It's been a long time since I was trying to write a proper intro text to my blog and something about me.
Finally I decided to focus on this and created this flow of words that can describe me for better or worse :)
So I am a...
PR & Marketing manager at the moment, Web 2.0 and social media competent, former website developer, pretty looking tech geek, polyglot wannabe, writer in dreams, ambitious blogger in reality, Italian at heart, curious photographer and award-winning movie maker in the past, active learner and exigent self-tutor, sentimental comedy/romance moviegoer, procrastination fighter and GTD-practitioner, 7-year experienced teacher and trainer, a used-to-be sacrificial AIESECer, cute dog owner, trying-to-find-a-soundtrack-for-my-life music listener, proud Armenian, enthusiastic tour guide and a passionate traveler, glamorous shoe addict and an incurable shopaholic, ineradicable perfectionist, life enjoying yogini, solar battery powered, intelligent truth-seeker and UFO believer, night sky romantic observer, gingerbread cookie baker and pizza-party organizer, a friend of all the nice people that I have met or I'm yet to meet.
For the recent years, the most affordable seaside vacation opportunity for Armenians is going to the Georgian coast of the Black Sea (Adjara region). It's much more cheaper than our own lake Sevan's hotels and guesthouses offer.
The post is big but quite informative filled with photos and useful tips.
Lake Sevan is the largest lake in Armenia and one of the largest high-altitude lakes in the world. It's one of the most favorable places for us, Armenians in summer. It's close to Yerevan (the first beaches can be reached in less than half an hour).
Here is how the lake is seen on the map of Armenia
In the beginning of 20th century the Soviet government decided to lower the lake's level and use the water for irrigation and hydroelectricity which led to almost an ecological disaster. The island where the Sevanavank monastery was situated, transformed into a peninsula.
In the recent years, the government of Armenia started to implement a plan for increasing the lake's level to recover its ecology. Its results can be now noticed almost everywhere in the shores of the lake where many of the trees and constructions have gone underwater.
People usually organize daily trips to the lake shore, making a picnic with the required BBQ making on the spot. It usually takes some days to organize those trips since the meat and stuff should be bought beforehand and the meat should be prepared for BBQing (the process is called "to make a basturma from the meat") one day before. To me, it's an unnecessary bustle and it's better to go there with just some prepared sandwiches, plus fruits and vegetables, meanwhile to many, those trips are mainly for eating the BBQ :( And I'm not telling about the competition most of the male Armenians participate in. It's for the best "basturma" and BBQ making.
This Sunday we went to Sevan with friends, with all the traditional BBQ stuff. It was still July 4 (usually early for swimming in Sevan) and we were not sure if the water will be warm enough for swimming. I took my swimsuit just in case and it was a right decision :))
The weather was pleasant at first and it was even cloudy that's good for our protection from the sun.
Oh and about the sun at Sevan. Since the lake is situated on a high-altitude in mountains, the sun is particularly strong there and one can get burnt in minutes, thus the long-sleeved shirts, hats and sun blocks are required.
I also discovered that it's especially pleasant to swim under the rain :) the water is even warmer then! and not telling about the sound of rain drops heard from swimming underwater :)
I enjoyed taking photos there and as you see in the photos below, the lake looks amazingly cool. Most of the comments in Facebook and Flickr on these photos point that you can see these views far not every day there.
I am now here to tell you about the project I am currently working on :)
As some of you may know, I work at the company that has established the first Armenian online information agency - PanARMENIAN.Net. The company itself is called PanARMENIAN Media and includes several other divisions such as our newly established PanARMENIAN Photo agency.
You may also know that I am currently the head of PR and Marketing of the company.
So a little advertisement may go here below.. :)))
Since my job takes a lot of time (and it's supposed to be so :))) i'm having no time and energy to write for my dearest blog, but since I'm currently setting up a blogging schedule for myself, I hope to fix this gap!
The recent months we were working hard on the establishment of the Photo agency, obtaining the latest photo reporting equipment, setting up the agency's work flow and trying to position ourselves in the market.
