Learn Australian English in this expression episode of The Aussie English Podcast where you learn to use the expression to HAVE TICKETS ON YOURSELF.

AE 517 – Expression: Have Tickets on Yourself

What’s the only venomous animal on the planet that doesn’t make its own venom? Here’s a clue. It is three hearts pumping blood. It digests food through its brain, has a bird-like beak, deadly saliva, weighs only 25 grams, is jet-powered, is a night-dweller, can change colour, uses its body as a cape, has no bones, a tongue-like drill, is a contortionist, oh, and it has 8 arms.

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G’day you mob! How’s it going? Welcome to this episode of the Aussie English Podcast, the number one podcast for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English so, guys, welcome to 2019! Happy new year, guys! I hope you guys had an amazing New Year’s Eve! Hope you celebrate it. I hope you didn’t get too drunk. I hope that you didn’t get into any trouble of any kind and I hope it was an amazing evening. So, for us, Kel and I went to my parents place this year and we started a bit early I guess about 6pm so, maybe not that early, but we were hanging out and to give you an idea of what New Year’s is like here, at least in Ocean Grove, in Victoria, in Australia, we were having, I guess, sort of like nibblies , snacks, you know, things to eat for the first hour or two where we had a few beers as well and some wine.

I think there was champagne and then we had dinner, which tends to be a barbecue of some kind. So, I think Dad went out on the deck, opened up the barbie, turned the gas on, started cooking some sausages and some pork, but I think he cooked in the oven. We had some salad, some veggies, some cheese some…what else did we have? Some chips and other things and then we got onto the harder kind of liquor where I think Dad got into the Scotch with his friends and Mum had some Gin with a few of the other friends that were there. But it was pretty tame, we just sort of hung out around a table chatting the whole night. There were fireworks at 10pm for the kids. They usually have the early fireworks on so, the kids can go to bed and then we had the fireworks on at 12, but I think Kel and I were a bit wrecked, we were pretty tight so, we ended up going home at about… I think it was eleven thirty at night and I may have even passed out before the fireworks went off for 12pm so, this was probably one of the more tame New Years that I’ve ever had. So, yeah, I hope you guys had an amazing New Year’s and I hope that 2019 ends up being a killer year for you, guys!

So, that scene at the very start of today’s episode, guys. That was a scene from a video on YouTube, from the YouTube channel The Nature of Science which is run by one of my favourite professors in Australia called Jamie Seymour so, he is an associate professor at James Cook University and his specialty, his interest. His venom and dangerous animals so, go and check out his YouTube channel and stay around until the end of this episode to find out more about what makes blue-ringed octopi or octopuses so interesting and I thought of mentioning blue-ringed octopi or octopuses this week because I had read a story of a man in WA, in Western Australia who’d been out at a beach with his kids and his kids had given him some shells. He put the shells in his pocket and then when he got back to shore he realised he could feel something moving in his pocket and it ended up being the deadly blue ring octopus and I think it was actually two of these that obviously had been a little shocked when their homes, the shells, had been picked up and put in some man’s pocket.

Anyway, that made it into the news, no one died, but it made me think of blue ring octopi and why they’re awesome. Anyway, guys, as usual remember this podcast is brought to you by the Aussie English Classroom, guys. That is the best place for you to go online to learn Australian English, English in general, but specifically Australian English, wherever you want whenever you want. Everything is online, there are 50+ courses in there, guys, designed to improve your pronunciation, expression usage, vocabulary, speaking abilities and much more. So, go to theaussieenglishclassroom.com and sign up.

If you just want the transcripts and the downloads for the podcast, however, you know, you’re just interested in reading and listening and being able to download all of that and get access to that, go to theaussieenglishpodcast.com and for the price of one coffee per month you will get unlimited access to all transcripts that are just on the podcast. Anyway, guys, as usual let’s dive into the Aussie Joke for the day, ok? Aussie Joke, and it’s a good one, it’s a good one. It’s a ripper.

What do you call an Aussie in the finals of the World Cup? Right? Soccer? What do you call an Aussie in the finals of the World Cup?

A referee. Get it? A referee.

Now the reason the joke’s answer is a referee is insinuating that the only way for an Australian to get into the World Cup, the soccer World Cup, is to be a referee because Australians aren’t known to be incredibly good at soccer. And so, there’s no way that our teams would ever get in, although sometimes we do.

Alright, so today’s expression is ‘to have tickets on yourself’. You might hear this as ‘to have got tickets on yourself’ and even ‘to sell tickets on yourself’. Now, this expression was suggested by Lima in the Aussie English classroom Facebook group. Great selection, Lima! This is a good one and it is very, very popular in Australia. However, it is less popular overseas. Let’s go through the definitions of the words in the expression or expressions ‘have tickets on yourself’, ‘have got tickets on yourself’ or ‘to sell tickets on yourself’, right?

