at edmittance

Man: So multi-level marketing…
Woman: That is right.
Man: So what exactly is that?
Woman: Oh just. You can go into the website. There are just thousands. It is like I introduce two people. Two people introduce two people. And so there are tiers to this marketing.
Man: Like Amway?
Woman: Network marketing or multi-level marketing. Yeah.
Man: Tupperware and Amway. Are they examples?
Woman: They are good examples. Yeah. They are in the same category.
Man: How did you get involved in it?
Woman: A very good friend of ours introduced us to it when my husband and I came to the Gold Coast.
Man: M-hm.
Woman: We were approached by this couple who became friends and we were introduced by friends, which is the deceptive element in multi-level marketing because very often they recruit friends and because they are your friends you naturally assume…
Man: That they are ok.
Woman: Yeah… have your interests at heart. Unbeknowns to us our friends although they are good business people they themselves were quite inexperienced in this particular business so they actually without meaning to misled us.
Man: Right. Ok. And what product initially..?
Woman: Well this company is called Omega trend and it is a sort of a replica of Amway.
Man: Right.
Woman: And so they started with cleaning products and…
Man: They broke away from Amway?
Woman: Yeah. They actually are a breakaway from Amway though they didn’t like people to know that because of Amway’s rep.
Man: Amway has a bad rep?
Woman: Incredibly bad rep so that Amway had to change its name that many times to disguise its…
Man: Past.
Woman: Yeah past or…
Man: I thought Amway like…I have that heard it is expensive but the products are quite good.
Woman: Actually that is what most people say and I think there is something to be said for quality. I think it is quite good quality but the fact is there is a high profit margin so I think it is inherently unethical and they pump up the price and they have to because the different tiers of people have to make their profit along the way, to me, for me, I think it is unethical.
Man: And you felt you got burned? You felt like deceived. You weren’t happy with your experience?
Woman: I felt, yeah….

Use this post to learn English and German at the same time.

What is that?

It is a photograph.

Who is that?

That is my father.

How old is he?

He is sixty-five.

Where does he live?

He lives in Berlin.

Who is this?

This is my mother.

How old is she?

She is sixty-one.

Do you have a brother?

Yes, I do.

Where is he?

He is in France.

How old is he?

He is thirty-eight.

What does he do?

He is an engineer, an artist, a novelist.

Who is this?

This is my sister.

Where is she?

She is in America.

What does she do?

She is a nurse.

Is she married to an American?

No , she is not.

She is not married.

She is single.

Are you married?

No, I am not.

I am divorced.

Are you divorced?

Yes, I am.

You too?

Yes, me too.

at clstal

Mark: I am just sitting here at a cafe in the Pahar Ganj area of New Delhi with Michael. Michael, you are not feeling very good?
Michael: No, I am certainly not.
Mark: What is the problem?
Michael: Well. I got diagnosed with amoebic dysentery about eight nine weeks ago when I was up in the mountains and I got treated for it then by a very good doctor with antibiotics but I fear that it has not yet gone away as I have had recurring problems.
Mark: You vomited this morning?
Michael: That is right. I got some new pills, that somebody at this very cafe recommended, that I take.
Mark: Ayurvedic?
Michael: No, no. Not those ones. These were some other pills. I forget what they were called. This man said that his sister was a nurse and these were the pills to take and I found them at a chemist, took a couple and I was violently sick this morning not long after taking one of these pills on the street, which was quite interesting.
Mark: Mm. That is terrible. How are you feeling now? Are you feeling a little better?
Michael: Not really I am feeling very weak I have to take some of these… you know… what do you call them…re-hydration salts.
Mark: And you are going to eat some banana and papaya as well?
Michael:Well I have got a papaya juice coming and yeah perhaps I will have some banana. I have heard that that is good for you.
Mark:I hope you feel better soon.
Michael: Thank you very much.
Mark: This man wants to clean your shoes.
Michael:Yes, I…

