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

Suicidal Tendencies

2008-04-22T12:00:00.002-07:00

I was having an atypically bad day today and of course it caused me to start thinking about suicide which is weird considering I haven't thought about that in ages. I don't even know what in particular brought on this onset of crazy emotions, but I know how to deal with it and I am just waiting for the next day to hit so that I don't do anything stupid. But today I thought that since I am feeling in this mood, why not discuss suicidal tendencies?

So there are a lot of people worldwide who think about suicide as a valid option for escape from their deteriorating lives. They think that having no life must be better than living in this hell hole. I can occasionally understand their point of view considering that I was suicidal for a good portion of my life, and so I speak with utmost respect for them, but what I don't like is when other people go on about talking about suicide as the worst thing a person can do to themselves. I do not agree with that. I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with suicide. In the end it is the person who is taking their own life, and since it is their body, their mind, their life that they are destroying, I think it should be their decision if they kill themselves. I think it can also be pretty cool to know exactly when and how you are going to die because then at least you can prepare for it. You can fix all the broken ties and leave on a happy note rather than on a tragic unexpected note that generally occurs with most deaths.

Others will try and say that suicide is actually a horrible thing to go through. It is selfish to think that it is only affecting yourself and that you will be hurting all of those people in your life that truly love you and depend on you to get through their own day. I think this is the only valid point against suicide, but at the same time, it is a weird concept. By telling someone that everyone else would be sad if they kill themselves it is almost like peer pressuring them into not offing themselves. I think it's weird that this form of peer pressure is thought of as good, but when peer pressure is used to get someone to start smoking it suddenly negative. I thought the point was to be your own individual and not let others peer pressure you to do anything you don't want to, such as live. So that is why I think it is sort of weird considering this option even though it is the only valid one.

I think the worst thing though is that in the states it is actually illegal to try and kill yourself. This makes complete and logical sense. Someone thinks they have a shit life, so instead of trying to make their lives better we are going to ruin it by giving them a fine/throwing them in jail (don't know the actualy sentence, but know it's illegal). Now where does that make sense? Make a suicidal person's life more miserable. Yes, I believe everyone should do that! Does the U.S. government really think that some random law is going to stop people from killing themselves? When you are dead, laws no longer apply! I mean if the U.S. wants to send dead people to prison then they can, but I feel our prisons already have too many people in them.

Now there are of course also success stories in which someone attempts to kill themselves, fails, and then leads a life and they suddenly are happy they never killed themselves. Now these stories don't occur very often, and are very one sided. You hear tons of these stories, but you never hear of the stories of the people who try and kill themselves, fail, and then wish for the rest of their lives that they actually went through with it. That may be because they are too afraid to come out in the open. Suicide is so badly looked upon that people are afraid to talk about it openly. Just like death, which is what I think the biggest factor in all of this is.

I don't personally understand why so many people are afraid of death. Everyone will encounter death in their lifetimes and so it is ridiculous to be afraid of it and to want it to never happen. If you stop someone from killing themselves now, they will eventually die anyway! You can't keep someone alive forever, and I don't see why you would want to. Yes, I understand that people fear death because it is unknown. YOu may have your faith telling you what is going to happen after you die, but you don't truly know. There is no scientific way (currently) of finding out what is going to happen to yourself after you die. And so because of this we are afraid of it. In fact we are deathly afraid of it (pun intended). But I don't like that fear, instead I like to consider it a celebration. Instead of being sad that someone died, why not celebrate the life they had? Everyone has some bit of their life that must have been extraordinary to someone. Even serial killers must have some good portion of their lives that is interesting to someone else. So why not celebrate that they were here, had fun some of the time, effected people positively, and moved on into the next phase of existance called death. I think being sad at someone's death is actually very selfish. The only reason you are sad is because you are no longer going to have the opportunity to say that one thing that you wanted, or to hug them one last time, or to have their presence. Basically, you are sad because YOU wanted them to still be alive. That is a pretty selfish thing to want I must say. But I guess it is in the nature of people to be selfish, which again loops back around to people killing themselves, selfish.

So I may be sad that people die, or kill themselves, but I am not going to let that sadness grow. Death is the end of your life which is fun, but I don't want death to be a sad thing. Instead I feel it should be celebrated. And I feel if someone does kill themselves, it shouldn't be considered sinful, or 'bad', instead it should be considered honorary that the person had enough guts that they were able to actually kill themselves. It should be honoured like in the olden days when suicide was sometimes considered very honourable.

So I will let you all think about that one as I get myself prepared for a long night of massive depression and not wanting to talk to anyone and just wanting the day to be over, because my selfish needs of self-fulfillment are not done yet.

Suicidely yours,
-Aram the Garmo

Jealousy

2008-04-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

It seems that there are a lot of things to be jealous about in the world around us. We can be jealous of the super rich people out there who are able to buy anything they want without worrying how they'll be able to afford their next meal. We can be jealous of the super smart people who seem to have their brains prewired to be able to understand every single thing you tell them. We tend to be jealous of people who have something, especially when that something is what we want.

Is jealousy a good thing though? I personally can't see any form of jealousy that can be taken into a good form. If you are jealous of the rich, most people will just try and degrade the rich in order to 'bring them down to your level.' This can be done by causing a scandal, revealing secrets, or being extremely happy when something goes bad with the rich. You can also be jealous because no matter how you attempt to get that crazy amount of money, it always seems out of your grasp. But do you have the right to be jealous? Are you not happy that the other person was able to become rich? Are you not excited that they do not have to worry about feeding their family anymore? You may turn around and say that you really don't care because you don't know the person, but how about if you did?! If your best friend suddenly won the lotto, would you be jealous of them, and is that jealousy rightly placed? I feel instead of being jealous, you should be proud that your friend no longer needs to worry about their life. That, as long as the money was used properly, your friend will be able to support their family and actually pursue the things they desire. Isn't that something that we all dream of?

How about jealousy of the really smart? This is probably where I fit in, because I tend to be jealous of the really smart. But do we have the right to be jealous of the knowledgable? Isn't the point of discovering new things in order to understand the universe a little better? Should it really matter who discovers the next smallest particle, or the newest theory in math? It may be hard to see those around you succeeding in academics, but is that a valid enough reason to be jealous of them? We are all put on the planet, and we all hope to learn. I feel we should be happy of the people who end up learning more than we do because then they may be able to further our understanding of the universe. That one day may turn into us becoming a much more sophisticated species and be able to do things we had never imagined before. The main reason, I feel, that we become jealous is that because we would like our names to be written down in history books instead of others' name.

So in essence my question is, is there a reason to ever be jealous and to actually act on it? I am not denying that people get jealous, but I am wondering if there is ever a valid reason to be jealous and then actually take that jealousy to an extreme (such as stealing from the rich, and keeping it from yourself; taking ideas from the smart, and publishing it as your own; etc.). Is that ever permissable?

Inquisitively,
-Aram the Garmo

Aloneness

2008-04-15T11:04:00.004-07:00

[Note: I didn't know if I wanted this in my blog, but decided why not just throw it in, so it is backdated to the day I wrote it, and has not been edited, and obviously was never finished.]

I think life can sometimes be a funny thing. We begin our lives attached to one person, literally. We eat, breathe, drink, think, and do everything this other person does. We don't even know it until a few years later, but this person is our mother. From here we are attached to a unit called a family. This unit in most cases consists of a mother, a father, and occasionally siblings or grandparents. From here on you are considered part of a family and your every move is noticed. Every sound you make is heard, every step you take is stared at, every time you touched something you were glared at; everything was noticed. You had a whole family with you; you were not alone.

You slowly grow older and you become aware of everything you are doing. You go into a form of the real world called school. In school you realise there are other people in your age group! For some reason or another you choose others like you that have similar tastes. You call them your friends and you start to do everything together. Whenever your family wasn't there, your friends were, and vice versa. You always had somewhere to be with you; you were not alone.

Eventually you start growing hairs in unexpected places. The grownups call it puberty, but you call it awkwardness. Some get acne, and some get breasts. It is an awkward time, and so you begin to withdraw. At the same time you also begin to realise that you are your own human being and start to become unique. Usually you would rebel against your parents, and have friends doing it too. You start doing everything with your friends, and when you are home, you are secretly wishing you are back with your friends. Your family keeps wanting to stay in your life, but you push them away and keep only your friends, but as long as you have your friends, you are not alone.

From then on, you keep your friends for a while. Sometimes you may lose them all and go back to your family for support. Your family will take you with open arms. Sometimes your family rejects you and so you stick with your friends, who take you with open arms. In either case there is a form of humans that stick by you. They are the people you turn to in case of problems, questions, and other such things that may arise; you are not alone.

The question becomes, what happens if somewhere along the line this system fucks up? What happens if you are desperatly, and utterly alone, sometimes literally. When alone, the world sucks. It doesn't matter what the world throws at you, there is only you behind the bat. If it's something simple then you are easily able to get back on track and keep going. On the other hand if it is something large and unavoidable, then you have problems. Being alone there is no where you can turn for support, there is no helping hand for guidance, there is no one standing behind you helping with the bat. And due to this you may not be able to swing hard enough to hit the problem away. What do you do then?

That question is very difficult because it then depends on the person. If you were utterly alone, what would you do? And I don't mean fake aloneness where you think you are alone, but you truly have people there helping you out and you just forget them; I mean when something happens where you can't even talk to any of your friends because either you can't tell them, or they refuse to listen or are not in a capacity to listen, and you also can't talk to your family because they are otherwise distracted and won't come to you for anything. What do you do when you are literally alone and a hard problem is thrown in your face?

And if you say turn to a topic you enjoy and work on it, such as a hobby and such, then let me add a stipulation. Pretend you don't have a hobby, that most of the time you just sit there and do nothing with your life. That in fact there is no point to your life and that only your computer would miss you if anything were to happen because they would miss you typing on them. The warmth of your fingers, the way they land on each key at almost the exactly same spot each time, the repetition of key hitting speed that does not change and can therefore sustain a liveable environment; your computer would miss you. But the problem would still hit you, head on. How do you deal with it?

Would you just dismiss it and hope it eventually goes away? Is letting it stand there staring at you an acceptable form of dealing with the problem? Is yelling at it at the top of your lungs helpful in the situation, causing a brief moment of insanity?

Lonely,
-Aram the Garmo

Last day in Paris (Part 3 of 3)

2008-04-14T12:00:00.001-07:00

So today is the final installment of my trip to Paris! And luckily, it is short. I'll be uploading pictures and such on my facebook tomorrow, so stay waiting for those! I also have a lot of pictures on my photobucket site if you want to see those. For those you only need to go here. Almost all the pictures from the past few posts are on there, but hopefully I will be adding a couple extra. I will also put them on my flickr account for those who have that. You can find me on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/crazyinsanoman/ And also, once again, I have made it so each of the pictures you can click on and get a bigger version. But enough of all that crazyness, let me begin with the last half of my journey!

So we left off last time Sunday midday. I had just finished the Louvre and was meeting up again with Steven. Steven had spent all day at the Paris Marathon. So in honor of Steven's trip I included one of his 60 photos of the marathon. I call it 'the gay marathon runner.' I wonder if one day I'll ever have the ability to run a whole marathon. One can only dream.
Well anyway, afterward we decided we were going to go and try and find the gay district in Paris. After walking a while, we were finally able to find the gay street in Paris. It was very cute and cuddly and pretentious. It was also VERY expensive. One can of Red Bull cost me 5.20 Euros. Almost $8 for a can of Red Bull! Anyway, so that night we decided we would go to a gay restaurant in Paris. I decided we would go to 'Le Gai Moulin' because it looked gay, and served traditional French food. Of course I went all out on this meal. I ended up eating escargot for appetizers. Escargot is actually really good. I thought it was going to be slimy and gross, but it turned out to be really really good. And the sauce it came in was a mint garlic sauce that was to die for. For Entree I had duck in orange sauce, which I'm pretty sure was my first time having duck before. And for desert I think I had a souflee. I had so many deserts in Paris I can't keep them straight anymore. The dinner was amazing though! And it only cost around 21 Euro for the whole meal. A bargain I say!

	So after we went eating, we decided we were going to check out the clubbing scene in Paris. From checking online Cud Bar looked like a pretty chill place to go so we headed off there. We had ended dinner around midnight so we got to the club around 00:30. So it was very suprising to find out we were the 3rd and 4th people there. We grabbed a coke, which was flat, and sat down to just chat. After about 45 min in the club and only 6 more people walking in we decided to leave. That is when we saw all the crazy snow. It was snowing in Paris! It was very cold, but very beautiful. But I will never again go out in the snow in only a tshirt and a jumper! We went back to the hostel, awaiting the next day. Our day of SHOPPING!

So the hostel was pretty cool in that we would get free breakfast every morning. The breakfast wasn't amazing, but it was enough. We had a choice between yoghurt, cereal, and bread with butter/jam. Since I couldn't eat the cereal and bread is too much for me in the mornings I was forced to invent something that turned out really good. I would take the yoghurt and put the jam in the yoghurt. It tasted really good because it sweetened up the yoghurt and also added fruit. I would also have coffee and tea each morning to get me through the day. Monday morning though, I decided I was going to have fun with the coffee and drink it like the French do. So instead of putting it in a mug I put it in a bowl. I even ended up making my own mocha instead of regular coffee! All I did was mix hot chocolate and coffee. It tasted really good, and it was fun drinking from a bowl.

