from Sri Lanka w* ♥

 ~ āyubūvan ~   

2012 has been the most crucial year of my life... lots of mostly unexpected things happened to me and unfortunately they were not always good ones. Whatever it was, having a total roller-coaster year, I made up my mind that it had to with elephants, the creatures that I absolutely love and adore, who were around on my ups and downs, who were the symbol of lots of unexpected good changes of my life...

I'm not trying to get too emotional here, so back to business ;)

With this on my mind my husband and I started planning a trip to Asia and eventually ended up with choosing Sri Lanka as the new year 2012-2013 destination. 

I feel it's gonna be a looong article, but anyways :) 

We were fling by FlyDubai which means we had to wait for a loo~ong 9-11 hours while  in the Dubai Airport terminal 2 which was... mmm not to say quite bad, not the most pleasant place to be or thing to do ... It's an international transit zone but the airport doesn't quite look  international. Men  in white and women in black... then the "Namaz" time came up and people started their prayer... The first couple of hours I was very happy seeing/being in such a  different culture among such different people but then the hygiene issues arose and I completely forgot about the cultural diversity and just couldn't wait but go to Sri Lanka or somewhere... anywhere just a place far away from that airport :) 

Dubai itself is breathtaking, and you realize it when you are flying over the Dubai, it's literally sand and desert and right in the middle of the desert they built the city with skyscrapers, tower, fountains and lots of green :) Dubai has a very specific sandy-watery smell in the air :)
Will definitely go back to Dubai to explore the dessert city 

We arrived in Colombo somewhere around 4 am and I did know we were going to a warm tropical country but in Yerevan even in the hottest summers there is a mild chilly wind blowing at night, we went out of airport and the heat full of humid blew right on my face and I entered into the summer I don't think I ever experienced before :)

We met out guide Koleampur something-something, we called him Kolé and our driver Mr. Buddika :) the nicest thing to happen after the 17 hours flight is to meet nice people who can take you to the hotel for you to sleep !!! We were speaking with them in Russian. Our guide studied in Kazan during the USSR period and he kind of thought that we were from USSR! and he would be right if we had gone to LK 22 years earlier ;) So the first thing he asked was: 

Kolé: So how is Soviet Union? 
Me: Mmm... I don't really want to disappoint you but it kind of collapsed and there  is no Soviet Union any more ;) 
Kolé: ehhh... I used to have a girlfriend there :) 

He is a lovely man :)


We woke up in the hotel couple of hours later opened the window and saw the beautiful vast ocean right in front of me, palm trees, tuk-tuks... the feelings were actually so mixed, and it was all about living the moment, that's why this is the only trip we have so~ few picture compared to our other trips :)

view from the window

We took a city walk and got familiar with the king coconut that you can actually drink the juice inside but the regular hairy coconut that you can only cook with.

Hello King Coconut :)

Yes! I did mention that the feelings were quite mixed, happy, excited, scared and very very unknown... no traffic lights, totally self controllable traffic, happy smiling people, offering you this and that every now and then.
We took a short walk along the beach  and I got a little into the environment :)

first shots in LK, first beach walk

Later that evening we met our acquaintances, beautiful Armenian-Sri Lankan family with 2 beautiful girls speaking Sinhalese, English and Armenian living in the most tropical house I've ever seen : 3 floored house with the half of the roof covered for the purpose of natural ventilation... and when it rains there is a small river place right in the living room, a nice balcony with banana, coconut tree and a regular visit place of local squirrels, monkeys and other animals... oh and we drove right into the lobby of the house.