So it's a news and event photography agency and our photographers are attending almost every event taking place in the country. We are also working towards realization of photo projects.
By the way, our photographers are more than photo reporters and you may notice some humor and creativity in the photographs, not so common in traditional photojournalism.
I love photography and outstanding magazine covers.
While browsing my daily feeds with news, images and interesting stuff in Google Reader, this one caught my eye, and I just can't stop watching it :)
Sharing with my readers:
This is Israeli model Bar Refaeli having the magazine's contents scrawled across her body, with a new Stephen King short story teased on her arms.
It's been a long time I haven't written my thoughts here. It's because my mind was occupied entirely with other things and mainly the job. Plus I caught a kind of a brain-virus that is called "being in love" that turned off my multi-tasking skills and ability to focus on any one thing for some period.
It's a rainy morning, not yet 8 am, and I didn’t sleep well this night. Instead, the lines of a future blog post were wandering in my mind, not letting to sleep until I bring them into these letters.
I've been thinking about the attitude we have towards other people and about the judging of others.
Recently I've been noticing that some of the people I know and love, where making me feel uncomfortable with them, because I couldn't stand listening how they were talking about other people, discussing some of their characteristics with sarcasm, negative tones, humiliation and sometimes also offensive notes. It could be just someone passing by the street or someone known…
Do we really have the right to judge people solely based on the limited information we have about them? E.g. their look, their beliefs, their deed, especially rumors about them...
I try and guess I mainly succeed in putting away the stereotypes that could be built by other people's opinions or other basic information i can get from the first look.
I have this attitude towards the unknown people that is: I generally like them, unless they prove me that I shouldn't. And if i like somebody, i won't let myself judge or make fun of them. This means that by default I like everybody, until someone does something that makes me change my attitude. Moreover, i don't quickly change it to the "negative" one, because one thing can be just a result of certain circumstances, so i can be just become neutral, not good, not bad.
I have had a lot of talks on this matter with different people that were trying to convince me that I'm too naive and optimistic and that I shouldn't so easily accept strangers as good people by default.
Yet this is how I'm made. I do believe that there are more good people than bad. In the general meaning of good and bad.
It's my whole lifetime experience with people, brought me to this.
I met an interesting quote in the blog of my friend Araz. She has a post called: "You can't hate anyone whose story you know".
Rephrasing this I'd say "You can't judge anyone unless you know his story".
When i wrote this statement, it didn't sound good to me, because i realized that "You WON'T simply judge anyone whose story you know".
I'm not touching the topic of judging criminals, people with no morality and wrong values. My post is about the common thing happening daily with all of us.
I find it offensive when people make fun of another people based on their look, deed or anything that makes a first impression, because it could just as likely be the worst day of their life, it can be something brought by circumstances that weren't under their control at all. They didn't choose it, it chose them. Who didn't have bad days? Is there anyone who can say that they are perfect and hadn't ever been in a bad situation?
I don't think that making fun of others with or without their presence is smth worth to be doing for intelligent people. In case of their presence, it can be only appropriate if you are sure that they are enough balanced and steady and that they are capable of understanding your sarcasm, accepting critic and feedback.
How many times did it happen to us that we had made a wrong negative impression about someone and then felt guilty of having it ?
To me, it had happened more often than the opposite. I rarely have changed my positive attitude towards anybody.
I truly believe that the stereotypes and some first impressions shouldn't be the base of the attitude towards anyone. Just change the angle of view and you'll notice additional details that were unnoticeable before.
Let's take this example:
There was a girl in my surrounding that was often criticized for being a weirdo, she didn't have many friends and seemed like pushing them away. She was a workaholic and didn't pay much attention to her outlook. Everybody was giving her judgmental looks until one day we got to know her "story".
It turned out that she had lost her father and had to take care of her mother that was ill and her siblings. She was the only one working in the family and had to help the younger sister to enter university.
She knew that she was making an impression of a weirdo, she knew that people were judging her, and that their attitude would be changed if they knew the story. But what she didn't want was having that pitiful looks on her. She was okay on her own, in her own small world.
