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Alright. So, episode 600. What the
hell? That is a lot of episodes,
guys. So, I thought I would try and
do something a little special today,
although, I mean, you know, special I
want to do sort of an announcement or
a chat with you, guys. Tell you my
plans, give you a recap of the last
year or so.

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So, obviously it's been it's been a
crazy ride for the last year and a
half, so obviously, I met Kel, we got
married, we had Noah. We're living in
Ocean Grove again, we've been to
Canberra, we've come back from
Canberra, we're in Ocean Grove now.
Recently I was trying to find
somewhere to move, right? So, in
Australia it's pretty difficult to
get into the house market and I've
been trying to find a way to get into
the house market, although I don't
have a lot of savings.

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So, the hardest part about getting
into the housing market when you live
in Australia, is obviously renting
somewhere where you have to pay, for
instance, here I think it's about
1600 a month in rent and trying to
save up at the same time. So, I've
really felt the pressure, I guess,
financially in the last year or so
since moving into this house and
having to pay rent and obviously Kel
not working, she's taking care of
Noah full time and obviously helping
me with Aussie English when she can,
so she's probably working harder than
I am, to be honest.

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But on top of that, trying to work
out how to improve things, keep
Aussie English growing make more
money to be able to save money to put
together a deposit for a house. So,
try to work that out and then work
out where to live. So, I had thought
originally, you know, I'll try and
buy a house here in Ocean Grove, but
housing prices are insane here,
right? There are houses here that
range between probably... The
cheapest thing you'll get here as a
house, not to mention an apartment,
would be probably six hundred
thousand dollars and there are houses
here within sight that I can see
outside of my window that are well
over one or two million dollars.

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So, housing prices are just insane
here and I think the biggest part of
it, the biggest reason for it is that
we're so close to a surf beach and so
close to Geelong and it's just a
really peaceful place with a lot of
supermarkets and nice shops and cafes
and the surf culture, right? You've
got Torquay nearby and the Great
Ocean Road, Torquay is probably more
expensive than Ocean Grove. Then
you've got Ocean Grove and Barwon
Heads, Barwon Heads is pretty
expensive, you know, the average
house there is probably about a
million dollars again because there's
a lot of people who want to live
there and there's not very many
houses but it's pretty small town.

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00:02:52,932 --> 00:03:27,820
So, trying to think about how the
hell I could get into the housing
market here in Ocean Grove was a real
was a real puzzle. I guess, I was
like 'oh my God am I going to have to
try and save whilst renting for the
next, however many years', and
meanwhile I can see a lot of these
houses selling and the mortgage
repayments aren't much more than the
rental payment that I'm currently
paying, right? You know, there'll be
mortgage payments of between two and
three thousand dollars a month, which
is quite a lot, but at the same time
you know another thousand dollars on
top of what I'm currently paying,
it'd be much better for that to be
going towards a house that's mine
than to some stranger I don't even
know.

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So, recently, the last few days, and
I'm bringing this up for a reason, I
went and saw my account and I think I
talked about that one of these
episodes and he was a friend from
high school, so I had known him for a
long time, hadn't seen him more
recently because I'd been living in
Melbourne, met Kel, went to Canberra
then only just recently came back
down this way to Geelong. So, I went
to him and partly it was because
things with Aussie English are
getting a lot more complicated now,
because I have like say a computer
that was four thousand dollars that I
had to buy, and so it's not as simple
as just claiming that on the tax I
have to depreciate it. I've got a
bunch of other things that I've
bought like microphones and, you
know, I just don't know how to do the
tax properly and I don't want to
screw it up.

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So, I went to see him because he's an
accountant and he was like yeah, this
will be easy we can do this, and then
he asked me 'have you got a house
yet?' Like 'have you tried organising
a house and getting into that?' and I
said no, like I'm thinking about it
at the moment, I'm trying to work out
a way of getting into the property
market as quickly as possible here.
And he was like 'well, I'll tell you
what I did, even though I am an
accountant, you know, on a pretty
good salary, when I was trying to get
a house, I only had like 20.000
thousand dollars saved up, right?'.
Not even, you know, 5, 10 percent of
a deposit, or sorry, for the 5 or 10
per cent deposit you need to get a
house.