So, ‘to have’. If you have something, you possess that thing, right? You own that thing.

‘To sell’. If you sell something, it is that you are giving something to someone for money, right? You are asking them to pay for that thing.

‘A ticket’. ‘A ticket’ is a pass that gives you entry or certain privileges somewhere or it could be a pass that signifies ownership or it could be for a prize or a large price tag.

And then when we say ‘on yourself’, that is a way of saying for yourself, right? It showing that you have those tickets and those tickets are related to yourself. They are on yourself.

So, let’s define the expression. If you’ve got tickets on yourself, if you have tickets on yourself, if you’re selling tickets on yourself, what do you think this could mean?

If someone has tickets on themselves, it means they are very conceited and very vain and other ways of thinking about this, other expressions we could use to describe these kinds of people, could be that you have an over-inflated opinion of yourself, that you are up yourself, that you have a high opinion of yourself or that you are stuck up and an interesting bit of slang here used in Australia quite a bit too, that you might hear from time to time is that you are a wanker, ok?

Now, that is very informal, it’s very informal language. I wouldn’t recommend using this just anywhere, any time, but you will hear this around the traps, you’ll hear this quite a lot around the place in Australia, ‘a wanker’ tends to be someone who is very conceited or vain, a loser, you know? An idiot, a bad person.

So, we can imagine that this expression originated thinking about someone who has tickets on themself meaning that they probably think that they have special privileges, right? Or are worth a high price or are prized in some way. So, you know, they have tickets on themself because they are such a prize, I don’t know, that’s about the only way I can think about this coming about an expression.

So, let’s go through three examples of how to use the expression to have tickets on yourself or to sell tickets on yourself.

So, example number one. Imagine you are a young lady and you’re going out clubbing, you know, you’re going out on the town, you want to party with the girls. Maybe you dress up in your finest frock, meaning your finest dress, you’re having a dance, having a drink and maybe you’re hoping that you catch the eye of your dream hunk, you know, a dream good looking man who is out and about that night too. So, you rock up to the club in an Uber or a taxi, you arrive at the club in an Uber or a taxi, you jump out and you have to get in a line with the rest of the people out the front. Eventually, you get inside, you walk up to the bar with your girlfriends, you buy a drink and straight away a guy approaches you and starts trying to chat you up, right? He starts trying to seduce you. So, he’s talking about himself, he’s talking about his job, how much money he makes, how expensive his car is and straight away you can tell how up himself he is, how much of a high opinion of himself he has. So, you turned your girlfriends in you might say ”man, this guy’s got tickets on himself! He’s selling tickets on himself! “, ”He has tickets on himself!”, He’s incredibly conceited and vain”, He has heaps of tickets on himself”, ”What a wanker!”.

Number two. You’re going out with the family on Lygon Street, in Melbourne and this is a street in the center of Melbourne, near the CBD, that is renowned for its Italian restaurants and ice cream stores among other things. So, it’s incredibly renowned for also having a number of rich men who drive down the street in expensive cars such as things like Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches, Maseratis. So, you head out with the family, you find a good restaurant where you want to have some pizza, you get a table, it’s outside in the street, you order some pizza or a pasta with your family when a guy drives down the road slowly in his Ferrari and he’s revving the engine, you know, he’s trying to draw a lot of attention to himself. He wants everyone to notice him. He wants everyone to look at him as much as possible. You know, all the diners, all the pedestrians in the street take notice of me, and your wife leans over to you and says ”Man, this guy selling tickets on himself!”. ”What a loser! This guy’s got tickets on himself!”. ”What a conceited and vain guy who’s after attention!”. And if she’s an Australian woman and she’s wanting to be a little ruder, she might refer to the guy as ”a wanker”. This wanker’s selling tickets on himself. This wanker got tickets on himself.

Number three. You’re going to a family gathering and your least favorite cousin is coming along to the party. Everyone dislikes this guy because his favorite topic is himself. So, he is always talking about himself. He only ever wants to talk about what he’s doing, his achievements, his plans and it gets very tiresome, very boring, very quickly. He’s the youngest child in his family and so, maybe that’s the reason why, he didn’t get enough attention as he was growing up as a child and, as a result of that, he has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about it so, he has a bit of a complex and he’s constantly wanting to talk about himself. So, the moment he shows up and walks in the door, it begins. ”I’ve done so and so”, ”I’ve traveled to so and so”, I’ve got so and so promotion”, ”I’ve just bought so and so” blah blah blah blah blah, me me me me me. Your family all give each other a silent look and you can tell that everyone’s thinking ”man…. Our cousin has got tickets on himself!” ”He’s so up himself, he’s so stuck up!”, ”He has such an overinflated opinion of himself”, ”He’s got tickets on himself, he’s a massive wanker!”, if you want to be rude, remember, that’s to be rude.