Dear everyone, next time before you do any remark on anybody like "geghci" (common referring to people from villages that are here considered as underdeveloped and silly) remember that having the luck to be born in the city doesn't make you better of those you didn't have that luck.
Before judging someone by their deed or look, do the basic thing such as putting yourself in their shoes, consider that there could be many circumstances that brought them into that condition and that generally, you are noone to judge others, whoever it is.
Exactly one month after the terrible earthquake in the Italian region of Abruzzo, that has destroyed the beautiful city L'Aquila and numerous villages around, killing about 300 people, a song-tribute to the victims was released.
56 great Italian artists united to create a song called "Domani 21 Aprile 2009. Artisti uniti per l'Abruzzo". April 21 is the day, when they met altogether in a music studio in Milan for the support the campaign "Salviamo l'arte in Abruzzo". Its aim is to collect money for the reconstruction of the conservatory "Alfredo Casella" and the seat of the Teatro Stabile d'Abruzzo dell'Aquila.
...and this is the video that they created and that I totally loved
The idea belongs to Jovanotti and Giuliano of Negramaro - both my very favorites, and they realized it by the support of Mauro Pagani of PFM, Caterina Caselli and others.
Among the artists there are: Ligabue, Jovanotti, Mauro Pagani, Giuliano Sangiorgi of Negramaro, Gianna Nannini, Elisa, Giusy Ferreri, Tiziano Ferro, Zucchero, Fabri Fibra, Giorgia, Piero Pelu’, Caparezza, Laura Pausini, Baustelle, Mario Venuti, Caterina Caselli, Pacifico, Dolcenera, Gianluca Grignani, Negrita, Nek, Francesco Renga, Antonella Ruggiero, Mango, Elio e le storie tese, Giuliano Palma and many others... (I named only ones i know and like)
I'm going to buy the song online (as soon as it will be released on May 8) and have my contribution in the support of saving the art in Abruzzo.
********
As some of you know, I have some close ties with Italy and live with a feeling that part of me is Italian. Sometimes I feel myself like one of diaspora Armenians whose heart aches when hearing Armenian speech or news from Armenia. I feel the same towards Italy! I feel homesick and I can't find my place. I have been listening to Italian radios all day today, and the Italian speech is so much dear to me... like the native language that I've somehow "forgotten" and then "refound" inside me again.
********
Here are lyrics of the song that also help to see who appears in the video and who sings which line:
Tra le nuvole e i sassi/ passano i sogni di tutti (Ligabue)
passa il sole ogni giorno/ senza mai tardare. (Tiziano Ferro)
Dove sarò domani? (Enrico Ruggeri)
Dove sarò? (Gianni Morandi)
Tra le nuvole e il mare/ c’è una stazione di posta (Franco Battiato)
uno straccio di stella messa lì a consolare (Massimo Ranieri)
sul sentiero infinito (Max Pezzali)
del maestrale (Eugenio Finardi)
Day by day (Zucchero)
Day by day (Cesare Cremonini)
hold me/ shine on me. (Zucchero)
shine on me (Cesare Cremonini)
Day by day save me shine on me (Zucchero, Carmen Consoli, Mauro Pagani, Cesare Cremonini, Eugenio Finardi)
Ma domani, domani,/ domani, lo so (Francesco Renga)
Lo so che si passa il confine, (Roberto Vecchioni)
E di nuovo la vita (Mauro Pagani)
sembra fatta per te (Giuliano Palma)
e comincia (Elio)
domani (Elio e Le Storie Tese, Vittorio Cosma)
domani è già qui (Jovanotti)
rap 1 Estraggo un foglio nella risma nascosto
scrivo e non riesco forse perché il sisma m’ha scosso (Caparezza)
rap 2 Ogni vita che salvi, ogni pietra che poggi, fa pensare a domani ma puoi farlo solo oggi (Frankie Hi NRG)