at ton3vita

Woman: When I finished school I went to university, Melbourne University, and studied science, a bachelor of science . I then did my honours degree and after that I worked in a heart disease research institute.
Man: In Melbourne?
Woman: In Melbourne. It is called the Baker Heart Research Institute. So I worked for a year, a bit over a year on cholesterol and the metabolism of cholesterol in the body.
Man: How the body breaks it down?
Woman: How it is actually transported. So I was looking at a protein, that determines how the cholesterol in the blood is modified and delivered to cells and how it is returned back to the liver..
Man: Right.
Woman: …to be broken down into bile. So we were working on that and then I wanted to have a break so I went traveling and I traveled through western Europe and ended up in London and I worked at the Guildford Surrey County Hospital in an immunology lab and that was more diagnostic work. It was quite interesting. And after that I moved to Finland. Helsinki.
Man: Wow!
Woman: And I did my PhD there.
Man: In Helsinki? In English?
Woman: In English. Every student who is doing their PhD; they have to write their PhD in English.
Man: Right.
Woman: And the seminars are given in English.
Man: So you were in Helsinki for like five years.
Woman: Five years.
Man: Do you speak Finnish?
Woman: Not very well. I can understand a bit, but it is quite a difficult language and because English was my mother tongue they wanted to practise their English.
Man: Right.
Woman: And preferred to speak English with me. But yeah I did take lessons and try and learn it…and that was all… So the PhD was all metabolism and transport.
Man: Right.
Woman: And after that I decided to move back to Melbourne so I took the trans-Siberian train.
Man: Wow!
Woman: And went that direction into Beijing.
Man: Into China, yeah.
Woman: Yeah. Then got back to Melbourne and I started my post-doctoral research which was in a different field.  It is blood diseases like leukemia and I was researching stem cells in the bone marrow and a signaling pathway…
Man: Stem cell research; that is illegal in some places, isn’t it?
Woman: It is. This is adult stem cells. Not embryonic.
Man: Right.
Woman: So we all have stem cells in our bone marrow and they are constantly re-populating the marrow and providing us with our whole immune system.
Man: Right.
Woman: But they are normally dormant or “quiescent” as we call it. And they only go into division when they need to produce certain cells. So I was trying to figure out or understand what controls; like what signals they get to move them from quiescence to an active state
Man: Right.
Woman: So that was three years and that was in Melbourne. So I just published the work from that and decided to travel…

At what age should we hold people responsible? (active)

From what age should society hold people responsible? (active)

Sentence Variations

Children are generally not held to be criminally responsible for their actions until they are mature.

Children are generally not thought to be criminally responsible for their actions until they are sixteen.

Young people are generally not held criminally liable for their actions until they have reached a certain age.

Did they draft him or did he volunteer?

Somebody taught him to play the piano.

Somebody separated the two boys.

They were separated.

They were taken away from one another.

They did not see each other any more.

They were born.

They were separated when they were born.

They were separated at birth.

They were separated as soon as they were born.

They were separated soon after they were born.

