Tapescript
Section
I
Female: Scope charity office, how can I help you?
Male: Oh hello, I’m ringing about the Dragon Boat Race that you’re asking people to take part in.
Female: Oh yes, we still need a few more teams. Are you interested in joining the race?
Male: Yes, we want to enter a team but we don’t know anything about it? Could I ask you for some more information first?
Female: Of course
Male: I don’t even know when it’s being held
Female: It’s taking place on the 2nd
July…
Male: Is that a Saturday?
Female: No, it’s a Sunday. It’s a much more popular day and more people can take part then.
Male: Right. And where’s it being held?
Female: …at the Brighton Marina.
Male: Oh, I’m an overseas student…could you spell
that for me?
Female: Yes, it’s Brighton Marina, that’s MARINA. Do you know where it is?
Male: I’m not sure.
Female: It’s a couple of miles past the Palace Pier.
Male: Oh yes, I know it.
Female: You take a right turning off the coast road or you can cycle along the seafront.
Male: That’s good. What time does the race start?
Female: Well, the first heats begin at 10.00am- but you need to register half an hour before the – at 9.30 and we really recommend that you aim to be there by 9. It’s a good idea to arrange a meeting place for your team.
Male: Right…and the race is to help raise money for charity?
Female: It is. We’re asking every team member to
try and raise £35 by getting friends
and/or relatives to sponsor them. Every crewmember will receive a free
tournament t-shirt if your team manages to raise £1.000 or more.
Male: Oh that quite good.
Female: Also we’re holding a raffle…every crewmember that takes part in the race this season will be entered into a free Prize Draw.
Male: Oh, what’s the prize?
Female: It’s pretty good – it’s a holiday in
Hong Kong
Male: Sound great.
Female: Is there anything else you need to know?
Male: Could you just tell me a little bit more about the teams?
Female: Well, you need to have crew of 20 people for your dragon boat…and you then need to agree on who’s going to be the team captain… that would probably be you…
Male: Fine, Um, I’ve a group 20 people who are interested…do all the team members have to be a certain age?
Female: Well there’s no age limit as such but if you have a team member who’s under 18 then that have to get their parents’ permission to take part.
Male: Yes, that makes sense.
Female: It isn’t dangerous but we do have boats
that turn over in the water and for that reason we insist that everyone
wears a life jacket as well and you can hire life jackets from us when your team
arrives.
Male: What do you advice people to wear?
Female: Well, most people wear a t-shirt, shorts
and trainers. I certainly wouldn’t recommend that you wear jeans or boots. It
fact, it’s a very good idea to bring some spare clothes.
Male: Ok.
Female: It can get quite cold and wet if the weather’s bad. And there’s quite a bit of hanging around especially if you qualify for the semi-finals or the final…
Male: I see what you mean.
Female: Have you got a name for your team?
Male: Oh, not yet, no.
Female: Well you need to decide on one and then put it on the entrance from which I’ll send you…
Male: Oh Ok.
Female: So if you’d like to give me your address…
Announcer: And now for some information on local events and activities. A couple of announcements for art-lovers and budding artists alike. First, a new collection of artwork is going on show to the public next month in the form of an artists’ exhibition. The exhibition will include many different types of art … over 100 different pieces, by 58 artists from the local area. It’s being held at the Royal Museum which – for those of you was are unfamiliar with the area – is located opposite the library in West Street, right on the corner … the actual address is number 1, Queen’s Park Road – it isn’t difficult to find. The exhibition will run for 9 weeks and will begin on the 6th of October and continue until the 10th December. So there’s plenty of time for you to go along and have a look and I’m sure that will be worth doing.
What will you see there? Well, amongst the items on display will be some exciting pieces of modern jewellery, furniture, ceramics, metal work and sculpture. To give you some examples … Local artist Kate Maine will be there to discuss her collection of pots and bowls that she has made to resemble garden vegetables. They’re the sort of thing that would brighten up any dining table, and range from things like yellow cabbage-shaped bowl to round tomato-shapes teapots. Prize – winner Cynthia Course, will also be there to talk about her silver jewellery, all of which she produced using ideas from the rural setting of her country home. Some of her rings are quite extraordinary and have beautiful colored stones in them. Or if you prefer sculpture, there’s plenty of that too. Take, for example, Susan Cup’s sculpture of 25 pairs of white paper shoes. It sound easy, but believe me it looks incredible! All of these items along with many others will be on sale throughout the exhibition period.