e la vita la vita si fa grande così (Gianluca Grignani)
e comincia domani (Giuliano Sangiorgi)
Tra le nuvole e il mare si può fare e rifare (Claudio Baglioni)
con un pò di fortuna (Ron)
si può dimenticare. (Luca Carboni)
Dove sarò (Baustelle)
domani? Dove sarò? (Samuele Bersani e Baustelle)
oh oh oh (coro: Carmen Consoli, Antonella Ruggiero, Alioscia, Pacifico, Mango, Massimo Ranieri, Bluvertigo, Nek, Giuliano Palma, Antonello Venditti, Roberto Vecchioni, Albano)
rap 3 Dove sarò domani che ne sarà dei miei sogni infranti, dei miei piani/ Dove sarò domani, tendimi le mani, tendimi le mani (Marracash)
Tra le nuvole e il mare
si può andare e andare (Laura Pausini)
sulla scia delle navi
di là del temporale (Carmen Consoli)
e qualche volta si vede (Nek)
domani (Antonello Venditti)
una luce di prua (Nek)
e qualcuno grida: Domani (Antonello Venditti)
rap 4 Come l’aquila che vola
libera tra il cielo e i sassi siamo sempre diversi e siamo sempre gli stessi
hai fatto il massimo e il massimo non è bastato e non sapevi piangere e adesso
che hai imparato non bastano le lacrime ad impastare il calcestruzzo
eccoci qua cittadini d’Abruzzo
e aumentano d’intensità le lampadine una frazione di
secondo prima della finee la tua mamma,
la tua patria da ricostruire,
comu le scole, le case e specialmente lu core
e puru nu postu cu facimu l’amore (Jovanotti, J Ax, Fabri Fibra e in chiusura Sud Sound System)
non siamo così soli (Giuliano Sangiorgi)
a fare castelli in aria (J Ax e Fabri Fibra)
non siamo così soli (Giuliano Sangiorgi)
sulla stessa barca (J Ax , Fabri Fibra)
non siamo così soli (Giorgia)
a fare castelli in aria (J Ax e Fabri Fibra)
non siamo così soli (Giorgia)
a stare bene in Italia (J Ax e Fabri Fibra)
sulla stessa barca (J Ax)
a immaginare un nuovo giorno in Italia (Giorgia, Giusy Ferreri, Dolcenera, Mario Venuti, Jovanotti, J Ax, Fabri Fibra)
Tra le nuvole e il mare si può andare, andare
Sulla scia delle navi di là dal temporale (Piero Pelù)
Qualche volta si vede una luce di prua e qualcuno grida, domani (Morgan)
Non siamo così soli (Giorgia, Mario Venuti, Giusy Ferreri, Dolcenera, Giuliano Sangiorgi)
(tromba solo di Roy Paci)
Domani è già qui
Domani è già qui (Jovanotti, Marracash, FabriFibra, J Ax)
(Assolo violino Mauro Pagani)
Ma domani domani, domani lo so, lo so, che si passa il confine (Gianna Nannini)
E di nuovo la vita sembra fatta per te e comincia (Elisa) domani (Sud Sound System)
Tra le nuvole e il mare, si può fare e rifare
Con un pò di fortuna si può dimenticare (Manuel Agnelli Afterhours)
E di nuovo la vita, sembra fatta per te (Mango)
E comincia (Niccolò Fabi)
(coro finale)
domani
E domani domani, domani lo so
Lo so che si passa il confine
E di nuovo la vita sembra fatta per te
E comincia domani
PR & Marketing manager at the moment, Web 2.0 and social media competent, former website developer, pretty looking tech geek, polyglot wannabe, writer in dreams, ambitious blogger in reality, Italian at heart, curious photographer and award-winning movie maker in the past, active learner and exigent self-tutor, sentimental comedy/romance moviegoer, procrastination fighter and GTD-practitioner, 7-year experienced teacher and trainer, a used-to-be sacrificial AIESECer, cute dog owner, trying-to-find-a-soundtrack-for-my-life music listener, proud Armenian, enthusiastic tour guide and a passionate traveler, glamorous shoe addict and an incurable shopaholic, ineradicable perfectionist, life enjoying yogini, solar battery powered, intelligent truth-seeker and UFO believer, night sky romantic observer, gingerbread cookie baker and pizza-party organizer, a friend of all the nice people that I have met or I'm yet to meet.
