Week 3: The Veldt

1. Quiz on Omelas

2. Speeches
Wed
10-12: B0644248, B0744221, B0744229, B0744112
3-5: B0743031, B0743034, B0603147, B0743016

Friday:
8-10: B0421129, B0721215, 213, 208
10-12: B0704111, 139, 134, 115

3. Reading

This is our last science fiction story. Next week we move to a new topic....

Questions. Answer with your partner.

1.      What is special about the House? About the Nursery?

2.      Who is the killer? Who do they kill? Why?
3.    Go back to the beginning. Whose screams are Geoge and Lydia hearing?

4.      Think about the children’s names, they are from another famous story. What story is this story  responding to? 
5. This is a hero story. Who is the hero? 

“The Veldt” (1950)

Ray Bradbury

“George, I wish you'd look at the nursery.”                                                                           “What's wrong with it?”

 “I don't know.”

“Well, then.”

“I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to look at it.”

“What would a psychologist want with a nursery?”

“You know very well what he'd want.” His wife paused in the middle of the kitchen and watched the robot stove busy itself making supper for four.

“It's just that the nursery is different now than it was.”

“All right, let's have a look.”

They walked down the hall of their Happylife Home, which had cost them thirty thousand dollars, this house which clothed and fed them and played and sang and was good to them. A switch somewhere sensed them and the nursery light came on. Similarly, behind them, in the halls, lights went on and off as they left them behind.

“Well,” said George Hadley.

They stood on the floor of the nursery. It was forty feet across by forty feet long and thirty feet high; it had cost more than the entire house. “But nothing's too good for our children,” George had said.

The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle at hot high noon. The walls were blank and two dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and disappear, it seemed. Presently an African veldt appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced perfectly. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with a hot yellow sun.

     George Hadley felt the perspiration start on his brow.

     “Let's get out of this sun,” he said. “This is a little too real. But I don't see anything wrong.”

“Wait a moment, you'll see,” said his wife.

Now the hidden smell machines were beginning to blow an odor at the two people in the middle of the hot veldt land. The hot straw smell of lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rusty smell of animals. And now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the rustling of vultures. A shadow passed through the sky.

“Filthy creatures,” he heard his wife say.

“The vultures.”

“You see, there are the lions, far over, that way. Now they're on their way to the water hole. They've just been eating,” said Lydia. “I don't know what.”

“Some animal. A zebra or a baby giraffe, maybe.”

     “Are you sure?” His wife sounded strangely tense.

     “No, it's a little late to be sure,” he said, amused. “Nothing there to see but cleaned bone, and the vultures dropping for what's left.”

 “Did you hear that scream?” she asked.

“No.”

            “About a minute ago?”

“Sorry, no.”

The lions were coming. And again George Hadley was filled with admiration for the engineering genius who had invented this room. Every home should have one. Oh, occasionally they frightened you, they startled you, but most of the time what fun for everyone, not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a quick trip to a foreign land!

And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real you could feel the fur on your hand, and your mouth was filled with the dusty smell of their heated skin, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the lion lungs breathing, and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.

The lions stood looking at George and Lydia Hadley with terrible green-yellow eyes.

“Watch out!” screamed Lydia.

     The lions came running at them.

     Lydia ran. Instinctively, George sprang after her. Outside, in the hall, with the door shut, he was laughing and she was crying.

 “George!”

 “Lydia! Oh, my dear poor sweet Lydia!”

 “They almost got us!”

 “Walls, Lydia, remember; computerized walls, that's all they are. Oh, they look real, I must admit but it is all computer tricks behind glass screens. Here's my handkerchief.”

“I'm afraid.” She came to him and put her body against him and cried steadily. “Did you see? Did you feel? It's too real.”

“Now, Lydia...”

     “You've got to tell Wendy and Peter not to read any more on Africa.”

     “Of course - of course.” He patted her.

     “Promise?”

     “Sure.”

