There are some things to keep in mind when putting together a calendar of Armenian holidays. Since there are three times as many of us living in the Diaspora than in our own country, should it include the official state holidays of the Republic of Armenia? What language should it be in? What about including religious holidays? Every religious “day” or just the big important ones? And what of the other non-religious but perhaps pagan in origin traditions some groups of Armenians mark or remember on their calendars?

Although I’m aware of all these questions, I haven’t spent an enormous amount of time coming up with great answers for each of them. Generally I’ve included most, if not all, official state holidays from the Republic, as I feel that even as Diasporans we should know what the state holidays are in our own country. I’ve also included the “big” religious or traditional days that our family observed or I know about in general. Each occasion is named in Armenian and in English, in some cases just Armenian names spelled phoneticall in English. The final list looks like this:

• January 1, Ամանոր / New Year Day
• January 6, Սուրբ Ծնունդ / Christmas
• February 14, Տռնդեզ (Տեառնընդառաչ) / Trndez (Purification)
• February 19, Վարդանանք / Vartanank
• March 18, Միջինք / Mijink
• April 5, Ծաղկազարդ / Palm Sunday (Tsakhkazard)
• April 24, Եղեռնի զոհերի հիշատակի օր / Genocide Remembrance Day
• May 21, Համբարցում / Hambartsum
• May 28, Հանրապետութայան օր / Republic Day
• July 5, Սահմանադրության օր / Constitution Day
• July 19, Վարդավառ / The Transfiguration
• September 13, Խաչվերած / Khachverats
• September 21, Անկախության օր / Independence Day
• October 13, Սուրբ Թարգմամչոց / Holy Translators Day
• December 7, Երկրաշարժի զոհերի հիշատակի օր / Spitak Remembrance Day

If you think I’ve missed something that should be on here, post a comment below with the date, what the occasion is, and, if you think I’ve not heard of it, why it should be included. I will definitely consider your feedback and update the calendar as needed to reflect additions.

Lastly, most of the Church-related dates change yearly so they are missing for next year. This calendar is good for 2009 only right now. I will update it for 2010 shortly before we get to it. Enjoy.

Subscribe to Armenian Holidays Calendar in iCal

Download Armenian Holidays Calendar file

Even if you’re not a Formula 1 fan or watcher it is a pretty cool two minute video to check out to get an idea of how the fastest race cars in the world are put together.

It will come as no surprise to most of you who read this that I’ve left Seattle to return “home” to Los Angeles. With that, I’ve left behind my job at Expedia and my cool apartment on the lake. But what I brought with me is worth way more than that.

The last three years have contained some of the most fun and rewarding experiences of my life. I met so many great people, and made a handful of life-long friends. I gained so much experience and accomplished quite a bit while working at what I consider to be my first job — in the sense of my career anyway. Plus, finally being out of school and working for a travel company allowed me to travel more than I ever have before. And lastly, I got a chance to see and experience what is definitely one of the most beautiful parts of this country, the Pacific Northwest.

Many folks, especially those I know back here in LA, ask me if I left because I finally got tired of the rain. The truth is, that’s not why I left — although I won’t lie, that didn’t help convince me to stay either. I thought it was time for a change. As people we’re so naturally averse to change that it’s very easy for us to find a comfortable niche that’s working well for us and stick with it. But as great as our comfy niche may be, we’re not doing a ton of growing or learning after some point. We’re just wearing a hole in that comfy cushion.

You might say, if change was in order, why go back to what you already know? Why LA? First and foremost, the reason is family. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s Armenian culture, but growing up my family was a huge, fun, and important part of life and I missed having that, or as much of it as I was used to (with a million thanks to my family in Seattle, blood and adopted).

Secondly, the last time I could call myself a resident of this giant sprawling mesh of cities we call Los Angeles, and a few months before I started writing here, I was 17 years old. Some say I don’t look very different than I did but I sure feel a lot different than I did then. I’m curious what the city is like now, as I explore parts of it I rarely ever saw before, with my new perspective as my ever-present companion.

You only need to turn back a page or two of this blog, or glance through my photo albums, to see what a great time I had in Seattle. But now, it’s time for a new chapter and a new adventure. Stay tuned…

Also, the song is pretty cool and I had never heard of The Bird and The Bee before.

