I typed "y"... I am now suddenly, geekily and happily engaged :)

...or "How to propose to a geek girl".

The rumor spreads and everyone keeps asking - how was it? what did he say? Since it was very unexpected, geeky and with so many details, I thought it would be best to write down here and share my happiness with the world.

It was an ordinary Wednesday (November 7). The only 2 things that could be counted as "not ordinary" were the facts that a) I was sick and bedridden on Monday and Tuesday and b) my (now) fiancé was on a business trip in Stepanakert, Artsakh (or so I thought).

The card

On Tuesday evening, while tracking his journey on latitude, I asked him to call and wake me up on Wednesday morning and so he did. I promised I'd get up soon. But since my tummy was till aching, I decided to cuddle in bed a few more minutes and eventually fell asleep again. I woke up a couple hours later to find his messages like "Asleep again?". I started to slowly dress up and get ready to go to work. My friend Lia called to ask me if I was still at home and could take the pocket books I had promised to pass to her. It was around 1pm already. Then it turned out I had to buy my dad's newspapers. So I went out, bought the papers, brought them home and headed to work. (see the bullet points below the post to find out why I described these details)

On my way to work, next to the Charents monument pathway, a teenage boy handed me something. I asked "what's this?", in order to avoid the religious pictures that kids give on streets and ask for money. The boy eagerly replied - "vizitka!" (business card). I took it and saw a nicely designed business card (pictured below).

the QR code reads "Will"

I went on a few more steps and checked the QR code on a side of the card, which read "Will". "Hm.. Interesting", I thought and entered my office.
I told about the card to Azar, my boss. My guess was, that this is some promotion or maybe a puzzle, a quest..

The Facebook tag

In about half an hour I am being tagged on a picture on Facebook. It was in a closed group of AIESEC alumni. See below:

I was tagged together with a bunch of other people.. It had the same logo as on the business card.. and a QR code reading "You". The description was "Cool initiative, guys i am sure you will like this! Detail coming soon!". I started to suspect that it had something to do with AIESEC - some kind of a new project and I was lucky to get the card on the street! The comments on the post didn't shed any light to what it was.

The hack

At 6pm I had an appointment with Kristine, Gohar and Lia (TEDxYerevan organizing team) at The Green Bean Coffeeshop. Kristine had written us a week ago asking to get prepared for a dinner with the US Ambassador John Heffern (who attended TEDxYerevan 2012). We had to discuss our possible cooperation. Kristine asked us to dress nicely, no jeans or suits -- just a cute dress. She also asked me to bring my netbook, since we had to discuss things in Green Bean, before going for the dinner. I didn't suspect anything yet :D
I got there and we started to discuss our stuff. The waiter approached, and I ordered a bagel and no drink. Gohar ordered tea and Kristine insisted that they bring another cup for me to drink too, since i was recovering from cold. I got the Green Bean mug... and it had the "liveit" logo and again a QR code!

I got surprised and started telling them about the card and the picture from facebook... and then finally got to scan the code. Guess what? It read "Marry me?" ..... I blushed and smiled... and then immediately got a call from Azar (my boss), who told me that supposedly panarmenian.net was hacked and I should check it quickly and call him back, since he was outside, far from a computer. I turned on my netbook and opened panarmenian.net. I got this console screen instead (click to view bigger):

I typed "y"...

The waiter, in a white elephant t-shirt, was looking at me and smiling. She led me to the other hall of the cafe to find my Areg. With white lilies and a ring. On his knees.

We were surrounded by friends - who were involved in all this - cheering, applauding ... By that time i was blushing with my full capacity :).. shocked to find Areg to be in Yerevan and to have a ring on my finger...

The story didn't end here.
We sat at a big table with this company and everyone was telling details of the "QRաջարկություն" operation.. Something that was being planned around me for the past few weeks.