     “And lock the nursery for a few days until I stop being afraid.”

     “You know how difficult Peter is about that. When I punished him a month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours he got so upset! And Wendy too. They live for the nursery.”

     “It's got to be locked, that's all there is to it.”

     “All right.” He locked the huge door. “You've been working too hard. You need a rest.”

     “I don't know - I don't know,” she said, blowing her nose, sitting down in a chair that immediately began to automatically rock and comfort her. “Maybe I don't have enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don't we shut the whole house off for a few days and take a vacation?”

“You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?”

     “Yes.” She nodded.

     “And fix my socks?”

     “Yes.”

     “And sweep the house?”

      “Yes, yes - oh, yes!''

     “But I thought that's why we bought this house, so we wouldn't have to do anything?”

“That's just it. I feel like I don't belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and maid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic bath can? I cannot. And it isn't just me. It's you. You've been awfully nervous lately.”

“I suppose I have been smoking too much.”

     “You look as if you didn't know what to do with yourself in this house, either. You smoke a little more every morning and drink a little more every afternoon and need more sleeping pills every night. You're beginning to feel unnecessary too.”

      “Am I?” He paused and tried to feel into himself to see what was really there.

     “Oh, George!” She looked beyond him, at the nursery door. “Those lions can't get out of there, can they?”

     He looked at the door and saw it tremble as if something had jumped against it from the other side.

     “Of course not,” he said.

                                                                      ###

     At dinner they ate alone, for Wendy and Peter were at the circus across town and had called home to say they'd be late, to go ahead eating. So George Hadley sat watching the dining-room table produce warm dishes of food from its computerized interior.

     “We forgot the ketchup,” he said.

       “Sorry,” said a small voice within the table, and ketchup appeared.

     As for the nursery, thought George Hadley, it won't hurt for the children to be locked out of it for a while. Too much of anything isn't good for anyone. And it was clear that the children had been spending a little too much time on Africa. That sun. He could feel it on his neck, still, like a hot claw. And the lions. And the smell of blood. Amazing how the nursery read the thoughts in the children's minds and created life to fill their every desire. The children thought lions, and there were lions. The children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun—sun. Giraffes—giraffes. Death and death.

That last. He chewed tastelessly on the meat that the table had cut for him. Death thoughts. They were awfully young, Wendy and Peter, for death thoughts. The long, hot African veldt, the awful death in the jaws of a lion. And repeated again and again.

     “Where are you going?”

     He didn't answer Lydia. Preoccupied, he let the lights glow softly on ahead of him, turn off behind him as he walked to the nursery door. He listened against it. Far away, a lion roared.

     He unlocked the door and opened it. Just before he stepped inside, he heard a faraway scream. And then another roar from the lions, which faded quickly.

     He stepped into Africa. How many times in the last year had he opened this door and found Alice in Wonderland or Aladdin and his Magical Lamp, or the Wizard of Oz. How often had he seen horses flying in the sky or heard angel voices singing. But now, all is yellow hot Africa, this bake oven with murder in the heat. Perhaps Lydia was right. Perhaps they needed a little vacation from the fantasy which was growing a little too real for ten-year-old children.

     George Hadley stood on the African grassland alone. The lions looked up from their feeding, watching him. The only failure in the illusion was the open door through which he could see his wife, far down the hall eating her dinner.

     “Go away,” he said to the lions.

     They did not go.

     He knew the principle of the room exactly. You sent out your thoughts. Whatever you thought would appear. “Let's have Aladdin and his lamp,” he snapped. The veldtland remained;

the lions remained.

     “Come on, room! I demand Aladdin!” he said.

     Nothing happened. The lions mumbled in their baked pelts.

     “Aladdin!”

     He went back to dinner. “The room is broken,” he said. “It won't respond.”

     “Or--”

     “Or what?”

     “Or it can't respond,” said Lydia, “because the children have thought about Africa and lions and killing so many days that the room's computer can’t do anything else.”

“Could be.”

