可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hello everyone, and welcome back to America Under the Microscope, advanced episode. Hi Lulu. Hi James. So we're gonna continue our talk about transportation which we were talking about in the basic episode. And we want to start off this episode by talking about money. Oh, how much it costs? Yeah, because this is always our concern, isn’t it? Now, how much do you think it costs to or how much do you think Americans spend on transportation every year? When you say transportation, does this include everything like driving? Yeah, all inclusive, all inclusive. All inclusive, I don't know, maybe six, five, six thousand, it's got to be more than that. Right? Yes. It's about $10,000 a year in transportation costs. 10,000?! Yes. OK, so, what if you, like, would it cost as much if you don't drive? No, it would be a lot less, the biggest things including this are like fuel, insurance and maintenance of your car. I see. But it also includes like if you take flight or anything like this, it's quite a lot. And, if you're in the lower income levels of the society, it's a big chunk of money. That is a lot of money, $10,000 per year just on transport. Yeah, it's like I don't even think I get close to that here, but of course I don't own a car in China, so that does really lower my transportation costs. Yeah, I don't regularly drive a car, I mean I can drive, but I don't really drive in Beijing. So, I don't really know how much it costs to maintain a car to pay all of the taxes and parking. So, you guys can educate us and leave us a comment, telling us as a car owner how much you spend on transport a year. Does it sound like a major chunk of your spending? Yeah. This comes into a major issue. Because if you're trying to move up and trying to make money and you don't have a car, or you have a major accident with your car. You just lost a big chunk of your savings of trying to get it fixed or replaced. And due to our limited public transportation options in many places. There isn't an alternative if you don't have a car.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to America Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话美国】. Hi, James. Hi, LuLu. Hi, everyone. Actually I would like to propose a topic. Cool. Now around the holiday I wanna travel back to Wuhan, I was trying to get a train tickets. When I'm now traveling from Beijing to Wuhan, I almost always get the train because it's so fast. If you consider the flight takes about 2 hours and then there's a long commute to the actual airport. But the train station is also usually located center of town and the train only takes 4 hours, sometimes even a bit under 4 hours. I know I love Chinese high speed trains, so nice. So I thought let’s talk about the transport in America. I know you guys don't really have a lot of trains or like your trains are not really great. We have trains. We have a whole two high speed trains in the whole country. You have high speed train? That's news to me. How fast are they? Well, the one in the northeast that goes between Washington DC and I think up to Boston, I think it can get up to 190. Kilometers per hour. But for very limited stretches because it has many stops. There's a brand new one in Florida between Miami and Orlando and it can go 378 kilometers in 3.5 hours. OK, that is like 120, 130 per hour. Yeah. That doesn't sound very impressive. Sorry to say that. It’s not. So really, trains that I wouldn't say that you have kept up with the world in terms of development of trains. We have not. America is well behind. If you look at many European countries like France, the UK, Germany, Italy, they all have forms of high speed rail. And then if you take Japan, it's like their high speed rails are outstanding. Chinese, high speed rail is really outstanding. Yeah, there's America. It’s sad. But why is that? Because it's such a vast country why? Money. But even building airports also cost money, right? Yes, it does, but there's a few things. So it's just really expensive to build rail because it's not just about the train station. You also have to lay down the track and all that other stuff which you don't have to do for an airport. Oh, I see. So is it fair to say that when it comes to traveling cross country, most Americans won't even think of rail travel. It's not even on the radar now. Who's taking the trains then? It depends on which part of the country you’re in. If you're in the northeast. So New York city region, there are quite a bit more trains where you can usually go from like New York to Boston, New York to Washington DC, New York to Philadelphia. In that part of the country, there are quite a few trains that you can take. But if you're from where I am, there is no train station in my hometown. The closest train station is an hour drive away and the train comes once a day. And you might as well just take the plane. Yeah, it would honestly be cheaper. But air travel, I mean I've also watched a lot of videos of people complaining about air travel and it's almost like a meme. When you watch a TV shows from America, people also complain about air travel. 