I'm in St. Petersburg :) and i have a photo for you

...and i saw these people...

(maybe you'd suggest a better title for this photo? ;))

I'm myself absolutely amazed by this photo... no idea how i managed to shoot this !!

Financial crisis reaches Armenia and my company :/

...and so the financial crisis reached us too. Lycos-Europe where lots of my friends have been working is being closed down. Other companies also do staff reduction, cut down budgets, decrease salaries... I've also heard that banks do not provide loans till January.

In my company, a decision has been made by the shareholders from Russia - not to sponsor the whole staff's salary for November. We were informed of it on Saturday with an announcement on the doors. It said that the company can finance the 50% of the salaries from self-financing (cutting down operational costs) which will be given on 5th, and the rest will be decided with the new executive director. It hasn't been a secret that my company doesn't bring any profit to its shareholders and something like this was expected. The point is that the guilt for this lies entirely on the management of all levels and not on the main staff who suffers from delayed salary the most. Many have loans and debts to pay. I'm also very frustrated since i won't get my salary before the trip which is quite bad. 

But well, there's no need to panic, as there are things a lot worse, like becoming unemployed (i'm sorry for my friends in Lycos :( ). And as my father suggests - i should take a hammer and nails and pin myself on my workplace :D

For Russian speakers: some fun on financial crisis.

About dreams, reminders, in short - dreaminder!

Dreaminder is a free tool that helps people remember what we want from our lives. Reflect on your life, your dreams, your vision for yourself and write it into the box on the website. Then set the date when you want to be reminded.

Here's how Dreaminder helps you remember your dream:

1. Write down what you want out of your life
2. Send it to yourself in the future
3. Start working towards your dream

On the day in the future when you receive your dream, you can see how far you've come. You can congratulate yourself, or revive your dream and continue on the path that is right for you.

www.dreaminder.com

I did so exactly one year ago, and today in the morning I received what I wrote then. It was a strange feeling :)

I've written some goals I'd like to reach in a year and now I'll copy them here almost the way i received... just a bit translated from my language.

• I have traveled a lot, I have lived sometime abroad!
• I developed many soft skills.. I'm much more fluent and confident in Italian and English...
• I have a high self-esteem !
• I have many opportunities....
• I am needed.
• I have a person whom i trust my life..
• I have a clear picture of my future...

I found out that i've completed most of the goals by the first quarter of the year...
So in general I've completed about 89% (raw calculation :D) of my goals ;) which is COOL!

This time, together with my friend Tata, we decided to write down our goals and dreams for 1 year and read them together meeting in our favorite cafe :)

See you on this page in a year ;)))

About discrimination, blonde or not girls in IT, and other gender issues

I've never been a feminist. Never even thought about taking any of men's traditional functions upon myself :)) Nevertheless, I've always dreamt of becoming a strong woman and have been always trying to strive for excellence - be smart, manage both career and family, bring a positive change into the society.
One of the most annoying things since my teenage years was when my guy-mates were telling me "you're a girl, you cannot do that", "there are no any outstanding women in IT industry", "Women are made for raising children and not for career", "woman's brain is blablabla", "women programmers are a myth" and stuff like that. Being well determined and serious about getting into the IT, and specifically, the programming sphere, it was irritating me much and I was always disputing with them. I was trying to convince that they are mistaken, and I was really getting offended. Now I understand how silly it was then... and how thankful I am to that guys :)
They actually made me to become one, they were convincing me that i couldn't, and made me prove them wrong. ...and i now think, maybe I had a motivation to do it to spite them :)
I wouldn't be the way I am now *, if it wasn't them and if i didn't have other people believe in me. These people weren't trying to convince me anything, they just believed and didn't put obstacles in my way, they they simply knew I could. and I knew it too :)

* I never mean that I'm a super professional now, but I've had certain achievements :) Probably my most valuable achievement is that now I'm sufficiently confident in myself - own skills and strength. I consider it to be very important :) And concerning my profession in IT sphere, I dare to claim, I've exceeded my own expectations.
A bit into my experience: I've worked in a web development field and was doing well in PHP & MySQL programming, but code-writing annoyed me in a while and my further deepening in programming was pointless, so i quickly started exploring new fields e.g. management, e-marketing, social media, SEO, etc... and now i hold a managerial position in my company, leading a team of programmers and designers (some guys didn't have anything else to do, but to express an opinion that i wasn't just competitive as a developer, which is, of course, not true :)
And by the way, i'm self-taught (never took any IT or programming classes, except the ones in the university, that had nothing to do with web development).