So of course one of the first things we did was go to the Louvre in order to do the shopping under the Louvre. Under the Louvre we were lucky to get an amazing rainbow structure on the upside down pyramid. It was amazing timing on our part. So we spent almost all of Monday shopping for presents since I needed to buy presents for all of my family because I love them so much. Steven didn't know why I bought presents since it was a hassle and cost a lot of money, but for me, watching the person receive a present that they get randomly is amazing. Normal present times suck because you don't get actual happiness from the person. So I bought them all tons of presents and am hoping they enjoy it. My younger brother is IMPOSSIBLE to shop for though. I had no idea what to get him from Paris. Everything I looked at I felt he wouldn't enjoy. He is the hardest person to shop for. My mother is the simplest, and my stepdad is occasionally easy.

So of course most of my shopping consisted around the Champs Elysees since I am just that type of person. I loved this street because it felt very much like the shopping area I would love. It is high fashion and I wish I could afford most of the clothes there so that I can look amazing, but unfortuantely the money does not grow on trees. I did end up going into the Louis Vuitton in Paris though. It was so amazing walking into the very first Louis Vuitton. I ended up buying something for my mother and then it was funny how the staff finally looked all happily toward me. They treated me like royalty after that. It was sort of funny, but also very exciting being able to walk around and not being looked down on.

So of course after buying presents for everyone in my family, we decided to go to the Sacre Coeur since we had sunlight left over, and Steven really wanted to see it. It was crazy fun getting there. It is one of the highest points in Paris and looks over the whole city. We walked up so many stairs to get there, but it was every step. The view was breathtaking. After getting to the top though we noticed that a heavy downpour was heading our way! So just in the knick of time we got into a coffee shop and ordered coffee. I ordered my most expensive cup of coffee ever. It cost me 6 Euro. Almost $10 for coffee! Crazy right? It didn't even taste worthy. There was too much chocolate and not enough Hazelnut. Either way, we waited the storm out and went back to the hostel to drop everything off before heading off to dinner which again would be in the gay district.
So this time it was Steven's choice to choose the place we were going to eat. He decided to go to a Spaghetti joint that we had seen the night previously. It was actually really crowded and very entertaining. It was very gay friendly and the waitors were very hot. The food was actually really good here too, but this time we didnt have room in our belly's for desert.

We ended the night by going to a different gay bar that night. We went to Raidd bar which was amazing! The drinks may have been expensive, but it was tons and tons of fun. First off the music was not very loud so that you could have a decent conversation with people without having to worry about your eardrums falling off. Secondly, halfway through the night they had a special treat for the visitors. On the side wall they had a plastic wall that you could see a room through. Well, around 23:30 a guy in underwear walked into the room and the lights came on. He started rubbing himself with something like lube and started taking a shower. Of course he was also teasing the audience, and eventually took his underwear off and we got to see everything. It was a nice point in the night because it seemed very normal to everyone in the crowd. The funny part was that later that night we saw the guy walking around in the bar. The only part I didn't like was that no one was dancing. But other than that it was good and I wish we could have stayed longer. We ended up leaving around 00:30 because we had to wake up at 6:00 in the morning to catch the train to get to the airport on time to get back home!

So that was the whole trip to Paris. I hope this little thing helped you see how amazing it was and how you all should go and visit it. If there are any questions or anything people want to hear about/comment on, feel free to leave a comment!

Exhaustedly,
-Aram the Garmo

Second day in Paris (Part 2 of 3)

2008-04-13T12:00:00.003-07:00

So here we are at day 2 of Aram's crazy trip to Paris. Today's post will be even larger than yesterdays, if that was possible! But luckily, tomorrow should be shorter. Also, this time I have made each picture a thumbnail, so if you want to look at a bigger version of the picture just click on it! So I am starting on Sunday if that helps anyone :-p To the left is a picture of the photographer of most of these pictures, Me! So I hope you enjoy the workings of the marvelous and dasterdly Aram on his amazing and fantastical trip to Paris, Part 2!

So we started our day bright and early at around 7:00! My personal goal was to leave the hostel around 8:30 so that we can be at the Louvre by 9:00. Unfortunately Steven was slow on the uptake and we didn't even get to breakfast until 8:30. I guess I shouldn't expect people to be able to get up really quickly in the mornings, at least as well as I can. So we finally got to the Louvre around 9:30 and the line was crazy long. There were around 100 people in queue just to get in. But somehow, the line was moving ridiculously fast. It took us only around 2 minutes to get in! Steven took a really cool picture of a statue and a water fountain so that it looks like the water is pushing the statue up, so I put it up right here. These statues and fountains were everywhere around the Louvre which was really cool. I personally didn't know what each of the statues were, but they seemed to mean something significant.

So the good part about coming this sunday is that the Louvre was free and so it was pretty full. It is free the first sunday of every month which is why I planned our trip around this weekend. It turned out to be the weirdest weekend to choose to come to Paris as you will find out tomorrow. So if you ever plan on going to the Louvre, make sure to go on the first sunday of the month! It may be crowded but then at least you aren't paying 15 euro just to get in.

So the actual entrance to the Louvre was the pyramid itself. So the stairs are literally underneath the large pyramid which is really cool. The actual museum is in the building surrounding the pyramid which is sort of cool. The bottom section of the pyramid is also where you can enter the museum itself. The museum has 3 main sections and you enter them from underground which is pretty neat.

The pictures here are of the same staircase from differing views. The one on the left is the stairs from the side with an elevator on the inside of the stairs which was pretty cool. The one to the right is an aerial view almost and you can see the elevator directly in the centre of the stairs. Pretty cool view I think. The pictures from here on will be pictures I took from the museum itself, and are ones I particularly enjoyed, or know about.


Statue of Marcellus By Kleomeles Front View	Statue of Marcellus By Kleomeles Back View		Emporer Augustus Statue Artist Unknown		Victory Statue Artist Unknown


Centaur teased by Eros Artist Unknown		Sleeping Hermaphrodite Artist Unknown Back View	Sleeping Hermaphrodite Artist Unknown Front View

So all of the statues are just a tiny portion of all the ones that are actually at the Louvre, and I also do have a couple more that will show up just on facebook itself. The statue on the right was my favourite one out of all of them. It was supposed to represent the slave that had given himself totally to his master and had accepted his master even to his dying day. I think that type of devotion is really cool. I understand he was slave and all, but the concept of devotion to the extent that you are together until the day you die, now that is a thought that I would love to live by.

Dying Slave
By Michaelangelo

Now I am moving on to paintings. The picture to the right shows where most of the paintings I enjoyed were. That whole corridor is 1 kilometer long and is full of Italian paintings. I personally enjoyed Italian paintings the most, especially when they didn't have to do with Jesus. It's sort of funny how a lot of paintings have a lot to do with christianity. I am more of a greek fan but there were some cool Christian paintings. So here are all the paintings I liked. Near the end there are 2 modern art pieces that I included followed briefly by my 3 favourite paintings. Again, most of these pictures are pictures that I personally liked, but I have a few more in my collection and there are countless more in the Louvre.


David and Goliath By Volterra Front View	David and Goliath By Volterra Back View		Endymion By Anne-Louis Girodet


Interior of a Church By Steenwyck		The Bold By Fraggonard		The Crowning of Napolean in the Presence of Pope Pious VII By David

So of course one of the most famous pieces in the Louvre is the Mona Lisa. I decided to reluctantly take a picture of Mona Lisa in order to prove I saw it. It was a tiny piece of painting and I couldn't even get really close to take a decent picture due to the large numbers of people trying to look at the painting. That is why my picture is vaguely blurry.You can also notice that there are a lot of people taking pictures of the Mona Lisa. The picture on the right is the whole crowd. I personally don't understand the crazyness over this one painting when there are so many more beautiful paintings in my opinion. But I guess to each his own. And so I looked at the crowd and chose to dismiss it. It was also very heavily guarded.

So in the same room as the Mona Lisa is this amazing painting called Marriage Feast at Cana and is painted by Veronese. It's the largest painting in the whole Louvre and was HUGE! It's supposed to be the time when jesus performs his first miracle or something like that. I wasn't fully paying attention, and most things were in French anyway. I personally much more enjoyed this painting than the Mona Lisa, but since the crowd was so big looking a the Mona Lisa, it was difficult to get a good view of this painting. Oh well, maybe another time.


Piece made of pins and nails		Egyptian Cups


	Young Man Seated Seaside By Flandrin	Gallery of the Views of Modern Rome By Pannini
The Education of Achillies by the Centaur Chiron By Jean Baptiste Regnualt
So these are my favourite paintings in the whole Louvre as far as I could see. I really liked the one with Chiron because it reminded me of DLP and how much I really miss them. I can't wait to get back to Davis so I can chillax with them! The last one is the painting that my mom and stepdad own in their house. Of course they own a replica, but when I saw the one in the Louvre I had to take a picture of it. That painting reminds me of home and how much I miss my family. The one in the centre had to be my most favourite art piece in the whole Louvre. Something about that painting draws me in. I think it's because I am able to relate the painting to my own life that I enjoy it so much. I think if I were to ever buy a replica of any painting, I would probably choose that one. It means a lot to me.

So I am stopping there for today. I will finish Day 2 Night and Day 3 tomorrow. This post has already been long enough with all the pictures. Tomorrow is much less picture intensive, hopefully! So I will see you all again tomorrow for another day in Paris!

First Day in Paris (Part 1 of 3)

2008-04-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

And today I will finally talk about my trip to Paris! I unfortunately, won't talk about all of it today, but I will go over some of it today, some tomorrow, and maybe a 3rd day. Maybe 1 post for each day I was there, that sounds pretty good. So, I guess we should start at the beginning; leaving Clarence Dock.

	So we initially walked out of Clarence Dock. As you can see, Steven was a gentleman and actually carried our luggage for me. We walked all the way to the bus stop and took the bus to the airport.		Here is myself and Steven getting ready to get our tickets. Around now is when they told Steven it was not allowed for him to take pictures. They were very funny. Then we sat and watched as the planes took off, and were generally bored until we took off. It was Steven's first airplane flight so it was bound to be super exciting for him and he could not stop staring out the window. It was super cute.

So after around 2 hours in the plane we land in Paris! And of course what is the first thing we do? We take the train to the city centre! The trains were really cool and took us about an hour to get to the city centre.		Our hostel was really cool. We got to meet this awesome Canadian named Brian who was from Vancouver! This was my first hostel so I was partially scared, but it's like a simplified version of a hotel. Totally worth it, and I will totally be doing my travelling in hostels from now on. I was fortunate enough to get the top bunk. The best spot in the house. We also had reading lights so I could read before I go to bed! And that is the end of Friday since we got there so late. The next day would for sure be much more exciting!

		On Saturday we ended up walking EVERYWHERE in Paris. In the end we walked a little over 20km! We did get to see some random things in the city because of though. We got to see a building that's called telephone [on right]. Our guess was that it was called telephone because back in the day it took the whole building to run just one telephone. We also saw a random cathedral [below] that I loved.

Because we walked the whole day we didn't take the metro. But because we were tired of walking near the end I took a hopeless picture of the above metro in hopes that eventually we may not have to walk. At the end of the day we decided not to walk all of Paris again. It was an 8 hour walk from one side to the other; on the way back we took the metro and it only took 30 minutes!

So while walking we did end up finding the Louvre. Our main attempt was to know where the Louvre was so that the next day (when the entrance was free) I could easily find my way over there. Since I have over 60 photos to share, I will be saving the Louvre pictures for tomorrow, but there are some pictures we took from right outside the louvre. The one underneath is a picture from the louvre. You can obviously see the Eiffel tower in the background and a statue of a spider in the foreground. The picture on the right is me eating the spider. It was a very big sculpture and was actually really cool. From the Louvre we went to the Champs Elysees which again I will cover in the monday edition since there are so many pictures to go through. The Champs Elysees was beautiful though. The other picture is an arc that is in front of the Louvre that I liked a lot.

	So after walking to the End of the Champs Elysees and Seeing the Arc de Triumph [below] we decided it would be fun to actually make it to literally the other side of Paris. So we walked all the way to La Defense which was another 3 kilometers away. By the end we were pretty exhausted, but we did get a nice view of the two art pieces to either side of this section. Personally, not much interested me at La Defense, but Steven really liked it and so we went there. The only part I liked was that there was a shopping centre there. I personally would have gone shopping and spent tons of money, but Steven was tired so we sat down instead. Probably better cause I may have spent all my money way too early!

	On the way over to La Defense we were able to cross over a river that runs on the edge of Paris. It was very wide and partly reminded me of Leeds. I may have been homesick, but I sure as hell didn't want to go back. Also, once reaching the edge of La Defense I turned around and took a picture of the Arc from it. If you look really really closely at the picture you can see a tiny Arc de Triumphe. Thats about 1/7 of what we walked that whole day! Crazy right? If the image is too small, you can view it again here without it being scaled down. The image to the right is Notre Dame. I personally think it's very postcardesque, but thats just me trying to make myself look good.


	So of course, the last thing we did that night was go and see the Eiffel Tower which was amazingly gorgeous. I personally thought I wouldn't be impressed by it, but it actually was very impressive. We actually even just sat and stared at it for a while. I really wanted to go up to the top and eat at the restaurant they have there, but Steven didn't want to so we decided not to. It was a very beautiful day, and I enjoyed our first day.

Tune in tomorrow to see what we ended up doing Sunday and Monday! I am hoping I will have time to actually put them online. This one post took me over 2 hours to complete cause of the complexity with trying to get a nice view of all the pictures, so enjoy them! I will give a link for all the pictures and some extras on Monday! Once my final installment is in, I will also update the photos on Facebook. I'll catch up with you all on Tomorrow at 8pm again!

Tired from Typing
-Aram the Garmo

What others think.

