Saturday, March 31, 2007

Teaching Arabic as Second Language (TASOL)

Have you ever wondered or thought about learning Arabic as a second language?

It might be very hard and it seems as if you are learning the old Chinese. However it is a flexible language and very fun to start with.

The problem, though, is with the old teaching methodologies. This is a an innovative approach to teach arabic and I am sure you would love it

Check the complete set at this link: http://www.arabicinenglish.com

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Concordia Graduate Students Association (GSA) Elections

If one follows the trends in students' life, she/he would be amazed to see the extreme shocks in the dynamics of one-to-one relations.

Now, people are fighting and sacrificing extremely expensive time to support their slates at the undergraduate levels. I admired this spirit since I was in my late teens at my undergraduate college in Lebanon. I joined Concordia as a graduate students and I missed all the beauties of this life.

I tried to delve into the electoral activities at the graduate level but it was a total disappointment because mature students are trying to imitate the mistakes of young teens instead of bringing some of their experience to the table.

For the first year, I really enjoyed working with a Leftist group who brought the GSA above the sea level and people start to think about this association and its services.

Some students vote for their ideology, political stand, race, color, language or religion only without thinking about competencies of candidates. As a result, the most incompetent team arrived and got over the council. They start fighting within each other directly. The president accuses the VP finance and the VP advocacy accuses the president. VP external accuses everybody and the council members selected one adored VP and accused everyone else.

This is another aspect of civilization clash in a civilized world without civilized manners.

The executives were soon accused of corruption and illegal usage of money and were requested to leave or cooperate. None of this work because of not enough evidence and because both teams are to be blamed and both are of course playing on one side to get rid of something on the other side.

The council members formed a weird collection of some leftists, right wing, arrivists, and left-jumping-to-the-right guys. The mix has some dynamics but their chemistry could not mix with the chemistry of the executive members at all.

I can not blame any of the two parties for their attitude against each other but I surely blame them not to call for an early election to re-start from the beginning instead of fighting each other and get kicked out from the office because the dean of students does not want to babysit them.

What is even worse, the same people who got drifted out last year would like to come back to GSA to abuse the resources again!!!
In here, I do not mean one side only because people from both sides are running again and both of them had the chance to abuse and (have done it maybe) but both of them could not prove their competence to fix such a position.

Whom you are going vote for?
Of course, you vote for United :)

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Big Brother by chance

I wanted to help someone and be a big brother for a while but all the smart matching were in vain because when parents try to find someone to help their son, they have already tried and could not succeed to bring him back to the correct path that they want for him.

I tried with few guys in Montreal and I could convince them to forget about the sadness they perceive in their life and look at the other side of the story. They started dreaming of their future with a rosy eye. However, I failed (I admit) with other guys. This does not mean I would not continue.

I did not wrote this note for these guys. I wanted to note, here, that the best small brother you can get is the one that you just find by a chance or a divine consideration and then you become friend with him. This is the true big brother experience.

This happened to me more than once. I really feel they are my younger brothers and I get sad for their sadness and happy for their happiness. I put as much efforts for their success and I do for mine or for my real younger brother.

At least now I can see something good of me coming to Canada after all :)

Thursday, March 01, 2007

GMAIL Down

You would not beleive what people start saying when gmail went down today in the afternoon. An excellent free service that was running perfectly for the past two years.

Suddenly something strange happened today and I am sure that it would happen again because the net can not be 100% online. There should be some minor downtime.

However, people do not appreciate what is free unless they feel the cost of email addiction.

For me, I will go out have some fun with my wife :)