Areg's masterplan for THE day :)

It turned out that:

• Areg had created a secret group in Facebook for communicating the stuff for organizing matters. Sharing mindmaps, coordinating everyone's actions for the day. 
• Areg didn't have a business trip that week. It was just to enhance the "effect".. and also have a free Tuesday for arranging the stuff. 
• Areg was near my building since early morning when he called me. He was waiting for me to go out for several hours! Standing! Tracking me on the latitude if I was still there... until his phone drained out... (yep, I feel very very bad about this :()
• Speaking on the latitude.. he did arrange somebody to login with his account on latitude on the trip to Artsakh. That's why I was seeing him there...
• Lia called me to ask if I was at home to take the books with Areg's desperate request. 
• He asked his friend to follow me on my way to work. When i went to buy the papers, I could accidentally see them. They were hiding behind a car :D
• They arranged someone to wait for me near Charents monument, to hand the card. She was available only till 1:30 pm. Afterwards, they were trying to find someone else and in the end approached a school boy having a lunch nearby. The idea was to suggest him some "bribe" for giving me the card. The boy politely refused the money, and after some convincing ("heeey, it's our friend's birthday, we need to give her this card, blabla") he agreed to stand there and wait, only until their teacher (who was almost near) could notice him.
• Areg followed me on my way to work until he was ensured that I read the QR code on the card. 
• Lia had been thinking that I saw her trying to hide near the cafe at Charents monument, but in fact, I didn't. 
• Azar reported in the FB group, that I had told him about the card. He also called Areg when I went out of the office, saying "Объект вышел".
• Kristine had made up the story about the Ambassador and asked us to dress up, because she knew that on that important day for me, I would feel upset if I wouldn't be dressed :)
• Areg had prepared beautiful flower compositions for the Green Bean (partly seen on the picture with the QR code mug). They are still there, decorating the tables in the cafe.
• The hack was created by our friend Tiko and was "enabled" on panarmenian.net by Azar (CEO of PanARMENIAN.Net). It was targeted specifically for the IPs of Green Bean (Areg and Tiko have been tracking cafe's IP address for few days, to ensure it was a static one). While installing the hack on the website, Azar was testing it in our office's IPs, and as a result, the whole editorial was frustrated, unable to work while the testing and installing took place. 
• When I just got to Green Bean, I didn't order any drink, which was a little out of the plan, but thankfully Kristine managed to convince me to ask for another cup for me to drink the tea. That's when I got the mug with the QR.
• There were actually 2 t-shirts with a pixelated white elephant - one for the waitress and one for me.
• Areg had prepared special "Thank you" cards signed by both of us (i did it right there) for all the participants of the "operation". 

So.. this is the story :) I want to thank all of my friends (and the Green Bean staff) who were involved in the organization of this beautiful day.. it's really something that me and Areg will remember forever :)

At the end, there are a few pics...

giving out the thank you card

Dalma Garden Mall: Opening of the first mall in Armenia

The first real mall opened today in Yerevan. I couldn't miss the event and since everyone is asking me how it went, I decided to make a post with my impressions and photos.

Dalma Grand Opening

It's a 2-story huge (for Yerevan) building with a nice interior. The parking lot can accommodate more than 700 cars). There are several escalators and 2 elevators. Apart from a hypermarket (Carrefour, to be opened in November) and 50+ shops, there is a Coffee House (on Level 1) and a food court with Tashir pizza (not surprisingly), Mr.Gyros, Wasabi, Spago Grill (on Level 2). To the disappointment of the opening's visitors -- only Tashir pizza was operating with the usual taste-less pizza and big queues. A "Cinema Star" complex is in the plans, so is a bowling alley and children's playground.

