Life in Armenia

[Federate]

Re: Life in Armenia

Armenia improves ranking in Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index

http://news.am/eng/news/183628.html

2011-128th
2012-105th
2013-94th

Arach Hayastan

Bracing myself for liberals to explain this as: "It's not that Armenia is improving, it's that everyone else is getting worse."

[Mher]

Re: Life in Armenia

Armenia improves ranking in Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index

http://news.am/eng/news/183628.html

2011-128th (score of 26)
2012-105th (score of 34)
2013-94th (score of 36)

Arach Hayastan

[Haykakan]

Re: Life in Armenia

Yeh there are plenty of people like Vrej1915 in Armenia and the diaspora who dwell on what is wrong and ignore what is right in this world.

[Federate]

Re: Life in Armenia

Wonderful reading with great comments . Thats what i want to read ,a change from within .

Agreed.

I recommend you guys read the post on the actual website as the post contains many hyperlinks that lead to interesting things as well as to check the comments he received from both optimists and pessimists.

[UrMistake]

Re: Life in Armenia

Wonderful reading with great comments . Thats what i want to read ,a change from within .

[Federate]

Re: Life in Armenia

Cheq Zzvel?
BY BAIRAMIAN JULY 8, 2013 MALAISE OPTIMISM POSITIVITY TAXI DRIVER YEREVAN

Taxicabs are tabloids on wheels. Their drivers will tell you all sorts of stories, some true, some not. Yerevan’s taxi drivers aren’t as talkative as the ones in New York or pretty much anywhere else I’ve encountered them. They don’t seem to care much where you come from, only where you’re going. And if you’re not a local, you may be inclined, by fear or interest, to attentively watch the road as your vessel comes painfully close to running over several people during the length of your trip instead of striking up a conversation. But, like any taxi, if they talk, the information you glean, if true, can be a window to the society of which they are the transporters.

Taxi in Yerevan's Republic Square. Credit: Vigen Hakhverdyan
Taxi in Yerevan’s Republic Square. Credit: Vigen Hakhverdyan

Alas, we happened upon a jolly-looking-though-not-so-jolly young fella who, as soon as we sat in the car, started musing angrily about the people walking up and down Northern Avenue on a warm evening rather than spending their time in a park surrounded by trees and wildlife. I recently spent two weeks exploring wilderness throughout California; there wasn’t much question which side of that question I ended up on. We made a connection so now we had to talk – otherwise it’d be too awkward – so we did.

He must have noticed from my accent that I’m not from Yerevan, which isn’t hard to do. He asked me how long it had been since we’d come to Yerevan and I responded by saying, “one week.” He didn’t even flinch, immediately following up with, «դեր չեք զզվե՞լ» (“aren’t you disgusted, yet?”). It was a suggested eventuality in the form of a question. I wasn’t sure how to respond except by honestly saying that I wasn’t yet disgusted but sarcastically gave him the opportunity to tell us what was disgusting so we could become disgusted, too. He sounded off his laundry list of problems that I’d heard a thousand times. Nothing is ever new – except he was younger than the others, maybe in his 30s. I was hopeful that he was an exception, that he was the fake tabloid story. I didn’t have high hopes but I kept an open mind.

A few days later, I was speaking with a younger man, probably in his late 20s. We were doing some work together so he asked me what I was doing in Armenia and I told him that this trip was for a project but that it’d please me to move here in the future. He quipped back with the most common of the anti-Armenia retorts: «Երկիրը երկիր չի» (literally, “the country is not a country”, i.e. the country is a worthless xxxxhole that doesn’t deserve to be lived in by anybody who has half a brain) accompanied by him emphatically telling me not to move.

If a tabloid story could be considered a thesis, it would need to be validated by a few different sources before taking it seriously. I had one corroboration that Armenia was better off dead. Another taxi ride later, I might have been convinced.

Seated for a long car ride in another taxi, just barely beyond urban Yerevan, the complaints started flowing with unhindered fury. Everything from how much Kirk Kerkorian never wants to have anything more to do with Armenia to the condition of the roads to how villagers weren’t picking all their apricots thus letting them go to waste.