2008-04-11T15:15:00.000-07:00

Section 1 - Mama; My Chemical Romance
Does it ever annoy you not knowing exactly what someone else is thinking?
"Mama we're all full of lies." "I could have been a better son" by trying harder to be able to understand the little cues that people give off. "You ain't no son of mine for what you have done," said mama who knew the truth. "Mama we all go to hell!' I replied.

Section 2 - No Hay Igual; Nelly Furtado
'"No quiero otro." I don't want another. You are the only son that we shall have,' she said staring balatantly at me. '"No hay igual." There is no equal.' She screamed, 'so stop trying.' This is his life she thought and I am not going to mess. He must learn on his own. "El tiempo pasa." The time passed as mama waited for me to learn my lesson. She thought, it may be too late. I knew that fact long ago as the beat went on and the dance grooved to an end.

Section 3 - Apologise; One Republic
She stared at me. '"I'm hearing what you're saying, but I just can't make a sound." "You tell me that you need me," and then you cut me off. "It's too late to apologise," so stop trying. By now you should have learned your lesson. "I loved you with a dying red," but now "I'm afraid" it's over. You haven't learned with those around you. "It's too late to apologise" for your stupidity and unwillingness to learn. I put you out there on your own and you did nothing with it. "It's to late to apologise" for not trying hard enough to learn all the lessons on your own. You wanted to be left alone, and you were. And now you know nothing of the real world.' She yelled as I stormed out the room.

Section 4 - One and Only; Timbaland featuring Fallout Boy
As I left my mind was racing. Thoughts flying. "I get over heels for someone, I that I really can't deal with. I want to block her out my mind, but I really can't do it." If only I had listened to her words I would know. The thoughts in his head would be mine. I would have learned. "I tell myself this is the last time I'ma let him do this to me. Whenever we do spend time I realise that I can't get enough of you." And it hurts to see the passion taken away. "to be despised, to be loved, to be dreamt of, to be sought, to be inside, I don't care. Right in the middle, I'm right in the middle" of going crazy. I just want to pull my hair out as I try and imagine what to do. "And everything I love about is a mess" for so does the world. "I want to be better than I am." I turn and see my reflection. Tears streaming, thoughts encompassing as I imagine him standing there. With my mother to my right a smirk appears. "Wipe that smile off your fucking face." "How could you do this to me" he said running away. Away in my mind he runs. Even my mind makes him run. I run and catch up. "why we arguing, I thought me and you were supposed to be friends. Let's chill for a minute," I yelled. But it landed on deaf ears. He was gone. And I was left, alone.

Section 5 - Stick to the Status Quo; High School Musical
And so I run off. I need my own world to live in. "If Troy can tell his secret than I can tell mine," I want to be perfect. The world to work the way I want. "stick to the stuff you know" is what I keep saying. "Intelligence beyond compare" is what they tell me, but it's all false. "Hip-hop is my passion" is what I yell, but my body does not follow, but I am sick of it. In my own world I follow the "need that I cannot deny." So, "I am ready to let it fly." I turn on the music and dance my heart out. The crowd around yells, "no no no, stick to the stuff you know." I refuse. My passion burns and I must let it out. If I can't have what I want in the real world, I'll have it in my own world. As I do a quadruple turn and land perfectly I realise what I am doing is untrue. "This is not what I want, this is not what I planned, and I just got to say, I do not understand. Something is really, really wrong!" "I have to get things back to where they belong." I leave my imaginary world, and return to the real world. "Why is everyone staring at me?" They all yell "Stick to the stuff you know." How do I do that though? What do I know? I can't read people's minds. Am I supposed to follow the dance? Am I suppoed to follow the maths? Am I supposed to teach the world everything? WHAT AM I TO DO!?

Section 6 - Seize the Day; newsies
"Open the gates and seize the day." "No on can make us." I must make myself. I must "arise and seize the day." I can't just sit and pretend others will help me. I must find it myself. But if a travel to a foreign country can't help what will. I thought I knew the world, only to be slapped in the face. "One for all, and all for one." Is that not what it's supposed to be like. All equal in the world, and yet it isn't. "nothing can break us" they scream from the streets. But I am broken. My soul not strong enough. I thought I could give in, but even the simplest things break us apart.

Section 7 - Survive; Gloria Gaynor
No, I will not let it happen. "At first I was afraid, I was petrified" looking at my broken barriers. "But then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong, and I grew strong, and I learned" and I built more barriers. "Go on now go, walk out the door, just turn around now, cause your not welcome anymore." "You think I would crumble? You think I would lay down and die?" Fuck that shit. I can make myself strong. "I got all my life to live, I got all my love to give." One moment of weakness will not become my downfall. "It took all the strength I had not to fall apart." But I managed and grew from it. "I used to cry, but now I hold my head up high." I will be better and stronger. With a mask pulled over my broken self I learn.

I no longer learn from the mother who never spoke, or the friends who never helped. I never learned from the books who never taught, or the teachers who never enlightened. I never grasped knowledge from myself. I was forced into the world only to fall and drown. The only way I learned to cope was to build a fortress around the moat that was already created. A castle with high walls. And in this fortress, I occasionally bring down the gate and let a human in, but no more. Each time, it hurts. The pain unbearable. The suffering immense. All because I allowed myself to fall, to open the gates and let them in. No more will it happen. I am over the whole episode. If I am to devote myself to anything it will no longer be to worldly obsessions. I will be.. and will forever be... insanity.

Election 2008

2008-04-10T03:04:00.004-07:00

So, Steven still hasn't given me pictures from France, so the update on France is going to have to wait. Instead I am going to talk about my anger at the US media, who for some reason says that Hilary Clinton has no chance of winning this election, unless she wins by large margins. I believe she can win, and that her margins don't have to be that large.

So in order to figure this out, I used CNN's delegate calculator which can be found here. And from playing around with the numbers I have found some interesting results.

The first thing Hilary needs is a big win in Pennsylvania. The big win will do 1 of two things, 1) give her the momentum she needs to finish the race in first, and 2) give her a nice big chunk of the delegate count. Using CNN, I gave her a 61% win in Pennsylvania. If she gets the 61% and then gets a 55% (minnimum) in each of the other states, which should be easy considering that her momentum will be crazy. Then due to her experience and knowledge, she should be able to get around 61% of the superdelegates also. This will give Clinton 2014, Obama 2003. Then add in Florida and Michigan, and Clinton has won the election!

But in realistic terms, Clinton is not projected to get anywhere near the 61% vote needed in Pennsylvania. The latest polls (Feb 27) say she is getting around 49% with Obama at a mere 43%. On February 14 though, Clinton had 52% and Obama had 36%. [Link]. So the latest poll gives Clinton a 6 point lead, and the older poll gives Clinton a 18 point lead. So let's say clinton wins by 10 points. (Those who think she can't win by at least 10 points, look at the following states: Tennessee, Rhode Island, Oklahoma, New Jersey, and Massachussetts to name a few). This will give her some momentum, and she needs to use this momentum very wisely. Because with that small of a win, she needs to secure at least 60% in almost every other state, including the superdelegates to win it. If she doesn't secure the 60% but gets really close, she will again be ahead of Obama by a few points, and so we include Michigan and Florida, and we have a win for Hilary.

Now some key things that I think Hilary needs to do in order to win the votes she needs. I think the main issue is she needs to speak with the people who are voting for her. As an example look at Obama who is using the internet to his EVERY advantage. He has a blog, he is on every different social site, he is talking and corresponding with everyone he can. He replies to emails, joins groups, and basically makes himself seen everywhere. So here are the things that Hilary needs to change and in which Obama is doing better, if Hilary wants to win.

1st thing is to look at Hilary's blog. It looks dry and boring. Barack has a very sexy way of creating his blog. I looked at his blog and went, hot stuff, while looking at Hilary's I said, how boring. Some differences? Each of Hilary's posts have a large rectangular box around it, which helps with the seperation of posts, but looks dull and boring, and very much overdone. Obama on the otherhand does not use boxes and therefore his blog looks more open and inviting. Another point is pictures, people love pictures. Clinton has only pictures of her on her blog. Obama has pictures of him and his supporters. Obama has pictures of just his supporters, and him giving speeches. He gives the audience more basically. Another thing is that Hilary's blog is only connected to Digg, Technorati, and del.ico.us; Obama is connected to: Digg, Facebook, Stumble, Newsvine, and del.ico.us A much better overview.

2nd thing is the number of sites that each one has a personal connection on. Hilary is on: Myspace, Facebook, Youtube, and Flickr (According to her website). I know for a fact she is also on Twitter! Why does she not show that she is on all of these other social networking sites? Obama does! In fact according to Obama's website he is on: Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, Eventful, Linkedin, Blackplanet, Faithbase, Eons, Glee, MiGente, MyBatanga, AsianAve, DNC Partybuilder. Hilary, PROMOTE YOURSELF!!!

3rd thing is that joining the sites in part 2 does not give you the votes, being friends with everyone does. I am going to use Twitter as an example. (The following statistics are taken from Twitterholic) There are 22,341 people following Barrack Obama on Twitter. He has added 22,053 as friends. This makes him look like he actually cares about people. Hillary Clinton has 2,848 people following her, while she is friends with only 1. Yes, only 1. Even Bill Clinton is having a greater time on Twitter! Another thing that is different between Hilary and Barack is that when Barack updates he talks about things he is doing. He shows what he stands for by the things that he is participating in. Example: Talked with Communications Workers of America about getting America back to work. Watch my full speech at: http://tinyurl.com/5mmlrv. So simple! He is showing that he is listening to America, that he wants to create more jobs, and also gives a link to his speech! All in under 140 characters!!! Here is Hillary's attempt to do something similar: Today on the Ellen DeGeneres Show I announced a new plan to combat breast cancer. http://tinyurl.com/5opnul. Ok, so she got Ellen, an amazing women, to let her be on her show. Good job. Help fight breast cancer? Ok, you are big on health, but everyone already knows this, talk about new things! And what is your new plan to combat breast cancer? Stab the breasts? It doesn't make sense! At least she provided a link though.

All in all, I think Hilary mainly needs to utilize the internet and make it work for her, and at least compete with Obama on a much greater scale. I think Hillary can do it, but she needs to look like she's putting effort into it.

Politically yours,
-Aram the Garmo

P.S. You know what would be really cool too. A daily podcast that is around 5-15 min about what Hilary is doing/has done and what she stands for. That would be pretty neat.

Travelling

2008-04-03T16:00:00.003-07:00

Sorry for the long break inbetween posts. I am currently in the middle of spring break and so have been travelling and studying so I haven't had time to update you with information. Today I will be talking about my adventures from the past weeks and the big adventure coming up ahead.

One of the biggest adventures of this break has so far been going to Southport near Liverpool. It's actually a really cute city with a population of around 100,000 people. I think the best part was how small the gay community was. It allowed all of the young gays to be able to hang out with the older gays. I personally enjoyed this because it allows you to be able to communicate with more mature men that are (hopefully) not only looking for sexual relations. It also was the type of town where everyone seemed to know everyone else just by walking down the street. Even though that can be weird, Southport was also big enough that you can actually disappear in it and have no one notice you.

The reason I went to Southport was in order to visit one of my friends, Roy, and to see another city outside of Leeds in the UK. By doing this I was able to meet some of Roy's friends. Roy's friends are very awesome and I was able to enjoy myself with their presence. One of the nights we went out to a club called Underground. It wasn't my type of music but oddly enough I enjoyed the club very much. I didn't get up to dance at all, but just sort of relaxed the whole time. It gave me a very comforting feeling to be able to just sit there and relax and not have to dance the whole night away. Another one of the nights we went to a pub called the Crown. The crown had much more of my music, but again I was not really in the complete mood to dance. Although, I did end up dancing, I felt like I did it half heartadly. I must state that Southport did have some attractive men there.

When not clubbing, or sleeping, I felt like I was eating Roy's mother's cooking. She is a culinary expert and so her cooking was amazing. I felt like I could not stop eating. That could have been because it was actually true. Her cooking was very good and I literally couldnt stop. I did feel rude though by eating all of their food and so I usually stopped before I was full so that I wouldn't finish eating all of their supplies. Roy's family is also very nice and very comforting. It took me a while to get into the way they were and to be able to get the to come out of their shells, but eventually I got to really see them and they were completely amazing and I loved them.

That unfortunately was all I did at Southport. I also had forgotten my camera at home so I didn't take any pictures unfortunately. But, tomorrow something better is happening. I will be taking my best vacation thus far. I am going to Paris, France! (And yes, I will be taking my camera). So I will be leaving tomorrow for Paris. Expect a huge blog with tons of pictures right when I return.

With Great Anticipation,
-Aram the Garmo

Hidden Post

2008-03-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

One Child Policy

2008-03-22T08:54:00.002-07:00

So today I am going to talk about China's one child policy, which I am completely in favor of. In fact I personally believe that every first world country should limit the number of children any couple has to at least 4 even though I would prefer setting the number to 2.

I already hear shouts of protest, so let me first explain myself. I personally wish that I did not want this policy. I want children myself and the thought that the government is telling me that I can only have a certain amount would make me angry, but that is very selfish. I would only be thinking of myself and my 'right' to having as many children as I want, but let us look at the big picture shall we? Let us look at our whole planet and the entire concept behind having children.

First off the world population, according to the CIA as of July 2007 [Source], is at a little over 6.6 billion. And most of the population growth has happened in the past 200 years. In the 1800s roughly only 900 million people lived in the world [Source]. Basically, what I am trying to point at is that the world is becoming overpopulated with humans. With the amount of humans one the planet we are tearing down food chains and disturbing the natural order of things. We are causing extinction of species due to hunting and the need to feed ourselves. We are using way to many resources of the planet and eventually they will run out. The Earth may be big, and may have a ton of resources, but the world is only finite. With the way the human race consumes eventually the earth will be nothing but rock, literally. There are 2 main ways to decrease the rate of growth in population. The first is the obvious of killing people in order to decrease populations firsthand, but let's be honest this is not a very moral way of doing things. The only other method is to limit the number of humans that are born. This second method is the lesser of two evils and we have now come to a point in our worlds history that we must seriously begin looking into this option.

