um

I’ll never forget the time one of those dinners segued to the Koreatown karaoke bar Brass Monkey, where later on, the owner felt the need to introduce a certain performance: “Um, this is a first for us, ladies and gentlemen — someone singing something they actually wrote. Allee Willis and ‘Boogie Wonderland!’”

“Um, I’m afraid not,” he said, with a tone that suggested he wasn’t entirely sure if I was serious.

Um Yaser Abdel Hamid Daher, who also lives at the hospital, told the BBC “we've seen so many people burning that we started feeling like we might burn like them”.

"Um, the thought of fittings makes me go like this," she says, rolling her eyes in mock exasperation.

And the director comes up to me and says ‘Um, could you just keep it really still?’