As part of the exhibition, there will be a series of demonstrations called ‘Face to Face’ which will take place every Sunday afternoon during the exhibition and these will provide an opportunity for you to meet the artists. The second set of activities are for those who would prefer to indulge in some artwork themselves … the Artist’s Conservatory are holding a series of courses over the autumn period. The courses cover all media and include subjects such as Chinese brush painting, pencil drawing and silk painting. All the tutors are experienced artists, course sizes are kept to a minimum of 15 and there will be plenty of individual assistance.
All the sessions offer excellent value for money and the opportunity to relax in a delightful rural setting. Fees are very reasonable and include the use of an excellent studio and access to the art shop which you will find sells everything from paper to CDs and they also include the provision of all materials. For more information on dates, cost and availability you should get in touch with the programme co-ordinator on 4592 839584 or go direct to the website …
Section
III
Tutor: We’re very pleased to welcome Professor Isaac Nebworth to our tutorial group today and he’s come to share one of his pet passions with us – City traffic and our western dependence on the motor car. I believe questions are quite welcome throughout.
Professor: Thank you. Well. I know you’re all very familiar with the super highway here in Melbourne. But do super highways automatically lead to super wealth, as our politicians would have us believe? I think not.
Tutor: Can you give us an example of what you mean exactly?
Professor: Sure…well, by continuing to encourage this dependence on the motorcar, we simply create more congestion and more urban sprawl. And you can see that here in Melbourne right under your nose.
Student: Excuse me. I would just like to say that I feel the sprawl is part of the city. The freeways mean people can enjoy the benefits of living away from the center…on larger blocks with gardens…but still be able to drive back into the city center for work or entertainment.
Professor: Well I’m not convinced that people want to do that. And is our money being well spent? It may be Ok for you now but come back to me in five year’s time! Let’s take City Link, for example, the new freeway here in Melbourne.
Student: Well…I use the freeway all the time. I think it’s great.
Professor: Ah yes, but it cost $2 billion to build, and you could have gotten ten times the value by putting the money into public transport. If you give the automobile road space, it will fill that space…and you’ll soon find you’ll be crawling along your City Link.
Tutor: But surely, you cannot simply blame the car. Some of the blame must rest with governments and city planners?
Student: Well there is an argument, surely, that building good roads is actually beneficial because most new cars these day are highly efficient – they use for less petrol than in the past and emissions of dangerous gases are low. Old congested roads, on the other hand, encourage traffic to move slowly and it’s the stationary cars that cause the pollution and smog…whereas good roads increase traffic speeds and thus the amount of time cars are actually on the roads.
Professor: Well…this is the old argument put forward by the road lobby but for me it’s clear-cut. Road equal cars which equal smog. Public transport is the way to go.
Tutor: Now…on that topic of public transport, I
read somewhere recently that Australia, granted, but by comparison with Canada,
it’s not so good. For instance, if you compare Toronto with the US metropolis
of Detroit only 160 kilometers away…in Detroit only 1% of passenger travel is
by public transport whereas in Toronto it’s 24% which is considerably better
than Sydney which can only boast 16%.
Tutor: Well I think it’s encouraging that our least
car-dependent city is actually our largest city. 16% of trips being taken on
public is actually transported in Sydney, isn’t too bad.
Professor: But it’s along way behind Europe. Take both London and Paris for instance…where 30% of all trips taken are on public transport.
Tutor: Well, they do both have an excellent underground system.
Professor…and Frankfurt comes in higher still at 32%.
Tutor: I understand that they’ve been very successful in Copenhagen at ridding the city of the car. Can you tell us anything about that experiment?
Professor: Yes indeed. Copenhagen is a wonderful example of a city that has learnt to live without the motorcar. Back in the 1960s they adopted a number of policies designed to draw people back into the city. For instance they paid musicians and artists to perform in the streets. They also built cycle lanes and now 30% of the inhabitants of Copenhagen use a bicycle to go to work. Sydney by comparison can only boast 1% of the population cycling to work.
