About the blogger
Rob is a producer at 成人快手 Learning English. In this week's blog he shows you around our new home in the centre of London.
Welcome to our new home
Hello! It's good to be back with you on the blog again. I must start with an apology on behalf of 成人快手 Learning English - we haven't officially welcomed you to our new home.
We are now located in a brand new building called New Broadcasting House in central London. It's slightly odd to call it a 'house' - it's not a house you would live in - it's really a huge, eight storey high office block - not a story, as in something you read! It's been joined onto the old existing Broadcasting House, as you can see here:
And because we are on the 5th floor, we get a good view of London's famous West End district:
There is a saying to call a house a home, meaning a house feels like home only when your friends or family and your personal possessions are in it. I suppose we can call it home because my friendly colleagues are here and we are surrounded by many familiar things like our computers, books and equipment.
Look, here are some of the team hard at work in our new office:
A similar phrase is home is where the heart is, meaning a true home is where the person or place you most love is. Well, I don't think I would say our new work place is the place I love the most, and it's not really a home from home - but it is a pleasant place to spend my working hours. Our old office at Bush House (another house!) is now just a distant memory and our new building is a very different place.
For a start, it is open-plan, so it hasn't got many walls and we're not located in small separate offices. It looks like this:
The great thing about this is that you get to see almost everybody who works at the 成人快手, from technicians, to journalists to presenters. And as it is a new building, everything is spick and span - for now anyway! There is no junk on the desks or cupboards full of old equipment. We need to keep our desks clear because many of us hot desk - that means we share desks and don't always sit at the same place.
Another benefit of a being in a brand new building is we have the latest high-tech equipment, which makes it easier for us to produce all the lovely content for you. The building has a few quirks too: outside, the names of places we broadcast to around the world have been stamped onto the paving stones. Like this:
But one thing that is really close to home is that in our new building we get free and unlimited cups of tea and coffee - that's something worth coming to work for! Here is my colleague Neil, enjoying a free cuppa:
I hope you now get a sense of where we are now working and where we are speaking to you from.
What are your first impressions? How does it compare with the place where you work or study? What is the best thing about where you work or study?
Vocabulary
- storey
level in a building
- to call a house a home
to make a building feel comfortable to live in
- home is where the heart is
a true home is where the person or place you most love is
- a home from home
a place where you are as comfortable and happy as you are at home
- a distant memory
something from a long time ago that is getting harder to remember
- open-plan
having no (or few) dividing walls between areas
- spick and span
very clean and tidy
- hot desk
a desk that is available for anyone to use
- high-tech
modern, up-to-date technology
- quirks
things that are strange and unexpected
- close to home
affecting one intimately and personally
- get a sense of
develop some understanding of
End of Section
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