     “Or Peter's set it to remain that way.”

     “Set it?”

     “He may have got into the computer and fixed something.”

     “Peter doesn't know about computers.”

     “He's a wise one for ten. That I.Q. of his -”

     “Nevertheless -”

      “Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad.”

     The Hadleys turned. Wendy and Peter were coming in the front door from their trip in the helicopter.

     “You're just in time for supper,” said both parents.

     “We're full of strawberry ice cream and hot dogs,” said the children, holding hands. “But we'll sit and watch.”

     “Yes, come tell us about the nursery,” said George Hadley.

     The brother and sister blinked at him and then at each other.

     “Nursery?”

     “All about Africa and everything,” said the father with false friendliness.

     “I don't understand,” said Peter.

     “Your mother and I were just traveling through Africa,” said George Hadley.

     “There's no Africa in the nursery,” said Peter simply.

     “Oh, come now, Peter. We know better.”

     “I don't remember any Africa,” said Peter to Wendy. “Do you?”

     “No.”

     “Run see and come tell.”

      She obeyed

     “Wendy, come back here!” said George Hadley, but she was gone. The house lights followed her like fireflies. Too late, he realized he had forgotten to lock the nursery door.

     “Wendy'll look and come tell us,” said Peter.

     “She doesn't have to tell me. I've seen it.”

     “I'm sure you're mistaken, Father.”

     “I'm not, Peter. Come along now.”

     But Wendy was back. “It's not Africa,” she said breathlessly.

     “We'll see about this,” said George Hadley, and they all walked down the hall together and opened the nursery door.

     There was a green, lovely forest, a lovely river, a purple mountain, voices singing, trees

with colorful butterflies. The African veldtland was gone. The lions were gone.

     George Hadley looked in at the changed scene. “Go to bed,” he said to the children.

     They opened their mouths.

     “You heard me,” he said.

     They went off to the air tube system, where a wind sucked them up the tube to their sleep rooms.

George Hadley walked through the singing glade and picked up something that lay in the comer near where the lions had been. He walked slowly back to his wife.

     “What is that?” she asked.

     “An old wallet of mine,” he said.

     He showed it to her. The smell of hot grass was on it and the smell of a lion. There were drops of saliva on it, it had been chewed, and there was blood on both sides.

     He closed the nursery door and locked it, tight.

    ###

In the middle of the night he was still awake and he knew his wife was awake. “Do you think Wendy changed it?” she said at last, in the dark room.

     “Of course.”

     “Made it from a veldt into a forest?”

     “Yes.”

     “Why?”

     “I don't know. But it's staying locked until I find out.”

     “How did your wallet get there?”

     “I don't know anything,” he said, “except that I'm beginning to be sorry we bought that room for the children. If children have psychological problems, a room like that -”

     “It's supposed to help them solve their psychological problems in a healthy way.”

 “I'm starting to wonder.” He stared at the ceiling.

     “We've given the children everything they ever wanted. Is this our reward—secrecy, disobedience?”

     “Who was it said, 'Children are carpets, they should be stepped on occasionally'? We've never hit them. They're spoiled—let's admit it. They come and go when they like; they treat us as if we were their children. They're spoiled and we're spoiled.”

     “They've been acting funny ever since you told them they could not take the rocket to New York a few months ago.”

     “They're not old enough to do that alone, I explained.”

     “Nevertheless, I've noticed they've been decidedly cool toward us since.”

     “I think I'll have our friend the psychologist, David McClean, come tomorrow morning to have a look at Africa.”

     “But it's not Africa now, it's forest and mountains.”

     “I have a feeling it'll be Africa again before then.”

     A moment later they heard the screams.

     Two screams. Two people screaming from downstairs. And then a roar of lions.

     “Wendy and Peter aren't in their rooms,” said his wife.

     He lay in his bed with his beating heart. “No,” he said. “They've broken into the nursery.”

     “Those screams—they sound familiar.”