Some will say that it is their right to have as many children as they want. I completely agree, but if they are going to be selfish and only think about themselves then they are hurting the greater good. If most people became selfish then suddenly we would be overpopulated. So for once stop thinking about yourself and stop being selfish and limit yourself.

There are 2 main reasons that most people have become used to the fact of having a lot of children. One of these reasons is religion. This is my favourite point to combat, (and just a quick note, I am not an atheist) because of the idea that religion is what causes us to have a lot of children. Let us face what most people refuse to face. Some religions are only out there in order to grow. For example I will tackle Mormonism. In the mormon religion it is known that having the more children the better it is, but why? There does not seem to be a good reason behind this idea. I believe that the main reason this was included into the ideals of mormonism was so that mormonism can grow. One of the best ways to get people into a religion is for them to be born into it and therefore if a certain religion wants to grow and become a big power then one of the key elements is for it to ask its followers to breed like crazy. So when religion asks you to reproduce, the main reason is in order to get the religion bigger so that they have more followers so that the religion is more powerful. Again, a very selfish idea and not a very nice concept to look at, but most modern religions use this technique in order to increase its membership.

You may argue that I am only saying this is true for modern religions, so how about ones further back such as christianity which also preaches to have children. These relgions ask for more children based on the second reason most people want many children. This second reason is in order to be able to survive. In older times people used to have to manually work in order to raise money and be able to support themselves. During this time it was very necessary to have multiple children in order to survive. One of the reasons was because there were many diseases and not much medication so a lot of children would die before ever reaching adulthood. Another reason was because for each child that ended up reaching adulthood that was a helping hand to the family business and the family can grow and prosper. So in past times it was extremely beneficial to have multiple children. This is my belief as to why older religions ask for multiple children. This is also why I believe that the one child policy should not be used in third world countries, where each child is another assett to the family still.

So since children no longer help a family grow in wealth during the lifetime of the family (usually), and since medicine has gotten much better in todays world I don't believe we need to be reproducing as much and over populating the world.

Some may argue that first point in the last paragraph and argue it with retirement. That if we don't have more children than aged persons then it is hard for us to support the aged persons who are retired. I just have one question, why are the young persons supporting the old? In todays society there are usually enough resources for a person to save up money in order to retire and use their own money and survive peacefully until they pass on. Why should it be up to the child to pay for someone who is older than them? And why is the retirement age set at 65? With medicine the way it currently is, people are living much better and are still very healthy at 65. Why are we taking healthy, strong individuals away from the workforce and then using the governments funds to help support them? The retirement age should go up to around 75 or 80 is what I personally think especially with the way the world is going and also I would personally cut away social security to the wealthy due to the fact that they have more than enough to save money on the side and survive after retirement.

I already hear arguments in which people are saying that after working 40+ years they deserve a break and that they are tired of work. Just one more question, who said? Who was the person who said that we deserve rest? Who was the global entity who said that as human being we deserve to take a break from work and just sit on our lazy butts and do nothing? Humans are also animals. If humans deserve breaks, then why don't other animals? Why do humans find themselves so superior to other beings that they think they deserve a break from work, while every other animal on this planet works themselves day in and day out until the day they die from working hard. I will agree that a rest is always nice and the thought of not having to work is always a promising prospect, but when the price of that prospect comes at having to have more children in order to support ourselves at being lazy, and that the cost of having more children is increasing our global population to an unsustainable number, and that this will cause us to deplete the earth. Yes, I am trying to argue that retirement (in part) helps to cause the depletion of resources, but only when taxes and children are used in order to create a time of retirement during old age.

Now I realise this is very controversial, but truthfully, it is a bad time to be on this planet. The ozone layer is depleting almost literally in front of our eyes due to greenhouse gases and our waters are becoming polluted to a point of drought. We are using the Earth's resources at a crazy rate and we need to make a brash decision. I know the decision sucks, and I know no one wants to make the decision, but it is time for someone to take a stand and take the fall in order to make the world a better place. Stop being selfish and for once think about the greater good of humanity. Think of others, and if you open your mind you will see that yes this decision is a horrid one, but it is the only one worth pursuing considering the only other option is death/murder.

With horrid views on the future,
-Aram the Garmo

Recollecting the Past

2008-03-18T09:10:00.004-07:00

Is it worth it for us to live in the past or should we keep moving forward? Taking our old selves and making a new sense of identity in order to relive life in a new way. To maybe try things again, to start over in a sense. What brought on this idea? I was editing my website (which is shit as it is!) and my first intent was to clean up the poems section. Of course I had to sit and read EVERY poem I had and categorise them so that I can see which ones I actually want to keep on the website. And as I was looking I noticed something pretty cool. I actually had some decent poetry. It is hard to imagine; Aram the mathematical Garmo with no artistic talent has a decent poem? And then I noticed most of the poems were written around the same time and centred around the same subject. I'll first write them down so you can see them and then I will discuss them.

Bodily Temptations

The eyes of brown,
The hair the same.
His maddened looks
Drive me insane.
His cool caress,
Those arms of steel,
His nice warm touch,
As if unreal.
The sweetest voice,
The nicest song.
The nicest dressed.
For dancing long,
The finest feet.
The craziest mind.
And in the end,
I may have him.

Stars

Look at the stars,
Aren’t they far?
Can you believe
That they can be sought?
We can go hold them,
We can go touch them,
We can achieve them.
But some just cant jump.
I have been jumping
Up to the sky
Trying to reach
The stars very high.
Today I jumped
In a brand new way,
And found out
It was better that day.
I jumped up,
And I felt a star.
Heaven was near,
But still very far.
And so now I practice
And try to go higher.
Eventually I will,
But for now im just tired.

Heaven

Walk down
Grab and pull
Close up
Scent of you
Feel of you
Taste of you
Let go
Smile
Heaven

All of these were written on 10 June 2004. So of course I thought I would look them up in my LJ and see what was happening in my life during that time to see why I was so exuberant about love. And then I went on a whole trip almost into my school years. So I'll give a quick background as to what was happening in Aram's life at this point so you know where I was in my life.

The 10th was the day right after I had my first date with a boy ever. We went laser tagging and then we went to a private location to makeout for a little while. He wanted more, but I wasn't willing to give it since it was only my first time. Then we felt the feel of exhilaration as we sped down the highway at over 100 mph with our windows rolled down. It was bliss.

Obviously, I was in an ecstatic moment in my life. I felt life could not get any better, and it probably hasn't gotten much better, but it has matured. I wait for the day this feeling returns, and I feel it almost has. I am feeling close to the same emotions as I was before, but I am currently not as artistic. I can't just sit and write poetry as I once did, instead I sit and create dance. It's a weird feeling creating art in the presence of lust. So of course as I am in a state of lust my gay side has been flowering like crazy. Talk about sadness though. Here I was last week stating how I was going to go straight and begin working on maths and actually fixing my life, but instead now I feel like jumping off the roof and doing a dance to my grave. I feel like expressing joy in a dance that no one has ever seen before. This is the time I should have created my dance piece because it would have turned out to be very good instead of the crap it ended up being.

So now back to my question of whether or not it is worth it to go back in life and see what our past was. I think it is very good. It allows us to remember things we usually do not recall. It shows us that those good days may be few and far between, but that they are so good that they are worth striving for. It shows us who we are and how we respond to those around us. It enlightens us to see how we have changed over time, whether we have matured and learned the things we intended or even accomplished the goals that we started. So I am off to recollect on my past and see what new things I should focus on. I hope my website will eventually relaunch so that the world can share in my hopes and dreams, but until then goodbye.

With artistic license,
-Aram the Garmo

Hidden Post

2008-03-13T05:11:00.003-07:00

Gay vs. Straight: The Resolution

2008-03-10T03:02:00.002-07:00

Last night as I was attempting to sleep I cam up with a resolution. I was tossing and turning in bed unable to produce enough tiredness in order to fall asleep when it suddenly struck me. I have finally chosen which side of the debate I will side with and I will explain my reasons for this sudden 'epiphany'.

The main reason for the conclusion I am about to give is some videos that are on facebook. I was watching me dancing on the video app on facebook and was comparing myself with the other dancers, which a very normal thing to do as a dancer. But as I was comparing I noticed something very vital in a dancers life; I don't dance like any of them do. I have my own rhythm and my own movements. I cannot follow and duplicate what the others in the dances could do. This may have been due to the fact that I was out of my element by doing hip-hop, lyrical, and the such, but as a contemporary dancer lyrical should have come fairly easily, and it seemed that it didn't. That is the main basis for my decision to choose to be straight.

Now deciding to be straight has many implications as to how I want to lead my life. Although it is too late to make any major changes in my life (such as career ambitions) but it is not too late to begin my wisdom training necessary to accomplish the things I must. So being straight basically entails that I will focus more on my geeky side of life. I will spend more time in the library looking up mathematics texts and reading philosophy texts. I will also be going more into web development and figure out what new technology is working in the world. I will pursue my inner geek with such fervor that my friends may see me as a completely new person. This will mostly be true due to the fact that usually they only see the gay side of me, so this will be exciting.

Being straight does not mean that I will not have my gay moments. I will still go out and be social occasionally because I need to satisfy the gay side of me occasionally. So you can almost count my gayness almost as a hobby. Being social and dancing my heart out will be my method of exercise, since I need to exercise anyway to stay fit.

Due to this I will begin my first ambitious goals of finishing up what I started and never finished. These include (in the web world):

Organising my hotmail accounts into directories and keep them organised

Revamping my geocities website so that it is more contemporary looking and much more enjoyable to look at

Organise all my journals so that they are centred on one website rather that on quite a few as it currently stands

Organise my yahoo page so that I can use RSS feeds on the go instead of relying on my home computer for the feeds. Or somehow combine the two so that they are compatible

Update my profiles. Mainly: facebook, myspace, twitter, pownce, LJ, blogspot, and others

In the knowledge world these include:

Brushing up on my basic mathematics; differential equations and linear algebra to be specific

Begin looking into philosophy, starting off with Aristotle and Plato

Understand the topics in mathematics that I am currently studying

Go to mathematics lectures held for graduate students that I am allowed to show up to

These are my first goals. More will come as I finish these ones. Eventually this blog will get a facelift as suggested by how the name has already changed. Instead of being about my adventures, they will be about my thoughts. And that is all for my update for today. I am off to begin working on my first few needs.

With accomplishment,
-Aram the Garmo

Gay vs. Straight

2008-03-08T15:20:00.003-08:00

Today will not be a review day. Instead I will be talking about the struggle occuring within me between straight Aram and gay Aram. So I'm sure not many people know that there are two basic version of Aram that are in constant battle. And I will first describe my two sets of personalities, and then I will try and see if I can come up with any solutions to my dillema.

I'll start with the gay version of Aram since most people know this Aram fairly decently. Gay Aram is they dancer, creative, crazy, impulsive one. He dances during the day, watches films and tv to catch up with society, and then dances the night away getting drunk in some club, preferrably with hip hop music so he can grind. He wants to feel good and usually wants to stay on top of society. He wants to be fashionable and buys the latest outfits and tries to figure out how to look good, mainly to attract men. He follows gossip, especially celebrity gossip, and also is very social. He also watches every musical he possibly can. I think you get the picture.

The other side is the straight side of Aram. He sits and does maths during his spare time. He doesn't care about fashion and only wears things to keep him warm. He sits and reads fantasy books in order to increase his foundational knowledge. He also tries and follows different philosophical thoughts and maintains interest in the sciences. He is very anti-social and would rather sit home by himself and learn about maths rather than go out. He plays video games during his spare time and also creates websites. I think you understand this picture also.

The conflict is, how do you live with both selfs? Some things I am easily able to compromise. In order to satisy my need to read fantasy books, and my need to follow society, I read fantasy books that everyone in society knows. For instance, currently I am reading The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. But of course certain parts of me just can't cope with each other because they each require great deals of time in order to master which then causes me to be apathetic and doing nothing. The best example is my two basic needs in my life; to dance and to solve maths. Dancing takes a lot of training and must always be kept up. You need to wake up in the mornings and stretch and then dance a few hours during the day and also build up strength and endurance. You need to follow a healthy diet and also keep track of what your body wants. On the other hand, for maths, I need to constantly be on my toes with the latest ideas. I must read new books and new concepts in order to understand the basic foundational understanding of mathematics in order to be able to achieve any great discovery. Of course this requires reading book after book and to actually sit and do problems.

As you can probably see, these two don't really follow well together and so I struggle. Sometimes my gay side wins and I go out and party until the sun comes up. Sometimes my straight side wins and I stay cooped up in my room reading maths and doing random problems in order to satisfy my needs. But most of the time I am in between the two extremes and don't know what to do. I need to be active, but I need to do maths. It's an odd combination and I don't know how to satisfy it. That is why I usually just end up lying on my bed staring at the ceiling which doesn't help either of the causes.

I don't know what to do. How do you cope with having two personalities in constant conflict within your own body and being able to be successful? I wonder how DaVinci did it.

Currently Bisexual,
-Aram the Garmo

Review of "Latter Days"

2008-03-01T15:07:00.003-08:00

My Reviews will now be posted on Saturdays since obviously my thursdays are shit. Even though it probably doesn't matter cause I doubt anyone reads this :-P

Talk about an amazing gay film that is really heart-wrenching. It seems nowadays most gay based films are only about the sex, but this one takes it beyond the sex and actually produces a decent story line. It is mainly about a Mormon named Aaron Davis, who is played by the gorgeous Steve Sandvoss. Aaron, who is from Utah, is in Los Angeles completing his mission trip that all Mormons must go through. Of course Aaron is secretly gay, but being a Mormon he is not allowed to pursue these urges. The movie follows the life of Aaron.

