The Thoughts of a Californian Garmo.

New Blog

2008-08-21T20:58:00.001-07:00

New Blog, New Style!

Come check out my newest blog at:
http://thecaligarmo.wordpress.com

I changed basically cause I'm sick of blogger.

-Aram the Garmo

See you over there!

Quick Post

2008-08-18T20:04:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone!

So I know I have been very very bad with posting very recently, but I SWEAR that I have been EXTREMELY busy with life and everything. I am also creating a new space for my blog since blogger is not allowing me the functionality that I need for my blog. It also forces me to accept 3rd party cookies which I really don't want. So I promise that sometime this week I will get my blog up and running and have my first post on or before next Monday.

Until then,
-Aram the Garmo

A slow evolution

2008-07-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

The day that my blog will be ready for the public is nearing. There is only 18 days before my blog will start to become more consistent. If you've been with me since the beginning you have probably already started to see a difference in my blog. I am talking less about random philosophical stuff and am relating more towards my audience. This was put into place by allowing people to vote. (If you want to vote on what my blog will be like, there is a voting box on the right side of my page. Votes will be stopped in 18 days.) I've also changed the look of my blog and also the name of my blog. I also recently changed my URL to: http://thecaligarmo.blogspot.com (Sorry if this confused anyone.)

There have also been some behind the scene changes that haven't appeared on my blog, but has happened in the infrastructure of my workings. I've created a new email address (This brings my total up to 6) and also have changed my twitter name to better suit all of my changes. There are also more changes on the way that will allow me to separate this blog from my daily workings so that I can blog better. This has been a very fun and exciting time for me so I hope you are all ready to begin the fabulous journey with me when the time comes in August.

Also, if there are any changes that you dislike or if you would like to see some changes added please let me know!

Excitedly,
-Aram the Garmo

South Carolina, Gay?

2008-07-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

Now who would have ever thought a story like this would develop? An Australian based gay travel company has labeled South Carolina among 5 other locations in the U.S. as 'great destinations' for the gay traveler. This makes me wonder whether Amro Worldwide did any research before starting their advertising campaign for South Carolina as being 'so gay.'

Amro Worldwide basically started an advertising campaign in London during London's pride in order to promote gay destinations in the U.S. South Carolina, Boston, Washington D.C., Atlanta, New Orleans, and Las Vegas were all chosen to be a part of their poster campaign in which posters describing each city as 'so gay' were put around the London Underground. The South Carolina poster is depicted on the left. But with South Carolina being so politically conservative and having such a anti-gay stance you would wonder how such a thing could happen. Don't we remember how South Carolina was the place where Irmo High School's principal resigned from his high school just because he did not want a gay-straight alliance starting up? So let's see how all of this went down.

The weird part is that it turns out that South Carolina originally liked the 'so gay' idea. Kristy Dillury, who is the spokesgirl for South Carolina Tourism, said "South Carolina has a lot to offer gay travellers... We are delighted to be involved with the 'so gay' campaign in particular as it sends a powerful positive message to everyone that there is nothing wrong at all with a destination being described as 'so gay'." This was put on a press release [here]. From here the advertising poster campaign was begun. It all went downhill once The Palmetto Scoop, a blog from South Carolina, talked about the ad campaign that Amro was putting up [found here]. Apparently Republican state senator David Thomas protested against the campaign and wanted an audit of the tourism department to see how this campaign could have happened using South Carolina's tax payer's money. The audit turned out that a lower level employee allowed the poster campaign to go through and the $5,000 to be paid for the ads without ever talking to their supervisor. Of course this employee quietly resigned. The governor of South Carolina, who apparently is in the running for VP of John McCain, said that the poster campaign was 'inappropriate.'

You can find the whole article [here].

All of this played out pretty much the way anyone could have imagined. I wish that South Carolina was not so anti-gay, but it's one state at a time I guess. I just have one question for Amro Worldwide. Why is San Francisco not on your list of 'great destinations'? And maybe next time, they should do some research before starting and ad campaign.

Realistically,
-Aram the Garmo

Cancun Part 2

2008-07-16T22:00:00.000-07:00

First off, sorry for not updating yesterday; I wasn't really in the writing mood persay. So anyway, today I will be going into the Mayan ruins that surround Cancun, and also my gay clubbing experience.

First I'll start off with the Mayan ruins around Cancun. Of course when you go to Cancun you have to visit the historical sites of the Mayan civilization. Each location has so much information and beauty that it will be impossible for me to explain all of it here, but I will try as much as I can. I highly recommend everyone to go and visit at least once in your lives.

