SKI TRIP, part 7 - Five friends in the snow

Quizzing Gagik, virtually everyone at the company is his age. The oldest is is the 45 yr old boss. A woman, this probably explains why the company has a maternity leave policy---I am guessing that one was not hard to get past the Canadian bosses! (They may not even have thought is was an option.) And the number of women at the company is near parity.

We went up the mountain, walked through the snow on Sunday, had meals at the hotel resturant, as part of the package. Besides Smbat's sister, who I chatted with quite a bit, I also met both a Lebenese, and a Syrian. Part of the Armenian diaspora, claiming a right of return. In both cases, I think their families were torn apart by the 1915 Genocide. 90 years later they and their families are still searching and seeking for a place to call home.

SKI TRIP, part 6 - When the chips are down, they are probably kopeks

Despite the economic downturn world-wide, their jobs are not yet imperiled. Well, the prices remain very low in Armenia. A current project, of great interest, is coding up a online-poker game. Not cutting edge, but all the other ones out there cost more money than it costs for them to program it. They are doing it for a social networking site (not FB, btw), not a gambling website. Chips will be just bragging rights or something.

So, poker is the game of choice. We played Texas Hold-em using Soviet 3-kopek coins as chips! (Talk about cultural dislocations....) These coins were pretty old, with many of them depicting a statute of Lenin, arm raised majestically. I have no idea where they came from.

It was quite interesting to see the generational changes. The drinking party has also changed: There was very little vodka, NO armenian brandy. One item included was a peculiarly russian riff on a margarita. At about 11pm, there was a loud and
extended discussion about how to solve one of the especially annoying logical puzzles involving islanders who are implausibly rationalists, and faced with some equally implausible life or death decision. There was more than enough brain power left to solve this thing. It ended at midnight, after a few frenzied minutes of Armenian dancing.

Not their father's drinking party, that is for sure.

old Russian 3-kopek coins

SKI TRIP, Part 5 - Gagik getting it the face from Smbat. Some things need no translation...

The employees and their guests were really nice to each other, (see the snow pics I took.)

And I met and talked with some of them. (I think all knew english, but speaking english is work, and foreigners are no longer the complete oddity, as when I first came eight years ago. Ahh, the good old days!)

In any case, I got the clear impression that the TV series "The Office" would not directly translate.

SKI TRIP, Part 2 - In front of the Tsaghkadzor church

"I was invited by Gagik Amirkhanyan to spend the weekend at the local ski resort of Tsaghkadzor, 60 km outside of Yerevan. This is a nice place, a few hundred meters "above Yerevan, at the base of a 4500 meter mountain. I have been there in September, but never had seen the snow."

In front of the Tsaghkadzor church, originally uploaded by _ML.