Of course by coincidence, Aaron happens to move next door to an attractive gay man who happens to be very promiscuous. Christian Markelli is his next door neighbor and is played by Wes Ramsey. Christian generally sleeps around, and due to this has the idea that he can get with any man he wants. This leads to his coworkers placing a bet on him that he can't get a mormon to give him their underwear. This makes Christian to meet his new neighbors. Aaron of course automatically likes Christian, but tells Christian he won't do anything with him because he sleeps around and only thinks of guys for sex and not for relationships. This causes Christian to have a meltdown and to reevaluate his whole life. Christian starts to help out at a local volunteering organization where he delivers food to those who have AIDS. Through many experiences Christian grows as a human. Eventually Aaron's other mormon roommates find out, and Aaron is sent back to Utah and is excommunicated from the church.

Being excommunicated causes great disruption in Aaron's family which causes Aaron to attempt suicide. From there Aaron is sent to a 'treatment facility' in hopes that he may no longer be gay. Christian ends up finding out that Aaron has cut himself and thinks that Aaron is dead. Christian then goes to Aaron's family and wishes his condolences and returns something that belonged to Aaron. This caused the mother to finally accept her son and to believe he truly has no choice. Then by a total miracle, Aaron finds out that Christian is not only about the sex and that he truly loved Aaron. This causes Aaron to secretly run away from the facility and go back to LA where he meets up with Christian again and they live happily ever after.

Now the good stuff. The acting in this film was mainly attrocious. I could have done better, and I am a crap actor. But they did a fairly decent job and the acting was usually not a distraction. There was also some unbelievable feats that occured which would never occur in real life, such as Christian flying to Salt Lake the day after he decides to go. The film was fairly good and was one of the few really good gay films not based on sex.

I liked the way the mother acted. She was one of the better ones. Aaron's mother, Gladys Davis [played by Mary Kay Place], had a very emotional time. At first she had everything she wanted and all at once everything was taken from her. Through this she learned that love is what needs to be the most important thing in her life and that she can't afford to lose her son even though she is gay. This is a fabulous dream which I think actually occurs. That even though she hates the fact he is gay, she can't help but to love him anyway. She closely reminds me of my mother.

Christian was also a funny character. He seemed to develop the most throughout the movie. At first he was just into the sex with other gay men. This is very typical of gay men in today's society. In order to get the guy he likes though, he must grow to be an actual human being. He has to be able to no longer be shallow and actually care about other people. Him being able to do it brings hope into my world that there are people out there who can change into better human beings. And also that nonshallow gays exist, even though they are ridiculously hard to find.

This movie moved me and made me cry at least twice. I fully recommend it to everyone who is willing to watch gay films. There is some partial porn in it, but what straight film doesn't nowadays anyway. I loved it and hope all will watch it.

Review of "Dead Poet's Society"

2008-02-21T04:40:00.002-08:00

Again, sorry for the lack of writing. I think I officially fail at blogging. I've been busy working on my dance show. I'll be putting up pics and other things after the show is done, but for now back to my reviewing.

This movie was very artsy and had a lot of implications. One of the main reasons that interested me in this movie was the concepts on education and how try to make individuals in a school setting is looked badly upon, while conformity is what is seen as to be the perfect model. It also tackles big issues such as suicide, family issues, problems with wealth, and, of course, education.

The story begins in an academy for boys somewhere in the U.S. It starts off mainly by showing the main principles of the school. These four principles (tradition, honor, discipline, and excellence) are what create the school into what it is. The story follows the english class which has recently acquired a new teacher, John Keating (played by Robin Williams). Mr. Keating used to be a student at the academy and therefore knows the workings of the school and what usually occurs there. There are many different characters in Mr. Keating's class. Neil Perry, played by Robert Sean Leonard, is the leader of a group of boys. Perry usually does not have a good academic record, but has plenty of extracurricular activities which he gets banned from doing by his father. Todd Anderson, played by Ethan Hawke, is a shy young boy who must live up to his older brother's image. Todd's older brother was valedictorian at the academy a few years prior. Knox Overstreet, played by Josh Charles, is a boy who is generally shy around women. The story follows the class as the boys learn valuable life lessons and accomplish tasks that they thought they could never do.

The story begins with the group of boys being introduced to the school that is enriched in tradition. They then get to meet their new English teacher, Mr. Keating. The boys are obviously not used to a many of Mr. Keating's nature, because it takes them a while to take him completely seriously. Mr. Keating begins his class by giving a speech basically about a poem 'Oh Captain, My Captain' and how if the class dares, they may call Mr. Keating 'Oh Captain, My Captain.' It also then goes to another lecture in which Mr. Keating asks the class to rip out the introduction of their english books. The point of this was to get the point across that poetry should not be analysed excessively to the point that it is dry and boring, but instead poetry should be felt as the authors wanted. Mr. Keating's main messages in class would always try and make the student's see life in a different perspective. He did this one time by having the students stand on his desk in order to see the classroom from a different angle. He also taught lessons of nonconformity. He did this by having three students walk around in a circle and led the boys in a clap to the beat of the boys walking. He then turned around and showed how conformist they all were. He pointed out that the three boys rapidly synchronised their steps even though it was never asked of them to do it. Mr. Keating also wouldn't let the other boys say that 'oh I wouldn't have done that if it was me,' by showing them that they too had conformed by joining in on the clapping to the beat. He made them aware how easy it was to conform to the needs of society.

Mr. Keating's unorthodox ways of teaching led the students to like his class. They even went out of their way to try and find any information they could about Mr. Keating in the old records of the school. By doing this they found out he belonged to the Dead Poet's Society. On questioning Mr. Keating, he replied that the society was top secret and he would only reveal it to them if they would keep it hidden. He told them of how the society was based off reading poetry and gaining much pleasure in learning about love and other much things. In fact Mr. Keating describes the society's main purpose to be to take the meaning out of life. On this Mr. Keating told them of the secret location they usually held their meetings and also slipped Neil Perry the sacred book that they used. Later on the boys would go to the meeting place, a cave near a river, at night and hold their first ever Dead Poet's Society meeting. From here they learn to become individuals and to not allow authority to control them. From Mr. Keating's teachings, and the ideas presented during the society meetings the boys grew into extraordinary individuals.

Knox Overstreet is taken to a dinner party where he meets the perfect girl for him. Instead of being shy about it like he normally would, Overstreet goes to her school and reads her poetry and does everything he can to try and woe her even though she has a boyfriend. Overstreet would never have done anything like this if he hadn't had met Mr. Keating. Neil Perry decides to not listen to his father and enrols in "A Midsummer's Night Dream." Perry follows his dream of acting and ends up being a phenomenal actor. Neil's dad finds out though and decides that enough is enough and that he will be taking Neil out of the academy and into military school. Due to this harsh decision Neil decides to end his life. With this tragic moment the school points all fingers at Mr. Keating and his unorthodox teachings and has him booted from the school. During his moment of leaving is when the last character learns his lesson. As Mr. Keating is leaving the classroom, Todd gains selfcourage and disobeys authority and stands on his desk and says 'Oh Captain, My Captain,' referring to Mr. Keating. As Todd is being yelled at by the headmaster, Todd refuses to listen and gives respect to Mr. Keating by not conforming. Eventually a number of the boys follow Todd and also join in to respect Mr. Keating and his teachings. All in all the lesson of the day was to not conform to society and to instead be your own special individual.

This movie has a lot of interesting aspects to it. One of the main aspects that I noticed is the drama within the family structure. The families portrayed in the movie are all upper class and are therefore very wealthy. But even though they have tons of money they do not spend any time with their kids. Instead they push them off to an academy and only look for them on special occasions. This makes it so that the kids do not grow up in a loving environment and have to fend for themselves. I think this is one of the worst things that could happen to a child. Children need parents to help them survive. They need the love of the parents and the knowledge that the parents are there to help them in any way. Without this knowledge the kids are forced to rely on each other which is not always the best thing to do. This causes the children to rely on other children who also may not have any idea what they are doing. This in the end could not be a very good thing for the children.

Another idea that is brought upon is suicide. I personally still don't understand the stigma behind suicides. Yes it hurts the family and all of that, but in the end is it not the person's right to decide when they should leave the planet? Who are we to force someone to live a miserable life if they want to end it? Yes, it is true that some people grow out of the depression, but I still don't see the consequences in allowing suicides to occur. In either case, I think the way the suicide is handled was very poor of the academy. It was obvious that the academy was looking for any excuse to punish Mr. Keating and took this opportunity to let him go. They did not see how much he was allowing the students to grow and become individuals. Instead all they saw was that Mr. Keating was putting 'bad' ideas into the heads of the children and that it should not be allowed. I personally would put the blame on the father of Neil who refused to let his child have a little fun before he was forced to go into real life. Neil was getting very good marks and was also very good at his extracurriculars. I would assume most parents should be happy that their child can handle these pressures, but instead Neil's father gets irritated. Maybe it is because his father is jealous that Neil gets to plan his own life, or maybe it is due to the fact that his father is just a cruel man, but in the end I blame the father for the suicide, not Mr. Keating.

The last topic I will discuss is the ideas on education. The academy seems to portray what most education schools are like nowadays. The students sit down and the teachers try and force knowledge upon them. The teachers try and make the students into a group and have them fit into what society wants them to be. They basically teach conformity. Mr. Keating was basically punished because he was asking his students to think for themselves. He wanted the children to allow their thoughts to flow freely and to always ask why. To not let any concept go unquestioned. To not let any conformist activity to go unnoticed. In essence he taught Carpe Diem, sieze the day. And through this his students grew to be able to accomplish things they would not have been able to do in the past. Neil, with the acting; Todd, with the standing up to authority; and Knox, with woeing a girl. I personally enjoyed the ways that Mr. Keating taught and hope to follow in his footprints.

As to how good this movie was. I personally enjoyed it very much and would recommend it mainly to other educators and also to students. I think the concepts portrayed in this film are vital to allowing a child to grow.

-Aram the Garmo

Review for "7 Virgins"

2008-02-04T10:07:00.000-08:00

First off, sorry for not reviewing last Thursday. But enough of that let's start shall we?

Let's first start off with a quick plot summary of 7 Virgins. It is about a boy named Tano, played by the gorgeous Juan José Ballesta. Tano is just released from jail in Spain in order to attend his brothers wedding. While away everything has changed in the city that he has grown up. He does the traditional things that he normally does such as has sex, steal, take drugs, and basically does everything that he was not allowed to in jail. But being away in jail so long has made him realise how much different the outside world is. Jail almost makes him more mature and he seems to want to get away from the life that used to be habit. The story is basically following him during the 48 hour leave from jail that Tano is given.

Tano and Richi

I personally liked this movie even though my mates did not enjoy it. They did not see the excitement in just watching normal, everday life. Or maybe I'm just weird because I actually enjoyed watching as Tano realised that he was suddenly mature and didn't want to deal with society anymore. When he was young he did drugs, had sex, stole, and basically was a perfect teenager in most cases. While in jail he didn't really learn his lesson. I think he learned his lesson when he came out on the outside. He saw how everything was and how much of it was just not worth it. His best friend, Richi (played by Jesús Carroza), was still in the life that Tano would have been following. Tano noticed that Richi's life may be fun, but it wasn't really going anywhere. He in fact noticed that none of his friends had lives that were in particular greatness. It was Tano's realisation at the end that he didn't want to live his life anymore as he currently was. he wanted a completely fresh start. This is why he refused to go back to jail, and in fact literally ran away. This literal running away was his running away from his old life into his new. He had grown up to be a more mature and more aware man.

Tano's Friends

I think this is sort of how I feel with how I am. I m currently in the phase where the movie ended. I am sick of all the teenager stuff. I am done with the drugs, I am sick of the sex, and I definately don't steal anymore. I guess maybe it's the whole persona of Aram growing up really fast or something, but I am tired of night clubs. Not because I don't love going to them, because I still do, but more of because of what they are. They are big hookup sights, and I ask why? Why are they created just so that people can go and find someone to go and have a one night stand with? I personally go there mainly to enjoy dancing with friends, and I don't need alcohol for this to happen. I enjoy the music, which is sometimes too loud; I enjoy the dancing; and I enjoy the company. I guess I am at the stage where I would almost prefer to be anti-social. I guess it is true what they say about mathematicians. We are all married, just not with humans, with books instead. And I really would rather be married with a mathematics book than with any person. People disgust me and make no logical sense. That is why I am digging deeper into mathematics. In fact I have pushed so far I am attempting to prove something no one has been able to do for a few centuries now. I basically just want to work on problems and not to involve myself in the petty little politics of university students. Maybe being old is not always a good thing, but in this instance I find it very comforting.

With his head in the book
-Aram the Garmo

Hidden Post

2008-01-29T14:48:00.000-08:00

Hidden Post made public

2008-01-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

The following used to be hidden, but I don't need to hide it and therefore it is being made public. It is a post from when I was drunk, so sorry for any misspellings:
(Opened on 04/02/2008)

I hope this hides everything. I don't even know what is happening to me right now. I can't even type straight. I hate being drunk, and especially hate alcohol. I don't even remember most of the night which is not good. I remember Mark saying I may just be acting drunk and just actually tire, but he said that near the end. I am so tired I don't even know what I am typing fully. I know that I am completely intoxicated and that I hate it. I remember typing something on my cell. It says:

"The question is, do you like math more than teaching? Cause you are already on the path to be a teacher. Do you want to give up that in order to pursue math even though you know it won't get you very far. Do you want to teach your children or what. Will you even be able to do that? Can you teach your own children? Or are you forced to be a math geek forever? I prefer math. Math all the way. I hope I remember in the morning."

