Thursday, November 10, 2011

... and suddenly WOZ at night :D

It's like you wake up in the morning on a regular working day, go to the office, have lunch, meet people, do stuff, go back home, cook, read, do whatever... and then hug Steve Wozniak, one of the Pirates of the Silicon Valley... the CO-FOUNDER of APPLE :D
My husband Musss' (Tik) is a huuuu~ge fun of Apple iDevices so we couldn't but join Armcomedy Narek, Tik's oldest friend, in his great initiative to go to the airport to meet Woz, arriving to Armenia to receive the Global Award of the President of the RA for Outstanding Contribution to Humanity through IT 2011.

So 2 hours before the arrival we started the preparation process, we made a poster with the Apple logo in tricolor to properly welcome the man to our country,  put on the T-shirts with Apple logo, took the iPods with "WEWOZ" quotes and were off to go when the idea just PUNCHED my head: "OMG, I need to take some REAL Apples!!!!" :D
the Apple tricolor logo is ready!

preparing to leave for airport

way to the airport... iPhone singing "Revolution"

iMuss' on the way to the airport
The Historical APPLE
We arrived at the airport 9 minutes before the landing and there was NO BODY in the beautiful, newly constructed arrivals terminal of the airport... (here when I say no body, I mean absolutely NO BODY!!!). So we were standing there waiting joking how happy Woz was going to be to have someone to meet him, it's pretty strange that there was no one there to meet him. We were even thinking that we would take Steve Wozniak to the hotel in OUR CAR :D
All 5 of us were pretty sure that we were at the right place, on the right time waiting for the right person to arrive...especially after meeting Raffi Hovhannisian there :D... thinking who would take WOZ to the old VIP arrival hall when there is this beautiful newly constructed NON-VIP ternimal ?! :D ... and with this though in our minds we waited there for 30 minutes if not more.

waiting for Woz at the airport new terminal
happily tweeting :D
guys looking for Woz Yerevan Check-ins or tweet :D
Musss' <3 Apple :D
On the 20th minute of waiting for Woz we started to doubt the right place, right time and right person thing :D 
looking for tweets, check-in, mentions, info... anything about his arrival

Arpik: "mmm :) by boss is more than sure that he is in the arrivals VIP Hall" :D
Ruuun Forest, Ruuuuuuuun!!! to the VIP hall :D
and we actually CAUGHT HIM!!!! ... Woz at first sight/first reactions :D"
Woz was giving an interview to MediaMax, I guess, when we arrived
Woz's wife was the first to get impressed about the tricolor logo poster :D
and then Woz and everybody else noticed us :D
guys moment of fame :D
Woz takes out the iphone to take a shot of the guys :)))

he looks quite impressed, doesn't he :D
the moment :D
Guys posing for the shot :D
and of course he joined them for a group pic :D
time to sign the iPods :D
signing
Musss's ipod is signed :D

Woz: "Hold on, I'll take a pic of you all :) ... I noticed all your phones are black and mine is white :D"
Thanks everybody, now we have to go :)
Did I mention that I was the camera man of the day ?! So I was taking pictures and everyone (almost) had a picture with Woz. By the time I thought my friend Aprik and I should also have a pics with him... he was already about to leave. I called Arpik to come up, rushed to him, took an apple from the Camera bag handed it to him saying "This is for you" and...

... leaving
no pic, but a hug instead :-)
On the way back home we all were really really excited and happy. My husband even remembered that it was actually also our 2nd month wedding anniversary that day and said "Musss'ik, this was my present to you" :D

The day was super exciting and not yet over... my photos were going to be published on Pan.ARMENIAN.net... I was soooo nervous and worried to be able to provide at least not bed shots among all the beautiful shots that PanARMENIAN.net super cool photographers do daily... So here I can't help but send a HUGE THANK-YOU to Vahan Stepanyan - Head of Photo agency at PanARMENIAN Media for improving the shots as best as they could possibly be :)))
So here they are "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is welcomed at Zvartnots Airport "

p.s. Can I have a HUG from BRAD PITT as the 3rd month wedding anniversary present?! :D

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Married my tall, blonde, non-smoking, harmonica-playing, Brad Pitt