Of course I still sometimes face discrimination towards myself and encounter injustice just because of my gender, but I try to enjoy the challenge and I just become stronger ;)
I encounter it at work (where some of my colleagues weren't taking me enough seriously at first) or when my salary didn't increase by the same amount as my male colleague's, that was hired at the same time as me and did the same job. I encounter it in personal life too - some guys have confessed that they'd prefer less smart girls, so that they'd feel themselves superior. (no comments)

Here's when one of my favorite self-created quotes was born:

"Trust me, sometimes I'd also prefer to be one of those stupid and careless blondes..."

Well, you know, i also laugh at blonde jokes... and i have had times when i was feeling myself blonde (when it was taking me long to get into some simple things), but I explode, when people treat me like a blonde, being confused by my non-geek look, especially at work :) (our IT admin had hard times recently... :-D)

I started writing this post after reading Amata Alieva's posting in the Forgotten Diaries blog where she was describing the discrimination she faced in her country.

So the points of my post are: you shouldn't treat anybody by stereotypes (be it a girl in IT or "Legally Blonde"); changing mind in doing something just because somebody said you can't - is stupid; obstacles and challenges just add you a good experience and make you stronger and wiser.

Misheard lyrics (Hoppípolla by Sigur Rós, Disturbia by Rihanna, Believe by Bilan)

Recently I discovered a new sort of fun in YouTube - called misheard lyrics :)

it's the lyrics of a song (usually in other language than English) 'heard' in a funny way and sometimes with a graphic presentation :)

i laughed a lot at Hoppípolla (Sigur Rós) Icelandic song's English interpretation:


another version:



Misheard lyrics of Disturbia by Rihanna:



and this one is for those who know Russian, it's EXTREMELY funny :D

"Что на самом деле пел Билан на Евровидении"


upd: a bonus from Dragostea din tei (O-Zone)

Armenian chess players won Gold at the Chess Olympiad 2008!

We won! Moreover, we defended our chempion status ! (Armenia won Gold the previous Chess Olympiad 2006 in Torino too).

photo from armenianow.com

Here's our team:

• Levon Aronyan
• Vladimir Hakobyan
• Gabriel Sargissian
• Tigran L. Petrosyan (who was my classmate for some short period)
• Artashes Minasian

During the final round, Armenia's only win came on board four where Tigran L. Petrosyan beat Chinese Li Chao.
Thank you Tigran and others!

And here's a nice photo report from the finals.

photo from the Chess Olympiad in Dresden official website

...and if you watch statistics of winners by each year in the wikipedia, you'll notice that USSR and post-soviet countries were almost in no competition for the recent decades.

For the second consecutive Olympiad, top-seed Russia failed to take a medal. From 1952 to 2004, they (and their predecessor the Soviet Union) never finished below second place.  (Guardian)

Armenian Wedding - traditions, customs on a real example :) (part 1)

For the recent months, the main topic of my family's gatherings' discussions was my cousin's long anticipated wedding :)

On this wedding's example, I'll tell you how do we usually celebrate marriages in Armenia.

In Armenia, a wedding ceremony is one of the happiest and traditional occasions for family gatherings, when relatives from all over the country and world come together and celebrate this important day with you :) Sometimes these relatives are just so far that when they come, and finally recognize you, they say that "I remember you when you were thiiiis young, and now you're getting married!" (pointing some very short height :D and with an excited expression - *almost crying*).

The recent years less and less customs are being kept and followed especially in Yerevan, and couples prefer to organize a small and modest wedding only for the closest ones and go to a honeymoon somewhere.. (this year the Egypt was the most popular destination for this). But if the couple can afford, they do both !
My cousin's husband's family decided to have a big wedding for 350 persons !