That is all. I am tired and eating an apple. I have lecture in the morning so I am off to bed. Good night.

-Aram the Garmo

Review of "Touch of Pink"

2008-01-24T10:09:00.000-08:00

So, I will try and review something once a week, and will usually be artsy/gay or something I'm interested in reviewing.

Todays review is on "Touch of Pink". This movie is a gay film that takes place in both London, England, and Toronto, Canada. It follows the coming out of a muslim boy, named Alim and played by Jimi Mistry, who grew up in Toronto and moved to London. Alim's mother, Nuru who is played by the amazing Suleka Mathew, is born in Africa and grows up dreaming of becoming like Doris Day from the films during her time. A few years after Alim is born his father dies and so Nuru and Alim move to England. Due to persecution Nuru and Alim move to Toronto where Alim is raised. Nuru also liked watching Cary Grant films and this manifests in Alim in the form of an invisible friend for Alim. This spirit of Cary Grant, played by Kyle MacLachlan, walks around with Alim and helps him in his life adventures.

The movie starts from present day, 2004, where Alim is invited to his cousin's wedding. In order to get Alim to come over Nuru flies from Toronto to London, where Alim is now living, in order to reconnect with her son. By this point Alim has already found the man of his dreams, Giles played by Kristen Holden-Ried. Nuru of course doesn't know that her son Alim is gay and so Alim and Giles pretend that they are only friends throughout the whole time Nuru visits. The mother constantly tells Alim that she is waiting for him to find a nice muslim girl for himself just like his cousin Khaled has. Of course, this constant intertwinning in personal lives causes great disruption between Nuru, Alim, and Giles. Giles gets hurt by Alim due to Alim refusing to come out of the closet even remotely to his mother, and Nuru feels ashamed of Alim because he refuses to find a girl and only focuses on his work. Eventually it all breaks down into Giles leaving Alim and Alim coming out of the closet to his mother.

Nuru of course cannot handle the news and leaves back to Toronto immediately. Alim heartbroken by both sides of his life decides that maybe going to his cousin's marriage would not be such a bad idea. After Alim coming back, Nuru comes to her senses and eventually accepts Alim for being gay and is happy that Alim and Giles are together.

Of course that would be the way the story goes. Suddenly the mom, out of no where, is forced to defend her son and so she realises how much she loves him. And through this act of devotion she realises she is stupid and fully loves him in the same way as she once did. I find this sort of ridiculous though. I guess I am wanting a movie to relate real life somewhat, because I feel this is not the way life goes. I wish my life was as simple as that, but it isn't. After coming out to my mom she was accepting, which was more than Nuru could manage, but the difference is that the love never became the same. My mom basically had asked me to stay in the closet after coming out and also blamed everything I did on being gay. Instead of defending the person she loved she began an attack campaign. Afterward nothing I ever did was ever good enough. And she still refuses to let me just be who I am around my relatives. This is more of the fact that she is afraid what they will think of her, but it still is the issue of her not being behind me 100%. You would think a mother's love would go a long way, but apparently my mother's doesn't even reach her heart. Either way at least she pretends to love me and that is all that matters I guess.

The acting in the film was amazing. I think the mother was in fact one of the better actors of the lot. She was readily available to change emotions and kept those emotions perfectly. She put the right emphasis on the correct areas and did not create a monotonic emotional ring in which everything was either strong or soft. Jimi was I think one of the worse actors in the play. He seemed unable to really show frustration and mainly used high school drama tricks in order to portray his character. He really needed to work on character development to see what had happened in his life to lead him to London. Kristen also did a fairly good job. Although he seemed to only have two emotions the whole time, he handled them very well.

If you are gay, or enjoy a little gay romantic comedy, then I would recommend this movie to you. I personally hope to eventually have this film in my movie catalogue so I can watch whenever I want a pick me up.

-Aram the Garmo

Review of "Vitus"

2008-01-17T04:13:00.000-08:00

Obviously, I am not going to review everyday since I am officially busy again. Sorry about that. But anyway, let me begin.

So "Vitus" was a movie about the life of a child prodigy. At around the age of 6 vitus von holzen is able to play the piano as well as many famous pianists. It follows his life as he is forced to play the piano in order to 'improve himself' and also tracks his family as they go into new business ventures.

Vitus' dad, Leo, is an inventor who has created a new hearing aide, which can be used as a fasion accessory. His invention becomes popular and causes Leo to start making money allowing the Von Holzens to upgrade in society. Due to Leo's success in life, Vitus is neglected from his family. In order to ensure Vitus' safety at home while Leo and wife Helen are away they hire a baby sitter, Isabel. Vitus falls in love with Isabel, but Isabel is fired from baby sitting due to an incident in which she is found drinking with Vitus. At this time Vitus is 6 years old and Isabel is a mature 12 year old.

The movie then jumps 6 years in the future in which the family is now upper class and Helen is the one taking care of Vitus and forcing him to play piano constantly. Eventually Vitus gets sick of it and attempts to kill himself by jumping off the balcony. Luckily, or some may say unfortunately, he was not successful in his suicide attempt and ended up with no major injuries but had a concussion. From here, Vitus took the opportunity and started to pretend he was a normal kid and did not show any genious. While pretending though, Vitus' grandfather finds out of the fib that Vitus is portraying. The grandfather of course keeps his secret which he promises to keep until he hits his death bed. Vitus then wants to help his grandfather so he basically solves the stock market and starts to use it to his advantage changing his grandfather's $340,000 into $3,700,000 overnight using stocks. Vitus then creates a company under his grandfather's name and starts making money for his grandfather and himself, all this time pretending he was just normal. Eventually, the grandfather dies and in doing so sends a letter to Vitus' parents revealing everything, allowing Vitus to come out and tell the truth about everything. This revelation of truth allows Vitus to save his dad from getting fired from his company, which occured once new management came around, and also to make his long time love, Isabel, fall in love with him.

The movie was an extraordinary film. I loved the film very much. It was a Swiss film, and had subtitles which made it that much more exciting. I liked the concept of watching a genius just want to be normal just like everyone else. It shows that in the end we need to accept who we are and just yell it to everyone, instead of trying to conform to society and what our idea of normality is. The portrayal of this using a genius was what made this film unique. You usually see this sort of portrayal occuring when someone has nothing at all and has to be themselves in order to prosper and become to have everything they want. It was a good thing to see that people who already 'have everything' want to just be normal also. This is what I'll probably take from this film.

The portrayal of the mother as 'losing everything' once Vitus pretends to be normal is also a heartwrenching one. The mother who had everything she could ever want from a child, and was in essence spoiled from the events, was destroyed because he became 'normal'. Helen could no longer accept Vitus even though he was still his child and was even a 'little above average' and completely healthy. Instead she punished herself for having him not continue to be a genious. She felt it was partially her fault and hated that her son was no longer perfect in her eyes. She could not accept him for who he was. I personally felt a huge connection with the mother. As I was home over this past christmas holiday I noticed my mother was going through the same thing. During my high school years I had been a very good child. I got good grades, I behaved well, followed instructions most of the time, and was respectful. Of course once I came out of the closet it hurt my mom and she now thinks I am no longer perfect. Of course this is not even the reason why she is bad. I spoiled her because I was so good to her. Now my brother, who is a completely normal teenager, is showing her what normality really is and my mother can't handle it. She wonders what she did wrong with him, when in fact she did nothing wrong with him, he just happens to be 'normal'. It's as if she got used to such a good child, that she no longer wanted normal, just like Vitus' mother. But just like Vitus, we all just want our parents to be happy, but must also look after ourselves.

In the end, I personally enjoyed this film and would watch it countless times again. I recommend it to anyone who needs a good heartwarming film with meaning, and was not produced in America.

-Aram the Garmo

Review of "A Secret Edge" by Robin Reardon

2008-01-10T12:29:00.000-08:00

I am going to try and put up a post almost everyday by either reviewing something I saw, read, or visited. I won't always have something up, but I hope to keep going for a while.

"A Secret Edge" by Robin Reardon

This happened to be the first romance book I have read in a very long time. If I recall it is also the first gay romance I have ever read and I must say it's decent. The plot was about a boy, Jason Peele, who is just figuring out he is gay and is coming out of the closet. It goes follows his life as he tries to keep his lead in track, stays away from bullies, comes out of the closet, and falls in love. Reardon begins the book automatically showing the confusion of Jason Peele by showing the wet dreams he has of David Bowie. Jason then goes through and tries to figure out who he is and along the way he meets an Indian, named Raj, who is also on the track team and they fallin love. While their relationship grows, both Raj and Jason learn from each other and mutually grow as their personalities conflict. Jason learns about Gandhi and the imporance of keeping true to himself and Raj learns to be more humble. While the love unfolds things of course happen in Jason's life. He comes out to his aunt and uncle (his parents are dead from an accident when Jason was 2), and how they treat his coming out. It also fallows school bullies and how they go after gay kids in schools. It also shows Jason making wrong decisions while being a teenager.

It seems the book is mainly geared toward the teenage crowd. The writing seems very simplistic and extremely easy to read. Reardon occasionaly skips important steps in the plot and assumes that the audience will just be able to follow. At some points I had to go back just to understand what was happening as sometimes between two sentences 10 minutes have passed without a mention of what happened. The book was also very unrealistic. The love affair between Raj and Jason seemed to not reflect reality, and the high school that Jason went to also seemed unrealistic. Almost everyone in Jason's life was understanding of him being gay which does not generally happen in modern day life in California. Even with the fallacies in logic, taking the fictional roller coaster of emotions was very good. It made you wish a world like this did in fact exist in which bullies were easily scared and where half of the track team was gay. Unfortunately that day is long ways away and we will wait for it to come.

As this book is concerned, I would say if you are bored with nothing else to do then it is worth picking up and having a read through of it. If you are not very bored and have other things to do, then I wouldn't really bother with this book.

-Aram the Garmo

CES and afterthoughts

2008-01-09T11:41:00.000-08:00

So this past weekend I went to the International Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas, and let me tell you how amazing it was. From the moment we stepped into Vegas I felt like I was home. With the bright lights, loud music, tons of shopping, and things to do for almost everyone, Vegas seemed like paradise. I quickly became excited about the coming day and a half that I would be spending at CES and all the prospectives of looking at brand new gear and finally finishing up my knowledge on computer technology to enable me to build a good gaming computer. Another wonderful thing that I could not wait about CES was the number of guys I would see. It has been well known in the past that I have a thing for nerdy looking engineers, especially the computer science types. And with over 140,000 people being at CES, I figured I would not be the only gay one at CES.

Look at the glass flowers hanging from the Ceiling!

So we get to Las Vegas on Sunday and sort of do a little bit of sight seeing. We go to Treasure Island first, and notice some nice designs throughout the hotel. After a quick glance we take a tram over to the Mirage, which I fancy a good deal more. This got quickly boring though, and so we drove over to the Bellagio. It wasn't that far of a walk, but the parents wanted to drive. I guess they like to help with global warming or something like that. So we headed to the Bellagio and my mom wanted to do some gambling so she went to the penny slots and my stepdad and I looked at some of the marvelous scenary. I really liked Bellagio so far the best. It was the most elegant and had the most amount of fun it looked like. The restaurant's inside were very nice to look at and the atmosphere was very enjoyable. I probably couldn't have afforded this place anyway, but it was an amazing place to see. We ended up waiting here for my aunt and uncle to come from Los Angeles. This was about the time they finally told us that my cousin wasn't coming, so I was on my own for entertainment.

Bellagio still had Christmas Decorations!

The next day began the wonderful CES! I had been looking forward to this for quite a while. I would finally be able to see all of the latest gadgets that are coming out for computers and I would be able to expand my knowledge on how a lot of things worked. I of course started automatically in the gamers section. They had the coolest stuff ever. They had 3d monitors, mice that allowed you to move the screen three dimensionally, and new online games that you can play for real money. In fact I was talking to one of the games so long they gave me a free $5 starting card! Talk about free money. Of course there were some awesome gadgets and stuff, but you know me, I only took pictures of the pretty decorations:

A ship advertising Pirates of the Carribean on Blu-Ray	Transformers, with a license plate that says FXpert. Don't remember who put this up though
Of course there were good looking cars here too.	And a car with video's for the people to the sides and back.

We had been at CES from 9 in the morning until around 4 in the afternoon which was when we started to feel tired. This was also around the time that my first encounter occurred. Up until this point I had had no gay sightings. I had began to wonder if i really was the only gay person who was at CES. You would think that there would be at least one other person right? And, of course, there were. We were standing at the LG booth, and I was arguing with my mother because she was being stupid again about ice cream (she likes to get into pointless arguments), and in the middle of the argument I catch eyes with a good looking guy as he walks by. I think nothing of it since that happens on occasion with a lot of people. What was interesting though was that once I stopped talking to my mother I noticed that the guy kept looking at me as he was walking away. So we had a sort of stare at each other and just sort of shared a moment of, "are you gay?" Well, at least that's what was going through my mind. My mom at this point said that I could have a few more minutes to roam around if I wanted so, naturally, I went in the driection I saw the guy go. Of course, being the stupid person I am, as I was walking the direction he had just gone I noticed that I was walking past him. He passed by me while I was walking toward him! That means he was walking back to find me, and we had both missed each other, AGAIN! So as I look back I notice he doesn't turn around, which means he didn't notice me, just like I didn't notice him. And this is where Aram makes the stupidest mistake in the history of the world. I just stand there waiting. I didn't know what I was waiting for, but I waited until he was out of vision. After a few seconds I decided to go after him. At this point I could not find him at all, and hope seemed to disappear. Only seconds later I was taken away by mother and we left CES for the day.