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So, what he did and what I can do
now, fortunately, considering I'm
Australian and I have family here, is
that I can get my parents to sign as
guarantors for the house, so that I
don't need a deposit. They will sign
as guarantors with the equity that
they have in their properties as the
deposit to get me into a house. So,
anyway, that's kind of complicated to
talk about, I'll kind of skip that,
but that is how, hopefully, by the
end of this year, I'm hoping, or
maybe early next year, we'll be able
to buy a house nearby in a suburb
like Drysdale, Port Arlington or
Clifton Springs.

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So, these are suburbs that are sort
of closer to the bay, The Port
Phillip Bay, which is sort of to the
north of where I am in Ocean Grove
and they are a bit cheaper. So, the
house, the housing prices are
probably three, four, five hundred
thousand dollars to get in, as
opposed to six, seven, eight hundred
thousand dollars here in Ocean Grove
and they're also pretty new houses.
So, I'm really looking forward to
hopefully going to some inspections
this weekend and checking out some of
these houses and then I think I have
to drag my dad down to the local bank
and talk to them about having him as
a guarantor and how much money I can
borrow and then I'll have to find the
houses that I'm interested in buying,
that are in my price range, and then
give them an offer and hopefully end
up with a house.

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So, yeah, that's been really
interesting, sort of a whirlwind
tour, I was expecting to move north
to somewhere like Coffs Harbour or
Port Macquarie because they're
cheaper towns, they're smaller, but
they're further away from big cities,
so you know, they're about seven or
eight hours away from Sydney and, you
know, four or five hours away from
Brisbane.

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But yeah, looks like I'll be setting
up shop here. So, that's been
interesting, to say the very least.
Aside from that, yeah obviously, I
want to say big thanks to you guys
and I'm working my arse off still on
trying to improve the podcast. So,
the point of this episode, at least
this part of the episode, I want to
tell you what I got planned, but I
also really want to implore you, I
want to ask you for your feedback,
ok? Sir if there are certain things
that you think I could be doing
better that maybe I'm not doing at
all and I could start including or
that I'm already doing, but maybe
aren't required, you know, you'd
prefer something else instead of
these things, these episodes or this
content that I'm putting on a
website, please contact me, ok?

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So, you can send me an email at
theaussieenglishpodcast@gmail.com.au
or you can just go to the website and
you'll be able to send me an email,
it's pretty easy, right? Just go to
contact and you'll be able to send me
an email, but here's what I've got
planned. So, at the moment obviously
Aussie English is divided up into
three main sort of areas. You've got
the podcast that you guys can sign up
to the premium podcast content to get
all the podcast episode, transcripts,
downloads all the bonuses.

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There's the Academy, which currently
has all of the courses for the
expression episodes, as well as a few
other courses including the Culture
and History course and the Natural
English Conversation course, that's
sort of the bulk of Aussie English
what Aussie English is built around
and the whole purpose of that is to
really get you learning about
Australian history, culture,
expressions, slang and improve your
English and get it to an advanced
level as naturally as possible.

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That's the point of the Academy, and
then obviously, lastly, we have the
other three courses that I offer
currently. The Pronunciation course,
the Spoken English course and the
Phrasal Verb course. So, I've been
working recently with my I.T. team,
headed by Praveen, and we're trying
to do the website up, we're going to
redo it, we're going to try and make
it a lot cleaner, a lot more natural
to use and we're also going to be
focussing on getting you guys to
interact a lot more.

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So, we're going to have forums in
there, we're going to have a chat in
there for you guys to be able to talk
to one another, and yeah, aside from
that the new website, the new academy
will have those features, there's
also the feature that I'm working on
at the moment, which is for the
podcast player, where you'll be able
to look up individual words to find
out the definitions for them as
you're listening to the episodes, so
that if you want to understand
certain words, you just have to click
on them and you'll see the definition
and you can hear the pronunciation as
well.

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The trouble with this recently,
though, is that there's no Australian
company that I can get this
information from to be able to give
you the pronunciation in Australian
English. So, I've had to use British
English, although, it's pretty
similar, right? And it's a good
basis, if you copy that accent, it's
not going be the end of the world.
So, working on that and then also the
words that you look up you'll be able
to add to your own personal
dictionary, so that you can then
refer to them. And it also pulls out
the sentence that that word came
from, so that you can see it in
context.