So the first place we went to was Chichen Itza. Chichen Itza is the most easily recognizable city developed by the Mayans. Chichen Itza has the largest games arena out of all the other spots. The Mayans used to play a game where they would hit a ball with a bat trying to get the ball into a hole on a wall around 20 feet up. (I really wish I had my pics so I can show you!) The cool part about this game was that every year they would have a sort of tournament in which each team would try and beat all the others. The team that ends up winning the tournament goes down in their history in a very simple way. The captain of the team would be sacrificed to their gods. Now a cool thing I learned was that human sacrifice did not come to the Mayans until the Tulocs came to their towns and basically 'conquered' them. So winning this game was one of the few ways to be have an honorable sacrifice. Normally a human sacrifice was reserved for their enemies. Thank God I wasn't their enemies!

Another cool point about Chichen Itza is their main structure. The building used to house the ruler of the city and was pretty massive. It also had a lot of significance which mainly corresponded to the Mayan Calendar. The Mayan calendar was pretty cool. It actually consisted of 2 different calendars that corresponded perfectly to predict eclipses. They had a lunar calendar which lasted 260 days. It was 13 months of 20 days each. The cool thing is that the 260 days corresponds to the womens reproduction cycle. If you notice 260 days is approximately how long it takes for a baby to be born, from inception to birth. Their second calendar was the lunar calendar which contained 365 days. This was 19 months of 20 days and 1 month with 5 days in it. The cool part is that the reason this last month only has 5 days in it is because it is seen as a bad month. The reason it is seen as bad is because it is the only 5 days out of the whole year that Venus cannot be seen from their point of view. And every 52 years the 2 cycles coincide. When they coincide is when an eclipse happens. Pretty cool!

Some other cool parts of Chichen Itza I will leave to you to find out when you go and visit yourself. I'll also mention that the entire place just looks absolutely beautiful. The concept that they were able to create all of these structures without the use of a wheel is amazing. I know that they egyptians did the same with the pyramids, but it still is amazing that humans could actually achieve such amazing feats. We also went to Tulum which was very beautiful also. Tulum was very cool mainly because you were able to see the buildings up close. There wasn't much information given to us at Tulum.

So the last thing I want to discuss is my gay clubbing experience down there. On the last night there I went to the gay club called 'Karamba.' The cool part is that it was in the city center itself. As in it wasn't anywhere near any of the hotels. Another cool part was that it was their comedy night and so they had a drag queen telling jokes all night long. I understood none of it, but it was pretty cool to be able to watch the whole thing happening. The music was also amazing and the hospitality there was great. I went there on my own of course and within 30 minutes a group of locals invited me to join their group and we hang out the whole time. They spoke really good English so my horrible Spanish was not used very much. The music at the club was also really good. There were only 2 problems the whole night. 1) There wasn't too much dancing happening. Of course I ended up dancing, but that's just the type of guy I am. 2) One of my drinks got spiked. Now this was mainly my fault and luckily nothing happened, but it was still a little worrisome.

So that is my experience in Cancun. I really enjoyed every minute and hope that one day I am able to go back during their amazing spring break time. I can only imagine how crazy and full that whole place is when it is packed with college students. I also realized that I need to work on my Spanish a lot, but that my Spanish is decent enough to get me by. I was able to have a whole conversation with the taxi driver on the way to the club. That's got to amount to something right!

Ravishingly,
-Aram the Garmo

Cancun Part 1

2008-07-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I don't have any of the pictures from Cancun, Mexico on my computer yet, but once I do I will upload a few of them up here so you can see the amazingness that is Cancun. Instead I will just talk about what I did in Cancun, and the random sites and such in the area.

Weather-wise Cancun took some getting used to. At first it was a little difficult to breathe due to the high humidity, but afterward you got used to it and it was normal. The heat was not unbearable like it is in Phoenix, and so it was nice to just walk around everywhere. We stayed at Moon Palace Resort right on the beach, but we never went into the beach. Since it was hurricane season, it was not safe enough for them to allow us to get into the ocean. That was for the better since I don't really like the ocean much anyways. So, instead, whenever we wanted to swim it was the swimming pools for us.

The first couple of days there we relaxed and learned the location. Within 2 hours I was already able to state which restaurants required formal clothes, which didn't, and the hours at which they were all open. All 17 of them. I was also able to name the time and location of a few of the resort sponsored activities that I was interested in participating in. We learned that everything on the resort was free (since we were at an all-inclusive resort). This meant that the restaurants were free, room service was free, the drinks were free, almost everything was free. This also meant you can eat whenever you want and however much you want. I automatically knew this was going to be a problem since I wasn't looking to gain weight on this trip so I would need to restrain myself from gorging.