That night I had wanted to go to Paris and Planet Hollywood, and since the parents had no objections, that's where we went. We first went to paris which had amazing decorations. My favorite part was the villages that were created. Again, I did not take any pictures of that, instead I took a picture of a chandelier. I need to stop taking stupid pictures.

The Paris Chandelier

While I was still agonizing about missing my chance with the boy my parents, my uncle, and my aunt decided they wanted to eat at the restaurant in the eiffel tower. Of course I was in such a transe I paid no attention as to what was happening around me, I just followed stupidly into wherever we were going. It was until we sat down that I really noticed that I was not hungry at all. I also noticed that each plate cost around $50 and was wondering how we were going to afford this. So since I wasn't hungry, and I thought we couldn't afford any of this, I decided to just get something small. I looked at the salads, and nothing looked interesting. I looked at the appetisers, and again nothing looked interesting. I looked at the sides and noticed potato gratin, and so I ordered that. It was a side dish that cost $10! but whatever. At this point my Mom asked why I wasn't eating. I just gave her a look, and of course she automatically thought that it meant it was because of the prices. I mean yeah, the prices had an influence in my decision, but in reality I would have eaten that little anywhere we went. I wasn't hungry for one, and for second I was sick to my stomach as to not having followed the guy.

Ok, time for a side note. The reason I was sick to my stomach about the guy needs mentioning. I had not had a look like that from a guy in so long, I had forgotten how it can move you. This guy was the first guy in about 2 years who actually gave me the look and swept me off my feet so fast I lost track of everything around me. My mind has been filled with nothing but that glance for around 3 days now. I was sick because I did not have the guts to go after the guy quick enough to get his number or anything. I was sick because I had let the only opportunity I had ever been given for the past year or so to slip away and to not know when the next time I would meet someone like him again. My chance had come, and I had failed to act. That is why I was sick to my stomach. It was because I had failed, and would now lead a miserable life for not knowing what could have happened.

Back to the story though. So my mom thought it was because of the food even though it wasn't. But I ate the potato gratin (more like forceably ate) and enjoyed the flavor, except the smell of the cheese made me want to throw up. (I mentioned that when I'm sick to my stomach I literally mean it right?). So I sat there and tried to organize my thoughts, and since my cousin didn't come I had no one to enjoy the night with, so I was all alone. It didn't help that I had been alone all day, and no one had spoken a word to me most of the evening anyway. So once my parents noticed they tried to incorporate me into the conversation; that allowed me to at least stop fully thinking about this guy. We ate, and my mom went gambling as Ray and I went out shopping for the night. I bought Steven a present for xmas that I hope he likes and kept thinking. Eventually my parents decided it was time to leave, of course not fulfilling their promise to see Planet Hollywood. Upon that mention, they decided we should go to Planet Hollywood.

Yes Another Chandelier

Planet Hollywood was amazing. Talk about the perfect place for someone of my age. The best part though was the idea that there was a gay club somewhere, which was the true reason I wanted to go there. Of course when I walked in, it seemed very straight instead. There was a strip club upstairs, and dancers on some of the poker tables strutting their stuff. Talk about very hetero, but sex geared. I thought since they were this sexual, they could potentially have a gay club, so I kept my hopes up. As we walked around I noticed the atmosphere was amazing. This was a hotel that I would love to stay at. The lighting was fun, the decorations were animated, the music was hip, and the atmosphere was young. Too bad it seemed pretty empty, but whatever. There were more chandeliers to photograph and tons of shopping!

What a cool shape!

And of course we shopped while there. I didn't actually do any actually shopping since my parents and uncle/aunt seemed to want to go home, so instead I just walked by to see what kind of stores they had. They had a few good stores, but a lot of them were not very good. They need to up their stores if they want me staying there for longer than a day! But at this point I was losing hope though. Halfway through my parents were getting sick of walking and wanted to go home and I still had not found my gay club that I was looking for. So as they walked into a christmas store I stole away and found guest services. The women there was so stupid. I asked her I was looking for nightlife. I was trying to be mildly flamboyant so she can know that I was gay, but for some reason, my flamboyancy obviously wasn't enough (does anyone know how people can think I'm straight!?!?! I thought that was impossible) because she gave me flyers to straight clubs. Of course one of them offered free breast implants and I joke with her if I would look good in a cup size C. She told me I should go for B's (ouch). But after that I told her that these clubs weren't exactly what I was looking for (trying to hint I wanted the gay ones), but of course she was utterly stupid. I think she thought I was trying to find an escort service or something because she said that she doesn't have information on "those kind of stuff." At this point I thought it was funny that she thought I wanted to sleep with women and couldn't help but just walk away without even saying anything, barely able to control my laughter. Apparently I'm not very gay. We ended up walking through the whole mall there and I couldn't find the nightclub, so I decided it was ok that I go home with them. (A minor point, I persisted in looking for the gay club and going to Planet Hollywood in the main hope that I may see that boy again, yes I am that desperate to find love, or at least someone attracted to me)

Side Note: Pictures on the side are of Aladdin which is where Planet Hollywood currently stands. They "took down" Aladdin and are remodeling it and calling it Planet Hollywood.

Some architecture

I like how the sky looks real, even though it's fake!

So we end up going home, me still bummed out about this guy, and completely dissatisfied that I couldn't find him. I was hoping I would get lucky with my four hours there on Tuesday.

Tuesday started out slow. We didn't even get to the convention centre until 9 which meant I only had 3 hours to find the guy with the assumption that it was even possible. I first went to the Sands Expo, cause I really wanted to and found it to be a disappointment. I think while there I saw two gay guys though. They were cute, but seemed to be a couple and very stuck up so it wasn't worth it. I then quickly headed over to the center hall which is where I had seen the guy earlier. I walked around hoping to find him. In the end I just started looking at products since my hope in finding him was gone. I saw some cool things here also. I saw flat panel monitors that look amazing. I was finally convinced that HD was worth buying, and I realised that I would probably never be a good gamer. I had forgotten how I can't control the mouse very well in first person shooters. The last booth I ended up going to was NBC's booth. They were giving away 2gb flash drives (score) and I found another cute gay guy who was doing the hair of one of the correspondents on the show Extra!. He was cute, and I think he even noticed me, but he wasn't interested it seemed since he never gave me another look.

So with that disappointing day, I was sad to leave because I hadn't really gone too much in depth with most of the products to be excited, and since I couldn't pursue the one gay guy who gave me hope that one day I may actually find true love.

With hope,
Aram the Garmo

Behind the Times

2007-12-14T15:09:00.000-08:00

It seems now adays life goes by fairly fast. If you take a single wrong step you are suddenly behind with no hopes of catching up with the rest of society. I feel like I have taken 2 wrong steps in my life that have now caused me to be so far behind that I feel I just can't catch up.

My first misstep was in not continuing my dancing at a young age. When I was younger I convinced my mom to allow me to go to dance workshops and the such. I went to a couple of different dance things here and there, but I never continued. I think one of the main reasons may have been because it wasn't considered 'manly' but that also could just be a fabrication created by me by my later self. But in any essence this stopping in my dancing at a young age has caused me to be morbidly behind. I look at even 'beginning' male dancers and I notice that I shouldn't even begin to imagine catching up. Most of them have the flexibilty to bend over backwards and do the splits. They have also learned how to spot properly so that they can turn more than once without falling over. They have also obtained the strength necessary to lift people up as if they weight absolutely nothing. I on the other hand have none of these capabilities. I am not flexible enough to do most of the movement necessary, I cannot even do a single turn without falling flat on my face, and as for strength, let's just say most women without strength training can outdo me. And so due to this I feel hopelessly behind on the times. And the sad part is, I just don't have time to catch up. I will discuss this later though.

My second misstep took place with my other profession, mathematics. This misstep was even more greatly my fault. I went into university thinking that I was going to pursue physics. Because of this I made the mindless assumption that I would not need mathematics, and so I did not try to learn most of it thinking that it would not benefit me much. I ended up being drastically wrong when, now I find out, I turned to love mathematics. Since I was behind on my knowledge, I could not catch up to learn. Even as I learn new and interesting things in mathematics, I still feel like I do not know much about the field. As everyone else is able to write proofs, I can't even create simple ones. As everyone has help to get them through their courses, I only have myself, and again have no time to catch up and learn everything. Also it should be noted that most of the greatest mathematicians had their best works published and exalted by the age of 25. That leaves me with less than 4 years to come up with some brilliant form of mathematics if I were to want to keep my name in the history books. Again, I am hopelessly behind on the times.

Now there are also tons of different things I would like to do with my life. I want to sit and play video games and catch up on all those. I want to learn about computers and the hardware and catch up on that. I want to learn about web design and how it works and catch up on that. I also want to catch up on all the books people read and all the tv shows (star trek mainly) people used to watch and catch up on those. I have so much to catch up on, it's a wonder I slowly don't get there.

So what is this reason I don't catch up on everthing? One word... School. It is the first time in my life that I have felt that school is finally taking its toll on me. I feel like I am putting so much effort into getting good grades that I am not learning anything. Grades have become too much of an importance in the world. Should it not be the knowledge that we obtain rather than a grade? I feel like all I care about nowadays is a grade. And it's starting to impede on my acquisition of knowledge. I have to take 8 classes minnimum in order to continue education so that I can be a teacher. I have to write essays for education classes. Why do I need to write an essay in order to show knowledge and why do you have to put a certain number of words on it. If I want to explain a certain topic in less than 3,500 words then i should be allowed it. Does it matter if my words flow nicely on a piece of paper or not? I personally don't think so. I have gained the knowledge needed from the classroom and yet they ask me to reflect on it in such a stupid fasion. And in mathematics they ask for me to basically write a book on a subject matter. In math I understand most of it. In fact I wanted to do the workload for my math class, but it is mainly the stupid education essays I just do not want to write.

Unfortunately, I must wait until I am out of school until I can 'catch up' on everything. By that point I will be 23 and I will be too late to pursue anything in dance, and I will only have 2 years to catchup and exceed everyone else in mathematics. In essence I must accomplish the impossible. And so I will look to school and say thank you. Thank you for ruining my life.

Still behind on life thanks to school,
Aram the Garmo

Birthdays

2007-11-21T16:28:00.000-08:00

Well, today is the start of my 21st year here on planet earth. *does a little dance* So I guess it's time to think about life. First off, you should have seen me an hour ago. Wow was that a crazy experience. Let's just say I was finally able to let go of some very pent up emotions. Which is a good thing I guess.

Basically I am here today to ask a question. What is so special about birthdays? I mean we are born, and from that day our days our numbered. Sure it is a good thing to celebrate that you made it through another year of life, but is it just not the same as laughing at someone? By noticing I am 21 I am noticing the lack of accomplishment. I look around me and what do I see? I see a lack of knowledge and understanding. By this point in life I wanted to be able to understand mathematics at least. I wanted to be able to pick up a math textbook and actually be able to casually read it and follow it along, which I can't do. I wanted to be able to come up with proofs for theorems, and for this I still need help. I wanted to begin my study on philosophy and what makes up the world and for that I have only read one text. I wanted to be teaching children mathematics and already able to help them understand basic concepts, and I am still at least 2 years away from that goal. I feel like I have all these accomplishments waiting to happen but not enough time to do it, and I already feel behind.

By now most of my 'smart' colleagues have already watched all the episodes of star trek and have read all the star wars books. The stories they used to read in middle school I am just picking up. I have over 10 years of knowledge to catch up on, and thats just the beginning. I mean where do I go from here, and what more am I to accomplish? There are so many unanswered questions and I hoped that by now all of this would have been settled. I am already in the stage in my life where I am seriously considering having children. I don't know. I feel so mature and yet so behind.

What do you do when all you want to do in life is catch up with everyone around you just so that you can eventually get ahead and get somewhere?

That is why I don't like birthdays. It is another slap in the face telling you that you are still losing the war in knowledge. Maybe one day I will catch up. Maybe I will one day hopefully accomplish my one goal in life. Maybe... But for today, I just ask for more knowledge for my birthday.

Unknowingly yours,
Aram the Garmo

Friendships

2007-11-10T19:05:00.000-08:00

What is a friendship? In the most closeness of the word. I think a friend is a person who stays by you and helps you in a time of need and someone you are willing to do the same for. Someone who you can freely talk with without fear of them thinking badly of you, and the recipricol. But what happens when friendship gets torn? What happens when a friendship gets cut in such a way that two pieces of the originally same string are held by only one point.

Which side of the angle would you lie on if your line got bent and your rays are now pointing in different directions, no longer pointing the same way? What ray would you follow?

Would you follow the ray who will bring you strength and will be there until the end, but will also keep you in a state which you wish to move out of. That friend which will cause you to think about life and challenge you to be the best you can be and to force you to work until the sun has risen yet again. Will you choose the side where money is spent and corrupts, but helps you feel good. Where decisions take time and options are considered. Where new experiences lie and the path you want is laid. The side which takes you away from the rest of humanity and will cause you to drift into solitary confinement, but will also make you become who you want and learn the languages needed to be the person you need to feel fulfilled.

Or would you choose the side where fashion lies. Where the outside determines your inside. Where gossip spreads like wildfire and fuels your life waiting for another day. Would you go toward the side where frugality is considered a good thing and a walk to save money is not considered negative. Would you walk on the side where popular tv shows rule and pub quizes determine life. Would you choose the side where alcohol is prevalent and all the problems of life are drowned slowly in order to make it all seem better.