This music video is a pretty good example of the way people are mashing and mixing things up in our globally connected world with all these digital tools at our disposal. At the same time this music video is a portfolio piece for its creator as well as a hype-generating machine for a lesser known music group. I think it is a win / win for both parties.

Let’s hope the group is not signed with a draconian music label that tries to get the video taken down or, maybe they’ve already got permissions figured out. Either way, I think it is tremendously valuable for people to be able to do little things like this to “add value” to existing art or work by others. Each group adds their own layer of creativity or thought and, as long as everyone is given their due credit, I think everyone wins.

Update: I guess the song does have its own music video that you can watch on YouTube.

I’m sure if I actually used this phone I could come up with a whole host of reasons why this thing won’t come close to an iPhone. But just by looking at this image let’s go with:

Why have they taken up a giant chunk of the space on the home screen to inform me that I am looking at “My Shortcuts”? You know, it is probably a pretty intuitive guess these are my shortcuts since you know, it’s my phone and, well, these are the shortcuts on it. Seems to me like that screen space could have been used a lot more efficiently by showing an additional row of shortcuts or increasing the size of the same ones.

I’m sure Apple is trembling in their boots.

It is easy to get bored sitting around a conference room all night waiting just in case something goes wrong. So of course, Matt and I were exercising our “J Finger” in Google Reader. Matt pulled up a post on Lifehacker about some kind of vertical wall-mounted planter for plants. The following inadvertently funny sequence followed:

Matt: This is cool. I’d love to get one of these. If only I lived in a place that got enough sunlight to keep a plant alive.
Armen: What are you saying man? I have a plant at my place and it’s fine.
Matt: Dude, I’ve seen your plant and it’s not fine.
Armen: Whatever man, you caught it on a down cycle.

Well, he did. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Anyway, I suppose it’s only fair to show a picture of how my plant’s doing right now…

Oh and I’d say it’s about mid cycle right now.

P.S. Thanks to my Mom who gave the plant to me as a birthday gift a couple years back.

For starters, there are a lot of them. I mean they are everywhere in the South. You can hardly go a mile in a city and not run into the distinctive giant yellow block sign. Then of course, they are all open twenty four hours a day. That makes it THE place to go after a night of drunken partying. You never saw a place as busy as a Waffle House at around two in the morning. Or eleven in the morning. And the food there is CHEAP. So cheap I did not believe it the first time I went.

I have a theory that there is some town, farm, or factory assembly line where they are churning out the people who work at Waffle Houses. I have been to one in at least three different states now and the people working there are like clones of each other no matter where I go or what kind of town the place is in. They say a picture is worth a thousand words…

Since we’re talking about a restaurant I guess I should say something about the food. I can’t speak to the variety on the menu, although its definitely there. You can get breakfast, lunch, or dinner any time of day or night. I’ve only eaten one thing every time I’ve gone and its so damn good that I don’t know if I will ever bother trying something different: scrambled eggs with cheese, hash browns, raisin toast with apple butter (extra apple butter), and a side of country ham. That meal is probably a coronary served on a plate but I don’t know for sure and I don’t want to know.

As for the rest of the menu, I have no doubt it is great. How do I know without having tried any of it? Well that’s easy — Waffle House told me. In fact if you were to believe the signage at this place, you would think it was the finest dining establishment in the country. The claims made include, but are most definitely not limited to:

• America’s Best Coffee
• America’s Best Chicken
• World’s leading server of REAL hash browns
• World’s leading server of waffles

Hopefully that list gives you an idea of the important contribution Waffle House makes to enhancing America’s culinary reputation. I had trouble finding them in my copy of the Michelin Guide but I’m sure that’s because I have an out of date copy. It is amazing that they can serve such great food at such dirt-cheap prices. My meal of choice can be had for between $5.50 and $6.50 depending on the area and it is a big breakfast! Those prices put IHOP, Denny’s, and any other wannabe late-night breakfast-serving place to shame.

Oh yeah, don’t forget all the immitators either. For those times when the Waffle House is too pricey, fancy, or busy you are welcome to try your luck at the local Waffle King or Omelet House. These places lurk notoriously close to their Waffle House brethren. They also sport block-letter signs that look a lot like the Waffle House one. I haven’t been to these places but natives tell me they’re even cheaper and grimier than the standard-issue Waffle House.

