Unit 9 Page 87 Lesson A3B

Page 87:

3: speaking and listening: who’s materialistic?

B:

listened to Howard answer the questions above; take notes, then compare with a partner. how much detail can you remember?

1:

do you like to have all the latest gadgets?

no way, I’m not interested in gadgets at all.

I think they’re a waste of time and money; worse, the end up controlling your whole life! you will believe this, but I don’t even have an answering machine at home.

no MP3 player, no digital camera and definitely no cell phone.

I can’t stand those things.

you know, a friend of mine had one of those handheld things with all his appointments and addresses and everything in it and then he lost it somewhere.

Poof! Gone! he was totally freaked out.

So, you know, forget about that.

I write all my appointments in a good old-fashioned desk calendar.

2:

could you live without a credit card?

well that’s a good question; I don’t like owing money.

I mean, I never keep a balance on my credit cards.

I pay them off every month.

so, in that sense I could live without one.

but I like to travel and you really need a credit card for that, like to buy airline tickets; right?

and I wouldn’t want to carry cash with me everywhere I went.

what if you were going away for two weeks and you needed to pay for everything in cash?

hotels and things?

I don’t think they’d even let you rent a car without a credit card.

or you could get robbed and then what would you do?

So, no; I guess I couldn’t live without a credit card.

3:

are you very attached to your possessions?

it depends; some things yes and some things no.

like, I have some artwork and gifts from friends and souvenirs from trips and things like that.

I’d be really upset if anything happened to those.

but you could take away almost everything else and I wouldn’t care.

like sometimes I think it would be fun to move somewhere really far away, and maybe I wouldn’t be able to take all my stuff with me.

no problem; I’d be way more interested in the adventure than in my possessions.

leaving a lot of stuff behind wouldn’t bother me at all.

4:

have you ever gotten upset because you lost or broke something valuable?

Well, one time I lost my watch.

I was in Puerto Rico on vacation.

I was having a really great time, and to tell you the truth, I have no idea when I lost it.

must’ve been at the beach.

I looked all over; retraced my steps and everything.

but it was gone.

Anyway, it was a great watch from the 1950s; vintage! one-of-a-kind!

I got it in Paris and people used to complement me on it all the time.

I really, really liked it.

so yeah, I was pretty upset.

and you know what made it worse?

I didn’t lose the watch until the very last day of the vacation.

so, I’m still wearing it in all of the photos we took on the trip.

I still can’t look at those pictures without feeling bad all over again.

5:

do you often buy things you don’t need?

that’s a loaded question!

what you mean by need?

let’s just say that I don’t like a lot of clutter in my life.

so, I don’t have a lot of things. I’m not a collector.

on the other hand, I’m really picky.

so, when I do buy something, it has to be just right.

I usually shop around until I find exactly what I’m looking for.

if it’s something big, I might even go back to the store a few times before I make up my mind to buy it.

so, I’m not an impulse buyer.

I never get home with something I just bought, take it out of the bag and say to myself “wow, why did I buy that?!”.