 

a fountain and a small glass bridge

The good:

• Many new franchise stores have opened and many more were announced on the doors of the yet empty areas. A good part of our population has been waiting for the opening of brand stores of Zara, Bershka, Marks & Spencer, Gap, Stradivarius, Pull&Bear, Topshop, Accessorize, NewYorker in Armenia. The full list of the brands is available in the description of the event.
• Many brands that already have their stores in Yerevan will have stores Dalma as well (like Mango, Promod, Clarks, Aldo, Baldi, Bata, Chocco, Yves Rocher, Sali and others)
• There is a Zigzag megastore! yep, an electronics megastore in Yerevan :)

the electronics megastore in Dalma

• The interior planning and design are generally good. The coffee house on the Level 1 looks really pretty :) There were a few fountains: the ones on the level 1 were with colourful lights, really cute:)

the Dalma Coffee House 

• A huge Zara store was opened today, with a fashion show organized in the evening. The collection was big and for almost all tastes, as always. 
• Charles & Keith -- a shoes and accessories store had a nice collection! 
• The prices (in case someone still doubts) are the same as in all other franchise stores of the brands.
• There was a really great mood around the mall, because of the many familiar faces, music, scents, balloons and a sunny weather visible from the big windows on the ceiling. 

Dalma Coffee House again

Charles & Keith in Dalma

Accessorize in Dalma

Zara in Dalma

Oysho in Dalma

The bad:

• Unfortunately, only few stores were open today. Some opened hours after the mall's official opening. You could see the store (like Accessorize), ready, with assistants inside, but there was a security guard at the door, not letting anyone in. Marks & Spencer, occupying one of the biggest areas, has invited everyone to the mall opening, but was actually closed :) with all the items set up and balloons at the door. They just replied to me saying "WE ARE EXCLUSIVE BRAND..and we need EXCLUSIVE OPENING!! YOU ALL WILL BE INFORMED !!!!!!". Well, ok :))
• I couldn't find a list of stores which are actually open already, either a timeline for those that will open soon. 
• There was a limited -- almost no food choice today. After walking around we got quite hungry, but resisted to stand in a queue for a Tashir pizza. The Coffee House didn't yet have any menu, or food whatsoever. We just took a good Molinari cappuccino, after waiting for a table to become vacant for quite a long time. Yeah, there were too many people for too few tables. But i guess it was because of the opening.

the food court

• Some areas in the mall (especially Level 2) were yet dusty, not yet constructed. I had a glance through the slightly opened door of the Cinema complex. It was yet just nothing but a cement :D
• The concert outside of the mall featuring Armenian pop stars (and then a group of some 'ancient' Russian pop chicks) was totally useless. I don't think anyone visited the opening because of the concert. It just created some unnecessary noise and problems for the parking and traffic.

The concert outside Dalma

• The website www.dalma.am has been down for days because of an exceeded bandwidth.
• The small brochure of the mall with the floor plan is poorly designed. The text (in English) is awful :) or maybe it's just literally translated from Russian.

the Dalma floor plan scanned from the brochure

Dalma brochure

Dalma Garden Mall is open from 10:00 to 22:00

A little background:
Dalma Garden Mall was build by the Dalma Invest company, affiliated with Tashir Group, with a $50 million investment.
The territory on which the mall was built was part of the Dalma gardens.

.. it used to be a historical monument in the form of gardens which stretched from Erebuni Museum to Yerevan Lake, then farther to Tsitsernakaberd, Hrazdan Gorge and much farther, up to Zvartnots Airport and to Echmiadzin through Argavand. It used to be a forest planted with fruit tress and vineyards, unique in their species. (Ecolur)

The land owners of the gardens have been protesting the illegal decision of the municipality for already 9 years, when they were seized their land areas and sold to new owners thus violating their rights. (here is more info on this in Armenian).

Dalma Garden Mall has been scheduled to open last year, or even earlier, if I'm not mistaken. It was being postponed without approximate dates for several times. Later it was connected with the fact that they want to open many franchise boutiques and months are needed to do the interior design and furnishing.

me caught by Anna from the escalator

me in Zara

with my friend Emma and her bump :)

Here's a professional photo report from the opening by PanARMENIAN Photo.

a lunch with @dolboed and meeting @stevewoz at the airport. quite a day!

Often, when you wake up in the morning, you have no idea how many awesome things will happen to you on that day.