     “Do they?”

     “Yes, awfully.”

     And although automatic beds tried very hard, the two adults couldn't be made to sleep for another hour. A smell of cats was in the night air.

###

     “Father?” said Peter.

     “Yes.”

     Peter looked at his shoes. He never looked at his father any more, nor at his mother. “You aren't going to lock up the nursery forever, are you?”

     “That all depends.”

     “On what?” snapped Peter.

     “On you and your sister. If you change Africa with a little variety—oh, Sweden perhaps, or Denmark or China -”

     “I thought we were free to play as we wished.”

     “You are, within reasonable limits.”

     “What's wrong with Africa, Father?”

     “Oh, so now you admit you have been creating Africa, do you?”

     “I wouldn't want the nursery locked up,” said Peter coldly. “Ever.”

     “Matter of fact, we're thinking of turning the whole house off for about a month. Live sort of a carefree existence.”

     “That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of letting the shoe tier do it? And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and give myself a bath?”

     “It would be fun for a change, don't you think?”

     “No, it would be horrid. I didn't like it when you took out the picture painter last month.”

     “That's because I wanted you to learn to paint all by yourself, son.”

       “I don't want to do anything but look and listen and smell; what else is there to do?”

             “All right, go play in Africa.”

     “Will you shut off the house sometime soon?”

     “We're considering it.”

     “I don't think you'd better consider it any more, Father.”

     “I won't have any threats from my son!”

     “Very well.” And Peter ran off to the nursery.

###

     “Am I on time?” said David McClean.

      “Breakfast?” asked George Hadley.

     “Thanks, had some. What's the trouble?”

     “David, you're a psychologist.”

     “I should hope so.”

     “Well, then, have a look at our nursery. You saw it a year ago when you visited; did you notice anything strange about it then?”

     “Can't say I did; the usual violence, a tendency toward a paranoia here or there, usual in children because they feel persecuted by parents constantly, but, oh, really nothing.”

     They walked down the hall. “I locked the nursery up,” explained the

father, “and the children broke back into it during the night. I let them stay so they could form the patterns for you to see.”

     There was a terrible screaming from the nursery.

     “There it is,” said George Hadley. “See what you think of it.”

     They walked in on the children without knocking.

     The screams had faded. The lions were feeding.

     “Run outside a moment, children,” said George Hadley. “No, don't change

the password. Leave the walls as they are. Get!”

     With the children gone, the two men stood studying the lions grouped at a distance, eating with great enjoyment whatever it was they had caught.

     “I wish I knew what it was,” said George Hadley. “Sometimes I can almost see. Do you think if I brought high-powered binoculars here and -”

     David McClean laughed dryly. “Impossible.” He turned to study all four walls. “How long has this been going on?”

     “A little over a month.”

     “It certainly doesn't feel good.”

     “I want facts, not feelings.”

      “My dear George, a psychologist never saw a fact in his life. He only hears about feelings; vague things. This doesn't feel good, I tell you. Trust my instincts. I have a nose for something bad. This is very bad. My advice to you is to have the whole damn room torn down and your children brought to me every day during the next year for treatment.”

     “Is it that bad?”

     “I'm afraid so. One of the original uses of these nurseries was so that we could study the patterns left on the walls by the child's mind and help the child. In this case, however, the room has led toward destructive thoughts, instead of releasing them.”

     “Didn't you see this before?”

     “I saw only that you had spoiled your children more than most. And now you're letting them down in some way. What way?”

     “I wouldn't let them go to New York.”

     “What else?”

     “I've taken a few machines from the house and threatened them, a month ago, with closing up the nursery unless they did their homework. I did close it for a few days to show I was serious.”

     “Ah, ha!”

     “Does that mean anything?”