 … about organizing the wedding… 

Wedding is magical, and saying this I not only mean the wedding day but the whole preparation process as well. Sometimes the magic disappears, when one gets too much into the administrative-messy-fussy logistics, but here is my moto for the weddings “If you want magic, create magic”. 
So this is how it worked for us too. 
Not to say that I am not goal oriented, but I have always given more significance to the making-of process rather than final goal. I mean, of course I cared that the wedding day (as a goal) went smoothly and happily for all wedding participants, but at the same time, I didn’t want to be a regular exhausted bride looking forwards to the wedding just dreaming of having some rest after.
So I created the Magical making-of process myself.
Of course the most important magic component is the wedding dress…~the Bridal Gown~… so I started with it 10 months before the wedding. Yes, exactly… 10 MONTHS.
And of course, never married before and never been really much into the wedding things, I started with wedding salons :)
I remember one cold winter day I entered the first wedding salon for the first time in my life… I walked around, saw some dresses, wedding accessories, etc and all of the sudden I had my first bridal moment… yes I started crying…I was like “I can’t believe, I am a bride?!... Is this really happening, am I that grown?!... aaaaaaa I want my childhood back!!!” … and I rushed out of the salon, and this was the last time I ever visited any wedding salon :)
 … but not because of the emotions but rather about the dresses… softly saying…I found nothing to my taste or anything close to what I wanted, so here I decided to spent my time not on the visits to wedding salons, but on creating my dress. I totally loved that process and I had time for really making a lot of experiments, researching on designers, drawing-redrawing dresses for a month, than the design of the dress was created.
      Making-of the Bridal Gown                                       
Here, of course, I would like to extend my full-hearted words of gratitude to Ellie Saab for the inspiration I got from his divine creations while creating the design of my dress.

#1 Tip
Here I would like to share a piece of advice/recommendation/whatever you want to call it with you girls:
The wedding dress is FAR NOT the cheapest thing in the wedding, so if you eventually decided to make a wedding dress on your own, you do not necessarily turn to one of the local famous and great designers for making it, but a good tailor could be fine too
:))  that was what I did, I was the designer of the dress and my tailor just perfectly implemented all my ideas on the dress and it worked out as I wanted in every small detail :)
#2 Tip
Start the dress making of process not less than 6 months earlier before the BIG day, for you to feel on the safe side about the time and if something doesn’t work out the way you wanted you still have time to change it.

The next stop in the preparation process was the …~Wedding Invitations~… we actually started elaborating the idea of the invitation 4 months earlier, as we knew we would have some guests to our wedding from abroad, we wanted to send them invitations earlier so that they could proceed with planning their trips. 
We came up with the idea that we definitely wanted to have a special postcard with our photo to pass the word of our wedding to people and they would definitely keep  photo/postcard as a good memory of a special event.
So we started having photo-sessions with some of our friends, and eventually we selected the photo that met all our expectations and made the postcard with it.
NOTE: here I say WE because when you are together and when you are doing things together there is no ME any more :) … but on the other hand, HONESTLY men are not really that much into hand-making things (you know what I mean ;))), don’t get disappointed here girls, just make sure you have enough time for creating things on your own. Yes!  creating hand-made things is pleasant, special, beautiful and NOT expensive, but it takes a loooot of time.
So here is what I did eventually did with the invitations.
I printed the photo, made a cover of it with parchment paper, fixed the cover with a hand-made, little, purple flower and wrote the inviting text on the back of the cover with grey pen :)

Invitations making-of
#1 Tip
Yes, you can do all the above mentioned stuff but also let me tell you that it’s quite OK  just to have an online invitation with nice/funny text and disseminate it through mails. It saves a lot of time and energy, believe me.
We actually decided to have only online invitations, but I was so inspired by my friend’s hand-made beautiful wedding invitations that I couldn't help creating one for us.


According to Armenian traditions, by the end of each wedding the bride and groom should give small wedding presents to the guests called …~ TAROSIK/Տարոսիկ ~… to pass the best wishes to all the single guests and wish them the soonest marriage. Actually according to the tradition there should be something sweet in the gifts in order to pass the sweetest wishes to the guest :) … (I will not go further with it, just Google it for more information :)

So I decided to create them with ceramics as a souvenir  with our graphical sketches on it and our love formula: T+L=<3 for people to hang on the wall.
Tarosiks making-of
Here I can not help but SHOUT OUT LOUD ~THAAAANK YOU~ to Nana Tarracota, the most beautiful, cute, hard-working ceramics teacher of mine who gave me ceramics classes every day being on the last month of pregnancy :)) and guess what, once we were done with all the Tarosiks, little Argishti was born right on the next day :))) 
The creation of Tarosiks was such a big inspiration to me, that I am definitely going back to ceramics right after my Honey Week :)

#1 Tip
If you want to create hand-made wedding gifts, start doing it earlier than planned. Don’t leave anything for the last month. As I mentioned before, creating hand-made
things takes a lot of time.
#2 Tip
Well, according to the tradition, Tarosiks should be given only to single ladies wishing them the soonest appearance of the prince in their life, but it’s very nice when every family or a couple present at the wedding has one as a good memory of the day. It’s very optional, up to you to decide, but it’s really nice to have a small present to give to every couple, family or person present at your wedding.