The food at the place was actually quite good. Most of the time it was buffet style, but when it wasn't it felt like they were serving the buffet food to us anyway. In essence, even though there were 17 different restaurants, they all felt the same and seemed to have the same food. This was not very good, but at least it allowed for consistency. I personally liked my morning meal the best. It was a selection of 5 different fruits, a fruit smoothie, and a cup of tea. Also I'll occasionally have a slice of toast or eggs or something. Lunch and dinner was usually up for grabs, but I tried to keep it to one plate max and no desert. The sad part was that they had very limited salad options, and almost no vegetarian options. Very sad.

The activities were very exciting though. They had beach volleyball, salsa lessons, rumba lessons, jogging tours, guessing games, stretching, water aerobics, yoga, pilates, and other amazing things. I personally was the most interested in the yoga/pilates session early in the morning. So I got to drag my parents outside early morning to participate in yoga with me. It was so nice and refreshing. I really must say that I really like yoga. On the last day before leaving I participated in the stretching exercise also. I thought that was the most fun. I only found it on the last day and so I couldn't enjoy it on the other days, but the stretching was so much fun and worked on things I hadn't worked on in a while so it allowed me to enjoy my re-stretched body. It also was fun since the guy leading the stretching was a dancer and found out that I like to dance also and so he called me dancer the whole time. I actually felt pressured the whole time to be able to flex at least as far as he was the whole time (which I normally could), but when I couldn't he would goad me on and be like 'come on dancer.' That was funny. Oh, and random fact, he was 21. I feel like I've past my prime in dancing since I am so old, but I will still continue my passion. I feel young at heart.

I unfortunately must go now since I am busy getting my life ready for August. Come back tomorrow for the continuation of my Cancun trip. In it will be my talk about Mayan Ruins, and my gay clubbing experience!

Enthusiastically,
-Aram the Garmo

Another Change

2008-07-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

So since I am back from my trip to Europe I will be changing my blog title to reflect my new status. Also, the poll is still in effect and will be closing in 28 days, so if you want to have your say as to what my blog will feature as its main component please vote soon.

In the next couple of days I will be finishing up my recollections and talks about my trip to England and also my trip to Cancun, Mexico. Hopefully they will add a few days to my blog, which (now with a little free time) hopefully will start having more posts.

Publicity?

2008-07-11T22:00:00.000-07:00

So I was randomly scouring the internet and reading the random blogs I generally look at and I noticed something odd; for some reason another blog mentions mine! Now normally this occurs by one of my friends who is talking about me or something random, but the blog that mentions me is from someone I haven't even heard of! (Of course now I have and will be reading more of his material.) I've basically been mentioned in a blog post about Gay Armenians blogging which is sort of cool. I just didn't know that other people actually read my blog.

If you want to read the amazing post (done by: Onnik Krikorian) you can read it [here]. And to read more posts by Onnik Krikorian you can do so at his blog [here]. I'd also like to say thank you to Onnik for mentioning me in his post!

Happily,
-Aram the Garmo

Random Talk

2008-06-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

I just need to get my head cleared and so I am going to post some random thoughts on here. You can skip this post if you don't want to hear any of my stupid crazy thoughts.

So I was just watching the movie 'August Rush' and it made me bawl. I loved how the child didn't stop at anything to follow his music. He had no outside distractions to pull him away from the thing he loved and caused him extreme joy. And I am not talking about temporary moments of fleeting joy that is brought about by new and interesting things. I am talking about a passion so deep the thought of not being able to do it upsets you. You would rather die than not do it. You would choose it over food.

This concept was also shown to me in 'So you think you can dance' where a couple of girls lived their whole lives around dance. Everything they did would in some way help them in their pursuit for their passion.

And of course this helped me with my ideas on how I should pursue my life. I need to stop getting off track with my life. I need to decide which things in my life bring me absolute passion and follow them with all of my heart. I can no longer allow others to influence what I do. I can't let the latest trend stop me from doing the things I love.

The question then popped up, what is the passion that I should pursue. Time and time again the answer has been in front of my face, but I never noticed it. My absolute love in life is dance. I love to dance with all of my heart and body. Even to this day I don't know how I will survive a life in which I am not able to dance. I dread the day that I cannot dance anymore. Whenever I have visions of injury, I always wonder how I will continue to dance. So my first love is dance.

My second love is for maths. I will not stop my passion for maths in order to continue dance, and naturally I can do both at one time. It may hinder my life a little, but again I don't know what my life will be if I don't continue to learn about math and to help develop the subject further. And so I must continue to learn.