It’s a national pastime, really, complaining. I’m not at all surprised so many people want to leave. If I had to listen to that my whole life, I can’t imagine I would think that living anywhere, possibly even a dog shelter, was better than Armenia.

Thesis confirmed. Mass disdain, dismissal, disgust.

But I won’t accept it. The results are not final.

–

I had given that first taxi driver a tip when paying him, which he thought was a mistake and commendably pointed out. I told him it wasn’t a mistake. What I didn’t tell him was that I was sure that he would eventually find a way out and that I was especially pleased that I had contributed to him leaving by giving him that extra 100 drams so he could abandon this place he disdained so much.

He, or any of the people I have met, could have talked about better things. There are great things going on, too: Ayb High School, Luys Foundation, AYF Youth Corps, Civilnet, Green Bean, urbanlabEVN, Tumo Center for Creative Technologies, Dilijan International School of Armenia, Gyumri Information Technologies Center, ONEArmenia. And a plethora of others. If not talk about these things, perhaps the scenery, or the food, or that hundreds of children can run around soaking random people with water throughout the country, unattended by their parents, with nary a worry about their safety. We can talk about these things but we choose to focus on self-pity instead.

–

Young people who are supposed to compose the vivacious, sprightly, hopeful core of any country are repeating the same tired aphorisms of their parents. After many years of reflecting on this malaise, there is not one thing that I can point to that I consider valid: not that there are no jobs, not that the government is corrupt, not that the prices have gone up, not that the trash is not being collected. These problems aren’t exclusive to Armenia, it’s just that Armenians think that they are. What’s more, there is no interest by most in solving the problems. Somehow, invariably, the onus is always upon somebody else to figure things out and make them better. If that doesn’t happen, time to head for the hills (of Glendale).

Fact is, in Glendale, and whatever other place refugees (because that’s what people who leave a place they no longer feel at home are called) from Armenia settle outside of Armenia, this mentality hardly changes. The complaints remain. The nuclear physicist lamenting that he’s driving a taxi in Yerevan will be doing the same lamenting in Santa Monica except to someone who has a harder time understanding him.

–

America wasn’t perfect. People did xxxx. When there were no jobs, they created them. When the government was corrupt (I only wrote that in the past tense for effect), they organized and demanded accountability. When the prices went up, they toughed it out (side note: inflation is a well-known concept in this thing called economics and every time that the prices go up in Armenia, it’s not a governmental conspiracy, it might just happen, you know, just like that. That’s why I can’t buy a Double-Double for 50 cents as portrayed in those goddamn posters they have at every In-N-Out surely put there to mock you). When the trash wasn’t picked up, they threw it in the Hudson River and thus created the largest landfill in human history and called it New Jersey – and they even started living on it!

I’m only using America’s example because that’s the one with which I’m most familiar. But there are others. When English people realized how much England sucked, they didn’t relocate to Spain (although they decided to lay claim to a rock named Gibraltar just to piss them off), they conquered most of the world so they could create the most important city on earth and vacation in exotic places like India, Kenya, and the Americas without having to get a visa. When the Japanese realized they were living on a rocky strip of land that was useless in every way a normal country would need to operate, they started inventing things like samurai, Toyota, and sushi and are now able to buy whatever they want. Even Canadians, who long ago had to helplessly reconcile being an American territory, somehow resist the urge to join the mainland and keep working on being the most socialist state of the Union.

–

There is surely someone reading this and thinking that it’s so easy for me, a Diasporan, to so freely criticize the decisions of these suffering people from my comfortable Diasporan life (lol). First, I’m commentating on this as an interested party. That is, I live in Glendale and that is where at least 50% of emigrants from Armenia end up so I definitely have a chicken in this fight. Second, I’m commenting as an observer and a student of politics, history, and societies. Armenians need to realize that their problems are not unique and they are not the worst in the world and that if they’re going to leave Armenia en masse, they should be honest about the real reason they are doing so: they do not love the country. Until they’re in Glendale, of course, which is when the xxxxxing starts about America and reminiscing starts about the wonderfulness of Garabi Leech, Opera, and Cascade. Which is kind of like belittling and cursing your spouse until you get a divorce then, when you’re with your new partner, extolling your ex’s virtues.