This week, I was invited to take part at the EU-Armenia Seminar on "Media Today" in Tsakhkadzor with many international guests and had a chance to get acquainted with Anton Nossik, the Russian internet guru. We had some interesting conversations over lunch and coffee and he even started following me on Twitter and 4sq! :)

You know, as a rule, I don't take photos of me with celebrities. I hate that. But i love being around them and talking to them. I get inspired by the conversations and learn a lot indeed.

Today the news broke that Steve Wozniak is arriving to Armenia to receive the Global IT award by the Armenian President. While posting a status about it I saw a Facebook suggestion to subscribe to Steve Wozniak's updates. I checked out his profile and saw his Foursquare checkin that was posted on his wall with the comment mentioning his flight number and destination - Yerevan :)
I couldn't miss the chance to go and meet him at the airport with friends. Despite not having any "i" devices to give him for signing and not quite being an Apple fangirl, it was a great chance for me to meet the Apple co-founder in person :)

My friends prepared a small surprise for Woz. He was really excited to see them (and his wife and other people there too!). He signed their iPads (they're priceless now) and got an Armenian apple from Lia (and hugged her:))

Armenian Apple fanboys meeting Woz in the airport

I was watching it from the side :)

me tweeting!

the geeks...checking in 

upd. watch the whole photo report here:  http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/photoset/1085/ 

Adrineh blogged today about the 10 reasons she loves about living in Yerevan. I can relate to the points she mentioned but would add a new one that's very true for me: life in Yerevan is full of surprises! You can hear that a legend like Woz is coming to Armenia right on his arrival day and actually rush and meet him in the airport :)

pics by Lia Mkhitaryan

"Guinea Pigs in Technology" or geek girls are cool! my TEDxYerevan talk

As I have told you already, I was honored to be selected as one of the speakers of TEDxYerevan 2011.

I was very excited about the opportunity and I also knew that it's gonna be a tough job. I had to pass auditions with the organizing team and prepare a talk which would be:

• short
• fun
• geeky
• inspiring

After my sudden success with the BarCamp's talk, everyone expected of me something similar: just an easy, funny speech about geeks and dating. But I really wanted my talk to contain a personal story (like in most of TED talks), have a message and to inspire at least some people. So i had many conversations with various people, met other geek girls. My closest friends were particularly helpful as they were "working" on my talk all the way from the start to the final submission. I even organized some small auditions at in my apartment, asking for feedback on slides, texts and even my body language when talking (a friend even recorded my rehearsal on a video so i could watch myself).

So here I can finally present the result. I'm posting the slide deck, narrative speech (a little extended with some parts that were cut out in the final speech) and also the video of the talk. 

"Guinea Pigs in Technology" or geek girls are cool (contains slide notes)

Do you know what guinea pigs and women in technology have in common?

This is an old joke i used to hear a lot some time ago. The popular answer is this: the common thing between women in tech and guinea pig is the fact that women are related to technology the same way guinea pigs are related to pigs. I'm here to tell you that this is complete and utter… nonsense.
Let me tell you a story.
So it’s about a girl, who was born in a very typical Armenian family. Normally her destiny would be pictured like this: she’ll go to school, enter university, find a husband, have some kids, become an exemplary housewife who can cook excellent dolma… and work as a teacher maybe.. well, in this particular family i'm going to tell you about, things went a little different.

Something somewhere went wrong and the first signs of the troubles have started to emerge as the family bought their first PC back in 1996 and their teenage daughter started to show signs of computer addiction.. becoming a «computer rat» in their words. Her initial plans to become a journalist quickly vanished and she started to dream of becoming a hacker.
Since the age of 13 she became the computer expert for her whole extended family, getting emergency calls whenever someone couldn't find a certain key on the keyboard, or couldn't change the font properties in the Word processor.

Since then, “Let Me Google It For You” has been a phrase she used a lot. Well and the RTFM.