其实很多美剧或者美国电影里面都有很多人去吐槽美国的飞机，就航空业各种各样的，说服务也好，什么也好，基建也好，so what do you think about the air travel? Right. So air travel is the easiest way to get across the country because a lot of people always seem to forget that America is really big. It takes 5 hours to fly across the country. It's a big place, but because it's high demand and there's high competition, a lot of the airline companies have done... done things to try to remain competitive. And consumers have voted with their feet and they decided that they want cheaper tickets than having all the bells and whistles of airlines.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ The project is funded by “Top Taste Original, High Quality Products from Europe,” an European Union campaign promoting the Consortium of Abruzzo Wines and the Piave DOP Cheese Consortium. Hi everyone, and welcome back to your favorite segment Global Village. In today's episode, we have in our studio two special guests, Michele and Elliott. Michele is an old friend to the show and has appeared in a few episodes. He's currently based in Shanghai and owns a wine importing business, specializing in Italian wines. Elliot is the founder of his own wine import business as well as the owner of the popular wine bistro in Shanghai. Both are wine experts, obviously. Welcome to the show, Michele and Elliott. Hi, lulu. (Michele) Thank you. Great to be here.(Elliott) Great to talk to you again. Today we're going to be talking about Italian wines from the Abruzzo region. But first of all, can you guys give us a brief self introduction about your businesses? Let's give the opportunity to Elliot first. Hi, my name is Elliot Shay, I’ve been in the wine business off and on for about 20 years. I started my wine import company in China about 10 years ago, focusing mostly on wines from Europe, one of my specialties with Italian wines; and then a couple of years ago I started a wine bistro called Crush that aims to pair amazing wines with more American pan-Asian fusion food. Okay. It sounds fantastic, I Love sort of the fusion in food. And Michele, I know that you've introduced yourself several times on the show, but could you still briefly give us an introduction? Sure. So I'm Italian. I live in Shanghai since almost 15 years and I am in the wine business since ten almost. I'm also a sommelier from the Italian Sommelier Association (品酒师协会). I know Elliott since long time and we also sometimes work together within his bistro. Okay, all right. So after the self introduction, I would like to jump directly into the whole Abruzzo wine topic. First of all, I would like to ask you to as individuals, what is your impression, not just as an importer or restaurant owner, but as just a wine drinker, wine lover, what is your impression of Abruzzo wine? Elliot? I think that the ones from Abruzzo are quite versatile, really easy drinking, but also unique and complex at the same time, both the reds and the whites. I was actually quite surprised when I first tried them because I didn't think that they were gonna be as good as they really are. Okay, what about you? Michele? I totally agree with Elliot on this part of the versatility of the wines they have. They are very good in different kinds of occasions. And according to the style, you can use it really, have a very wide applicability in the food pairing, and also not to forget that value for money, it's extremely high for an Italian wine especially. So that was your individual opinion. What about as an importer? I know for a fact that Elliot, as your import business actually carries... actually sells some of the Abruzzo wines and you also serve them in your bistro, right? Yes, that's correct. And can I ask about like your customers, do they like Abruzzo wine? I think at first, they were kind of questioning what is this wine and then also confusing Montepulciano with the Tuscany region as well. But after explaining it to them, and having them tried multiple wines, I think they've gradually become more acceptable to try more wines from the region and have really enjoyed them. Sounds great. Michele, you're from Italy, then back in Italy, what's people's opinion about Abruzzo wine? Is it one of those, I know Italy has so many famous, world famous wine regions. How does Abruzzo feature Italian ranking? Actually, in Italy, we have this problem that we are this huge, wide range of varieties of grape, varieties and wine varieties that we have. It's also sometimes a limit. So we drink a lot of local wines.