So with this new passion, I am unfortunately going to drift away from technology and the internet. I am moving away from web designing and logging every aspect of my life on the internet. I am going to stop worrying about continuing my education for teaching (even though I will continue school). I am going to stop everything and pursue the things that I love the most. And hopefully nothing will stop me.

With motivation,
Aram the Garmo

New Look!

2008-06-11T14:00:00.001-07:00

So I am in London right now and I won't be updating this almost at all. In fact the updates here will be at an all time low until around August time. Until then enjoy my brand new layout to my blog, and also take the time to vote on my poll on the right. Once I get back in track in August I will take your suggestions and begin to publish things as is wanted by my audience.

With much love,
-Aram the Garmo

Chinese Grocery Bags

2008-06-10T14:00:00.001-07:00

I always hear around me that China is bad. It seems there is always someone saying something bad about the policies that China employs. People look at China and only look at the bad policies and don't look at China when it actually does something beneficial and better than most of the world. People see the way China handles child labour, they way they handle global economy, the way it handles security, and the internet, and all of that stuff, but people turn a blind eye to the good things China does.

This was prompted by an article I read a couple of days ago from Reuters about something that I feel China is doing good on. In essence, the article is saying that China is trying to stop the selling of plastic bags. The article can be found [here]. Apparently, in order to help protect the environment China is trying to stop people from buying plastic bags. They started a law that basically makes it illegal to produce thin plastic bags, which is what is most commonly used in China, and that if a store does use plastic bags they must charge for it. They are hoping this will cause people to start using reusable bags and to maybe switch to paper bags.

I find this amazing. This is one of the first countries that I have heard to do this at this scale. I have heard of hundreds of cities that employ this, but not a country. I think it's funny how America points their fingers at China and says that they won't decrease their Carbon Emissions until China does. America is basically saying they aren't going to be environmentally friendly until China does. Well guess what America, China has started. When is America going to follow suit and actually take global warming seriously and start to issue laws in order to help protect the environment? When is America going to realise that the future of the world is green and not massive oil consumption? When is America going to change? Hopefully, in 2009.

Hopefully,
-Aram the Garmo

Farewell

2008-06-08T14:00:00.000-07:00

The countdown has begun to my final farewell to England. In less than 9 days I will be flying out of Heathrow on my way back to the U.S. I am seriously going to miss everyone here. I have yet to pack my stuff and that will be done in the next two days. Today I will visit people, and I will be going to London on Wednesday, which is also the day my grades come out. *nervous*.

My arrival in California is going to be a little weird I expect. In order to understand, I must describe a whole story. So I am having my dad make the track jackets for my fraternity again. This is around the third time that I have asked him to do it, so I didn't think anything of it. My brother though overheard from somewhere that my dad actually looked up the details to my fraternity. Which means that he knows that I am in a gay fraternity. Of course my brother only overheard it, so I don't know what my father knows exactly, but he could easily find out that I am gay. This may turn into a very awkward trip to LA especially if he asks anything. I'm prepared for any questions, and I am not coming out of the closet to him yet. The reason is because he currently has all of my stuff, and I know he doesn't like homosexuality and so I don't want all of my stuff getting stuck at his place. So I will wait until all of my stuff are at mine and then tell him, or maybe just never tell him. He isn't very worth it anyway.

So that is what is waiting for me in LA and I hope it all goes good. I have backups just in case something happens, but still nervous.

That is all for today, I will update some tomorrow (hopefully).

Nervously,
-Aram the Garmo

Sorry

2008-06-07T14:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not posting in FOREVER ... again! I was doing a lot of random stuff and visiting places such as Alton towers and Manchester. I will be putting up some posts in the coming days. I will hopefully have enough to cover my time while in London. If not then I may miss out on more posts. Sorry.

Sadly,
-Aram the Garmo

Dunkin Donuts vs. Terrorists?

2008-06-02T14:00:00.001-07:00

So I was looking through Google reader and noticed this article which made me disappointed in Dunkin Donuts. I found this story [here] and was put on by CNN.

Story Summary:
So basically this whole thing starts off with Dunkin Donuts creating an advertising campaign in order to sell their new drink, an iced coffee. The online ad had Rachel Ray, from 30-minute meals on the food channel, posing with the iced coffee and a fringed black and white scarf. [The picture is provided on the left. I took it from CNN, which apparently copied it from AP. So please don't sue!] Apparently Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin took the scarf to represent a kaffiyeh which is more commonly worn by Arabs. In his syndicated column, Malkin wrote "The kaffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad." At this point Dunkin Donuts decided to pull the advertising campaign because it did not want to look like it was supporting terrorism. Dunkin donuts even said that "absolutely no symbolism was intended." It had merely been a costuming choice.