Let’s put it all out on the table: when one loves something (a nation, perhaps) or someone, they commit to them, come hell or high water, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, till death does them part. If hell, sickness, and poverty dissuade you from your love, then it wasn’t love to begin with and it’s not love once you leave and profess it.

I hate to air dirty laundry but this is one of those things. Our nation has been overcome by naysayers and it needs to stop. The eternally depressed and depressing don’t get a pass because they think their life (and I guess no one else’s) blows a fat one.

The people who live here in Armenia who are working so hard to make this place better should not have to be subjected to the incessant morass of the depressed masses. Their work is already difficult. The young people who are optimistic about their country shouldn’t have their beliefs tested by the half-witted uninterested at such a young age. These people have to deal with unemployment, corruption, rising prices, sporadic trash cleanup. The last thing they need is someone telling them all the things that are going wrong in the country. After all, they must know – they are the ones trying to make it better.

Instead of asking if we are yet disgusted of this country, let’s ask another question: Բողոքելո՛ւց դեր չեք զզվե՞լ:

http://thegampr.com/2013/07/08/cheq-zzvel-3/

[Haykakan]

Re: Life in Armenia

Dual Survival: Man and Church in the Lake Van Region of Historic Armenia

http://www.armenianweekly.com/2013/10/26/dual-survival-man-and-church-in-the-lake-van-region-of-historic-armenia/

By Matthew Karanian // October 26, 2013

Story and photos by Mathhew Karanian
(Special to the Armenian Weekly)

If you've ever watched a reality survival show on television - one of
those shows were a couple of adventurers get dropped off in a desert
with instructions to survive long enough to make it back home - then you
might be able to conjure up an image of me hiking in Historic Armenia.

I was on the shore of Lake Van, researching and photographing the
Armenian churches of the region.

My goal for this day was modest: hike to the ancient Armenian
monastery of St. Thomas, a monastery that looks older than the
treeless mountain that it's perched upon. Survival was the last thing
on my mind.

But my priority for the day changed when I was about mid-way through
the 90-minute trek to the top.

The 10th to 11th century Armenian Monastery of St. Thomas rests on a
hilltop above the southeast shore of Lake Van. (Photo by Matthew
Karanian)

This was roughly about the same time that my supply of water ran out.
Remember, survival had been the last thing on my mind. So, of course I
hadn't carried any water.

The mid-day temperature was pushing closer to 100 degrees, and I had
begun to reminisce about better times - like the time, earlier that day,
when the mercury hadn't yet risen above 90.



The mid-day temperature was pushing closer to 100 degrees, and I had
begun to reminisce about better times - like the time, earlier that day,
when the mercury hadn't yet risen above 90. (Photo by Matthew
Karanian)

I still wanted to see the church.

But now that the risks of dehydration and heat stroke had been added
to my itinerary, my priority was to make it back down the mountain. I
wanted it all! I wanted to see the church, and I also wanted to
survive.

I was hiking with Khatchig Mouradian, the Editor of the Armenian
Weekly. He and I had the same goals. Better yet, he also had some
water. He offered me half of what remained in his bottle. We were
brothers in arms, and would share our water supply, 50-50. I reached
for the bottle. It contained about two ounces of warm water.

I was incredulous. `Really, Khatchig, I can only have one ounce?'

Yes, he replied. `We will need the rest to survive.'

I took a drink, and we continued our ascent.

There were no trees to shelter us from the sun as we scrambled up the
mountain, but every two or three hundred feet there was some dwarf
scrub that cast just enough shade to offer a bit of relief from the
heat. We dashed from brush to brush, like soldiers in battle, until we
had reached the monastic walls of St. Thomas.

We dashed from brush to brush, like soldiers in battle, until we had
reached the monastic walls of St. Thomas. (Photo by Matthew Karanian)

We discovered that the survival of the church was also at risk.

A Remote Treasure

The buildings of St. Thomas were constructed in the tenth and eleventh
centuries, and are stoically sited on a mountaintop overlooking the
southeast shore of Lake Van. The main surviving building, the
cathedral, is about one thousand years old.