Keywords 1.Greetings can be very different in the UK and US 2.British humor V.S American humor 3.Is there any difference in lifestyle between UK and US? 4.How does TJ feel spending 7 years to get his PhD？ Well, it's not quite... we're not enemies, right? You assume that everything is normal and that you know what's happening. But really underneath, there's some kind of problem, some kind of complication is maybe a better word that you don't expect. Yeah, can you give us some like specific examples so that we can get a feel of it? Yeah, one very good example that I've come across several times because it's such a habit of mine is greetings. So in the UK is perfectly normal, especially in the north of the UK where I'm from, to say, are you all right as a greeting, right? Are you all right? That's not just in the north. I hear people say that a lot in London or around London as well. I that used to confuse me because in my book, when you ask people, are you all right as a way of greeting, it sounds like you assume that I'm ill. Right. And so the Americans feel the same way as you. It implies there's something wrong. Like, are you okay as if they've had an accident or fallen over or something has happened or they look very ill or something, I remember just 2 or 3 days ago, I went to a social event. And I saw somebody that I had met once before and I thought I'll go and talk to him, and I walked up to him and said, “are you all right?”, and he looked at me, and he said I'm fine. What's wrong? You know, as if there was some big thing I needed to talk to him about. Then I had to explain to him. No no, I'm just saying hi, right? That's the way it goes. It's interesting because you get different advice from different Americans you know. So Americans they don't say are you all right? They say how are you? how's it going? something like this. Yeah. But then what you say to that, do you actually reply and say how you feel or do you say nothing? I think it's just fine, right? In British culture is when they ask you how are you, they expect you to say I'm fine. Like I'm okay, I'm doing well. They don't expect you to tell them exactly how you feel, even if you feel bad that day, even if you feel a bit under the weather, you don't say, in British culture you don't like announced that because that was not expected. Yeah, there's maybe let's say like ten, maybe if I'm lucky 20 people in the world, when they ask me if I'm all right or if they ask me how it's going, that I will say to them a genuine answer, I'll say it's going okay or I'll say not so good today, but I’ll live or something. But one thing that's very common in the UK is that you give some kind of comical answer or something that's a little bit unusual difference. So I remember I went into the office and saw one of the members of staff and they asked me how I was, and I said I must be fine because my heart is still beating. And they look very confused by that. I feel like in the UK you can get away with these kind of slightly maybe eccentric responses. The British eccentric it's... Just like British humor is very very dry, I think that's the thing. British humor does not translate very well into American humor. I don't think to the general public, maybe in certain crowds, but certainly not in general public. It's true that the Americans seem to really like to signpost that they're making a joke. So everybody knows, you know, from the tone of voice, from the body language that it's big and it's a joke and it's exciting. Whereas, yeah, the English kind of like to slide the jokes in to normal conversation and say something counter intuitive. And it's like a landmine.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ The project is funded by “Top Taste Original, High Quality Products from Europe,” an European Union campaign promoting the Consortium of Abruzzo Wines and the Piave DOP Cheese Consortium. Hi everyone and welcome back to a special episode of Global Village. 欢迎回来【小酒馆大世界】的特别节目. Let's continue to talk about Abruzzo wines. After our talk with Davide who represents the Abruzzo wine region. I'm sure you all got to know a bit more about this beautiful wine region of Abruzzo and the unique wines and cheese it produces. Now let's connect with one of our old friends, Roger. And Roger is not only a wine expert who regularly holds like master classes on wine appreciation, but also the owner of a few very popular restaurants in Xiamen, was one on Gulangyu Island, right Roger? Yeah sure. I love my restaurant, anyway, this is by the seaside. Sounds beautiful! Love the seafood by the seaside. I mean, so today we invite you to the studio. So hopefully we can get some insights from you as a wine expert and also obviously someone in the food and beverage business. What is your impression of Abruzzo wine? So first of all, what is your personal impression and perhaps also professional impression of Abruzzo wine? OK! Shall we start with the professional side? Sure, of course. Which feel more, a lot more complicated. But overall, I think Abruzzo is not a very complicated wine, of course, but when it comes to the aging, and Abruzzo shows a very good potential of aging, shows complexity, shows the tertiary, a typical character of tertiary flavors, for example, like leather, chocolate, and which is (what) I like most. And apart from that, Abruzzo always comes from very ripe grapes. And that gives the Abruzzo wine a very beautiful, you know, there's a plum, ripe cherry, the sort of red fruit or dark fruit flavors; and plus with there's some aging in the