Nine millions bicycles

Every time I see Sevada, no matter how long it’s been and how much catching up it involves, our conversations always end up with discussion of music - about how we can no longer bring ourselves to listen to Zeppelin; about the immortality of the Stones and the fact that Mick Jagger might just as well be the sexiest man alive; about the merits and demerits of the new U2 album; about our lack of interest in “sad bastard” music and how instead of falling for the next generic alternative band number one hundred and eleventy six, we are now slowly switching towards the mellow, more ear pleasing tunes of the newly found and (relatively) less famous and nonetheless favorite artists of ours… These type of discussions inevitably lead to grand music swaps of sorts, although long gone are the days when we’d trade Sonic Youth for Pearl Jam (! Sonic Youth, by the way, sucks. I don’t know what business I had listening to it in the first place).

Sevada seems to be into chick music these days. I am not a particularly big fan of chick music – too loaded, too emotionally charged for me. But then, sometimes there is just that one song that is so perfect in its simplicity and so harmoniously melodic that I can’t stop listening to it over and over and over again…

More on Katie Melua here.

Oh the wonderful world of possibilities

Sometimes I wish I could get a contractor job with the State Department and move to Armenia on some kind of a foreign policy “mission”, taking the boy along with me, and he would teach history to the embassy brats and do whatever else historians do when they are in a country full of history, and we would live the good life of pretentious expats and scout out neighboring Georgia, Turkey and Russia on long weekends…


At other times I want to just say “Fuck it” and apply to the Math PhD program here at VCU and stay in Richmond forever (or at least for the foreseeable future) without having to move or think about anything else but being happy and content… But then they tell me stuff like “You could do better than VCU. You should try to do better than VCU,” and that makes me want to smack people in the head because the fact that a VCU professor would tell me to go to a “better” school appears to me somewhat disturbing…


I know that between these two options there is a world of other, infinitely many possibilities. I also seem to have a much better idea than I did before about where I’d like to be in the next five/ten years. And yet, even though the shortest distance between point A and point B is always a straight line, that’s not how things usually work out for me, as far as choices are concerned… And this is just a tiny glimpse of the kind of an ongoing debate I have been having with myself that I am sure will be reappearing here on a more or less regular basis.


I do find it rather ironic that of all subjects in the world I chose the one that deals with decisions and choices while being the worst type of person whenever decision making is concerned. I wonder whether I need to really see someone about this…

A gentle reminder (to myself) about the importance of staying humble

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

Kurt Vonnegut

In about an hour I will be heading to class and life, as I have grown to know it during the past couple of months, will never be the same. Here's to the end of my summer indolence and to finally starting to have a thing or two accomplished. Frankly, it was starting to get a bit ridiculous around here.

On birthdays and things...

There’s a part in my favorite childhood book where Smidge and Karlson are trying to split a peach. They need a knife to cut the peach in half and before Smidge can fetch it from the kitchen, Karlson quickly finishes the peach and hands him what he calls the best part of the fruit– the big and sticky pit.

‘I always want you to have the best bit,’ he says. ‘If you plant this pit, you’ll get a whole peach tree stuffed full of peaches. You’ve got to admit I’m the world’s kindest Karlson, not making a fuss even though I only got one miserable little peach… A whole big peach tree! Think of that! At your fiftieth birthday party you’ll be able to give every last guest a peach for dessert, won’t that be nice?’

This has long become one of the favorite skits of my family. Recently, as my brother handed me the sticky pit of the peach that we were enjoying one afternoon, I caught myself thinking about how lovely it would be to have a peach tree on one's fiftieth birthday. “Let’s try to figure out when we’re going to celebrate our fiftieth birthdays,” I said, without putting much thought to what I was saying. “What an idiot you are,” said my brother before I realized what a retarded thing I had just said. “We’ll celebrate them tomorrow, how about that?” he continued, bursting into laughter. This is the part where those of my readers who think that I have even an ounce of intelligence are kindly asked to reassess their prior beliefs…

