#1149 The Blind Side, Auckland Power Cut, Up And At 'Em

Show 1149 Tuesday 26 January

Watch today's show at YouTube or BlipTV.

Hi I'm Sarah. Welcome to The Daily English Show.

Today we’re studying a scene from The Blind Side which is a movie that came out last year and stars Sandra Bullock.

It’s about a guy who has a rough start in life, as it says in Wikipedia, he had an impoverished upbringing … and then a happy ending basically. He has a happy family, he goes to university and he plays football.

Not that I have seen the movie, but I feel like I have because I watched the trailer.

So a rich woman decides to look after the guy and she lets him stay at their house and he becomes part of the family. And when she shows him his room, she says: I found some time to figure out another bedroom for you.

Figure out is a phrasal verb which means: to think about something until you understand it or to calculate something.

In this situation she means she figured out, or solved the problem of where he was going to sleep. Maybe she had to move some furniture, or rearrange something.

And then he tells her he’s never had a bed before.

This is mine?

Yes, Sir.

Never had one before.

What? A room to yourself?

A bed.

That, Yes, Sir is interesting.

Yes, Sir is, of course, used in military situations, when you’re talking to someone who ranks above you. So you’ll hear it if you watch war movies.

It’s also used in some formal situations, like flight attendants often say it to male passengers.

But in this situation, it’s friendly. I think it’s kind of used for emphasis, like saying, yes, that’s right or yes, absolutely.

This film is set in the South or maybe it’s the South East of the United States, and apparently in Southern American English, people use Sir more often, so maybe that has something to do with why she says that.

STICK NEWS

Kia ora, this is Stick News. Yesterday afternoon, thousands of homes in Auckland, New Zealand had no power for more than two hours.

Auckland is the biggest city in New Zealand and the home of the world famous studio tdes.

Yesterday afternoon the power suddenly went off.

The power cut lasted for more than two hours.

The Daily English Show crew amused themselves by watching traffic drive through an intersection with the traffic lights off.

The power returned just before 7 o’clock.

Apparently the power cut was caused by a fire underneath some power lines.

And that was Stick News for Tuesday the 26th of January.

Kia ora.

Word of the Day

Today’s word is another phrase – it’s an idiom: up and at ‘em.

'Em is short for them.

The mother in today’s movie says this to her son: Up and at ‘em.

I’d never heard this before and I thought she was saying up and Adam. So I searched for that and then I found an answer saying, “I think that you mean "up and at 'em".

In this situation it clearly means get up and I think it also means things like, let’s get moving, or get going. And I found this example: Up and at 'em - there's a lot of work to be done.

Have you heard this idiom before?

My mum never said that to me when I was a child. But I think she might have said rise and shine sometimes. Well, that was the first time. And if I still didn’t get up it was something like: Get up, you’re going to miss the bus again.

conversations with sarah

#727 That sounds exciting.

Step 1: Read Billy’s lines.

Step 2: Repeat Billy’s lines and talk to Sarah.

Billy Are there a lot of power cuts in Auckland?

Sarah Well, yeah, there’ve been two this month already, so yeah, quite a lot.

Billy Don’t they have a back-up system?

Sarah Hmm, that would be a good idea. Yeah, um, I’m not really sure how it works.

Billy So what did you do during the power cut?

Sarah I looked out the window at the traffic.

Billy That sounds exciting.

Sarah No, it’s actually quite interesting to see how the traffic flows through the intersection without traffic lights.

links

today's news
today's STICK NEWS pictures

The Blind Side - Wikipedia

music

show start
artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: Future Cha Cha
from: Brooklyn, NY, United States
artist site

cws start
artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: The Jazz Woman
from: Brooklyn, NY, United States
artist site

qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack2
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

qa bgm

artist: King Dubby

album: Chapter II

track: Zen Dub

from: Angers, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo

artist site

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