Hello, everyone, and welcome to EnglishPod. My name is Marco. I'm Amira. Hey, Amira. How are you today? I'm doing great.

  What about you? I'm doing pretty good. I'm excited about this lesson that you have for us today. Yes, it's actually（实际上） a very, very useful lesson. It's about someone asking his（他的） boss（老板） for an assistant（助手）. Oh, okay（好）.

  An assistant. What's an assistant? Well, it's someone who helps you with your work around the office. Okay, great. So let's listen to this dialogue and when we come back, we'll take a look（看） at all the interesting and useful vocabulary（词汇） that you'll find. Like（喜欢） I told you before（以前）, we just don't have the resources（资源） to hire you an assistant（助手）.

  I understand that, but the fact is we're understaffed. The timing is just not right. The economy（经济）'s bad and it's too risky（危险的） to take on new staff（工作人员）. Yeah, I guess you're right. Here's an idea. What if we hire（租借） an intern?

  She would take some of the weight（重量） off my shoulders（肩）. She? Yeah, you know, a recent（新近的） graduate（研究生）, she could give me a hand with some of these projects and we could keep our costs down. That sounds reasonable（合理的）. Let me see what I can do. Tony, I'd like to introduce you to your new assistant.

  Okay, great. Let's meet her. Hi, I'm Adam. Oh, hi, I'm Tony. And we're back. Tony, he's surprised（感到惊讶的）, huh?

  Yeah, I don't know why, though（ 虽然）, he's surprised. I think we should talk about that a little bit（一点） later. Yes, for now, let's look at some interesting vocabulary and phrases here. Marco, I know you've chosen one for us. Yeah, the first one that I want to take a look at is resources. Resources.

  Resources. Resources. And that means, in this text, basically（基本上） money. Right. So the office doesn't have enough（足够的） money. Okay, I've chosen another interesting word for you and that's understaffed.

  Understaffed. Understaffed. Understaffed. Now, understaffed means that they don't have enough people working（使工作） there. They don't have enough workers. Right, they don't have enough employees（受雇者）.

  Perfect（完成式）, okay（好）. The next one is timing is just not right. The timing is just not right. The timing is just not right. The timing is just not right. Okay, let's listen to how we can use this entire（全部的） phrase in a different situation so then we can understand what it means.

  Let's listen. I was going to sell my house, but the timing is just not right. Honey（蜜）, I think we should have a baby.