at irp

(Swami talks for the first 25 seconds of recording. Then transcript begins.)
Mark: So the creation is sustained by prayer?
Swami: It is sustained by divine will. It is sustained by divine will and the divine order; the cosmic order. The cosmic order…In the beginning five basic things were created…
Mark: The relation with us? We are praying…?
Swami: Because we are in error.
Mark: Mm.
Swami: Ignorance means. It is not a…it is not a.. You don’t…If you say someone is ignorant, you are not accusing him. You are not blaming him. You are not scolding him. You are saying that he does not … that you do not know your essence. “Hey you ignorant fool!” If a monk; if a saint out of compassion says to a normal person “Hey you ignorant fools. Foolish children.” They should not get angry. “Hey there I am a big man. I am a big officer. I am so wealthy. This fool; he looks like a fool and he calls me a fool; he should be punished.” The way our foolish kings used to punish saints and they used to bear the consequences later. Ignorance means not knowing your true nature;
Mark: Mm.
Swami: Not knowing the true nature of your self. Who are you in essence? You are alive. You say this is your body. You are not the body. This body is changing all the time. It was in the mother’s womb for nine months and then the boy is born and the body is grown and it grows up. It becomes old. So where is the essence?
Mark: Mm.
Swami: You are not the body. The body is not the essence. You are the speck of consciousness, the speck of the infinite light that shines in the heart.
Mark: Mm.
Swami: You are that piece. You are that fragrance of the infinite light. That is God! So you are but that. But then you think that you are…you are different from the other boy. An Australian is different from an American?
Mark: No, he is not. (laughs)
Swami: He is not?
Mark: No, he is not.
Swami: No he is not! (laughs) The essence is one. The essence is one. The essence is one and to realize that; to realize your true nature as the essence of all, you have to pray. You have to practise. You have to do penance. You have to seek the Vedic gods who are given by the grace of the infinite; by the grace of the infinite Vedas as; it is called; you can say they are like schemes. They are like schemes. The government forms so many schemes for the welfare of so many sections of society.
Mark: Mm.
Swami: This scheme is for the handicapped. This scheme is for the blind. This scheme is for the downtrodden. This scheme is for the tribal people.
Mark: Mm.
Swami: This scheme is for orphaned children. So many schemes are laid. All for the good of them. The government which looks to the welfare of all; it forms specific schemes that they may live happily;
Mark: Mm.
Swami: That their livelihood will be taken care of. So God too; the formless infinite has formed several schemes.
Mark: Mm.
Swami: Ok you worship this god. Your nature will suit this Lord Shiva. Your personal nature; you are too pure; your nature will suit this Lord Vishnu.
Mark: Mm.
Swami: Ok you form this divine mother. You are attuned. You like your mother very much. So nature is about mother; the divine mother. But you you want to see a God every day in the form. So that Lord Surya; the sun god is there. Without him there is no life. He too is my own form. Lord Surya the Sun God is there. You worship him and you will attain the higher truth, the highest truth. So god has formulated all these schemes. So these are the schemes of the infinite to get back to your true nature as the infinite. So that is why you have to pray. You have to meditate on these forms. If those forms are pleased the same inner essence that is there within your heart; that too will get pleased.
Mark: Mm.
Swami: The method of pleasing the inner one is to please the outer ones.
Mark: Mm.
Swami: The formed ones.
Mark: Yesterday I came here and I got lost.
Swami: Ah.
Mark: And…

at drp

Axel: What kind of churches were they?
Isabel: There are churches now, but they were not obviously churches then, but they are temples in the shape of a cross…
Luis: You know this…?
Isabel: And they are all hewn out of rock from the top down.
Luis: They are like huge sculptures.
Isabel: Mm.
Luis: Yeah, Sculptures. They are carved in rock.
Isabel: Mm.
Luis: They are not built buildings but…
Axel: Excavated from the rock face.
Mark: Caves?
Luis: Not exactly.
Isabel: No no no. It is a very geometric building when you look down on it.
Mark: It is cut out of the rock?
Luis: Look from a helicopter! You arrive to Lalibela for example which is where we are talking about…
Isabel: Mm.
Luis: You get to Lalibela and you see, Lalibela is a flat place with huts and palm trees, and you say, “where are the buildings?” Then you look from the air…
Mark: From the air?
Luis: …from the air and you see a huge square like I don’t know five hundred metres on every side.
Mark: M-hm.
Luis: Here is like an empty corridor of perfect flat walls and in the centre a building in the shape of a cross, for example but this building has not been built there. It is that all this around and all this stone inside the building has been taken out.
Mark: Taken out. It has been sculpt…cut out of the rock.
Luis: They are like huge sculptures rather than buildings. They are not built actually. They are carved.
Mark: Three thousand years old. Monasteries? Temples? Churches?
Isabel: They are connected with…
Luis: Monasteries.
Mark: Coptic Christian? What is the religion?
Isabel: No. Now they are Christians.
Luis: They are Christian. Ethiopian Christians.
Mark: Coptic Christians.
Luis: No. Ethiopians.
Mark: Ethiopian…I think…
Luis: It is not exactly the same
Isabel: Yeah, there is a difference. It is not quite Christian. It is almost a Zionist Christian.
Luis: No no no no! But…
Mark: But who are the people who built these buildings? What is the name of the place…where these buildings are…?
Luis: Lalibela.
Isabel: Lalibela.
Mark: What is the name of the people who built the buildings?
Luis: The Amharas. The Amharic people is the big ethnic group in Ethiopia and the one which has been on the throne for, I think… The problem is the Amharic are black, but they trace their path from King Solomon.
Isabel: That is right. They are also totally connected with King Solomon.
Mark: So there is a linguistic genetic thing (that) doesn’t link up somehow?
Luis: There is a temple …in Lalibela…in which only the priest; only one priest can accede (access) to the big relic inside and the big relic are supposed to be the Ten Commandments.
Isabel: The Holy Grail.
Luis: Well, I have heard the Ten Commandments.