The current peril to the structure is caused, at least in part, by
local people who are acting upon a long-discredited myth. Some of the
Kurds who now live in Historic Armenia believe, incorrectly, that
there is buried treasure at Armenian churches.

And so some of these treasure seekers dig for gold and xxxels wherever
they see the ruins of an Armenian site. Judging from what I observed
at St Thomas last month, some people appear to have believed that
there was treasure hidden in the ground beneath this church, too.

We saw holes dug in the earth near the foundation, at the entrance,
and in the church yard. These excavations have undermined the
foundation of St. Thomas, and similar burrowing undermines other
churches, such as the nearby Karmravank, where treasure hunters have
also sought supposedly long lost gold.

The ruins of Karmravank, on the southeast shore of Lake Van, a short
distance from the Monastery of St. Thomas. (Photo by Matthew Karanian)

According to the discredited myth, Armenians buried gold and other
valuables beneath the altars and near the points of entry to their
churches. Ask a Kurdish villager if the Armenians supposedly did this
while fleeing during the Genocide, or whether they buried their gold
as a matter of routine in the years before the Genocide, and they are
apt to just shrug their shoulders.

The odds of buying a winning lottery ticket are better than the odds
of finding buried treasure at an Armenian church, because the odds of
finding the buried treasure are zero. There's no treasure. But people
still buy lotto and they still dig for treasure.

Even if the legend was true, which it isn't, any treasure would surely
have been dug up many years ago. Still, logic and truth have not
deterred treasure hunters, even now, a century after the Armenians
were expelled from this area.

As a result, the only treasures that really exist in places such as
St. Thomas and at nearby Karmravank - the sacred structures
themselves - are at risk of being destroyed.

We made it safely back down the mountainside, and found plenty of
shade and water. We lived to share the story of yet another ancient
Armenian site that may not survive.



Matthew Karanian is an author and attorney, and he practices law in
Pasadena, Calif. He has spent several years working in Armenia as
both law professor and Associate Dean at the American University of
Armenia. His latest book is `Armenia and Karabakh: The Stone Garden
Travel Guide. He is currently working on a new book about Historic
Armenia that will be published in 2015. Book details at
www.ArmeniaTravelGuide.com and at www.Amazon.com

[Haykakan]

Re: Life in Armenia

THE MEN FROM MOUSH

Maria Titizian

BY MARIA TITIZIAN

Developing complex models and postulating theories, writing academic
papers, organizing high-level conferences and advancing policies
to address some of the most pressing issues facing the Armenian
nation is typically the method we employ. We discuss and analyze,
argue incessantly, lose our composure in the melee of verbal and
pseudo-intellectual traffic and usually end up nowhere.

One of the most crippling problems in contemporary Armenian life is
the divide or disconnect between our two selves - the homeland and
the Diaspora. We have yet to find the right formula that will help
us to see the world and ourselves with a common vision and end game.

Sometimes the answers are so very simple. Case in point, the men
from Moush.

I have had many incredible experiences in Armenia. A few nights ago,
I was blessed to experience yet another. Friends visiting from abroad
wanted to take a group of us out for their last night in Yerevan. They
had one condition - the restaurant should have a band that played
traditional Armenian instruments. You would think that this wouldn't
be a problem in the homeland but sometimes it is. Nonetheless, we
discussed the list of possibilities and agreed to go to a restaurant
called Noyan Tapan.

My girlfriend was commissioned with making the reservations. She
called me early Saturday morning to say that the arrangements were
made and we should all be at the restaurant at 7:30. That night,
my husband and I picked up some of the guests and made our way down
to the city. En route, we got a phone call to say that the plans had
changed and we were to go to another restaurant, Ayas, instead. It's
Armenia, we don't ask a lot of questions, we just change our route.

However, before we got to Ayas, we received yet another call to say
that there were no tables available at Ayas.

Imagine if you will the situation... three cars full of repatriates,
plus a couple of tourists, trying to figure out where to go to listen
to some traditional Armenian music live. So, as we were driving the
streets of Yerevan, we were thinking about alternative locations. A
few minutes later another call was received to say that Hin Yerevan
had an available table for our group. There was a collective groan
in the car as we protested but we didn't have much of a choice. Our
hosts wanted a place with traditional Armenian music, so off we went.