Despite (because of?) all this, I have to say I love the Waffle House. I love the food, the hours, the cookie-cutter locations and people, and the kitschy small-town diner feel of it. I wish we had one on every corner out west just like back in the South. But I doubt we would be able to recreate them out here. I don’t think we have the people out here to run them and I doubt anyone would dare serve my cheese and eggs breakfast for anything less than $10 in Los Angeles. I guess my cravings for country ham will just have to wait for my infrequent visits to the South then.

A couple of weeks ago there was a total lunar eclipse. Fortunately, it was one that could easily be seen from the USA, clouds permitting of course. And when it comes to Seattle and clouds well, let’s just say that you better get friendly with them if you live here.

At the end of last year, I bit the bullet and repurchased a digital SLR camera

Expect some pictures of this trip, and some others I have been going on since I last posted, when I return! Happy Thanksgiving!

Loyal readers will have noticed that I have been M.I.A. for about two months now. The biggest reason for that was the planning for, going on, and recovering from a whirlwind two-week backpacking trip across Western Europe. I had wanted to take a trip like this two years ago when I finished at Cal but, with my Let’s Go Western Europe book in hand, plans fell apart at the last minute. Now, two years later I had the vacation time, the money, and another chance to go on just such a trip — let’s take a moment to celebrate not being college-student-poor anymore. Add to that Ara was wrapping up his time at Cal and looking to go on a big trip before sinking the next few years into investment banking. Oh and add to that my buddy Anurag also wanting to join in on the European fun. The time was clearly ripe for a backpacking trip to remember.

So we spent mid-to-late June hightailing it across a bunch of places all over Western Europe including:

• London
• Paris
• Amsterdam
• Berlin
• Nurburg
• Munich
• Barcelona
• Girona

Overall the trip was great; we all had a ridiculously good time and I’ve got memories from this trip that I will cherish forever. As I sort through the photos from the trip, I intend to put up a series of posts, one for each country probably, with some of my thoughts on the places we visited and of course, some funny stories.

That point also brings me to probably the only low point of the whole trip. While in Munich, near the end of the trip, and after snapping 600+ of probably some of the best photos I have taken yet, I left my camera unattended for about 30 minutes and it was stolen. Although I didn’t write about it here, I had finally taken the dive into the world of SLR photography by procuring my own Canon 20D. I thought it was an awesome camera and I was having a lot of fun learning how to best use it to expand my abilities as an admittedly amateurish photographer. You can see some of the shots I was able to take with it in my photo gallery here and here. Anyway, the point is that although I will be posting a bunch of photos from the trip soon, I cannot take credit for taking the vast majority of them; that credit goes to Ara and Anurag.

Stay tuned for more Euro action.

The following is a brief overview on the composition and history of Armenian last names. It is reprinted from a recent edition of the Gibrahayer (Cypriot-Armenian) Newsletter. The one thing that is a bit odd is that they don’t talk about the Indo-European roots of the “ian” suffix.

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Most Armenian names end in “ian” or “yan,” meaning the “son of,” but some Diaspora Armenians have changed these endings to blend in their host societies. Today in Turkey “oglu” often replaces “ian,” while Russian Armenians may change the endings to “ov”; e.g., Gary Kasparov, Serge Parajanov. A name ending in “ian” is not always exclusively Armenian, since the ending can also be occasionally found in names in Irish, Persian, English, Philippine and some other cultures. Armenian last names generally fall into five specific categories: Aristocracy, Parent, Geography, Occupation or Trait.

Aristocracy
The ancient Armenian aristocracy (“Nakharar” class) was derived from Parthian-Persian stock and many of their names ended in “uni” or “ooni.” Most of these families were destroyed over the centuries but some still survive today; e.g., Sasuni, Rshtuni.

Parent
Many Armenian names are derived from the first names of an ancestor; e.g. Davidian, “son of David,” Stepanian, “son of Stepan,” or Krikorian, “son of Krikor/Grigor.” Until the 19th century, virtually all first names had a religious origin, so most of those last names are also religious.