The next day to moved on to our trips and visited the Pinnavela, the famous elephants orphanage of Sri Lanka. For me this trip was completely dedicated to elephants, so you can imagine me meeting them for the first time seeing the bathing elephants. I jumped and screamed and ran down to the river from the tourists' balcony to meet, talk, hug, caress them all. 

elephants at bath time :)

The local elephant guide saw me and came to take to down to take to to the elephants. and we met the biggest elephant in the orphanage we was so big that we had to stand on the rock in order to caress him :)
He was the most adorable creature on earth I caressed him for a while, talked to him and he raise his trunk I thought he is responding back and hugged the trucked and he gave me such a wild blow with his truck that the my hair got stuck up :) I take it as an elephant way of welcoming people :D

the wind blow on my face :)

some elephants talk to each other, others talk to people

hey gorgeous

we took a long walk in the Pinnavela met the rest of the elephants, enjoyed their company a little bit more their company after the bath time :)

cutie playing around

pupush~pupush

bath time is over now it's time for breakfast

rushing beauty

:)

wild one... you don't want to mess with her

that's me trying to get an excited profile pic :D fail!!!

The next stop was Dambulla. We took a walk in the Cave temple to see lots of Buddha statues, sleeping, in nirvana, sitting, praying and a lot of other poses together with a local monk who was accompanying us around telling stories... beautiful and breathtaking place.

Buddha temple newly constructed front

Buddha cave temple

Buddha

The worse part for me about visiting Buddha places is that you have to walk distances barefoot. 

... and of course I had an "santavik" incident

back of the temple! monk statues

Mr. M* I guess a regular visitor of the temple

The special thing for me particularly in the cave temple was the monk who came up to me, took my hand and said that I had a good karma, and he is right :) I do have a good Karma!!! Tik, my husband thought that he said so just because of the tip, I like thinking that my good Karma is just sooo~ good that it's that obvious for monk's naked eye :P :)  

The next stop was Sigiriya 350 m high rock fortress with a big beautiful royal palace on the top of it.When I first saw it was scary huge like 12 times taller than my parents' 9 floor building... oh and guess what we had to climb up and down by stairs and oops an awkward moment, I just remembered that after vampires, Dracula, ghosts I'm stair-phobic - if there is such a word, but yes, I'm scared of stairs (for me it's something very~very uncontrollable for my height and every time I go up and down I have the feeling that I'm about to fall down)... I went up and down without falling down, shouting, crying or having a heart attack and had my well deserved feeling of triumph. The place itself is breathtaking with beautiful beautiful view. We saw the royal palace on the top. took a walk around and you know what?! that king had 500 wives, can you imagine?

I know I burnt the sky, but it doesn't Sigiriya less high :) S* & her surrounding royal gardens

steps were marbled & it had rained the day before, so they were wet and slippery 

doggy chilling out on the height of 250 m

wall paintings with natural colors

half way through

& we made it to the top

I still couldn't believe I did that!

I look excited but in fact the only thing that was going on in my mind was:
"how on earth am I going to climb down..."

the royal pool for wives of the king, he seemed to like sitting on this thrown
& watching them swim

I mean... look at the stair, if you looked down all you could think of would be
 "I really-really don't want to die"

Later on we rode ~Mutto~ actually, before going to Sri Lanka I had doubts whether it's good to ride elephants or not, I researched a little bit... some forums would say that it's OK, other would disagree... but anyways I love elephants and I never ever in my life would want to hurt them. So we went to  visit elephants and I very very reluctant to ride Mutto, as I was convinced that it's bad for them, but local elephant men told me that I shouldn't worry about that cause it wouldn't hurt them but of course I didn't want to believe just like that until my logic switched up: a regular 18-20 year old elephant weighing 4 tons each 200 kg food per day which basically means that my husband and I weigh less then he eats, would be really feel us, and would it really hurt?! what about horses and donkey... they weigh much less and people still ride them... and also "does our Hrant eat 200 kg a day?"

Good or bed I set on the Mutto and she took us for a short walk :)

walk with Mutto :)

Mutto in the river

in the middle of the walk the elephant suddenly stopped, I asked the guide
what happened, he said : "kaka Madam... &...tsunami" :D

thanking Mutto for a nice ride

p.s. did you know that in Sri Lanka people recycle elephants excrement and make a recycled paper. I saw couple lovely note books and wanted to buy for some of my friends as a souvenir, then I thought "OK how do I present the souvenir, hey I got you something special, it's a beautiful notebook for you to write/draw in... oh and by the way, it's made out of elephant excrement" :D
Should have bought couple of them, at least now I would know what the reaction would be :))

When we went to history museum and visited another Buddha ancient temple!!