***

I was born on a cold Thursday, ten days after John Lennon was shot (you do the math). Nothing particularly significant about the day, except that it was the day when my grandfather got his license suspended when trying to rush my mother to the hospital. A day before my birth doctors had reassured my mother that I wouldn’t be due until a week after New Year’s. And were they all wrong! It is also worthy to note that I was supposed (expected) to be a boy. In fact, they were so sure about it that nobody entertained the fact that there’s a fifty percent chance of it NOT happening and when I came out of the womb without a penis, everybody assumed that it (the penis) got lost in the dark and murky corners of the birth canal. And since nobody had bothered to come up with a suitable name for a girl, for the first couple of months everybody called me Bob (or so they say). Eventually my mother named me Shushanika after her grandmother who wasn’t really her grandmother in biological sense, but that’s an entirely different story altogether.

I was never particularly fond of my birthday. And the older I grew, the more apathetic I became about the whole thing. It’s in an awkward time of year – cold and crappy. It’s a week before Christmas when the last thing one needs is to worry about celebrating a birthday. As long as I have been in school, my birthday has been during the most inappropriate time of the semester – right amidst the finals. Add to that the fact that I’m not usually big on birthday planning and you got the most boring birthday one could possible have year in year out. I am not sure whether it’s the lack of planning that makes me feel so apathetic on the day of my birthday or the other way around, but the long short of it is that I HATE THE TIME OF YEAR THAT I WAS BORN. I don’t think I could be more emphatic about it.

To correct what I perceive as fundamental injustice of birthday deprivation, I have decided to celebrate my birthday any day I want and while I’m at it, why not have not one, but SEVERAL birthdays throughout the year? “Great!” thinks the boy “now I have that many more occasions to completely fuck this up,” as he tries to convince me that there’s nothing wrong with the day I was born and that I can’t just randomly have a birthday whenever the hell I want. So for those of you who have a problem with the term “birthday”, you can call these days “Nika Days”, “Nika Appreciation Days” or whatever have you, as long as there are red balloons involved.

So today is one of those days when I let myself and others around me “appreciate” the fact that I, indeed, exist. This is actually the main idea behind the whole thing – celebration of being rather than becoming. After all, what’s the point of it all if I can’t indulge in occasional frivolity like this? And if you’re looking for a way to show your own appreciation, feel free to have a cupcake or two in my honor, today or any other day you want.

To Whom It May Concern: It's Hot and Humid. A Quiet Richmond Afternoon

And since I can't seem to concentrate enough to produce any useful content of my own, below is a list of links that may catch your attention for the time being:

• I just returned from a trip to Colonial Williamsburg. I can't believe I have lived in Virginia for as long as I have and never visited Williamsburg until now. Some of the pictures have been posted on Flickr account that I have been neglecting for way too long.

• Letter From Tbilisi - it's good to know that someone was finally able to see that Georgia's last year's shenanigans were not only a hot-headed military and strategic mistake, but would also have long-lasting political and economic repercussions on the future of the country. Lets hope that not every Georgetown educated imbecile is in charge of a country. On the second thought - the world might have been an entirely different place now had it not often been the case.

• The financial crisis finally arrives in Armenia, looks around and says: "Has someone already been here before me?"

• On a brighter note - it's good to know that somewhere on the East Coast they make good coffee worthy of such praise. The "drizzle" at Starbucks is utterly undrinkable these days.

• Speaking of coffee - this is how real Armenian coffee is made (Armenian, and not Turkish, I said). And while we're at it, let me give you my own recipe for an absolutely divine version of the drink. Get bulk coffee and grind it at your local grocery store choosing the finest grind (either Turkish or Espresso). I suggest you chose lighter to medium roasts, since the coffee will turn out rather rich and thick. You can also experiment with mixing different blends, including flavored ones (I normally use one third French Vanilla, two thirds Columbia ). Put two teaspoons of the finely ground coffee in an 8oz cup and pour boiled water into the cup, like you would if you were making instant coffee. Let it sit for two-three minutes - the water is too hot for immediate consumption anyway and it lets coffee grounds fully soak in water and settle on the bottom of the cup. Add sugar (and cream) to taste. Once the coffee grounds are fully settled, enjoy (stop drinking though when there's about an inch of coffee left in the cup, otherwise you'd be drinking the grounds). I have noticed that filtering, percolating and even French pressing gives coffee an unpleasant acidic and burnt taste, whereas this beverage turns out amazingly smooth and velvety. A word of warning though - this coffee is very strong, so don't go too crazy with it (a cup of coffee is known to have enough caffeine to kill a horse as you may know it).