     “Everything. Where before they had a Santa Claus now they have an evil father. Children prefer Santas. You've let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children's affections. This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents. And now you come along and want to shut it off. No wonder there's hatred here. You can feel it coming out of the sky. George, you'll have to change your life. Like too many others, you've built it around computerized comforts. Why, you'd starve tomorrow if something went wrong in your kitchen. You wouldn't know how to cook an egg. Nevertheless, turn everything

off. Start new. It'll take time. But we'll make good children out of bad in a year, wait and see.”

     “But won't the shock be too much for the children, shutting the room up so quickly, forever?”

     “I don't want them going any deeper into this, that's all.”

     The lions were finished with their red feast.

     The lions were standing on the edge of the clearing watching the two

men.

     “Now I'm feeling persecuted,” said McClean. “Let's get out of here. I never have cared for these damned rooms. Make me nervous.”

     “The lions look real, don't they?” said George Hadley. I don't suppose

there's any way—”

     “What?”

     “—that they could become real?”

     “Not that I know.”

     “Some error in the system, people breaking it or something?”

     “No.”

     They went to the door.

     “I don't imagine the room will like being turned off,” said the father.

     “Nothing ever likes to die - even a room.”

     “I wonder if it hates me for wanting to switch it off?”

     “You’re just being paranoid,” said David McClean. “Hello.” He bent and picked up a bloody scarf. “This yours?”

     “No.” George Hadley's face was rigid. “It belongs to Lydia.”

     They went to the fuse box together and threw the switch that killed the nursery.

###

     The two children were wildly upset. They screamed and threw things. They yelled and sobbed and swore and jumped at the furniture.

     “You can't do that to the nursery, you can't!''

     “Now, children.”

     The children flung themselves onto a couch, weeping.

     “George,” said Lydia Hadley, “turn on the nursery, just for a few moments. You can't be so abrupt.”

     “No.”

     “You can't be so cruel...”

     “Lydia, it's off, and it stays off. And the whole damn house dies now. The more I see of the mess we've put ourselves in, the more it makes me sick. We've been under the care of computers for too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!”

     And he marched about the house turning off the clocks, the stoves, the heaters, the shoe shiners, the shoe tiers, the automatic cleaners and massagers, and every other machine he could find.

     The house was full of dead bodies, it seemed. It felt like a cemetery. So silent. None of the humming energy of machines waiting to function at the tap of a button.

     “Don't let them do it!” wailed Peter at the ceiling, as if he was talking to the house, the nursery. “Don't let Father kill everything.” He turned to his father. “Oh, I hate you!”

       “Insults won't get you anywhere.”

     “I wish you were dead!”

     “We were, for a long while. Now we're going to really start living. Instead of being handled and massaged, we're going to live.”

     Wendy was still crying and Peter joined her again. “Just a moment, just one moment, just another moment of nursery,” they wailed.

     “Oh, George,” said the wife, “it can't hurt.”

     “All right—all right, if they'll just shut up. One minute, mind you, and then off forever.”

     “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” sang the children, smiling with wet faces.

     “And then we're going on a vacation. David McClean is coming back in half an hour to help us move out and get to the airport. I'm going to dress. You turn the nursery on for a minute, Lydia, just a minute.”

     And the three of them went off talking while he let himself be vacuumed upstairs through the air tube system. He started dressing himself. A minute later Lydia appeared.

     “I'll be glad when we get away,” she sighed.

     “Did you leave them in the nursery?”

     “I wanted to dress too. Oh, that horrid Africa. What can they see in it?”

       “Well, in five minutes we'll be on our way to Iowa. Lord, how did we ever get in this house? What made us buy a nightmare?”

     “Pride, money, foolishness.”

     “I think we'd better get downstairs before those kids get too involved with those damned beasts again.”

     Just then they heard the children calling, “Daddy, Mommy, come quick-quick!”

They went downstairs in the air tube and ran down the hall. The children were nowhere in sight.

“Wendy? Peter!”

     They ran into the nursery. The veldtland was empty save for the lions waiting, looking at them.

“Peter, Wendy?”

     The door slammed.

     “Wendy, Peter!”