She has been studying computer science and one day she realized that the profession she's chosen is changing her while studying databases when she was around 18 years old. She had this idea.. of being able to remember big amounts of information, to be able to connect things she heard.. and just to be able to fit in all the things she was learning. She found out how to optimize her brain's databases, arrange the tables with a 'foreign key' and index all the data, so that all the new information she gets, gets stored in the appropriate table with the keywords, and she can fetch the information quite easily. This was a remarkable moment when she realized that she somehow managed to optimize her brain the way, so she quickly connects the facts and random pieces of information and her memory is significantly improved…

One of the happiest moments of her life was buying a laptop. She needed a portable computer that she could use it even in bed and in cafes, and when she had it, it was not very common to walk in the streets with big laptop bags yet.. and she occasionally felt herself like the little Tiffany from the Men in Black.

With the web 2.0 and new media emerging, she became an early adopter, and was labeled as a tech evangelist. One who signs up for all the new social networks, manages to be aware of all the industry news… she has built some impressive online personality with big network, and with many followers and all…
She was labeled as a geek. Then she started to explore what’s in that word.

So who are geek girls?

These are the most common perceptions I’ve brought together.

• They are not feminine 

• They lack social skills, mostly hang out with other geeks

• Using a lot techno-slang 

• They must know good programming 

• And they work just in tech industry

Some of these things are truly just myths. In reality geek girls are:

1. Independent or better to say - self-dependent people. They solve most of their own problems :)
They can easily setup a home wireless network, configure a router, even without a prior knowledge in networking. They just know how to find it out digging through search results and technical forums.

2. Geek girls are smart, witty, tech savvy


3. They are gadget and connectivity dependentEven though they don’t depend on other people for their problems, they are very much dependent on their gadgets and network availability.

4. They learn really quickly and are actually very good at quick self-learning. They know how to google stuff, or youtube things like “how to fix damaged headphones” or simply “how to gift wrap a box”.

5. Geek girls are info-junkie and love sharing. They have to be up-to-date with the latest information on their interest and they all love sharing information and useful hacks. That’s why they are active in social networks.

6. Also, geek girls can be really cute
Just like socialites. Not convincing?

Well.. for the socialites we all know that they are:

• Obsessed with shopping and worship shoes 

• They actually admire lady gaga for some reason. 

• They are obsessed with SATC show and frequently quote the heroines. 

I know a geek girl who’s a shopaholic, with a particular passion for shoes. Well, she recently told us, she counted about 27 pairs in her 2011 spring-summer collection.
And not only her… among my geek girlfriends there are ones who think that Lady Gaga is actually cool. They read Cosmo and yeah, Sex and the City is one of their favorite shows of all time, they were noted to be stylish and pretty. Not quite like the perceptions, right?
Now lets go back to the girl I was telling you about in the beginning.

The netbook that’s the default accessory in her purse is actually pink. It has Google, Firefox, Android and Hello Kitty stickers next to each other. Among her 200 RSS subscriptions, there are many fashion, gossip blogs. Her smartphone has more fashion apps than you know existed J She meets her friends not by calling and asking where they are, or telling where she is. They have foursquare and other geolocation services for that. She tracks her not suspecting sister with the google latitude she had setup on her cellphone.

You can meet geek girls in some glamorous party, all dressed up, on towering heels, talking on her smartphone.. Explaining someone from her workplace how to fix the server..
You can meet a girl restarting that damn router at a café when they badly need a wifi.
This is Ani, she has written an alarm clock application for her friend’s phone, because it didn’t have one.

These girls - Nelly and Gayane, have created a very popular website dedicated to indie music all by themselves, coding, promotion and stuff.

Geek girls were active in Yerevan Barcamps’ organization, well; I was one of them and guess what? I was telling about “how to date a geek girl”. Somehow this presentation became a viral hit on the web, becoming the top presentation of the day, then week, then most tweeted and ended up getting about 20K views in couple of weeks. And I got featured in a Taiwanese website with a special mention of my netbook which turned out to be a Taiwanese pride. It got a huge positive feedback and I want to share some of the highlights.