So, hopefully by now guys you understand the expression ‘to have tickets on yourself’, ‘to have got tickets on yourself’ or ‘to sell tickets on yourself’. This expression is primarily heard and used in Australia and it means to be conceited or vain, to be up yourself, to be stuck up.

So, as usual let’s go through a listen and repeat exercise, guys, where you can practice your pronunciation, ok? So, if you are working on an Aussie accent, listen and repeat and try and copy my pronunciation as well as possible. If you’re working on a different English accent, just say the words after me practising your own accent. Ok? Let’s go!

To
To have
To have tickets
To have tickets on
To have tickets on yourself

I’ve got tickets on myself
You’ve got tickets on yourself
He’s got tickets on himself
She’s got tickets on herself
We’ve got tickets on ourselves
They’ve got tickets on themselves
It’s got tickets on itself

Good job, guys! Remember if you would like to get all the bonus content for this episode, including a bunch of videos showing you things like vocab, other expressions used in this episode, as well as walking you through this pronunciation exercise to help you sound much more like a native speaker, go to theaussieenglishclassroom.com, sign up, and give it a go for one dollar for your first 30 days, ok? Go and check it out!

Anyway, let’s get into the Aussie English Fact today, where I wanted to talk to you about what kind of animal? The blue ringed octopus, ok? So, today’s fact is about one of Australia’s deadliest animals. The unsuspecting, enigmatic and petite blue ring octopus. A group of four species of octopus, the blue ring octopus is a marine animal, it is a cephalopod, which are a group of eight legged mollusks and they include the octopus, as well as squid and cuttlefish and nautilus, nautilus as well.

So, these guys live in intertidal zones and reefs surrounding Australia, but they are also found all throughout the Pacific and Indian oceans as far North as Japan and as far South as Australia. So, the blue-ringed octopus is a tiny and docile little critter, only about 12 to 20 centimetres in length. So, they can generally fit in your hand. They’re active at night, they are nocturnal, and they feed primarily on crabs, hermit crabs, shrimp and any other crustaceans they can get their tiny little tentacles onto.

These guys only live for a very short period of time of about two years and spend much of that time hiding in crevices, whilst displaying effective camouflage patterns with their dermal chromatophores or cells. In other words, they camouflage themselves, they hide themselves with their skin cells that can mimic color and texture of their surroundings. So, when provoked, they quickly change color and they become a bright yellow with each of their 50 to 60 iridescent blue rings flashing as a warning signal: ”don’t eat me! Go away! I’m poisonous!”.

The octopus produces venom containing a number of different chemicals, but of which the most potent and deadly is a chemical called Tetrodotoxin. Interestingly, this toxin is not produced by the octopus itself, but instead, it is produced by bacteria that live in the octopus’s saliva so that when any prey item is bitten by the octopus, the toxin is injected and within moments the defenseless victim is rendered paralyzed and it’s more easily and safely consumed by the octopus. You know, you don’t want those crab pincers chopping off your little tentacles.

If you’re an unlucky human fossicking around the rocky shore in Australia, lifting up rocks, picking up shells or putting your hands in crevices where they don’t belong, you might receive a painless little nip from a frightened octopus trying to defend itself. One of these octopus carries enough venom to kill 26 adult humans, within only a few minutes once the venom has paralysed the diaphragm and you suffocate because you can’t breathe.

The good news is, you’ll survive just fine as long as you’re aware that you’ve been bitten and as long as someone that you’re with can do mouth to mouth, they can do CPR on you and help you breathe until ambulances arrive. Once the ambulance arrives, it will take you to a nearby hospital and put you on a medical ventilator to breathe for you until the venom is metabolised by your body and disappears, usually within about 24 hours. More good news, is that despite its deadly abilities, only three people are known to have died from blue ring octopus bites, two In Australia and a one in Singapore.

Many more have come close to death, but live to tell the tale. So, the moral of the story: make sure that you keep your hands to yourself at the beach. Don’t put them in any dark crevices, in rock pools, where they don’t belong and you’re intruding into the homes of these little octopus and also make sure you empty out any shells that you pick up and want to put in your pocket.

So, with that, guys, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. I hope you have an amazing 2019 and I will see you in the Aussie English Classroom or in future episodes on the Aussie English Podcast. I’m looking forward to 2019, guys, thanks for your support. See you soon!