Preparations
Arranging the hall, scheduling a day and time in a church,... and numerous other things that keep the marrying couple in stress until the day "X".

Speaking on the bride's family's side, the eve before the wedding day is a mess! decorating the table - canapes, candies, fruits; decorations of the house/apartment, including the stairs and the entrance. This time all of these were made with the help of the cousins and other close relatives.

the decorated table at the bride's

Morning - the female part of the guest list is running to and from the hairdressers', then the make-up and getting dressed.
In the afternoon, the close relatives gather at the bride's apartment, waiting for the groom and his family to arrive. The groom arrives with "tashi-tushi" - which is provided by a musical band a.k.a. "dasta" (Armenian live music with "dhol", clarinet, accordion).

a typical "dasta" on a wedding

The female part of the groom's relatives is dancing right in the yard, holding so called "sini" - decorated baskets with 1) fruits and cognac, 2) usually the bride's dress, shoes, bridal vail (in our case it was just the vail and shoes), 3) candies and sweets.

bride's female part looking out of the window when the groom arrives

The bride's female part is going out of the house hearing the music, having "gatas" and small presents in their hands ("Gata" is an Armenian pastry thing). They are joining the women dancing there with sinis and exchanging their presents to sinis. Gatas go to the women who dance (i got to know about it only that same day, when they handed me the gatas and sent downstairs with instructions :D) and presents to the ones with sinis.

me and my cousin with gatas and presents

Then they go upstairs altogether, females go to the bride's room and dress her up (in our case, she was dressed by the time they arrived).

An interesting tradition: when they go upstairs altogether, one of the kids from the bride's side has to "steal" a shoe out of the "sini" and give it to the grandmother in exchange of some money from her.

Then the godmother asks a young boy (preferably out of bride's siblings or cousins) to come and put on the shoes on the bride.

Then they take the veil and spin it above the bride's head for three times.

the veil tradition

Then they put it on and the women around say altogether "Shnorhavor lini" (Congratulations) on each of the action. Then the godmother takes out of the sini a perfume, opens it and splashes a bit around (not to mix it with the bride's fragrance which she already had put on herself).

Then it comes a time for the garter and a bride's brother again is called up :)

Then the godmother takes some candies from the sini and splashes on the women around (today's candies are heavy! and it's like a hail!).

Girls take the candies and keep it until the night to put it under the pillow and see their future husband in their dream :)  /this thing never worked for me ;(/

After this small ceremony the groom who was meanwhile waiting for the bride to get ready...

... and drinking couple of "kenats" (cheers) with the men in the other room, comes and sees the bride lifting the veil.

And so they are ready :))))

my beauty cousin

Then the couple drinks couple of cheers...

The bridesmaid (my sister), the bride, groom, the "best man" called "azab" or "azabashi"

...and goes downstairs again with the "dasta" playing the music.

Another interesting tradition: A young boy (brother or cousin) is standing in front of the door, closing the door with a sword. The godfather has to give him some money in order to be able to take the bride from the house!

By an old Armenian tradition, the bride's mother is not participating in any celebration. Instead, she is passing the dowry to the groom, going with her daughter to the door, kissing her goodbye and staying at home crying. What does she have to celebrate when they are taking her daughter away! nowadays this custom is not used, luckily :))

Some women dance again in the yard :))) (some have an excuse not to dance but to take pictures! :D)

Now it's very common to rent limousines for the weddings... some limousines just can get in/out of the yard because of their length :D luckily in this wedding we had a short one )))

So all the people are getting into the cars and following the wedding limousine in a long motorcade. Cars are decorated with ribbons so that they recognize each other and not lose the chain. Some cars even put some sings on the number plates like "Братва жениха" (groom's mates), but it's like showing off :)

During the soviet times it was common to decorate the car of newlyweds with a doll :) now it's maybe preserved in regions but not in Yerevan.

It was also common to go around the circle of the Republic Square in Yerevan for several times with loud signal alarms, getting everybody's attention. Now it's considered old-fashioned :)


To be continued...