up with some technical support from my partner, and it automatically adjusted to the place it was projecting. In this case, that was the wall, and people could see it as they came in and ask questions and mess around with it. It's quite fragile. So, or at least it seems it's quite fragile. So I did my best to keep out of the way and keep it out of the way to avoid people tripping up over it. Aside from some slight anxiety about accidental damage, I was quite keen to show the thing off, to be honest. It was relatively inexpensive and it did a great job, in addition to being fairly easy to use. All you needed to do was plug it in and then find an ideal place to sit it, and then you could use the remote to issue instructions and find things to watch, since it also has an internet connection and a very user-friendly interface, especially after a few drinks, which is always useful for a party. I wasn't too happy about the initial position I put it in, which is on the coffee table, but later on, after I moved it to a less precarious place, on a shelf, rather than the coffee table, I think it's much better now. And I'm really looking forward to showing it off in the future. It looks pretty cool. At least I think so, and it takes up all of that extra wall space I have just sitting there.

M: Hey! Thank you, Rory, for your story!