• Twelve Weeks to Better Photos by Two Peas in a Bucket - a guide to digital photography that I find very useful as I am trying to figure out a thing or two about my new favorite toy. Time permitting, I am planning to post weekly updates of my digital experiments.

• How to care for Phalaenopsis, more commonly known as orchids found at any grocery store.

• What if loggers ran the world? What can I say - I'm a sucker for commercials in general and this one in particular.

• I really really love this post of Alphabet History.

• It's August and Everything after and although this year I don't have anything new to add to what I already said last year, I am staying true to the tradition and bringing my summers back.

I'm back in Richmond. Things are good. School starts in a week and I can hardly contain my excitement. I have a world of things that I need to take care of during this week:

• Readjust to a normal sleep schedule.
  
• Clean - the former tenant didn't really bother with it before moving out and I've been finding all kinds of dust and dirt in different corners of the apartment. Even though I am not the cleanest person in the world, things like that are really starting to bother me.
• Return the camera that I bought before my trip to Best Buy. This may be the sexiest little thing ever made, but the quality of the pictures (and the frustration that goes along with it) doesn't quite cut it. I think I am ready to leave the point and shoot behind and although I'm still not ready to commit to full blown SLRs, there is something better in between that I can settle for with my hard earned money (and no, I know nothing about photography - I just like taking pictures, good pictures, that is).
• Replenish my supply of quad ruled graph notebooks and gel pens (doing math without these two staples is next to impossible).
  
• Bring King Ludovik (the goldfish) home.
• Straighten a couple of bureaucratic messes that happened while I was gone.
  
• Have a birthday - just because birthdays always sounds like a good idea in general.

I still can't believe how fast this summer went by. It feels like it was only a week ago that I had turned in my last take home exam in Econometrics and was finally able to unwind. I had hardly slept the week before that - now the insanity is going to start all over again.

This semester is going to be harder than the previous ones. I am taking Analysis (otherwise known as Intro to Real Analysis); a graduate course in Ordinary Differential Equations; Panel and Non-Linear Methods in Econometrics and Advanced Macroeconomic Theory. Nerd heaven, in short. I hope I do not pass out from anxiety in the process.

An Open Letter to Yerevan Women

Sometimes I wish that the Fug Girls would move to Yerevan, because the city seems to be in desperate need of a style critic or two. Even if Yerevan isn’t quite the current target demographic of our dear girls, I can assure you that there’s plenty to rant about (just sit in one of the countless downtown sidewalk cafés for half an hour and blogging material is guaranteed for more than a month). But since the occurrence of such an event is highly unlikely and given the grave state of the affairs when it comes to fashion/style related issues of this town, I feel compelled to say what I'm going to say in a vain hope that perhaps someone will finally take notice and spread the word around.

Dear Yerevan women,

I think it’s high time we had a little chat. I wish things hadn’t gotten to this point, but alas. During my last visit to our lovely city I was happy to notice how beautiful, well-dressed and put together so many of you are. I think respect needs to be paid where it's due. And yet, the state of the affairs is such that at least two out of the three of you at any given point give me more than one reason for a “WFT?”, “Did the mirrors in your house stop working today?” and “I can’t believe you spent all this effort to make yourself look like a … hooker.”