remainings of the Buddha temple

former parliament building

Tik in the parliament standing in the place of one of the ministers

famous moon stone

biggest stone book

Tik coming out of one of the Buddha temple :))

Buddha in nirvana

and last but not the least :) One of the most interesting Gods I ever came across :)

God of fertility and sex :D in old times when a woman could get pregnant,
she would come to this status pour some milk on it and get pregnant :)

One the way back to the hotel we met this wild cutie coming out of the tropical forest :) Our driver was terrified but I was excited~

Wild cutie on highway :)

Then we moved on to Kandy where we visited the the Relic of the tooth of the Buddha . It was a big, beautiful place, you know another "perfect place" to walk barefoot on a rainy day :)

the temple

Inside of the temple

panorama ;)

Then we went to see national singing and dancing performances, honestly I wasn't impressed by the technical or vocal abilities of the performers but they did have very colorful and beautiful costumes it's all just a very entertaining to watch once or twice :)

funny costume

Then we reached the tea land. We went to see tea plantations and also took a  tour in the tea factory where a very nice guide who actually was the first person who knew what Armenia was and where it was :) We got to know to the technologies of making the black, green, white teas both in leaves and bags. And I gave a little hand to the local women working in the factory! so the next time you take English Breakfast, remember me, cause I might have help in the making-of process :) 

tea lady posing for a pic at the plantations

OK, I'll get a pic as well :)

big waterfall near the plantations

Then we visited the botanic garden, I call it a paradise for biologists. Tons of tree, plant and greenery variety, beautifully and carefully preserved. I'm took a walk only on around the important areas of the garden cause walking and getting to know to the entire territory of the garden would take around 3 days.

Tik and Kole at botanic garden

this is not a decorated tree, it just grows like this

the yellow thing down there, it's me :) yes!
this tree was thaaaat huge!

unless I'm mistaken it's one of those walking tree: wherever the brunch touched
a tree grows and one tree can make a whole forest

& my favorite DRUNK trees :))

each fruit could fit 2-3 coconuts inside :)

In between we tried the national costumes and had a wonderful Sri-Lankan massage (no pics from massage, of course ;) :)

Then we ended a trip at the beautiful beach on the south west of the island and spend 6 days on the beach, did nothing but swimming, drinking king coconut, then swimming again then sleeping long hours :)

sunset 

Tik on holiday

me on holiday

happy-mappy

beach photos censored ;) 

During this trip we visited around 12 cities, got to know to the culture and the people. I came to realize that people can be kind to each other, smiling and happy and appreciating what they have rather than complaining about what they don't, at least that's what I saw in people here during my short trip :) I'm not saying everything was perfect, and tip request at anything was annoying, something that would make you feel mean every time you refused to give a tip but I still wouldn't put the "happy madam? tip madam!" stereotype on the whole country and all the people. I lost my favorite earrings, but I don't want to complain about that... little something I gave in return to all the emotions I got from LK :) 

This trip taught me to be patient, positive and most importantly grateful for what you have. I so am... and also his trip made me realize how close people can live with nature, how close they can be with animal & that made me hate Zoos as place for caged animals even more now :-/

My father always told me that I should travel a lot and make the world a smaller place for you to be in and I'm so totally going to do that :) 

p.s. next stop ~Cuba~

all on my own

little something about being self employed

I have always known that I'm eventually going to end up being self employed or probably it's still better to say - away from all kinds of 9 am - 6 pm, 10 am - 7 pm or 24/7 schedules imposed on you, making you super less productive, less creative and less happy (not to say miserable), hate Mondays and mornings in general, (cause you are assured that waking up at 7 am should be legally prohibited), sometimes dislike managers cause they are not fair (optional) and in general gain all those characteristics that a regular employee, who is not happy about his/her occupation at least 30-40% of the time, has!