Geography
Some last names are based on geographic origin and end in “lian” (Turkish) or “tsian” (Armenian). Typical examples are Sivaslian “from Sivas,” Urfalian “from Urfa” and Vanetzian “from Van.” These names were typically given to an immigrant who migrated from a different region of Armenia. Obviously everyone living in Marash would not call himself or herself “Marashlian”.

Occupation
Most last names were taken from the professions of an ancestor. These names frequently originated with the tax collectors who needed to identify all individuals for tax purposes. Typical examples are Najarian “son of a carpenter,” Arabian “son of a wagon/ teamster,” and Vosgarichian “son of a goldsmith.” Many of these occupations are not Armenian, since the tax man (typically a Moslem Turk, Persian, Arab, etc.) would use his own native word for the occupation; e.g., the name Boyajian is based on the Arab/Turkish term “boyaji” “one who dyes.”

Trait
The most confusing and curious names are those based on some trait of an ancestor. Typical examples are Topalian “son of the cripple,” Dilsizian “son of the tongueless one,” or Sinanian “son of the spearpoint.” Many of the origins of these names are unclear unless one understands the original context. As an example, Dilsizian indicates that an ancestor had his tongue cut out by the Turks for using the Armenian language, while the term “Sinan” was a slang term applied to somebody either with a very erect military-like carriage or who was “hung like a horse.” Some of these traits are not physical, but rather reflect personality or social status; e.g., Melikian “son of the king” or Harutunian “son of the resurrection.” The name Harutunian could be based on an ancestor named Harutune (so-named because he was born around Eastertime), or adopted by a convert to Protestantism to show his status as a “born-again Christian.”

Many last names today have been shortened or modified to aid pronunciations by non Armenians; e.g., the name Mugerditchian/ Mkrtichian” becomes “Mugar,” “Husseniglian,” become s “Hewsen,” and Samourkashian” becomes “Samour.” These abbreviated names often drop the ian” ending, and are not immediately identifiable as being Armenian to an outsider. The name categories of Occupation and Trait can differ significantly between Eastern Armenians and Western Armenians, since the eastern names often have Persian, Georgian or Russian roots, while the western names may have Turkish, Arab, or Greek roots. Names with the prefix “Der” or “Ter” show that one of the ancestors was a “Der Hayr” a married parish priest), a position of great social status among Armenians; e.g., DerBedrosian, Ter Petrosian.

The study of Armenian Names is a fascinating exercise, since virtually every aspect of the culture is reflected in names. There have been extensive studies of Armenian names in the Armenian language, but little has appeared in English and many Armenians (born outside of Armenia) do not understand the significance of their own names.

Given the fact that I hadn’t done any serious programming for a while — sorry Expedia Dashboard widget, you don’t count — I was itching to enter the contest to stretch my coding skills a bit and, of course, blow everyone away with something so cool we had to win. Lucky for me I had some friends at work who were interested in doing the same. So armed with two rock star developers and two crazy program managers who code (“why would PM’s write code??? they say), we formed an elite black ops unit that began to meet and discuss the details of our project.

Hack Day came around and we hacked our little hearts out. I learned JavaScript tricks I never knew existed, we became intimately familiar with the Prototype library (don’t write JavaScript without it!) and writing object oriented JS, and we wore out the JS debugger and other tools in Firebug — the Firefox extension sent from the heavens unto web developers everywhere.

Working day and night through the weekend on our project (yes I know it was Hack Day but they said if we wanted to work all weekend, more power to us) took me back to the nights spent in Soda Hall on the Berkeley campus trying to finish up one of our many CS class projects a few nights before it was due.

Lots of lines of Java, XML, JavaScript, and CSS and three days later we had completed our vision for a next-generation travel shopping experience. We showed our prototype at the judging the following Wednesday and it was a big hit. Since the initial presentation we’ve been inundated with questions and requests for demos for various groups. Tonight we found out that we won and tied for first place. We had a lot of fun working on the project and I can honestly say I’m very proud of the work we did.

Anyway, if you were wondering why I had been MIA the last couple of weeks, now you know what I was doing pretty much that whole time. I can’t post screenshots or videos of our prototype here but if you know me and are interested in hearing more about this, get in touch with me. Hopefully someday soon I can point to something on the live site and say it was inspired by (or is!) our Hack Day project.

I have been busy working on a couple of other web sites. One of those is ready for the world and had its “grand opening” yesterday.