When geek girl is dating a geek guy.. well. That’s predictable. They communicate via messengers (even when they are in the same room), they schedule meetings via google calendar invitations, their computers are sweetly connected via a shared folder in dropbox, and they express their emotions via likes and comments…

When geek girl is dating a non-geek. Either the guy gets paranoic thinking that their (potential) girlfriend can hack everything of theirs, starting with text messages on the phone, ending with email and social media accounts. And nothing good comes out of it.

You can never know that a pretty girl you’ll be flirting with in a bar, might have already checked your FB profile on her smartphone while you were looking away, and might have tweeted how bored she is with your conversations.
But, if guys are smart enough, they start exploring her ‘territory’, signing up in the social networks she’s in, following her posts and reacting to them.
If you follow these simple steps, a geek girl can give you the root password for her heart.

But actually, being a geek girl is really cool.

Being a geek girl makes you feel more confident, independent. You can solve your own problems actually. You become needed and demanded by everyone around, from your boss to your friends.

So what do guinea pigs and girls in technology have in common? Yes, they are both cute J

We, the geek girls of Armenia have decided to establish a community of our own. So i invite the girls to join us.

At last, I want to tell you that a geek’s image for girls actually comes with a ‘dumbness filter’. If you’re a geek girl, you can attract all the right guys and scare all the wrong ones J

Girls, enjoy being geeks.

The video of my talk

I'm really thankful to all the people who approached me, gave feedback, told me that they could relate to some parts of the talk and just told me they enjoyed it :) I'm thankful to fellow speakers for cheering me up when i was nervous and for all the support. I am so lucky to be part of this great team!

TEDxYerevan 2011 speakers

Don't forget to check out other talks on the TEDxYerevan website. 

Happy 20th Anniversary, my Independent Armenia

• I am from the first generation of kids of Independent Armenia to go to school in September 1991. 
• I remember seeing tanks from the window of my school (it was Charents school on Amiryan str.)
• I remember the the war, the dark and cold years and studying under the candle light. And then one day the electricity turned back on and didn't go off again. 
• I remember watching how Lenin's statue was dismantled and moved out of the Republic Square. 
• I remember watching how the Armenian tricolor was raised on the Republic Square for the first time. I was standing there, holding my dad's hand. 
• I've seen the developing free and independent Artsakh.
• I've been standing, captivated and holding breath, in front of the newly renovated Republic Square fountains for the first time admiring the singing and dancing show.
• I've been following the preparations for the 20th anniversary celebrations and I feel proud. 
• I have seen the worst times of my independent country and me and my children will see its best times.

...
Few days ago friends were discussing their plans of moving to study/work abroad and have the life they deserve and want. Then someone asked me where do I want to move to? This is not a question I would think twice before answering. I don't usually go into such discussions and I never blame anyone for planning or actually leaving the country for a better life. However, for myself, I can never imagine living permanently abroad. Even in my beloved Italy. Few months at most. And it's not an exaggeration and not a selfless patriotic decision. I do truly feel good living here and I don't care about the fact that I would be earning much more and would have a more secured life if i moved to some western country. I'm not blind and I see the development here and I see the role I can have in it.

There are people who constantly criticize all good and bad initiatives (some even do manage to present entirely good and worthy things from the worst possible angle), point out all the mistakes and shortcomings of the authorities, alarm about problems and spread out all the negativity. That's their way of trying to make a change. As for me, I prefer to cross the street on the green light, never throw anything on the street, admire and share news about all the good initiatives and notice the smallest steps in the development. In my inner circle of friends there are people who are optimistic about the country's future, preferred to stay and work in the country despite of the numberless opportunities to move away. They don't spend most of their time complaining, instead, they actually try to work things out and help others to work things out with a positive attitude. I know how I can contribute to my country's prosperity and I will do it. One step at a time.

This is my post from 3 years ago: Independent Armenia -17