oak. So, give it a hint of vanilla plus the chocolate I talked about and toffee, you know, the sort of sweet tasting. But it's not sweet, it's like just give you the sweetness. Sweetness, without the sugar. No, no sugar. So, I'm just talking about the ripening of the fruit. And it's no sweet but still really, really mature and ripe wine that you can have. From the other side, we also have easygoing Abruzzo wines. So, it's like daily consuming wines. So, it's more like a red and dark fruit together with red berry, strawberry and mixed with plum, mulberries. They sort all the different red and black fruits all mixed together. Lots of berries. It does, lots of berries over there. And it shows... there're sort of the really fruitiness and all over again and again, give you a really nice feeling of… in the flower garden, you know this sort of things. The floral and the fruity feeling. It all... from what you're describing, it sounds like quite an approachable wine. When I say approachable, I mean, some of the wines, although very famous, very like big wines from Italy, but they are actually harder for beginner wine lovers because they find it way too heavy. You know, like the Barolo, not everyone, especially like the beginners, they don't have that palate to appreciate that. So, it sounds like with the fruitiness, with the floral tasting notes, Abruzzo wine sounds perfect for people who want to know a little bit more about Italian wines. Exactly Lulu, I totally agree with you. For the big wine, for example, like what you say about Barolo and Barbaresco. They are big wine. They are really big. However, it's very harsh, you need a really good time for you to do the canteen and then to solve out all the tannin. Actually, for some beginners, you feel a lot of tart, you know, this sort of black tea, this sort of feeling that makes you like try to run away from it. Like quite a lot of people who first contact of the champagne, they can't even deal with those yeast. I know. A very strong yeast taste over there. It's the same story.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ So far we've talked about your studies, we talked about your interest in your field, but let's move on to something that is more about life in America, or life in academic setting in America. So first things first, let's talk about academic setting, because this is more specific. So far you have got degrees in British university, Chinese university and now doing a degree in American university. How would you compare these three very different university environment? Yeah, It's one of those things. Ah, it's a little bit difficult to compare the environments. But I definitely think, one of the things that comes to mind immediately is they definitely look after you more in China. So in America, they just kind of say here's some money, find somewhere to live, find something to eat and just take care of yourself. Of course, the Americans they think of this is freedom, right? I'm free to live wherever I want and eat and do whatever I want. But I do have to admit that I do like the Chinese system which kind of looks after you, right? Here's your room, the electricity is on this card and the canteen is down the road and it's tasty and it's cheap. Yeah, everything is sorted. Yeah, I guess it's very beginner friendly, newcomer friendly. Because you don't have to spend all the time feeling disoriented. Exactly! Right. And they'll usually have some kind of orientation does quite comprehensive and give you a nice map, and of course the professors and other students in America have been very kind to me and very helpful. But it's a lot more informal. There is some kind of online induction and training, but it's nowhere near as detailed and comprehensive as the things I experienced in China. What about British university then? Do they do anything like that for newcomers? Yeah, somewhere in the middle, I think, cause you do have the canteens and they are a little bit more expensive and exclusive than the Chinese ones. And it's different when you're undergraduate as well, actually. I think the undergraduates here get a little bit more guidance, just like I did in the UK. But I do think the UK, they kind of give you the training wheels a little bit. But they don't do too much to help you either. Yes, it’s closer to America than China, I think. I see. But what about just this whole work ethics? I don't know if it's the right word to describe it, like in terms of hardworking, how hard, which would you… I know every country, every university has the really, really hardworking people. It has also slackers. But comparatively speaking, which country has the hardest working students? I think it's interesting cause it's a continuum right? So I think in America they give you the most work, so you in terms of like the readings for the courses and things, they give you way more reading than it's humanly possible to do. And I think the idea is you have to kind of choose the important parts, find the important parts. So it's a kind of literature review every time. When I was at Fudan, they don't give you as much. Like maybe we just read like two passages of the Laozi, but you've got to know every single character, of course you've got to be able to read them, but the history of that character. And you've got to know what Huangdi said about that character. And you've got to know what He Shan Gong said about that character. And you've got know, like, there's so much more detailed. I see. This is sort of very two different styles, different focus.