Fight Critic is a blog where I’m going to continue posting my thoughts about mixed martial arts news and events. The couple of posts I made here on C-Objectively were fun to write and were popular enough that I decided it was something I wanted to keep doing.

I hope my readers here that are interested in MMA or combat sports will give Fight Critic a shot. And tell your friends!

Exhibit #1 – “Mac Office users were Microsoft ‘guinea pigs’“, MacWorld UK
This article from Johnny Evans at MacWorld UK was published after the public release of some internal Microsoft e-mails that discussed their plans for a Mac version of Office back in 1997. In the e-mail Ben Waldman, seemingly one of the leaders of the Mac Office ’97 team, implores Bill Gates and other Microsoft executives to come to a final decision on releasing the newest version of Mac Office they have been developing. His e-mail explains his motivations in detail but to sum up, he is most concerned with:

1. Getting a great new product that’s almost ready to their Mac-using customers
2. Trying not to crush the enthusiasm of what had to be a pretty large team of program managers, developers, and testers at Microsoft who had been working on Mac Office ’97 for months

Instead of focusing on or even mentioning the positives in Ben’s e-mail, Evans attempts to use this e-mail as proof of Microsoft’s evil tactics against Mac users. What he ends up doing instead is showing his complete lack of understanding of software development and sound business planning.

Despite the mud-slinging in the MacWorld UK and other articles, Microsoft’s tactic of trying things out on their smaller audience for Mac Office is actually “a good thing”. Since Mac Office is a product that is not as crucial to their business and bottom line, they have the opportunity to take some risks with it that they probably never would consider with the Windows version of Office. The outrage from their shareholders and the pundits would be huge if Microsoft tried out some risky or wacky UI ideas in the Windows version of Office that sent sales of the next version plummeting.

That’s not to say that the Mac version of Office should or would always get new features before they were introduced into the Windows version. It simply provides that opportunity for Microsoft. And if taken as a whole, Ben’s e-mail shows you that behind whatever legal or business wrangling was going on between Microsoft and Apple at the time, the people behind Mac Office ’97 believed in the product they were working on, worked hard to make it a good one, and wanted to deliver it into the hands of their faithful Mac-using customers.

Since when do we rip on companies for doing careful planning and testing of changes to the cash cow of their business?

Exhibit #2 – “Microsoft’s Meltdown“, ZDNet UK
This article is just more of the sensationalist garbage that is typical of the media today. Maybe the media are producing more sensationalist articles and headlines because there are more things vying for readers’ attention than ever; they think it is the only way to find readers or viewers.

In an article attributed to the entire publication, ZDNet UK condemns every word Microsoft says and every byte of software Microsoft ships or has shipped until they can explain how there was a bug in OneCare, their anti-virus software. Apparently there was a bug in OneCare that, in some cases, would quarantine, not delete as ZDNet claims, a user’s entire e-mail collection if a virus was found in any one of the e-mails they had received or sent.

Is that a bad bug to have in an anti-virus program? Yes, definitely. Is it bad enough to condemn Microsoft forever as producing completely untrustworthy software? Not even close.

In a forum discussing the issue, someone from Microsoft stated that “this problem was found in beta and fixed

UFC 68 went down last Saturday evening in Ohio. I wasn’t very excited about this card and did not end up ordering the PPV for myself. I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly that makes me so much more excited about PRIDE events than UFC ones. Maybe it’s because there are so many more UFC events that there aren’t as many exciting fights? In general I think it has to do with the fighters’ efforts to finish the fight and stay aggressive. I think not being able to clinch and stand against the cage helps keep PRIDE fights more interesting. Anyway, I did end up catching most of the fights later thanks to a friend’s recording.

I’m not going to recap the events of the fights themselves, like I did for PRIDE 33, as there are plenty of good write-ups already posted that do that. Instead you’re going to get my commentary and opinion on some of the fights and their outcomes.

Randy Couture vs Tim Sylvia
UFC 68 has given me a reason to celebrate; for the simple reason that Tim Sylvia was exposed to the masses as what many MMA fans have known for some time: Tim Sylvia is an unoriginal, lumbering, zombie-like freak of nature that has won most of his fights due to a tremendous reach/height advantage or mistakes on the part of his opponents. I have mixed feelings about the outcome though, since I think Sylvia could have been dismantled in even more dramatic fashion by Mirko Cro Cop, aka The Terminator.