On the other hand, I probably shouldn't really generalize employee habits and in general all the above mentioned, so I'm just going to present things from my perspective (it happened so that I've experienced it all during my employment times for this or that organizations). Every time I would complain about something about my job: office, manager, salary, the system, lack of sleep, exhaustion, overload or whatever my friends would tell me "Why don't you find another job?" which in fact probably could be a good temporary solution for my type of people cause my answer would always be "I'm really - REALLY not looking for a better sameness" :) Because, it's not always about the place you work, it's often about you, whether or not you are at the right place or doing the right thing :)

Not to go in details about what happened, when, what, how and why, cause it's probably a topic for another blog post, I'll just say that the opportunity knocked at the door and I had the "10 seconds of insane courage" thing again and quit my job momentarily starting doing own stuff and eventually ended up registering foundation and got on to work for myself :)

And here is what happens when you are own your own :)

• you manage your time completely on your own but it takes a while to manage yourself and your time as productively as you thought you would have
• you definitely do a lot more work than you used to do with your former full time/part time job, cause now you work for yourself and there are no limits but just bundles of work that you take over your shoulders willingly and voluntarily... now you are doing everything for yourself, for your joy, your development: the key point about working more than you used to do is that you want to work, not that you have to!
• you definitely stop hating Mondays and in general stop caring what day of the week it is, cause every day is as beautiful as another one and you work no matter it's a working day or not ;) I still have problems remembering dates...if not for my mobile phone I would never know what day of the week it is, what the date it is  in general, sometimes even mixing the months - cause it doesn't really matter any more :) 
• you stop craving for vacations or looking for public holidays on the calendars hoping that the dates might coincide with the working dates and there is a chance of having a long weekend. And the reason is again very simple: you can take your time for vacation any time you want now ;)
• you stop looking for/forwards to salary promotion, cause you can raise your salary any time you want and in the amount you want ;) 
• if you are married and have to take care of the household stuff, you start having this delusion that your house will be super-duper tidy every day, cause before you probably, just like a most married women with full time employments had time to really really make the house super clean on weekends, but it's an illusion! your house is not tidier than it used to be and a big difference with former house cleaning habits is that you might hate household stuff even more now, cause it's taking YOUR time from YOUR beloved occupation
• another funny thing might occur that lots and "loads" of people might start thinking that you have plenty of time for anything which is not true again, cause if before you knew that you finish you job at around 6-7 pm, now you have NO IDEA when you'll finish it and what else might pop up
• alongside with lots of people thinking that you have plenty of time, even more people start thinking that you are actually unemployed... but, I mean... do you really care what others think ?! if you still do, then don't ;) 
• your mind starts working in its full creativity that you probably would never thought you were capable of, you know why?! you are not doing a routine work! even if you are during a little routine/administrative work for a while you know exactly why you are doing that and where you are going to!!! you start to create new things and it doesn't even matter what profession you are in, you mind starts working in different ways where there are no limits, no judgement and no control
• you start having these strong cravings for dramatic changes in your appearance, cause so many things have changed in your life, you have changed so much along with your life, and it's strange to look in the mirror and see your former self that now you have hard times really recognizing. As for the appearance changes - I had a dramatic cut-off my hair :) 
• you wake up at around 6 am in the morning! "WHAT? how this happened? why am I up this early? mmm~ wow it's actually nice to wake up this early, no cars, no people fresh air, birds sing, oh look the sun rises, GOD it's beautiful, I actually forgot how the sunrise looked... oh so this is what peace and serenity looks like... I'm gonna get some coffee" exactly what I thought on the second day of my "unemployed" life :) and then I got to work
• you are less sustainable than you used to be, I mean you never know what's going to happen tomorrow but on the other hand... is there any sustainability in Armenia? is the whole sustainability thing not an universally accepted myth?! I can bet, it is! and not knowing what's going to happen tomorrow is exactly what makes your mind works so~ creatively and you come up with so many new ideas and implement new "projects" that make you sustainable day by day. And in general I came to really realize that sustainability and comfort is not always what you need or should constantly have... cause magic happens when you actually get out of it ;) 

My dad would always say "whatever I do in life,  do it as best as you can possible do, be as best in it as you can possible be, so now this is exactly what I'm striving for together with my Eiva :) 

p.s. I hardly ever read long blog posts without visuals, I just keep wondering why on earth do I keep writing such long posts ?! :)

the "ColorGuide" story

Several months I was going back home from work, really tied, out of mood and stuff and on my way home I thought I might do a little shopping for home to get a bit distracted from the daily routine. 