The project is funded by “Top Taste Original, High Quality Products from Europe,” an European Union campaign promoting the Consortium of Abruzzo Wines and the Piave DOP Cheese Consortium. 可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone. Welcome back to your favorite segment Global Village. 欢迎大家回来你们最喜欢的板块【小酒馆·大世界】. Today we're going to present to you a special episode sponsored by the Abruzzo consortium from Italy. We have a special guest speaker in the studio, Mr. Davide Acerra, who is the marketing manager of the Abruzzo consortium. Welcome to the show Davide. Thank you, Lulu. First of all, could you give us a general introduction about yourself, especially your role at the Abruzzo consortium? For sure, I'm the marketing manager of the consortium that is the major organization in our region that represents more or less 80% of the producers from Abruzzo wines, and my role is... I work for the marketing about the marketing of the promotional activities of the Abruzzo DOC, in particular, and normally I organize the activities in the world, in particular out of Italy. The overseas market. Yeah. I talk about the wines, I talk with the agency, with the importer, all that you need to organize some promotional activities. I see. First of all, I think our audience probably, well I mean including me, we don't really know that much about the region. I've been to Italy many times, but mostly you know to Rome, Milan. So where is Abruzzo, and could you give us a general feel, I know that you actually live in Abruzzo, is that correct? This is a good question because normally the foreign people when they come to Italy normally used to go to Rome, Milan, Venezia, but Abruzzo is my region, we are in the center south of Italy, the east side of the country. Abruzzo is a very small area, you think that we are more or less 1 million habitants living here, so it's very small for the numbers of China, but it's very rich in biodiversity. It's a treasure of biodiversity. In fact, we are known as the green region of Europe because more than 30% of the territory is protected by leisure parks. Yeah, I mean before our talk actually I did a little bit of research online. Yeah. And like lonely planet is describing Abruzzo as like a hidden gem because its national parks, all the nature. We have free national parks. The first national park of Italy was in Abruzzo, we have one original park and about 77 natural protected areas, so you think it's very, very green, it’s a small region, but we have everything. In the east side, we have the sea. In the west side, we have the habitats, but we have many rivers, lakes, ancient villages, standing serene time. It's original to be discovered.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi everyone, and welcome back to your favorite segment Global Village. 欢迎回来你们最喜欢的板块【小酒馆·大世界】. Today in our studio, we have an old friend. I'm just curious because even as early as your bachelor years, you were doing philosophy already, but what sparked that initial interest like when you chose major for your bachelors study, for your undergraduate study, what made you choose philosophy? I think philosophy is a little bit self-selecting. You have to be a certain kind of person to choose it. When you say self-selecting, is it one of those things like it's not so much as you select that philosophy selected you. Yes, all that it's may be part of my character to study philosophy I guess. I think some people can't help but continue to have those questions that children have. So children will always ask just yesterday, I was waiting to go into somewhere that wasn't open yet and there was a child and they were asking their parents, why isn't it open? And they're like because it's not time yet. And the child saying why isn't it time yet? Then they'd say everything has to happen at a certain time, and he's like, why, why can't everything happen all at once? Like why do they have to happen in order? And then the parent, the mother just said, do you want to look at some pictures on the phone? And The child said, yeah let's look at some videos or pictures on the phone. But unfortunately, I'm one of those children that says no, I want that answer to the question like why, why do things happen? And you carry on asking the annoying questions, they're more interesting than the pictures on the phone. Oh. I see. Yeah, one of those highly inquisitive souls basically. Right. Right or highly annoying, I think, is the other way of describing. I bet your parents say that about you, but you know it's like the major that we study or the field that we're in, the type of jobs that we do, they all make an impact or imprint on us, right? So studying philosophy and even this almost like getting into religious study territory, how has this changed you or do you think it has changed you or your perspectives, your personality at all over the years? Yeah of course. It’s kind of has to, and I think there are definitely a lot of philosophy books, whether it's the Laozi or whether it's JS Mill on liberty or Nāgārjuna...those books after you read them, yeah, you're a completely different person.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi everyone, and welcome back to your favorite segment Global Village. 欢迎回来你们最喜欢的板块【小酒馆·大世界】. Actually today in our studio welcome back an old friend, some of you probably remember we had this philosophy segment called Let's Philosophize? 