This makes me not want to eat at Dunkin Donuts anymore even though it was one of my favorite doughnut shops. How can you pull an ad just because one person thinks that a scarf represents terrorism? Let us remember that symbols change and are also used by many people for different purposes. There are tons of people out there who wear this traditional headscarf and don't go around killing people. There are some who wear the headscarf and aren't terrorists. How can you combine a whole group of people and call them terrorists just because they wear a certain type of scarf? What ever happened to the lesson, "don't judge a book by its cover?" We can also see how symbols can have very different meanings. Looking at the swastika, it had been used for years as a symbol for peace, and didn't have such an anti-Semitic ideology behind it until the Nazis incorporated it into their flag. A symbol can have multiple meanings. This is why it pisses me off that Dunkin Donuts pulled the ad. There was nothing wrong with it, and in fact I thought the scarf looked good on Rachel Ray.

All opinions are welcome.

Ideologically yours,
-Aram the Garmo

Eurovision

2008-06-01T14:00:00.001-07:00

So the Eurovision song contest happened a few days ago on 24 May. The entire show was fantastical and I think most of the countries did extremely well. A lot of people here in the UK believe that other countries mostly vote politically. But they use politically in the sense that the countries are neighbors to each other. Now I think this is partially true, but I don't think it has anything to do with politics. I think its because if you watch a performance and you see 2 really good performances and you have to choose which one you liked better, it is easier to choose the performance that comes from your neighbor or friend. And so I think it's mainly due to the fact that so many of the singers were amazing that it becomes really difficult to choose who you liked the best.

One sad thing that I noticed this year was the way in which Russia won. I do agree that Russia was really good, but I really think they won completely due to votingof neighbors rather than actual talent. The results ended up being:

Russia
Ukraine
Greece
Armenia
Norway

Now I feel the actual order should have been:

Ukraine
Armenia
Greece
Russia
Portugal

Now why I think this is actually the fun part. I am basing this off of the semifinals which were designed to lower the number of people voting for their neighbors and so 'politics' would not play into it. I'll show some fun statistics from the top 4 countries in order to prove my point:

Russia:

Place:	Semi-Final	Final
1st	2	7
2nd	2	5
3rd	5	5
4th	3	4
5th	2	6
6th	1	5
7th	2	1
8th	1	1
9th	1	0
10th	0	2
Total Votes	19	36
Total Score	135	272

Ukraine:

Semi-Final	Final
6	1
1	7
3	4
3	5
3	7
0	3
0	3
2	3
0	1
1	1
19	35
152	230

Greece:

Semi-Final	Final
4	6
3	1
3	6
3	2
1	3
2	5
2	3
1	6
0	3
0	3
19	37
156	218

Armenia:

Semi-Final	Final	Place:
5	8	1st
3	3	2nd
1	3	3rd
0	2	4th
2	2	5th
3	2	6th
1	1	7th
2	0	8th
2	3	9th
0	3	10th
19	27	Total Votes
139	199	Total Score

So as you can see, Russia got very unheavily biased during the finals. Also, Armenia lost many points due to the fact that many countries did not even vote for them. This is because Armenia is a small country that very many people have not heard of. I think this is what caused Armenia to lose in the end. They had the most number 1 votes in both the semi-final and in the final. They also were a very formidable opponent to everyone else even with getting at least 8 less votes than the rest of the top 4. (In comparison, Norway (who got 5th) had 7 more votes than Armenia!). So as you can see being a small country hurt Armenia greatly. Russia on the other hand, being a well-known superpower took that advantage and greatly boosted its chance of winning to the point of getting votes and also stealing almost all of Ukraine's number 1 votes and pushing Ukraine to second due to it. Greece got the most votes though and due to it did fairly well even if the Eastern bloc was against them.

In the end this shows that the eastern bloc is destined to win almost every Eurovision from here on out, but only the big countries that most people have heard of. Another key point is that non-eastern bloc countries will only get top 10 if they receive over 30 votes. So as it stands prediction of winners is very easy. My prediction for next year is that Ukraine wins. They are a well-known country with good singers, and also part of the Eastern Bloc.

Due to this weird system of voting, I have decided to not look at Eurovision as a song contest anymore. Instead I view it more as a concert of gay people. It a location where tons of gays hang out and watch as the campest singer from each country gets on stage and sings their heart out in as camp of a fashion as possible. So I personally can't wait for next year's Eurovision to see how camp it gets, and also to see the competition to Armenia. (I believe Armenia should have one this year but whatever :-p, that's just my Armenian bias).