It’s kind of sad, you know – sad, because I know that that’s not an accurate reflection of who you really are and because it makes this city feel like a place where fashion has gone awry. Of course I am no fashion critic and shouldn’t be in a position of giving style advice, but there are things that simply can’t go unnoticed. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? It’s the tight, ill-fitting, two-sizes-too-small pants; the see-through, lacey tops (I believe they are intended to be warn as lingerie); the fishnet leggings (really!); the stripper platform shoes; the pancake makeup and the headache inducing bizarre color combinations. Seriously, ladies, do you think that’s an appropriate outfit to leave the house in, let alone wear it to the office? Someone needs to tell you that skank is not the latest fashion trend; that the-less-the-better choice of makeup does a much better job enhancing you natural beauty (and you are, indeed, naturally very very pretty) and while I applaud your bravery to embrace bright colors, try not to look like an eye test in the meantime. You think you can handle this? Cause there is yet another long conversation to be held about venue and age appropriateness of your outfits, you know. Of course I do not expect all of you to turn into a Jackie O overnight (that may not be everyone’s cup of tea, anyway), but there’s got a be a thing or two that one can change in what seems to be the grand circus of Yerevan fashion scene. I have to admit though that that’s exactly what makes people watching in this town such a fun exercise. Bonus point if the Fat Bastard is around.

With best regards,

Your estranged compatriot

My brother listens to Elvis Presley in the morning before heading to work. I can’t think of a better way of staring the day…

***
My stay in Yerevan this time around has been very quiet and rather uneventful. Aside from family oriented stuff, my little vacation has been somewhat lacking (for the better of it) as compared with the previous years in the sense that, thank god, no weird shit happened during this trip. I consider it an upgrade. Blame the fact that at this day and age I do not think that bar hopping is going to give me anything that I haven’t seen or done before, blame the fact that I am way too old (and jaded), but these days I rather spend my evening drinking tea in a small company than take Peace Corps on a field trip to a local strip joint. So I apologize for the lack of juicy and eventful accounts on my trip. After all, the primary purpose of my visit was to spend time with my family and during the past three weeks I have been doing just that. It was important for me to spend as much time as I possibly could with the two people who I love more than anything in the world, instead of spending a night after another in some sketchy establishments, talking to strangers…

***

Even though I spent most of my time at home, I was able to notice a few of the changes that had taken place in Yerevan. In the past these changes were hostile and discordant; this time around they were no longer sharp and drastic - it appeared to me that life here has acquired some kind of regularity. People appeared quieter, more relaxed, each busy with their own lives, whereas I remember feeling in the past as if everyone, myself included, was living in some kind of silent hysteria – there was a kind of tension in the air, everyone was in a state of perpetual expectation... I found this new sense of ordinariness, this quality of regularity of life in Yerevan comforting and reassuring, even though I knew that I was no longer a part of it…

***

I will be leaving Yerevan in a few hours. Leaving this time around is going to be harder than ever, mainly because the older I become, the more connected I feel with my immediate family, yet the further I grow geographically. I have also come to realize that my life as I know it – school, work, the person who I love – it’s all in the States, yet a big and an equally important part – my family - is here in Armenia, miles and miles away. What makes it even harder is knowing that my brother will be leaving in a month as well, to start graduate school in Europe and my little family will be scattered all over the world. As an older sister, I am, of course, worried. But I am even more worried about my mother. And I will miss them both, very dearly.

Leaving Yerevan has never been easy, but this time around it is even harder…

It's been a week since I came to Yerevan

and during this time I have:

• Eaten my weight in tomatoes and apricots.

• Practically given up drinking carbonated beverages.

• Run out of the five packs of Marlboro Ultra Light Menthol that I brought with me and am not experimenting with brands available here, which is usually a hit or miss type of exercise. Menthol anything, let alone Ultra Light, is nowhere to be found in these whereabouts, so it’s usually Winston One, Kent or Davidoff White depending on the mood - the latter when I am feeling particularly fancy and pretentious.

• Somehow lost my favorite blue sapphire ring that my mother had given me on my 21^st birthday. I think the ring was lost sometime during the trip. Although it wasn’t an expensive ring per se, I had gotten really attached to it. All my efforts to find a suitable replacement at local gold markets proved to be fruitless, so I am now working on making a sketch of the old one so that a goldsmith can make a new one that comes as close as the one that I lost.

• Realized that running four miles in Richmond, where elevation is 50m above the sea level translates to 2.5 miles here before my muscles get all cramped up in 1200+ meter altitude. I am improving – very slowly, in hopes that this mock “altitude training” will give me that extra push that I need when I go back to Richmond. My endurance past the 4^th mile is practically non-existent.

• Spent insane amounts of time talking to my mother (our conversations can switch from petty gossip to the genetic significance of meiosis within a blink of an eye).