Student: It could have something to do with all the hills!
Professor: Then they banned cars from many parts of the city and every year 3% of the city parking is removed and by constantly reducing parking they’re created public spaces and clean air.
Student: Really?
Professor: There are also freely available bicycle, which you can hire for practically nothing. And of course, they have an excellent transport system.
Student: Well, that’s all very well for Copenhagen.
But I’d just like to say that some cities are just too larger for a decent
public transport system to work well. Particularly in areas with low
population, because if there aren’t many people using the service then they
don’t schedule enough buses or trains for that route.
Professor: I accept that there is a vicious circle here bit people do need to support the system.
Student: And secondly the whole process takes so long because usually you have to change…you know, from bus to trains – that sort of thing, and that can be quite difficult Ultimately it’s much easier to jump in your car. And often it turns out to be cheaper.
Professor: Sure… but cheaper for whom, you or society? We have to work towards the ideal and not give in all the time because things are too difficult…Anyway lets more on to some of the results the survey…[fade]
Section
IV
Lecturer: In today’s lecture I‘d like to look at the topic of food preservation and start by asking obvious question ‘Why do we need to preserve food?’ Well, apart from keeping it fresh for our daily need, many foods, such as fruit and vegetables are only available at certain times of the year so if we want to be to eat these foods all year round, we need to preserve them. We also need to preserve food for export overseas to make sure that it doesn’t perish in transit, and lastly we need to be able to preserve food for when there food shortages.
There are a number of methods of preserving food, which involve both high and low temperatures, chemical, irradiation and drying. Let’s have a look at these in turn. In 1870s the French scientist, Louis Pasteur, show that micro-organisms on food could be destroyed by raising the temperature the food a process now known as pasteurisation. This involves heating milk to just 650C for 30 minutes. A new method, the ultra-high temperature or UHT process, involves heating milk to 1500C for three seconds. The advantage of treating milk in this way is that it lasts much longer though I tend to feel, and I’m sure many of you would agree, that taste is somewhat sacrificed in the UHT process.
Tin cans were first used in the early 1800s to store and preserve food. Just as they are now, they cans were tin-plated, steel containers and the process had the advantage of being cost effective. Unfortunately, however, there were many early cases of food-poisoning because they canning process was not fully understood at that stage. We now know the exact temperature and length of time each food needs for proper preservation which has greatly reduced the risk of food-poisoning.
People living in cold climates often preserved food by burying it in the snow and the Romans knew all about the advantages of packing food in ice but for most people this was not an option until the invention of the refrigerator in 1834. Today, however, refrigeration is the most important means of preserving food because the food stays fresh without needing to be treated. However, refrigeration requires an electricity supply and unfortunately if the power goes off, so does the food!!
A variety of chemicals can be added to food you’ll find their names listed on the labels of cans and bottles. Salt is probably the oldest of all the chemical preservatives and was used by many ancient civilizations for many years. Sugar also acts as a preservative and is used to preserve jams in much the same way that vinegar is used to pickle foods. Chemical preservatives are effective but they do not suit all foods and the processes involved are time-consuming.
Another method of preserving food is by drying it. Most foods are 75% to 90% water so if you remove the water the micro-organisms simply can’t survive. When food is dried is not only lasts a long time but it also becomes much lighter which is a big advantage as this makes it cheap to store, though some people argue that valuable nutrients are lost in the process. Early methods for drying food involved cutting it into trips and hanging it in the sun or over fires. But there are now a number of more modem methods which involve the use of recent technology. One of these is known as roller drying and it’s a highly effective way of making dried foods from liquids, such as soup.
Have a look at this diagram to see how it works. Well, first of all the hot soup is poured in at one end-here. The liquid spreads to form a thin layer on a heated belt. The liquid dries as it moves along. By the time it reaches the end of the belt, all the water has evaporated living only dry powder. A blade then scrapes the dried material off the roller and captures it in powder form. All you have to do is add boiling water and you have your hot soup back again, ready to drink! Another method is called freeze drying …