...Here let me pass on to sharing general organizational tips with you...

#1 Tip
Wedding should have a style
Retro, funky, modern, traditional, etc. Think of the style that fits you the best and apply it to the whole wedding. The thing here to remember is that the style you create should be applied not only to the wedding gowns of the bride and groom but can easily be applied on the dress codes of the guests and all the small details of the wedding. Everything should be done in ONE manner, ONE language and ONE way.
We were more of the Retro style, we were dressed so, had a Retro Car and corresponding music in our weddng.
 
Yerevan 1965
Chaika
NOTE: It’s important that the style of the wedding fits to your guests as well or they feel comfortable with that, otherwise it might not work, or might work but not in a positive way. (You know what I mean)


#2 Tip
The photographer and the camera man are as important as the Bridal Gown
…and I totally mean it. Very subjective and very personal opinion but… “Why to have a good wedding if you don’t have good photos afterwards?!”

#3 Tip
Subscribe to Wedding Newsletters
You know when you are in the wedding preparation process you can’t help but read wedding blogs, view wedding collections, etc… so here I decided to subscribe to my favorite Vera Wang online newsletter and was getting nice wedding tips, ideas, recommendations on weekly basis in my mail box. You can always find something useful there.

#4 Tip
Have Detailed and WRITTEN Budget with action plan of the day
This is the part when you really need to sit down together, talk and put down to paper everything you talk about. I have to say this was the hardest to manage in our case, because we both were really busy and could hardly ever manage to meet to talk about planning. Every time we met,  we couldn’t help but enjoy each other’s company and nothing more than that. As for the planning, the Planning of the Planning was always planned for “TOMORROW”
:)
But here comes the 21 certury’s advancements in the technology: Thanks to the Google online working tools we actually had a very effective and detailed planning of the budget, action plan/to-so lists, day plan/agenda, guests names and their tables allocation, transportation and even the playlist ONLINE.
So don’t put off anything for tomorrow if you can do it today. And DO IT today ONLINE and/or OFFLINE.

#5 Tip
You are THE BRIDE and not a HIRED wedding organizer!!!!
whatever doesn’t work out, IMPROVISE!!!! 

Nothing in life goes smoothly all the time, and neither does the organization of the wedding. There might be moments of despair, exhaustion, over pressure, things wouldn't work out the way they should… LET IT GO… and moreover have some time for yourself, do whatever makes you feel good (yoga, swimming, massage, etc). If you don’t want to be an exhausted and stressed bride on your own wedding, better don't be
:))
For example, the wedding first dance was a TOTAL improvisation in our case… not because we never practiced it before, WE DID…but we never practiced the dance WITH the Bridal Gown… so this is how we improvised it :D


#6 Tip
Music insures the mood of the day
Music is the main key of each party, so if you are making a playlist of your wedding, better that you take into account the preferences of the majority of the participants about the music. I mean people of older generation might not like to listen to rock, house, etc  all the time, so if you care that they also enjoy their time at your wedding, make sure you have music corresponding to their preferences as well. If you don’t really care how they feel, better not inviting them at all
:)

#7 Tip
Say proper goodbye to you single life
I am very lucky to have friends I have and to have had the most awesome bridesmaid of all times
:) So they prepared the Girls-Only PARTY of my life with tons of cute, little, sexy present and a little bit of extreme. Guess what... I had my first RIDE on the MOTOR BIKE!!!!! YES!!!!
The moment I felt absolutely free (strange feeling to have right before the wedding but it had it :)))
That was THE DAY of my life... :* LOVE YOU GIRLS for making my day and Special thanks to Areg for the beautiful ride I had :)))) !!!! ~ UNFORGETTABLE~ 

the best possible Hens-Party


10 more seconds and I'll have my first ever bike, EXCITEEED
#8 Tip Be Motivating, Encouraging and Inspiring
We ladies are very emotional and we are lucky to be able to express our feelings openly... shout, cry, laugh, scream… whatever… unlike our gentlemen, so really be motivating and encouraging so that they feel your support.

#9 Tip
Do something memorable
I am lucky to have my friends and I am even luckier that they were with me on my special day. All of us at some point were involved in the AIESEC International Youth Organization and got friends within that organization. Of course, on such an AIESEC wedding, we couldn't help but perform our most favorite AIESEC dance of all times. 


