Show 1019 Monday 6 April
Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.
Hi, I’m Sarah, welcome to The Daily English Show.
Studio tdes taught some Japanese lessons for beginners in Niseko this winter. It was basically for tourists and seasonal workers. It was a lot of fun and we met some really nice people. And our first student was a ski instructor from Vancouver in Canada called Rob.
Rob spent the season here in Niseko. It was his first time in Japan. And the day before he left he visited the studio to do an interview. I asked him why he decided to come to Niseko.
It’s a bit of a long story, but the short version is I met my boss on a level three instructor course in Whistler. He was taking the same course and he offered me a job. So I thought, “How often does an opportunity to work in Japan come up?” So I took it.
STICK NEWS
Kia ora in Stick News today an American television program has been cancelled after 72 years.
The Guinness Book of World Records says Guiding Light is the longest running drama in television and radio history. It started out as a radio serial in 1937 and moved to television in 1952. CBS has announced the show will be cancelled because of declining viewership. The last episode is set to air on the 18th of September.
And that was Stick News for Monday 6th April.
Kia ora.
conversations with sarah
#642 When did you start skiing?
with Robert Hargrove
Step 1: Repeat Sarah’s lines.
Step 2: Read Sarah’s lines and talk to Rob.
Sarah How long have you been a ski instructor?
Rob Ah, I’ve been doing it since my second year in uni. Almost five years now.
Sarah When did you start skiing?
Rob I was three years old.
Sarah So you can’t remember how you learnt to ski?
Rob No, I don’t. I do remember relearning how to ski, which was part of the level one instructor course. They basically took us back to the very beginning and started from there and put it all back together again in the way that they wanted it.
Sarah Why did you decide to become an instructor?
Rob One of my, ah, one of my really good friends is a blind skier and he asked me to become his guide in this racing program. And so I had to take a certification course for teaching disabled skiing to do that. And after that, it just started to snowball from there.
Sarah How does being a guide work?
Rob You just tell … turn, ah, left, turn right, stop. Ah, is the, the basics of it. Try not to give too much detail other than, you know, if it’s a … a run’s got a lot of moguls, obviously got to let, let the skier know about it. But if there’s a lot of people around, generally, it’s not a good idea to, to say anything. Just guide him around it and as long as he doesn’t know it’s there, it might as well not be.
Sarah So you race together?
Rob Yeah, so I ski in front. And when we’re racing actually just, ah, make, have a, have a little microphone. I just talk to him, ah, through the microphone. Just constant noise over and over again. And he … ah, without any directions, he just follows me, about, ah, two meters behind.
Sarah Is that a special race for blind skiers?
Rob It’s not really special for blind skiers. Usually they’re … it’s combined disabilities, those races. So … and they’ll have different classes for different disabilities, from, raging from sit skis, um, three and four track skiers, blind skiers and any other … a bunch of other different disability classes. In fact there’s three disability classes for blind skiers alone, based on how much vision they have.
Sarah Did that experience change your skiing?
Rob A little bit changed the way … how I, how I think about skiing. Cause it took it from being an automatic process to something I had to, ah, something that I had to convey to someone else. So it was no longer automatic doing that.
Sarah Has he been in the Olympics?
Rob Yes, but not the winter Olympics. He’s a five-time, ah, medallist in summer Olympics, in swimming.
Sarah Did you speak Japanese before you came here?
Rob When I got here? No.
Sarah How did you learn Japanese?
Rob From you. Ah, not quite, a little bit from you, ah, a little bit from people I live with and I was dating a Japanese girl, quite a bit from her. All of it sort of just started to snowball together. And now I can speak with broken sentences and understand a third of what people say. Well, maybe not a third, maybe a quarter, but …
Sarah What helped you the most?
Rob Just when I’m walking around town or going to do things I’ve got Japanese lessons on my iPod and just listening to those as I’m, when I’m on the go and, ah, doing nothing else, it really, really helps.
Sarah Have you learnt any other languages?
Rob Theoretically, I learnt French in high school. I don’t know any French past … well just a couple of phrases, none of them nice.
Sarah What did you study at university?
Rob Physics.
Sarah Have you worked in that field?
Rob Ah, no, I have worked in electrical engineering though. Um, not quite, ah, physics, but very related.
Sarah What were you doing?
Rob Designing power supplies.
Sarah Are there many Canadians in Niseko?
Rob No, not so many. Ah, my boss is Canadian and I’ve met two or three other Canadians while I’ve been here. But, no, there’s not a lot.
filming notes
This interview was filmed on Saturday 28th March 2009 at studio TDES, MSK JR Apartment, Niseko, Japan.
links
today's news
today's STICK NEWS pictures
Robert Hargrove at ProPowder, Niseko
music
show start
artist: Boom Tschak
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: More Chocolate, Please
from: Former Yugoslavia
MySpace
cws start
artist: Wolfgang S.
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: Dynamite
from: Belgrade, Serbia, Former Yugoslavia
artist site
MySpace
qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack2
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site
qa bgm
artist: Hugo 'Droopy' Contini
album: Strikes Back !
track: Jackie's Idea
artist at Jamendo
album at Jamendo
MySpace
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