So I will leave you with Armenia's performance at Eurovision.

Decidedly yours,
-Aram the Garmo

PS. I really wish I could have been one of those dancers! They are so dancing my style of dance, and I can do almost all of the moves except for 2 of them! I am so signing up to be a Eurovision dancer in a year or two!

Christmas Cards

2008-05-31T14:00:00.000-07:00

So every single year my mom begs us to make Christmas cards with a picture of the family on it. You know the ones where everyone poses in front of a Christmas tree and then the picture is sent out as the actual card rather than buying a card from the store. So while I was studying for exams I had this immense urge to create a Christmas card for the parents for this year. I used photoshop for the first time to make the card, and I think it looks really good. It is not amazing or anything, but it looks really good. It is still not completely done and it may also be altered in order to have the picture of the family be different or even have a different message, and basically just logistical issues, but other than that it is pretty much complete. Here are the images of the Christmas card that I made:


Front View	Back View

The project took me a little over 4 hours all together and I think it ended up looking really nice. I am extremely proud of myself and I can't wait to design more interesting creations using photoshop. It's really fun when you learn how to use it properly, and actually is not that complicated. It just has a unique way of doing things.

Make sure to comment on the pictures and tell me how you like them and if there is anything that I need to change in order to make them look better. If I change anything major I'll create a new post with the updated pictures.

In a holiday mood,
-Aram the Garmo

Graduation

2008-05-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

So the past couple of weeks have been filled with intensive studying sessions and also examinations in order to finish my final year as an undergraduate. When I get back to California I will have been graduated and will have my Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. I feel all smart.

As my exam results come out on 11 June, I figure I am going to try and make predictions as to what my grades will be for all of my classes depending on the amount of work I did and how well I did on the exam.

EDUC1002(Contexts for Learning): 50%
MATH3152(Coding Theory):65%
MATH2015(Analysis 2):55%
MATH2032(Rings, Polynomials, & Fields):80%
MATH3024(Homotopy and Surfaces):90%

I hope these are my final grades, because I need to pass all of my classes and average a 65% in order to fully qualify into UC Davis' Masters program. As of right now I have been conditionally excepted into UC Davis' teaching credential/masters program. I have already set up my living for next year, and can't wait to be back in Davis.

As I have more free time I will be discussing some topics from the past that I wanted to blog about, but never had time, and I will do this in the coming days. I will also hopefully get back into writing in this blog.

Enthusiastically,
-Aram the Garmo

Impossible Dreams

2008-05-17T14:00:00.000-07:00

It's sort of funny how people tend to have impossible dreams. It helps them move forward and be able to accomplish more than they ever would have been able to otherwise. But sometimes it can turn a person lethargic due to the fact they don't know how to accomplish their dream, or they have so many dreams they don't know which to pursue. I seem to fall under the latter category.

I feel like there are so many different things I want to accomplish in life there has got to be absolutely no time to ever actually do everything I want. I think not even 100 years is going to be enough to be able to do all I want, which is a sad yet realistic ideal. I blame most of it on my inability to sleep less than 9 hours a night. This takes a large chunk out of my day. I wish I was like normal humans who only needed around 7 hours of sleep, and like most teenagers who can survive on 2. But unfortuantely I am not and so I have less time to accomplish the impossible.

Now if you are like my dad, you will probably think that nothing is impossible. If you set your mind to it you can accomplish any goal you ever wanted. Now although I believe that for most things, I feel that there are limitations. An example, it is currently impossible to stand in the center of the Earth. That would be one dream that would literally be impossible. You would be dead by the time you got there. But my impossibility relies more on the fact that I have so many goals in life that I will never be able to accomplish all of them. To understand I will list most of my goals in life:

Teach a child math well enough for them to be the next 'genius' in mathematics.
Solve Fermat's last theorem using only theorems available to him.
Prove that there are infintely many twin primes.
Understand all topics of mathematics.
Understand all topics of Chemsitry.
Understand all topics of Physics.
Contribute something to the field of Physics.
Understand the ideas of most (famous) philosophers.
Perform in an actual dance company.
Write a science fiction book.
Create a website (that people actually visit).
Be listened to.
Get married.
Learn the following languages:
- Italian
- French
- German
- Swedish
- Arabic
- Chinese (Mandarin)
- Japanese
- Latin
- Greek
- Russian
Stay on top of video games.
Read over 100 books
And probably other things I can't remember right now

So as you can see my list is fairly long and will not ever be accomplished. I don't even know where to really begin. I feel like my life takes turns. One second my entire dream is to be a professional dancer, and then the next I'm back to being a computer geek, and then the next I'm on a teaching frenzy. It's like I jump from topic to topic never being able to accomplish anything in any one topic because of it. I don't know where to begin and so I don't know where to end. I also feel being social with friends hinders my goals. The only reason I feel they hinder me is when they want to go out clubbing. Now don't get me wrong, I love going clubbing, but it ends up wasting so much time. That is at least 5 hours of your life that you are ruining because you are going out. It helps that I prefer not to get drunk so that the next day I feel more refreshed, but clubbing takes a lot out of you. I wish sometimes it was easy to live without friends.