When we arrived we inquired as to why Noyan Tapan fell through. This
is how the story goes - my friend calls Spyur, an information service,
to get the number for the restaurant. The operator at Spyur gives
her the number for Noyan Tun, not Noyan Tapan and when they arrive
at Noyan Tapan, they realize it has closed down. My friend calls the
number she's gotten from Spyur, purportedly for Noyan Tapan, only to
realize that she's made reservations at Noyan Tun instead. Because
Noyan Tun doesn't have live music, the erroneously made reservations
are cancelled.

So we arrived at Hin Yerevan, not looking forward to it because we had
had some bad experiences there but we kept an open mind. We walked
in, the place was full save for our table and the band was playing
the right kind of music. So far, so good. We said things happen for
a reason but we had no idea they really do.

The evening started out pleasant enough, the food was mediocre,
the music was just fine, and the alcohol was flowing.

Right next to our table was a group of men, singing, drinking,
toasting and making requests for songs. We kept hearing toasts to
Moush, the ancient Armenian city which is now in present-day Turkey.

They were all Mshetsis. My husband, who was at this point in high
spirits, no pun intended, decided to walk over to their table and drink
a toast to Moush and told the group of men that one day we would all
return there. Well, this was the ice breaker. For the next several
hours the two tables became one, literally and figuratively. Their
table, Hayastantsis whose grandfathers were from Moush, and our table,
repatriates who had been living in the homeland for more than a decade
and some Diaspora tourists.

We sang together, danced together, made toasts together and in the
end, some even cried together. It will remain one of the highlights
of my life here in Armenia for so many reasons. These men who called
themselves Mshetsis had never been to Moush. The ancestry of our
table was a mixture from Kharpert, Aynteb, Musa Ler, Yozgat, Kessab
and Garin, places in Western Armenia where our grandparents were from
but which most of us hadn't been to before either.

It didn't matter and yet it did.

Those connections to our ghostly past, to the places on maps which no
longer said Armenia, meant something to us. It meant that our lineage
didn't end or begin with 1915 when we were driven from those lands. It
meant traditions and heritage and ties that could be traced back for
centuries if not millennia. It meant that we were all connected to
each other regardless of geography. It meant a fusion of Eastern and
Western Armenia and Armenians. The lines of division between homeland
and Diaspora blurred and we were just a group of Armenians singing,
laughing and dancing together.

The evening spent with the men from Moush taught all of us there
an important lesson - if you're Armenian, it doesn't matter where
you're born, what matters is what you do with that birthright and
how you decide to live your life. It reinforced the power of shared
memory and a rootedness to a particular place and most importantly,
it underscored how powerful human connections can be in forging
understanding, tolerance and comradery.

Luckily for us, the operator at Spyur inadvertently played an important
role in that journey of discovery.

http://asbarez.com/114756/the-men-from-moush/

[Haykakan]

Re: Life in Armenia

FREEDOM HOUSE CALLS ARMENIA A COUNTRY WITH FREE INTERNET

October 03, 2013 | 13:26

Freedom House called Armenia a country with free internet in its new
report "Freedom of the Net 2013".

In terms of obstacles to access Armenia got 8 points out of 25, in
terms of limits on content - 9 out of 35 and 12 points out of 40 on
violation of user rights.

The report says internet access in Armenia has significantly increased
over the past few years due to decreased cost of connectivity and
improved network coverage. At the same time, however, there have
been minimal efforts to improve community access to the internet and
digital literacy remains somewhat low, with television remaining the
predominant source by which people receive news and information.

The report indicates that since the incident in 2008, following the
presidential election, the government has engaged in minimal blocking
or deletion of online content.

The neighboring Georgia is also called a country with "free" internet,
unlike Turkey, Azerbaijan and Russia rated as "partly free".

Overall, only 17 countries have "free" internet according to the
report. Iceland tops the ranking followed by Estonia, Germany and
the U.S.

News from Armenia - NEWS.am

[Eddo211]

Re: Life in Armenia

Edit:

Posted in wrong thread