Personal Bios

I guess I'm the odd one here.

My name is Abdulelah Ramadan (good luck trying to pronounce that!) from Saudi Arabia. I'm part of a minority called Hijazi going back to when this part of the country was the Kingdom of Hijaz. I think I'm 33. Not married and have no children (really). I still live with my parents, younger brother and two younger sisters. In my community, men here typical don't leave there families until they get married, and they don't move far. The reason for this is to be ready as much as possible to take care of the parents and the little ones. Once boys are capable, parent (culture) throw and expect tons of responsibilities at/from them and it stays even after their marriage.

I have a bachelor degree in English, and it is different than that in the West. Here it is part of the social sciences unlike the West where it is part of the arts.

My current and first job ever is a technical secretary in a major construction contracting company. I got here mainly because I know English and have a good background dealing with technology. I'm posting this from work now.

I play video games a lot, love fishing, listen to instrumental music, maintain computers, drive and take care of my cars and watch cartoons.

My favorite food is plain boiled and grilled whole crustaceans with white rice or wheat/white bread. I catch crabs myself sometimes. I also like fried and grilled chicken and porterhouse/t-bone steak. I can eat any kind of fruits I know of and uncooked vegetables except for tomato. No cooked vegetables... NEVER!

Nice to meet y'all :)
 
I screwed up on a phone call this morning :D
I guess it could happen to anyone (trying to make myself feel not bad :))
Actually it is not a good reason to know good English. Language education here sucks. Cartoons and video games is what improved my English.
 
... Cartoons and video games is what improved my English.
I got a chuckle out of this as cartoon characters wouldn't be my first choice to learn English from as they often use strange colloquial expressions and weird accents.

Regardless, it worked for you SG, your English is pretty darned good!
 
Oh you... gosh... stop it :D

You do have a point, but it applies mostly with short cartoons. Many featured old cartoons used to use proper English. Do you remember ones like Bionic Six, Mask, Spiral Zone, Centurions and Duck Tales?
 
That's old cartoons? To me old is Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner, Betty Boop, Popeye, etc
 
I got a chuckle out of this as cartoon characters wouldn't be my first choice to learn English from as they often use strange colloquial expressions and weird accents.

Regardless, it worked for you SG, your English is pretty darned good!

on a recent trip to Romania a few guys out there were telling me that they learned English through cartoons.

with English products and English cartoons, and English video games saturating the world wide market, English is just something that young people in non-native English speaking countries are picking up on.

I'm Danny. I've 32, I'm married, and have 2 daughters.

I've worked in the IT industry since I was 18, always on the managing infrastructure side, I've worked in a software house a university and currently work in a company that does outsourcing, (hence the trip out to eastern europe as that's where one of the company delivery centres is based.
I spend most of my days now playing with servers or configuring networking equipment.


i expect I've got some hobbies, but between work, two kids and a wife, and a chronic lack of space I never seem to have time to do anything!
 
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