     George Hadley and his wife whirled and ran back to the door.

     “Open the door!” cried George Hadley, trying the doorknob. “Why, they've locked it from the outside! Peter!” He beat at the door. “Open up!”

     He heard Peter's voice outside, against the door.

     “Don't let them switch off the nursery and the house,” he was saying.

     Mr. and Mrs. George Hadley beat at the door. “Now, don't be ridiculous, children. It's time to go. Mr. McClean'll be here in a minute and...”

     And then they heard the sounds.

     The lions on three sides of them, in the yellow veldt grass, walking through the dry straw, roaring in their throats.

     The lions.

     Mr. Hadley looked at his wife and they turned and looked back at the beasts coming slowly forward, tails stiff.

     Mr. and Mrs. Hadley screamed.

     And suddenly they realized why those other screams had sounded so familiar.

###

     “Well, here I am,” said David McClean in the nursery doorway, “Oh, hello.” He stared at the two children seated in the center of the open veldt eating a little picnic lunch. Beyond them was the water hole and the yellow veldtland; above was the hot sun. He began to sweat.

      “Where are your father and mother?”

     The children looked up and smiled. “Oh, they'll be here soon.”

     “Good, we must get going.” At a distance Mr. McClean saw the lions fighting and clawing and then quieting down to feed in silence under the trees.

     He watched the lions with his hand above his eyes.

     Now the lions were done feeding. They moved to the water hole to drink.

     A shadow fell over Mr. McClean's hot face. Many shadows fell.

     The vultures were dropping down from the heated sky.

     “A cup of tea?” asked Wendy in the silence.

VOCABULARY
psychologist
paranoid
fur
claw
wail
vulture
instinct
starve
tendency
admire

CONVERSATION

Are you a member of a health spa or gym?

Are you healthy?

Are your parents healthy?

Do think that you need to lose weight?

Do you always eat healthy food?

Do you bruise easily?

Do you catch a cold more than once a year?

Do you consider alcohol a drug?

Do you drink a lot?

Do you eat a lot of vegetables?

Do you eat lots of fruit?

Do you eat vegetables every day?

Do you ever get headaches?

Do you know anyone who suffers from migraine headaches?

Do you ever read magazines or news articles about health? If yes, what subject(s) do you find the most interesting?

Do you exercise?

What kind of exercise do you do?

How often do you exercise?

Do you go for regular medical check-ups?

Do you go to the dentist's twice a year?

Do you have a lot of stress?

Do you normally go one doctor in particular or any available doctor?

Do you have any allergies?

Do you have any scars?

Where are they?

Would you like to show them to the class?

Do you know anyone who suffers from backaches?

Do you know anyone with false teeth?

Do you often eat fast food?

Do you smoke?

If so, do you smoke more than two cigarettes a day?

Do you think smoking is not bad for your health?

Do you take medicine when you are sick?

Do you take vitamins or mineral supplements?

Do you take vitamins?

Do you think it is unhealthy to keep a cat in your home?

Do you think nuclear power is safe?

Do you think pets are good for a person's health

Do you think that the tobacco companies should be held reasonably responsible for a person's addiction to nicotine?

Do you think you are overweight?

Do you think you will live until a ripe old age? Why or why not?

Do you think you would be a good surgeon? Why or why not?

Do you use an alarm clock to wake up?

Do you usually get enough sleep?

Do you watch your weight? What foods do you think are healthy?

Have you ever been hospitalized?

Are you afraid of needles?

Have you ever been to an acupuncturist? What do you think of acupuncture?

Have you ever broken a bone?

Have you ever burned yourself with hot water?

Have you ever donated blood?

Have you ever gotten a black eye?

Have you ever had braces on your teeth?

Have you ever had stitches?

Have you ever sprained your ankle?

Have you ever taken a sleeping pill to get to sleep?

How can you reduce stress in your life?

How have you been feeling lately?

How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

How many hours of sleep do you usually get?

How often do you eat junk food?