• Went to a small show at a local club to realize that the rock scene is no longer what it once used to be - perhaps for the better of it.
  

• Realized that despite the recent abundance of pub-like establishments, nothing will ever come close to replace Cheers.

• Discovered that the nightlife of this town has long lost its appeal that it once used to have on me.

Where I allow myself a couple of unpopular and politically incorrect utterances

A while ago, during that crazy year that I spent in Yerevan, a friend and I were having a conversation about feminism and women’s liberation in Armenia, during which I allowed myself a statement that might be perceived as arrogant, ignorant, unpopular and perhaps politically incorrect.

“Armenian women don’t want to be liberated. Those who do, have already done so, quietly and without the fuss.”

“So you’re not going to be a part of women’s march of burning bras and all?”

“No, of course not.”

On March 8 of this year (the International Women’s Day) The Women’s Resource Center of Armenia and a bunch of other NGO’s organized an event, or rather, a burial rite of the infamous “red apple” – a traditional and symbolic representation of women’s loss of virginity to their husbands. The Armenian tradition prohibits pre-marital sex (many societies do). The red apple symbolizes the blood that comes after a woman’s hymen breaks when she has her first intercourse with her husband. The tradition is that the morning after the event, the mother of the groom collects the sheets that are stained with that blood and hangs it outside her house for everyone to see that their bride is indeed a decent and honest woman. The groom’s family then sends a red apple to the bride’s family as a way of saying thank you for giving them a decent and honest woman. The participants of the burial rite claimed that this practice is demeaning to women and is a violation of their human rights.

Whether this tradition is barbaric, demeaning or whatever, you be the judge. The truth is, this particular event did not and never will put an end to this practice. I will go as far as say that perhaps there is even a need for this tradition to exist – a point that should be elaborated a bit. The tradition does exist. Many families choose to adhere to it – out of respect or even some sort of necessity. And yet, there are many women (and men) who have made a choice not to follow it out of their own personal beliefs and out of a same sort of necessity. But the latter do and have done so without the aforementioned fuss – it’s a personal choice, after all, that shouldn’t be turned into a spectacle. Giving it a feminist twist, projecting one’s own opinion on the tradition itself (even if it’s coming from a civil society organization) is no less arrogant than the statement that I had made a few years ago (I still choose to stand by it, for a matter of fact). Calling it demeaning, shameful, etc. to an extent where a bunch of artsy folk have to organize a burial rite is nothing but giving all women of this country a collective mentality of a victim. Armenian women are much better than that.

* Picture courtesy of Queering Yerevan

I love professors who post their syllabi early

Syllabus for Math 532, Section 001, Fall 2009

• Review of basic linear algebra and constant-coefficient differential equations
• Eigenvalues, eigenvectors and diagonalization
• Jordan canonical forms for non-diagonalizable matrices
• Powers and exponentials of matrices
• Systems of linear, homogeneous ordinary differential equations (ODEs) with constant coefficients
• Linear planar systems of ODEs
• The phase plane: Saddles, nodes, spirals, sources, sinks, etc...
• Stable, unstable and center subspaces

————– FIRST EXAM ————–

• Inhomogeneous systems
• Systems of nonlinear ODEs
• New issues: Existence, uniqueness, and maximal intervals of existence
• Stability of equilibria
• Linearization about hyperbolic equilibrium points, the Hartman-Grobman Theorem
• Stable and unstable manifolds, Stable Manifold Theorem
• Lyapunov functions and non-hyperbolic equilibria

————– SECOND EXAM ————–

• Periodic orbits and the Poincar´e-Bendixon Theorem
• Homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits
• Bifurcation theory: saddle-node, transcritical, pitchfork and Hopf
• Introduction to delay differential equations

I have been swooning over this all day. Needless to say, I can hardly contain my overflowing excitement! I fucking can't wait for this class to begin!!!!

***

"Women of this city seem to have gotten taller and prettier," he said, then after a pause, "or maybe it's a sign that I have grown old..."

Women may be taller and prettier than before, but you and I, my friend, are definitely getting old. And it's all downhill from here on.