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Archive for June, 2007

Immigration = Totally F@#ked.

27 Jun

This is one of the top stories here this morning. As someone who works in IT, I’ve seen many jobs lost this way. It also really pisses me off that Hamou and I have had to spend hundreds of dollars following USCIS guidelines to get him a green card, and these other people are willfully and blatantly abusing the system.

Law Firm’s Video a ‘Blatant Disregard for American Workers’

In the video, however, an individual identified as Lawrence Lebowitz, vice president and director of marketing for Cohen & Grigsby, explains how employers can hire foreign workers under the PERM (Program Electronic Review Management) process, which stipulates requirements for placing job ads to fill vacancies by either hiring U.S. workers or evidencing that no qualified ones are available.

“Our goal here, of course, is to meet the requirements No. 1, but also do so as inexpensively as possible … and our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker,” explains Lebowitz to seminar attendees.

“We’re complying with the law fully, but our objective is to get this person a green card, and to get through the labor certification process, so certainly we are not going to try to find the place where the applicants are going to be the most numerous; we’re going to try to find a place where, again, we’re complying with the law and hoping and likely not to find a qualified or interested worker applicant,” continues Lebowitz.

 

Who ARE you people?

27 Jun

Here’s the top ten keywords/phrases since Sunday. Draw your own conclusions.

1. najat el wafi
2. yassin ahjam
3. nigerians hardly get the visa
4. andrew davies brideshead revisited
5. jet4you.com
6. temporary jobs for english morocco
7. morocco clothes designs
8. yassin ahjam ma vie
9. moroccan clothes
10. jeremy brock brideshead revisited

 

What Did You Say?

26 Jun

Taamarbuta – “A group of us were sitting in first class, we had just passed Rabat, when all of a sudden the train grinded to a halt.”

Liosliath Says:
June 25th, 2007 at 4:43 am

Did you just write “grinded to a halt?” :)

taamarbuuta Says:
June 25th, 2007 at 1:38 pm

@ Liosliath – Ground to a halt? Is that correct? God, I’m embarrassed, I don’t even know and I’m an English teacher.

Liosliath Says:
June 26th, 2007 at 1:03 am

Apparently “grinded” is somewhat obsolete, but still usable! (Though it still makes me laugh…)

Even though I was just teasing Taamarbuta over at Morocco Report, it reminded me of how many times I’ve forgotten how to say something in English. The more languages I speak, and the more I practice them, the more frequent my goofball mistakes in English become. I’m blaming it on the combination of:

    Speaking Darija and Tamazight at home with Hamou
    Watching French, MSA, and Darija TV
    Reading French blogs/news
    Hamou speaking Spanish more often because of the guys he works with (I understand that language, too)
    Me studying MSA on Rosetta Stone every night
    All the German words that we commonly use in English that make Hamou bust out with a stream of incomprehensible German (gesundheit, kaput, macht nicht, etc….)

    Anyway, someone (usually Hamou) will ask, “How do you say X in English?” He’s asking me in darija, and the answer is right on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t quite remember. I’ll often remember how to say it in yet another language, so we make do.

    So, about this “grinded” thing – it’s exactly the kind of question that Hamou likes to spring on me. I looked it up, and “ground” is correct, but “grinded” is some kind of obsolete form that’s sort of ok. It has a similar structure to “to mind,” which is what throws people – obviously, it’s “minded” not “mound.” It just struck me as funny, but I didn’t have any proof – and you know, you probably shouldn’t depend on me for correct verb forms now that I’m deep into MSA style. “Ya+” “Ta+” and all that.

     
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Posted in Language

 

I Know Someone in a Movie!

24 Jun

I went to the sneak preview of Sicko last night, and everyone is right, Pat looks great in it! Oh, and it’s a thought-provoking film, too. :)

 

I Am a Goomba

24 Jun

Well, some of you may have noticed that there was a notice up for a bit stating that this website was over its bandwidth limit. Sadly, it’s true – though I am hardly popular enough to ever dream that would happen. What caused it was that nifty little plugin that allowed me to stream songs – it turns out that Skinny Puppy and Marcy Playground are extremely popular, who knew?

Having said that, I’m still getting more traffic every month, so I’ve had to switch hosting providers to get more bandwidth – though I still love you, Heather! Anyone who wants great and inexpensive hosting with excellent personal service should contact her right this minute.

Luckily, I make regular backups of my WordPress database, so I just re-loaded it – but now I have to go find a cool WordPress template again. Ah well, I like changing it anyway.