What kinds of junk food do you eat?

How often do you exercise?

How often do you get a cold?

How often do you get sick in one year?

How often do you go to the doctor's?

How often is garbage collected in your neighborhood?

How would you recommend treating a cold?

If a company sells the public a product they know to be harmful or addictive, should they be held responsible for the use of that product even if the government approves it?

If you smoke, how old were you when you started smoking?

If you were President of Taiwan, what would you do to improve the health of the people?

Should smoking in restaurants be banned?

What are some things people can do to keep healthy?

What are some things that cause stress?

What are some ways to deal with stress?

What are some ways you know that you can personally keep yourself healthy?

What disease frightens you the most? Why?

What do you do to stay healthy?

(What are some things you do to keep healthy?)

What do you do, if you can't get to sleep?

What do you think about abortion? Why do some people support it and others are against it?

What do you think about getting old?

What do you think is the most serious health problem in Korea?

What do you think of cosmetic surgery? Do you know anyone who has had cosmetic surgery? Would you ever consider having cosmetic surgery?

What drinks to you think are healthy? What drinks do you think are unhealthy?

What foods to you think are healthy? What foods do you think are unhealthy?

What is the best way to find a doctor, if you're new in the area?

What is the best way to stop smoking?

What is the most horrible accident you have ever had?

What is the average age of people in your country

What kind of pollution is the most risky?

What time did you go to bed when you were a child?

What's the best way to stop smoking?

What's the highest temperature you've ever had?

What's your blood type?

When did you last take a bath?

When was the last time you went to a dentist?

When was the last time you went to a doctor?

When was the last time you went to a hospital?

When was the last time you were sick?

When you were in high school, how many days of school did you miss each year because of sickness?

Who do you think is responsible for the care of your health--you yourself, your parents, or your doctor and medical people?

Who is the healthiest person in your family? Who is the least healthy?

Why do people smoke?

Would you consider donating your organs after your death?

What is the health service like in your country?

What do you think of the health service in this country?

How can the health service be improved?

Have you been to hospital since you arrived here?

What do you know about the SARS virus?

What do you know about AIDS?

What do you know about the common cold?

What is alternative medicine?

Have you ever practiced alternative medicine?

What treatments or remedies do you follow when you have a cold?

which kind of medicine do you prefer to take when you are sick?

How often do you clean your bathroom?

Do you clean as often as your parent cleaned when you were a child?

Which parent did/does most of the cleaning in your household?

How old were you when you had start helping with the dishes/laundry/vacuuming/dusting/?

Were the chores divided equally between men and women?

Do people in your country usually wear deodorant?

How often do people in your country shower?

Have you ever ended a relationship because your partner cleaned too much or too little?

Have you ever ended a relationship because your partner had bad hygiene?

Do you enjoy cleaning? Which kind of cleaning do you enjoy most?

How often do you brush your teeth?

Have you ever swept something under the rug?

Do you use strong cleaners like bleach and ammonia?

Have you ever bought a miracle cleaner from a TV infomercial?

What's the best way to get stains out?

What alternative health therapies do you know about?

Have you ever tried any alternative health therapies?

Do you think traditional medicine is a good alternative to modern medicine?

In what circumstances should traditional or alternative medicine be used?

Do you think traditional therapies are compatible with modern medicine? Why or why not?

What are the advantages or disadvantages of modern medicine?

What are the advantages or disadvantages of traditional medicine?

What do you complain of?

What is wrong with you?

Have you any appetite?

How long have you been ill?

Have you any pain the back of your head?

How long has it been since you began to feel bad?

Have you a bitter taste in your mouth?

Do you feel nauseous?

Do you sleep well?

Is it hard to swallow?

Do we need to eat as much junk food as we do?

Have you ever realized during a dream that it is a dream; and have you then been able to change events in that dream?

Do you think the government is doing all it can to prevent disease?

What do you think of wellness institutions and their programs?

How do you deal with stress?