Well, those are my impossible dreams. My true goal in life is to accomplish just one of those. Which one, I have no idea, but I hope one day it will come to me.

Unpredictably yours,
-Aram the Garmo

CA Same-Sex Marriage ruling

2008-05-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

So this is just a quick note because I feel everyone should know this news. The Supreme Court of California ruled yesterday that banning homosexuals from marriage is discriminatory and therefore is unconstitutional. In essence, gays now have the right to marry. If you would like to hear about the report from an actual news agency [Reuters]. That is all I basically wanted to state for today. Have a good night!

Gayly,
-Aram the Garmo

Busy Life

2008-05-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

So I was talking to my friend Alberto the other day and I realised why I'm going crazy. The main reason is because I am absolutely not busy enough. I am going to compare what I do now on a daily basis as compared to what I used to do last year in order to show the difference in activity level.

This year:

Dance Expose
5 classes (semester system)
LGBT Society
Hanging out with friends
Applying for Masters Program
Finding somewhere to live next year

And that is pretty much all. Now compare it to just last year.

Last Year:

Telemark Dance Troupe
6 classes (quarter system)
LGBT Centre
President of a fraternity
Hanging out with friends
Finding out requisies for Teaching Credentials
Applying for Study Abroad in UK
Working around 15-20 hours per week
Participating in the Student Board of Directors for Sodexho
Working with a trade union to help them unionise
Going to Theatre performances for Dance Major

Now of course it isn't that huge of a difference, but it's enough to make me outrageously bored now, and with nothing to do. It has caused me to think a lot and also streamline my life even more, which also gives me more free time unfortunately.

I think this may be one of the reasons I can't wait to go back to California since life there is much more welcoming to being busy. I can easily get a job, and can easily make myself super busy super quickly. And with my new computer next year, I can easily restart playing video games once I do get more time.

So as for now, I try to make due with the time I have, but boredom causes me to not work which then causes me to get behind everything. I need more work stress in my life.

In complete boredom,
-Aram the Garmo

Shopping Spree

2008-05-12T14:00:00.000-07:00

So I was feeling down the other day due to some issues in my life, and I decided that it was time to do something about it. I had saved up £250 on the side for a rainy day, and so I decided that since I was in the middle of a downpour that I should look into using it. So I decided to take the money and participate in some retail therapy. For those who don't know, retail therapy is when you go out to a mall, or shopping district, and buy massive amounts of items, spending more money than you have, in order to feel better. The main way that retail therapy works is that you go out and you buy brand new clothes which make you look good. Since then you look good on the outside, you feel that you can newly conquer the world and get whatever you want due to your new amazing looks. This then creates a heightened experience of euphoria in which you feel good about yourself and whatever issues you were going through seem insignificant. Retail therapy usually works best after a break-up in order to make yourself know that it wasn't because of you bad looks that you broke-up.

So I decided retail therapy was in order in order to make myself feel better. I ended up buying some really good stuff, and almost wish I had more money and time in order to be able to buy even more stuff. But I am going to show all the things I bought cause they are pretty cool!


A shirt from River Island - £10	A shirt from Top Man - $14

Leather Dunlop bag from River Island - £20	Blue Dunlop bag from Top Man - £20

Converse Shoe from Office - £35

Dish Scrubber from Octopus for the Parents - £12	Penguin Flask from Octupus for the Parents - £18

So I hope you liked all of them. I didn't include any links to the websites because all the websites are flash based so I can't even directly link to any of them, but all of the images above are copyrighted by the respective companies they came from, just to let you all know :-p. I also bought stuff from H&M, but they don't put their clothing online for some stupid reason, so I couldn't get images of them, but I bought 2 shorts from them which was cool. I also ended up getting a haircut which was pretty cool.

So after spending around £200 I am feeling much better and feel very sexy. That is pretty much all for today. I'll chat laters!

Feeling Sexy,
-Aram the Garmo

Hidden Post - Loss of Hope

2008-05-09T03:42:00.003-07:00

Patience

2008-04-28T14:00:00.006-07:00

We always here people saying that patience is a virtue, and that everyone needs more patience. Patience is a very funny thing. It is one of those things you need, but how much of it? There is a such thing as too much patience, and when mixed with optimism it causes conflict.

