Actual English 3 – Occupation

Reference: http://home.ebse.co.kr/actualenglish/

Actual Talk

https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=XZdlLx7ZkjENSzM9VgFzlq97judQCBuv57ty

 

M: You know Rachel, I feel truly blessed to do what I do for a living.

 

W: Oh yeah? You know not many people love what they do. So you’re really lucky.

M: I do count my blessings.

 

W: What do you do by the way, specifically?

M: I can’t tell you, because I’d have to kill you. No, I’m not a secret agent. I’m a freelancer so I do lots of different things. I guess you could say I’m a jack-of-all-trades.

 

W: You’re like a renaissance man. You can do anything and everything.

M: I’ve got fingers in lots of different pies.

 

M: How about you? Do you like what you do?

W: I do like what I do. You know, I worked as a news anchor at a radio station and I absolutely loved it, because I was getting paid to learn. I was reading about the news, current events and I was learning about the world while I was getting paid to do it.

M: That’s true, everyone reads the news anyway. And you got paid to do it.

W: I did a lot of editing and also translating Korean into English so I learned a lot in that sense too.

M: That’s interesting. I don’t think there are too many people who are like us. Maybe people watching this will be saying, “I hate my job”, but just stick with it and something will come of it.

W: Exactly. You make it what it is.

 

• feel blessed: grateful, happy or contended
• *count one’s blessings: to think about the good things in life instead of being unhappy about the bad
• *jack-of-all-trades: a person that talented in many different fields
• have fingers in different pies = have a finger in every pie to be involved in many different activities
• *stick with it: continue to do it *something will come of it: something (good) will happen

you make it what it is: everything is up to you

Actual Interview

https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=XZOlLx7Zpm4G5YFn9lhD6Af8dBjdLRHesIiX

(Interview: Talk about what you do for a living and the details about your job)

 

As a writer, author and occasional entrepreneur, I’ve been very lucky in my career and have quite enjoyed the different things that happen each week… the different turns I take and the different projects I get to work on. Everything from working on things for the Korean government to helping them improve their international relations or doing things for some large companies… the projects can be very exciting.

I also have a lot of free time, so I get to spend more time with my family than people with normal jobs, so that’s been very rewarding. As an author of books, it's a very time consuming process. So having the free time from other projects occasionally is very nice.
I try to do new and interesting things as much as possible, so I look forward to creating new things and new ideas. I’ve got many new books for children in the works and hopefully I’ll get those done in the coming months and years.