Back then, still considered as newly married, living in a new beautifully tiny apartment with fresh renovation and furniture, lots of home decorations were still missing. So that evening was just perfect for me to get some little nice things for home. 

Going from one shop to another I came across some beautiful and colorful cushions that I thought would fit our apartment perfectly. And they were on sale, so the luck was on my side :)

I love cushions, I could live a cushion house, if I liked the shopping thing in general, I would go for cushion shopping every day. But luckily or unfortunately I'm not a huge fan of the shopping thing & I go out for shopping every once in a long while, so what I'm saying is that the evening was perfect for me buy several beautiful cushions for the coziest place in the world/our place;) and put a BIG CHECK on the cushion part of the home decoration. But if only the case was that easy.

I went to select some cushions, they were beautiful, colorful, diverse and I somehow got lost in them. I couldn't make up my mind which ones I'd want to take. I'm in general for minimalism and our entire apartment is designed so and I really didn't want to spoil the style by bringing in random color cushion diversity. I mean I love colors, but still.. When I eventually decided on the cushions I came to realize that I couldn't remember the color of our sofa. Terrible, I know, but I really couldn't... was it purple? red? 

Whatever it was, I was really upset that I couldn't remember the color of our sofa exactly right and I got so upset that I decided not to buy any cushions at all. 

Then, going out of the shop an idea just came up to me that if I had a application on my home that could detect color and find its matches that would be perfect, I could detect the color of the sofa exactly right and have the matching colors of the detected color right on :)) I actually LOVED the idea!!! I thought it will be so useful for so many people just in daily routine: clothes shopping, home decorations shopping... & pretty much anything! So I called my almighty "Brad Pitt" to share the idea and he seemed to love it as well:)

And I was sooo happy when I found out that he  actually started programming process of the application :) ...researching on the color  theories, studying the color algorithms and so on.

So this is how the application actually works: 

• You go into the application and get a real time detection of the color
• You fix the color by clicking on the camera inside of the application
• You go the to page with the detected color and its matches & with a little (I call it) bonus feature :) it gives the the colors RGB codes as well
• You save is as a pictures with the detected and matched colors in the "ColorGuide" folder in the gallery.

That it is :) But still not to go any further in this, just check the application out in the Google Play Application Store.

And here, let me just say how absolutely happy I am for my husbandEST HUSBAND ever for actually making it happen!!! 

aaaaa~ shat kayfa!!

p.s. I've not bought any cushions yet, so excited to actually to go and get some with the ColorGuide :))  

QUIRVA

Couple of weeks ago, my friends visited me... you know, sitting around, having snacks, talking about everything and nothing when we reached the general topics of families and friendships. My mom was there too, nursing me (I guess, I didn't mention I was a bit ill) so she told a wonderful story of real friendship that passed generations, a friendship that seems quite unreal to me at the moment.

"Back in early 1920-s there were a lot of Azeri villages in the Eastern part of Armenia, I will be mainly talking about Alaverdi (Lori) and its surroundings  where my mother comes from. Armenian and Azeri people lived in neighborhood quite in peace together, as I figure (I assume, it looked something like Armenians and Yazidis for e.g. living next to each other) 

Anyways, one day Armenian and Azeri villages located in Lori started to fight.  An Azeri guys took a knife to stab my great grandfather also involved in the fight when all of the sudden another Azeri guy jumped out, grabbed the hand of the guy with the knife and didn't let him hit my great grandfather, in other words saved his life. From then on, Ghazar, my great grandfather and Yolchi, the Azeri guy, who'd saved his life, swore to each other to be brothers (QUIVA (Քիրվա) - the traditional word for it) and take care of each other no matter what (back then probably there was a tradition of brotherhood). Their Quivahood was perfect, the 2 families were very close, until my great grandfather Ghazar died in the World War the 2nd and Yolchi pass away too.