As it is, Sylvia was out-wrestled, out-grappled, and out-boxed by 43 year-old Light Heavyweight Randy Couture. Captain America dominated The Maine-iac in every facet of the fight. And his game plan to fight the 6’8″ behemoth was a thing of beauty to watch as it was put into action. Sylvia on the other hand seemed like a broken record; constantly lumbering forward awkwardly and throwing the same two slow-motion punches for five rounds. I think this fight showed more than anything, that Randy is one of the most intelligent fighters in the game; and it’s extremely dangerous to underestimate what he is capable of, even at this age.

However, Randy’s victory does have me worried about something. According to recent interviews with Dana White, President of the UFC, the winner of this fight is going to fight the winner of the Mirko Cro Cop / Gabriel Gonzaga match at UFC 70 in the UK. Barring some freak accident, the winner of that fight will be Cro Cop. I don’t know of another MMA fighter who deals as much striking damage per minute than Cro Cop. He employs an unrelenting and devastating move-forward offense and couples that with exceedingly good takedown defense. I would hate to see Randy be completely dismantled by Cro Cop right after winning the belt from Sylvia. In fact, despite Sylvia’s loss here, I’d still love to see him fight Cro Cop and put his money where his mouth is on his previous claims of being able to match up with the best in the world at Heavyweight.

Oh and Tim, copying Chuck Lidell’s hairstyle is not going to help make you anywhere near as liked by fans as he is.

Chris Lytle vs Matt Hughes
Chris was expected to lose this fight and he did. Hughes was in control but not as dominant as many of his fans would have liked. I’m not sure we saw anything from Hughes in this fight to indicate he’s somehow improved enough to get a different outcome at Hughes vs GSP 3 than Hughes vs GSP 2. I can’t say I’m disappointed though. Any fighter that says he lost a fight because it was God’s plan and not the other fighter’s superior skill is a jerk. I’m looking forward to George St. Pierre dismantling Hughes for a second time.

Jason Lambert vs Renato “Babalu” Sobral
With the exception of Babalu’s extremely stupid approach to beating Chuck Lidell in their most recent encounter (running after him throwing wild punches and leaving himself wide open for the counter-punch KO), he has fought, and often beaten, many of the top fighters in the 205-lbs division. That makes Jason Lambert’s knock-out win over Babalu all-the-more interesting. Jason’s win has also placed him at #10 in MMAWeekly’s latest Top 10 Fighter rankings. That doesn’t make much sense though since he recently lost to Rashad Evans, a fighter who has been on a tear recently in the UFC’s Light Heavyweight division. Rashad is nowhere to be found in the rankings. Jason’s a better fighter than the guy he lost to six months ago? Maybe the MMAWeekly editors could explain that one for us.

Jason MacDonald vs Rich Franklin
Franklin beat MacDonald by tap-out due to strikes. No surprises here. MacDonald is a good fighter but not on Rich’s level yet. Again, like the Hughes match, the caliber of Rich’s opponent does not allow for much analysis on any changes Rich may have made to get a different result out of the forthcoming Franklin/Silva rematch. That is a match I am definitely looking forward to. I doubt that Franklin will let Silva dominate him in the clinch again.

UFC 68 Wrap-Up
The results from this event dictate three upcoming title fight match-ups we will probably see very soon:

1. Rich Franklin vs Anderson Silva 2
2. Matt Hughes vs George St. Pierre 3
3. Mirko Cro Cop vs Randy Couture (Most Likely)

Some other fights I think we should see based on the results of UFC 68 are:

1. Quinton Jackson vs Jason Lambert – since the Ortiz/Jardine fight isn’t happening until the end of May, and neither of those guys would be ready to fight again for at least a couple of months, this is a fight I wouldn’t mind seeing in the mean time.
2. Quinton Jackson vs Winner of Tito Ortiz / Keith Jardine fight
3. Rashad Evans vs Loser of the Tito/Keith match
4. Jon Fitch vs Karo Parisyan – I would love to see Karo back in action against another tough opponent. Why is the UFC putting him up against Josh Burkman, who lost to Fitch last year?

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