可能还有一些小伙伴记得原来你们很喜欢的一个板块叫做【知乎哲也】，是讲哲学问题的, 当时就有很多人喜欢这个板块的嘉宾主播TJ, so TJ, welcome back. Hi, Lulu. I'm very glad to be back with you after a long hiatus. I mean you have been really busy, right? I thought the reason why I invited TJ to this segment rather than Let's Philosophize is because he has some interesting life updates to share. Like before in this segment earlier this year, if some of you still remember, we talked to Brad about his move to Japan. And TJ, you were in China in Beijing before COVID and during the COVID years you were back in the UK, and now you're in America. Right, O’er land of the free and the home of the brave as they call it. I'm just trying to get used to the culture shock of being in another place. I call it my third childhood. I had my first childhood in England, my second childhood in China. Now I'm learning everything again, right? Completely different environment. I'm sure this is going to be a very interesting talk. But first things first, let's start with where exactly are you? I mean the United States is a big place. Where are you? The area that I'm in is called the Midwest. The Midwest is the area that's seen as almost like the suburbs of America. It's lots of corn. People are supposed to be very friendly and they've been very nice to me so far. And it's somewhere that seemed to have a community and family values. Which state are you in? So the state that I'm in is called Indiana. Indiana, okay. Are you in like a big city at least or are you like really in suburbs or even countryside of America? So it's one of the strange things really that I'm in a town called Bloomington, which has under 100,000 people. So it is quite small. It's like a village in China. Right. You can bike around very easily. And the interesting thing about Bloomington to me is that its almost half of the entire population is to do with the university, right, its teachers, students or staff. This is my next question and I'm sure a lot of you want to ask this question. Why are you in America? It's a good question, right? Especially as I focus on early Chinese philosophy. So it's a strange place. It's essentially it's because my supervisor in China told me to come here. We have some of the best researchers that focus on early Taoist thought and early Confucian thought in all of the western world. Let me get this straight. You now move from China or from the UK to America to study Chinese philosophy? Yes. That is true. I know it seems very strange. But the degree you're doing right now is your PhD right, your doctorate? Right. I'm doing a PhD. For those of you who don't really know TJ’s really interesting educational background, Let me fill you in. TJ has got two master’s degrees, right? One from the UK one, from China, from Fudan university. Yes, that's right. Can you tell us a little bit about that like what degree did you like, what major did you do it in what field? My undergraduate degree I did in Leeds in England that’s philosophy. Then I went to Beijing Normal university and did some language courses at Beijing Normal University. After that, I did my teacher training. It was in Manchester but it's the Cambridge certification, right? That's not as impressive as it sounds for the listeners that are easily “fooled”. And then a master at Birmingham and then as another master of Fudan, now a PhD in America. So you're just one of those like perpetual students. Right, right. I think I do grow up slowly. It takes a long time for me to grow up.

1.Has people’s spending habits or their preferences changed after Covid? 2.How is prosecco rose different from prosecco? 3.How to pair prosecco with food? 4.Special mixology tips for prosecco rosé. 5. What kind of new prosecco events are on the horizon? Hi, everyone and welcome to the show. This episode is made in collaboration with the Prosecco DOC Consortium. After our talk with Tanja, I'm sure you all got to know a bit more about prosecco and the beautiful region it comes from. Now let's connect with another one of our guests, Roger, who is not only representing Casa prosecco in China, but also the owner of a trendy restaurant on Gulangyu island, Xiamen. Hi, Roger. Hi Lulu. Welcome back to the show. Haha, it’s been a pleasure. So since we talked last time, what has been happening with Casa Prosecco, your restaurant and the general restaurant, food and beverage industry. Well, we have really bad impact from the pandemic. It's been a really tough time for the restaurant owners during the period, but lucky to see we are slowly going through it. Now we see some really, really good conditions gonna come in, shows up and then to have a better economic situation right now. For our restaurant, it was really quiet, people are afraid to go out, have dinner or something. Now we get back to normal, so I'm happy to see that this is or a good sign for the future. I'm quite happy with that. Yeah, I mean good to know that. But would you say... you said it's back to normal, but I just want to know how has this, obviously Covid has a lot of impact on people in all aspects, so have your customers changed somehow like their spending habits or their preferences? For example, have they been spending more after everything opened up? Have they been celebrating more or are they more cautious about spending money? What would you say? This is a great question because it's some sort of controversy in between because after such a long period of lockdown and people were not able to go out freely to have a good time together with a friend or any events. Now they are free to go, so they sort of really happy with that. When they come to our restaurant, I also found out it's a better condition compared to before, however, the purchasing power looks like it goes down. I mean the whole economic situation, it's not really going back to normal, but I'm looking forward to see that, but nowadays if people wanted to buy some champagne, you know the customer used to have champagnes, now they don't really have the money, they would say, okay, show me something really happy stuff and not too expensive. You know what I mean, so now comes to the realistic that people would like to have some fun, they love to and eager to have some fun, but don't cost me too much. Well, prosecco now becomes a more affordable and approachable option I guess. That is exactly what I'm going to say that, now the happy style and they cost less and you can spend less for a longer period of happiness if you know what I mean.