When the two QUIRVAS died, Yolchi's son Ismail visited my grandfather John Ghararich to continue the Quirvahood their fathers had made. Grandfather was OK with continuing the Quirvahood... OK but not enthusiastic (he was a head of former trade unions of the regions also was the director of the Alaverdi beer company and the Ismail was a simple shepherd... I guess this could also be a reason of the lack of enthusiasm of keeping the Quirvahood... yeah, granny acted snobbish ;)) and Ismail could feel it, but it didn't matter to him. Ismail went on carrying out Quiva's responsibilities to the fullest in the memory of their fathers' perfect Quirvahood: you know, sending huge parcels of presents, baskets of almonds, pomegranates, sweets, etc-etc, every new year.

In early 1980-s my younger ancle came back from his military service and got into good relationships with Ismail, and Ismail, wisely enough, decided to shift his Quirvahood from my grandfather to my uncle and it all went all over again perfectly well.

1990-ies, Karabagh issue raised and actually war started between the two nations... Azeris were removed from the Armenian territory to Azerbaijan. Ismail had to leave his home in Armenia... My mom tells the goodbye scene was heartbreaking, they didn't want to leave, we didn't want them to leave, but the country was in war state so there was pretty much nothing we could do about it, besides probably it wouldn't be safe for them to stay. My uncle drove them to the Azerbaijan territory passing the border of Ghazakh to make sure they were safe in their territory and came back home...

Everyone was OK except for my grandmother Siranush (her real name is actually Tamara, I have no idea why everybody calls her Siranush:)) who couldn't find her place after they departed... she was very worried whether they were safe home, all settled or not. So 2 day later my grand mother together with my uncle decided to go to Azerbaijan to make sure that Ismail's family was safe... they crossed the border late at night, found a local Azeri policemen who helped them find Ismail's family...Their meeting, my mom tells, was very emotional,  tears and laughter... Ismail couldn't believe they actually made the whole way to see whether they were safe or not... Tables were all laid and a big party was organized that night for the guests... 

That was actually the last time the two families ever met..."

P.S. John Ghazarich, my grand father, is 88 now and my grand mother is 84 :)

P.P.S. does it really mean I theoretically might have an Azeri Quirva sister and/or brother now... ?!

i want to sleep

I was thinking about the general state of the world, about people, happiness and where it comes from, about life, satisfaction and making the most of every minute of it. I was thinking about love, arts, beauty, social security, food, welfare, clothes, fashion etc~etc when I came to realize that I really want to sleep first...  

Couple of months ago I came to realize that I have been dreaming of sleeping for almost my whole life... I went to school for 10 years and I liked it, but I hated getting up early in the morning, then I went to the university for 5 years and I liked my university but I still hated getting up early in the morning, then I was employed for 4 years already and I like my job but I hate getting up early in the morning even more enthusiastically... and the whole universal truth is that I would have loved my school, my university, my jobs so much more, I would be so super productive and mega motivated if only I had the opportunity to sleep couple of hours more... 


I pondered over this issue even more and got to not -the-happiest news about my whole life... The school is the time when you get the general knowledge and you come to realize what is of your interest and what is not, to get decided on future profession ... and here please explain to me how you are supposed to understand some chemical formulas, rules in physics early at 9 am when your brain wakes up only at 11 am... and what if this  automatically puts you off your right professional path and you end up doing something you are happen to be good at and not maybe something you were meant to do... (talents in arts probably excluded....)


I went to university and it started all over again... probably better not to specifically mention the fact that right after the first 2 months of my university studies, I still couldn't remember how come I made a decision to take up languages as my life-long specialization and why on earth should I spend 5 years on studying 2 language ;-))) ... but in any case the excitement of being an excellent student for 2 years faded away from 3rd year of studies when the schedules for classes changed for early in the morning... (might also be a coincidence, but you never know...)

So it turns out that one gets to sleep properly before going to kindergarten and after retiring... OK so what I die right after retiring, is that suppose to mean that I die with an unfulfilled dream to get a proper sleep?! 

Nooooooo~ 

p.s. The Working/Studying & Sleeping system is not somehow user friendly

... 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 "WE ♥ WOZ" 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

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.