Enjoy the Dance, enjoy the prep process, enjoy your big day and enjoy your life :))) 



~ Wish you togetherness forever ~

p.s. I am happy to share more photos of the big day HERE.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Barcamp ~ Conference for Geeks

So the previous week-end was full of Barcamp. Geeks from Armenia and some other foreign countries gathered to Barcamp together on IT, media, design and general social topics. In comparison with the last years I think this year  I was geeker to actively participate at the Barcamp.
I wasn’t really able to participate in all the sessions I would have liked to, but still some of the sessions I did participate and would like to share my impressions.
Eveything started from the pre-party at Friends BarClub, it followed by night and the opening in the next morning which was pretty cool, a lot of fun and creating the mood for the upcoming 2 days.
Actually I had to leave right after the beginning for couple of hours so I got back only during the Armcomedy presentation. This is actually the session that had the most of the audience. It was a lot of fun... guys were telling about their general activities and their new
NewsՀԱԲ project. The session was so much fun and the project video teaser was even funnier that I can not exactly remember what the project was about :)) so I’ll stop telling about the project here not to give any disinformation
ArmComedy Narek presents...
ArmComedy Sergey presents...
NewsՀԱԲ coming soon
 By the way, once again my warmest congrats to the Armcomedy guys for getting the prize of the best presentation of the Barcamp.

The next session was dedicated to the Armenian Wallie (the Cymeroid)… cute and smart robot able to move, see, detect, follow and do some other things I guess :))
Wallie the Cymeroid
Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of Wallie doing all that because I had to translate the session to a Slovenian friend of mine.

As I am not really a technical person, I really enjoyed media and design related session, as I interact with both of them.
I would particularly like to mention the presentation of Vadz about the Design as Art and Art of Selling, and how much I enjoyed it… within those 30 minutes he gave a lot of useful information on design techniques, problems and challenges. There was a big discussion on the topic as well, so I really enjoy it and got so much carried away with the session that I forgot to take any pictures :))

I really enjoyed the session with BBC journalist Pooneh GHODOUSI about the BBC World News civil journalist.
Pooneh presents...
But the culmination of all the session I attended of course was the Arpik’s “How to date a Geek Girl” session… 
Arpik presents...
You know what I can say for sure is that some of the recommended tips can be used even when you are not geek… I am just saying it from personal experience.
I am afraid I might not be able to fully describe how much I enjoyed the session; I just go ahead reading it here
This was the session that raised a lot of emotions in the audience...
YES!!! say it Arpik, say it :))))
Girls thoughful, older generation sleeping back there... :)
Some guys are really nervous :)))
... and some are making LOVE confessions :))


Arpik presents
There was a comment I heard during the presentation and it totally made my day :))
Quote from a presentation:
"Geek girls are not that kind of ones you can achieve by sending the standard flowers, inviting for a classic café dates. :)"
Here the Slovenian friend of ours asked in rhetorical form. "If we can not send standart flowers, can we at least send pictures of flowers?" :))))))
Aprik, please clarify this part with him, so that he doesn't get into trouble when dating a geek girl :))) 

Opera guy was presenting something technical and here I would definately lie if I say that I loved the session, as didn’t really get much of what he was saying, just was accompanying my muss’ :)))) But judging from the discussions after, I think if was quite informative :)) 
Opera Guy presents...
the audience at the presentation
Geeks discussing/testing after the presentation
Well I didn’t attend many sessions as at some point I was enjoying spending 2 hour talking to Nouneh Sarkissian about life stuff… I really appreciate the insights I got. Thank you so much for that.
Indie Libertines present...
the conference is drawing to its end
Other Opera guy is getting a  Barcamp certificate
Organizing committee photosession
According to the logical flow then was the time for afterparty :)))
the greatest music band for the party
people having fun

some networking
:))
That was definitely one of the best after-parties I have attended… a lot of fun, a lot of networking, a lot of singing and dancing. I was very impressed about the fact that Geeks do not only dance, joke and have fun, but also sing and play musical instruments.

So huge round of applauses goes to the whole organizing committee team for making the conference happen, volunteers for supporting the organizer, presenters for making the nicest content for the conference and the audience for being there and spreading the word after, of course, all the partners and YOU for reading this post till the end :))))

p.s. unfortunately I couldn’t display many photos and talk about more presentations, as I still need an external flash for my camera... a lot of pics were rather poor in their quality...

p.p.s 
Find 3 differences
p.p.p.s.
Happy Muss’ with JUICE (not M***)