Patience is generally a good thing. It allows us to not complain when we don't get our food right on time, or when we are stuck in traffic. Patience is also a key component in teaching as the teacher must wait for the student to reach their level of knowledge. Patience would allow the teacher to take the time to be able to teach the student at the pace that the student requires. An impatient teacher would not be beneficial to the student as then the teacher will teach things the student is not ready for, causing the student to no longer pay attention, which in the end creates apathy and hatred for the subject.

As I said earlier though, patience can sometimes tun into a bad thing. An example of this can be seen in some relationships. Say there is a guy and a girl and the two like each other. The guy is otherwise preoccupied such as a guy normally is. The guy also has family issues in which the girl helps him out and supports him the whole time. The closeness brings them together and they start seeing each other. But by choosing this guy the girl has caused anger to some of her friends and the guy is also too distracted with family issues. This is where the problem arises of what the girl should do. Being optimistic and patient may in the end hurt the girl more than she realises. She can sit there and wait forever for the guy to turn around and stop having family issues, or for her friends to realise that she is seriously not doing anything wrong. This patience though can sometimes hurt the girl so much that it will overburden them. This is why sometimes patience is not a necessarily good thing. It causes you to put yourself through torchure in the hopes that one day it will get better in the situation you are in, even though you can always just change the situation and reap benefits almost immediately.

So in the end I recommend that people stay being patient, but to not force themselves to be patient if by doing so causes them to harm themselves mentally, physically, emotionally or otherwise.

Impatiently,
-Aram the Garmo

The Bigger Picture

2008-04-27T14:00:00.002-07:00

It's sort of funny how sometimes we look at something and automatically assume we know everything about it. As an example take the very simple equation of 2+2. Now if I were to ask you what 2+2 is equal to, I am going to assume that more than 80% of the world would turn to me and say 4. My example is coming from a quote, that I am stealing from the BBC Website [found here], by John Hurt in which he said "There's no way of disproving that two plus two equals four, and therefore, take that to the ultimate, much more complicated areas, and you're dealing with something which is truthful."

Now wait one second John, we have a problem here. Again there are quite a few assumptions being made here. The first assumption is that we are even talking about maths. If I were to say tu and tu make a tutu so that it can be worn, now wouldn't that also partially logically make sense? And if you say it outloud it makes more sense. In this case it doesn't equal four, but instead an article of clothing. Just for arguments sake we will assume he was in fact talking about maths and that all those in the conversation knew that. Then I quickly notice another major assumption he is making, that we are talking base 10. If we are talking base 2, such as would be used in computer science, then two plus two is equal to 100. (Or in written out form: 10 + 10 = 100). So again I am playing around with the usage of the words.

Now let us assume instead of saying the words, he actually wrote out that 2+2=4. In this case I can no longer use the previous two arguments, but I can STILL find that he is assuming even more things. He is assuming that we are still talking in base 10! Just for kicks pretend we are in base 3. Again I can write out quickly that 2+2=11, not 4. And if we take away the whole concept of bases, then I can still show another assumption! Assume you are in the field of integers modulo 4. Then we get the equation that 2+2=0.

It is not John's fault that he assumed all of this because we all make assumptions every single day of our lives. Assumptions are what help us get through the day without having to explain every single tiny aspect of our lives. But sometimes assumptions can be very bad. An assumption turns bad when you are arguing with someone and to you it seems like they understand you but are refusing to listen. I have seen this so many times it pains me. I think as humans when we start to argue we need to take a step back from the situation and be able to look at the argument from the other person's perspective. Would we be doing the same thing? Why are we even arguing over this topic? I think you will find that if you try and think about what the other person is thinking, you will find out that you were making a lot of assumptions about them understanding what you are trying to say.

Realise that everyone thinks differently and that we will never be able to understand the way another person thinks. We must try and understand in order to communicate better. I took a clip off of youtube.com that I personally liked that shows another example of this in the sense of a small young boy. Notice how his life was 'ruined' just because he thought in a different way and no one around him took the time to ask, 'how is he thinking?'

Conflicting Values

2008-04-23T14:00:00.000-07:00

So I will try and update a few times a week from now on. And it will always be updating at 22:00. This one is a tad bit late, but my dinner took longer to make than I expected.

Today, my blog is not going to be about words. It's a picture that I drew. It is basically me currently. It is not an amazing drawing or picture, but I feel it is good enough to upload. Hope you enjoy it. (click on it to enlarge it)

Artistically,
-Aram the Garmo