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Keywords 1.Types of cults that existed thousands of years ago 2.Cults VS. Marketing scheme 3.Why start a cult? Welcome back to Geek Time advanced. I'm Brad. Hi, Brad. How's it going Lulu? Yeah. I'm good. I'm ready to talk more about cult. All right. So we're gonna talk a little bit about some of the early cults before like thousands of years ago those types of cults. Oftentimes, cults were considered to be part of like minor religions . So just like pagan beliefs. Definitely, like smaller groups of people having different ideas when the movies we often see them as cannibalistic or something like that really sinister kind of like the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and ripping hearts out of your body, stealing your soul kind of thing. Honestly, I think in terms of Indiana Jones, if you don't mind me saying it, it is a little bit of racial prejudice and it's like mystifying or even vilifying cultures that you don't know perhaps. Yeah, they have those...now one of the actual cults that was kind of like it was almost a runner up to early Christianity was called mithraism. Mithraism. Mithraism yeah. Now that was in the Roman empire. You could see they had these underground places where they would worship and mithraism was kind of like... it was an astrological type of cult, they worshipped space and that type of... it wasn't a particular god or anything like that they worshipped, it was the closest thing to a god you could see was like the Taurus, the bull Almost sounds like the earlier definition of cult is basically just outside of the mainstream. It doesn't have that destructive element. Yeah. Some of them did, some of them had like they might have had sacrifices, although some people think that those sacrifices may not have actually been people they killed, they may have been people that have just died. And so it's kind of hard to see where it actually happened. It could just be that the bigger religions were trying to vilify them as mentioned earlier, but that's something that was actually this mithraism was actually quite common. They found over 400 sites around Rome where they did worship.

Cult 可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Geek time. 欢迎回到Geek时间。Welcome back to the studio, Brad. Thank you. Today we are going to talk about something equally niche. We’re gonna talk about cult. Indeed. 就是邪教了。You know cult I guess in any culture in any country is kind of a taboo topic, isn't it? It can be. Especially like if you know someone who was part of cult because that's when you see someone going through the process of getting into a cult, it kind of like can destroy a whole family. It's something very serious and it can potentially be very, very dark. First of all, let's talk about the definition of cult. What is a cult? Usually a cult is a group of people that follow a leader or some sort of ideology. It might be some sort of idol as in like a thing. 一个领袖或者一种理念。 And they are usually just families joining, or individuals join... Sometimes it's families, but often time it's like a group of people will follow an enigmatic person. I think cults based on my very limited understanding of cults, the reason why there are cults is because they hurt people. They are destructive. Oftentimes they are, and it's something you see after the cult becomes much much bigger, you don't see it in the early stages because if you were to do something like that, people are obviously going to quit. But once you have a cult established and you have these followers, then in order to keep people from going somewhere else, you might hurt them in order to get them to not leave. So a lot of it is to attract them first, and then once they build up some sort of loyalty or fear to the leader and then it's destructive. Right. It's some sort of dependence on them oftentimes like a cult will get someone to sell off all their possessions or like hand over the money, or if you have a house, you sign over your house to the cult leader, so then you have nowhere to go, you have that home and you can live there so long as the cult allows it. It seems like a lot of the cults across the globe seem to believe that the world is going to end and then just believing in that cult is the only way to save yourself. Right. It's either the cult is you're going to save yourself by being in this cult or that they as a cult are going to be the thing that saves the world. 这种所谓的末日邪教doomsday cults. But we talked about secret societies before. What are the differences? It sounds somewhat similar - it’s secretive with a small group of people. Well, like a secret society can be kind of a subset of cult in some ways they have the, usually it’s an ideology rather than like an individual person. Like in a secret society, you may not know who the cult leader is. It may change from area to area and it might be like a group of cults over a large area. So they don't worship any particular leaders. Secret societies are more connected by an idea. Yeah, an idea or some sort of idol. And in most cases, there can be like secret societies that are akin to a cult in the fact that they have a leader who's controlling everything, but secret societies tend not to have such a limited nature. I mean when you're back in the states, like growing up, did you have any run ins or have ever heard about cults in like your social circle? In fact, I did. I've known several people who have been in different types of cults, it's actually when I was just after high school, one of my friends who I worked with actually, he got fired, he lost his job, his wife divorced him. And then he kind of joined this cult, inside of the cult the leader said that he could read other peoples’ previous life so it was like this reincarnation cult. 这种重生转世。 And why would people believe him?