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So, I'm really trying to work on
customizing the user experience, so
that you guys can focus on the
language you're trying to improve
individually, right? And add these
words to your private dictionary, and
than later I want to add in features
sort of like Anki, right? Games or a
flash card kind of a system, where
you can practice the new vocab that
you're learning from the content
that's in the academy or on the
podcast. So, we're currently working
on that.

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On top of that, we're trying to
gamify it. So, I'm trying to make it
so you guys get points, you can go up
levels and really trying to build
this around Australia. So, having
rewards in there that are maybe
related to Australian animals, right?
You get an award and it is a certain
Australian animal.

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Yeah, I've been thinking about this
and how I can really bring it back on
Australia again and again and again
to reinforce that cultural immersion,
ok? So, that's where things are kind
of sitting at the moment. We're
working on the website, I've got the
first group of people who I contacted
who are members of the academy
already, to go in to the academy, the
2.0 Academy and we'll go through as
alpha testers and they'll be able to
test everything and see what needs to
be fixed.

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And then I'm going to release this as
a beta product to all of you, guys,
ok? So, in the near future, when you
see this released, if you're in the
academy or you're using the podcast
or any of the courses, I really need
your feedback if there are things you
don't like or things that you really
like. Let me know, so that I can keep
improving things.

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And then beyond that, the last thing
I want to mention, obviously we've
had classes with Renata, so she's
been giving three classes every
single week for members of the
academy and these are speaking
classes, but the interesting thing is
there's hundreds of you guys signed
up to the academy, but usually these
lessons only have three, five, maybe
seven people in them. So, guys, if
you're in the Academy, really make
use of these lessons and the good
thing is at the moment, if you go to
them, you're going to have a teacher
there for free. You know, it's
included in the price of the academy
with only a handful of other
students, and she's Australian and
you'll be talking about advanced
topics, so that you can really
improve your English quickly.

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So, use these classes and I'm going
to be trying to also get more
teachers on board to teach different
things, to teach things like IELTS
preparation or the PTE exam
preparation and maybe also academic
English and grammar, ok? So, I've
talked to one girl who is a Brazilian
native, but she's lived in Australia
and been teaching English for 15
years, and I want to get her in there
to teach you guys grammar so that you
have live classes, you can ask
questions and everything like that.

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So, that's where things currently
stand, guys, and that's where I want
to get things before the end of the
year. I want the academy up and
running, I want it to be much more
intensive, so that when you get in
there you can ask questions, you can
chat with each other, you can meet
other people, you can really work on
your Australian English, I'm going to
keep adding content, I want to make
more courses as well, I want to make
some more advanced pronunciation
courses or accent reduction courses,
I want to work on courses about
expanding your vocabulary, I want to
keep adding more content about
Australia or and I'm also set up a
way of ranking all the material or
the podcast episodes and all of the
other course material by level in
English, right? A1, A2, B1, B2, C1,
C2.

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So, that you'll also be able to rank
the material from the most easy to
the most difficult or vice versa and
be able to find the material at your
level and then practice that
material. So, I think that's going to
really help you as well once we
categorize it by difficulty.

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Anyway, so that's where things
currently stand, that's sort of the
most recent news, I'm going to keep
working my ass off to serve you,
guys, to help you guys improve your
English and better understand
Australia history culture, integrate
here into our society, I really
appreciate all you guys who listen
every single week, I appreciate all
you guys who send me emails and
comments with feedback, with
questions, with kind messages. It
really means the world to me you,
guys. So, yeah, I am so pumped, I'm
so happy and I'm looking forward to
what awaits us at the end of this
year and in 2020.

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So, here's to another 600 lessons,
ok? Anyway, guys, give yourselves a
pat on the back from me as a way of
saying thank you very much, and
again, contact me, send me a message,
send me an email if you have any
feedback, any questions or you just
want to say g'day, ok? Thanks for
joining me, guys, and I will see you
in less than six hundred and one
catch up.

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Baron.