Which side would you choose? I have chosen mine for it is my dream that I must follow. And so I say goodbye to the world. If you never see me again, it is this that has occured. Aram is following his dreams, pursuing his paths, seeking the knowledge which he needs to know. As Socrates has said, "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" and saying, "There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance." And so I rest my day in pursuance to be the next known person in history. To have my name etched in stone next to Euclid, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Newton, Fermat, and so many other fabulous people such that I only hope to accomplish 1 tenth in my lifetime what they did in 1 year.

Regretfully yours,
Aram the Garmo

Teaching Credential Dilema

2007-10-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

So I can't get to work for the life of me so instead I am writing a dilema that I am in.

As of right now I have 3 main options as to what to do with my life in order to become a teacher. The issue is, I don't know which one of the three is the best one for me to take. Some I am being forced not to take, due to the fact of me not knowing what to do, while others I don't want to take, but may need to.

1) Go straight into teaching. This of course is the simplest one to explain. I personally would not mind this idea and seems to be the most prominent one that I have. This is difficult for me because this means that I would need to find a school in the UK that is willing to hire me, in an area that I like. This is difficult because I don't know the UK very well, like my English counterparts do. I don't know that essex is not going to be the best place to teach. I don't know where are nice areas to live, and I don't really have the money to go and see other places in order to make my decision. The hiring part cannot be too difficult due to the fact that they are looking for maths teachers, but I wonder if I will get paid less if I am not qualified. I could also take this option until I can afford to go and get my qualification, or find a way to qualify myself during the nights. Those are options here.

2) Go to a PGCE programme here in the UK and get qualified. In order to do this I unfortunately need money though. I would need to pay the 9,000 GBP tuition that is required in order to go there. This is not including the rent and food and everything. Basically, I would go into crazy amounts of debt in order to achieve this. There is a slight possibility that I may get a grant/scholarship since I am trying to be a teacher, but the chances are slim since I'm international. Like this I could study in Leeds, but again would not be able to look around and see where would be the best places to live and such. During this time I will also have to get a job so I am not completely broke, and will also mean I have to start paying back my loans to the states, which is extra debt in the UK.

3) Go into a Teacher Credentialling programme in the states. There is a problem with this one also. Since I am over here it is difficult for me to get my hands on the information needed to get into grad school. I need 3 letters of recommendation, and also I apparently need to take the GRE. Being in England makes it difficult to take the GRE. The next one is actually on the 3rd of November, but I am too late to sign up for that one. The one after that is in April, which would be too late for Grad school applications. Also, in order to get the CSET exemption I would need to get into grad school this coming year, or else I need to take the CSET, which is a $210 exam which you are almost guaranteed to fail the first time, and there are almost no study guides out there to help you pass it. So I could wait a year and do it then.

Now most of this sounds almost impossible, but there is a plan to make numbers 2 and 3 much more reasonable and doable. If I were to take a gap year next year and just do work for a whole year, I could potentially save up to $7,000 in one year. (This is assuming a $40,000 a year job with expenses as follows: $1,000 rent a month, $300 a month for food, $500 a month for personal expenses, $1,000 per month for loan repayment). So after one year the $7,000 would be more than enough to finance my next year at a UC school. I would also have all of that year to take and retake the CSET exam until I pass it. I could also end up taking that $7,000 and go and study in England. The money would pay off my housing, and I could easily get loans and such to afford my tuition (Assuming I get no scholarships).

So that is my dilema basically. Do I take a chance and try and turn in an application for UC Davis grad school, do I take a year off and work to save money, or do I go straight into teaching without knowing anything?

[Note: $40,000 a year was based off the fact of: $20/hour income working 40 hours per week. This may not seem doable, but remember I would be willing to take up 2 or 3 jobs in order to make the 40,000 a year. I could also end up working for agilent for a year and make a salary. I could also be an accountant for a year and make money that way. I could also decrease spending by living at my parents house during this time (even though I don't think they would want me to live there, and it would also take away my californian status).]

So the battle has begun. Which crazy scenario will Aram pick?

Confuzzled beyond belief,
Aram the Garmo

What would you do for your family?

2007-10-19T13:51:00.001-07:00

As I move further away I only notice one huge thing, my family. For some reason I always comprimise my family for my wants. I do what I want and let my family fend for themselves in essence.

I firts noticed this in middle school when I was given an option, stay home with friends or go up north with relatives. Basically it was a weekend a long time ago where I was given the choice of staying home so that I can go bowling with Dan on Sunday, or I could ride up north to San Jose to go to my "cousin's" graduation party. I of course, stupidly, chose to stay at home with my friends. When my parents got back they showed me the wonderful time they had and I regretted it. I had chosen friends over family, and that is not how I wanted it to be.

Yet again though I am doing another faulty line and I had to travel all the way to England to realise it. I am choosing myself over family. Yes, in an American world that is completely ok and is normal. It is the I culture. But, like I tell everyone else, I am not American, I am Armenian and I do not like being a part of the I culture. That is in essence sort of why I left. I was trying to find somewhere where it wasn't all about the self. All about me me me. It wasn't until I got here that I realised that I had fallen into the American trap. I was only thinking about myself. I never thought about what this action would do to my family. I never intended to hurt my family in the process, yet that is all I have done.

I recently have realised what I am doing to my family. My mother is completely torn that I have left her. She can now barely walk and move around. She has to see a chiropracter once a week, and it's even gotten to the point where she is undergoing something called a ph treatement. It's something like her going in twice a week and having them do some treatement for her back so she doesn't feel pain anymore. And I seriously believe that it is due to me. Her life was ok before I left. She didn't have back problems, she was leading a normal and healthy life. All her problems began the day that I left. She also deeply misses me and wants me to come back home. She even says that she misses my "smily face." I mean how can you say no to that!

And then my brother is another person in need. Although we may always argue and fight I truly, deeply love him. And I may not say that to him very often, but I know he knows that, or at least I hope he does. And I also blame my leaving for his tragedies. He has no guidance in life. He doesn't know where to go or what to do. He has his mother and father both yelling at him to do certain things and they won't let him do the one thing he wants. He needs an older brother to stand up for him and help him, and I can't do that from far away. I have failed in helping my younger brother. I have failed in protecting him.

And so this brings me to once question, what can I do about all of this? Can I just drop everything I want and change my whole life for my family? Can I give up my dreams of living in Europe? Can I give up my dreams of being a teacher? Can I give up my rights as a citizen to go and live in a second rate country with a crappy political system? Can I change my job so quickly and adapt to a new lifestyle? Can I grow up so fast that everyone will think that I am 40? Can I be there for my family?

I hope my answer will be yes.

I am now seriously thinking about getting an accounting job that pays over 100k and moving to the states so that I can always see my mother and have the money to afford helping my brother. I don't know if I will end up doing this, but as of now, my plans for my future have changed.

What would you do for your family?

Signed,
Aram the Garmo

Weather

2007-10-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

Back for my second post of the evening! This topic will be about the weather so far in England.

A lot of people have this weird idea that the weather here in England is disgusting. There is this idea that it is always raining and just always depressing. I actually find the exact opposite. The weather here is so intriguing. You wake up in the morning and look at the weather forecast and then you trash the report you just read because it means absolutely nothing. A rainy day could mean 2 drops of rain, and a sunny day could mean the exact same thing. So since the weather is so unpredictable you always walk around with an umbrella just in case rain came in.

Another wonderful aspect about the weather is the clouds. In California the clouds almost didn't move. They stayed in place and created beautiful pictures in the sky. Over here the clouds move so fast it is amazing. It's as if the clouds have somewhere to go and they are in a rush to get there. I also like the way the clouds move. Since they are moving so fast it is an amazing site to see. One minute it is completely cloudy outside. Then you walk through a mall and by the time you walk to the other side the clouds have all disappeared and it is suddenly a hot sunny day. I find it amazing.

I will agree that it is pretty cold, but you get used to it. Within a couple of days I was used to the weather over here.

I think that is all about weather. Pictures are coming soon. I am waiting for a day that I am not dying and the weather outside turns out good AND I don't have classes in order to take pictures. So far I have pictures of my room. You can view them here:
http://s71.photobucket.com/albums/i143/crazyinsanoman/Clarence%20Dock%20-%20my%20room/

Freezing his bum off,
Aram the Garmo

Christmas

2007-10-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

This is a first of a couple of posts that I should be making tonight. This one is going to be about my frustrations over my vacation planning.

So as it has been made aware, I was initially planning to have 3 different vacation schemes throughout the year in order to visit all the places I wished to go. During December I was going to travel Southern Europe. During March I was to travel the UK. During June I was going to travel Northern Europe. This was my initial plan, until travesty hit.

About a week ago I began realising that I had financial issues. I was running out of money, and fast. I needed to come up with a way to see how much I was allowed to spend. So I looked at my budget and calculated the amount of money I currently have and divided it up by 38 weeks. I had around $4,500 to spend for 38 weeks. This was around 2,250 GBP (The input area won't let me do the pound symbol). Which meant for around 59 GBP per week, which is really good. I could handle that, and then the big picture came in. When was I planning to travel, and to where, and how much was this going to cost. I needed to figure out my vacation plans.

It quickly became obvious that the money I had would not go far. I couldn't survive if I had 3 different vacations. I would be so poor they would end up kicking me out of the halls. So I thought hard about it and came up with a plan to do all of my Europe travels in June and go home for christmas time. In March I planned on just hanging around and not doing much, probably go to the library here and such.

I decided to travel in June because earlier my mom had been talking about how she wanted me home for christmas, and so I thought that like this I could go and visit her for christmas and do my vacationing plans.

So I sat and planned the places I wanted to go and around how much the cost would be if I were to go there. I first made a list of the places I wanted to go: Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Venice, Athens, Helsinki, Stockholm. Those were my 8 choices if I had to narrow it down. So then I calculated expected costs. 630 GBP for travelling, 300 GBP for food, 300 GBP for hostels. That ended up with a grand total of $2,500 for travelling just in June.

So then I took the $2,500 out of my finances, and looked at my new budget. I took 4 weeks out for christmas, and 4 weeks out for Europe, so my budget was only over 30 weeks now. This didn't help much because now my weekly income was a grand total of 33 GBP. And for anyone who isn't living in England, only having 33 GBP a week for food/mobile/laundry/and the occasional luxury, 33 doesn't even begin to cut it. But I knew I had to manage.

All of my plans have recently changed due to an idea my mom has had. She has now come to the conclusion that she doesn't want me to go home for christmas. She would much rather have me travel and would be willing to pay for my expenses for me to travel in Europe instead of going home. This is a curius idea since it was my step dad who asked her to do it. She is of course hurting since she hasn't seen me in forever and my stepdad thinks that she needs to learn to let go of me and let me live my life. So she is trying that by not seeing me.

Now this is tragic since I was very excited to go and see her over christmas. I really want to go to her for christmas and spend a little time with her. So now she wants me to go travelling instead and I don't know what to do. Do I go against her wishes and go and see her during christmas or do I just travel Europe without her? Yes it is a fact that most students are very excited to leave their families behind and never see them again, but I recently saw a TV show that has changed my mind. I was watching Queer as Folk (UK version) and saw how Nathan's mom was so hurt by Nathan leaving her and so I figured that is how my mom is feeling, and I suddenly felt horrible for leaving. Is it sad that I feel bad for following my own path because it hurts my mother?

So that is my current dillema, do I choose christmas with mother against her wishes, or do I go to europe and travel and by doing so not seeing my mom until June.

Inquisitively,
Aram the Garmo

"These are 2 of my favorite new things"

2007-09-25T02:22:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is a twist off of "these are a few of my favourite things." So I decided instead of writing boring shit like where I went and at what time, I am deciding to write new experiences and stuff like that. And so in the past week 2 main things happened that I want the world to know. Well, mainly you, but in reality I want these recorded in history!

My first new favourite thing to do is walk the streets without looking both ways. And here is where the story begins. I was standing right outside of the Leeds City Centre Market friday at around 15:00 and we were heading to uni in order to open a bank account. I look to the left because I thought the symbols on the floor told me it was a one way street. So I see no cars coming and I take a step forward. *BANG* A bus comes and hits me from the right hand side. I never saw the bus or anything. In fact I didn't even feel the bus. All I remember is falling, feeling the floor, and thinking "oh, I should get up." And I did a dance turn and stood up without ever breaking the fall. I think I actually got up faster than the bus could fully stop. It wasn't until I was standing that I realised that I got hit by a bus. It was a very fun experience though. I had no broken body parts, and only a little bit of soarness. I was more upset about my sweatshirt getting wet.

Later on my friend told me that she thought the bus was going around 15 mph and that the scene looked like the end of "Mean Girls" where she gets hit by the bus. And we also realised that the reason I didn't feel the bus was because the bus never hit me, it hit my purse. I realised this since I noticed my lotion cap was broken and had to toss it away. My friend who was there was more in shock than I was. I personally was ready to go, but she had me sit down for a little bit. While I was sitting some random woman walked up to me and was trying to say that in the UK you can sue for getting hit by a bus. Well, here's the thing. It was MY fault for getting hit. I am not going to sue the bus company when I was the one who did it. What happens if when I sue them they let go of the guy who "didn't stop in time"? And what happens if that guy was relying on this job to feed his whole family? I am sorry, but when it is completely my fault I will not be suing anyone. So she tried to tell me to go to a hospital within 48 hours just in case. Which I thought was a good idea.

Now, of course any logical person would have gone straight to a hospital and been examined. Well, I was a stupid one I guess. Instead of going to the hospital we still went to go and open up a bank account. We got some information and then around 4 pm (1 hour after the accident) I went to a dance workshop. Yes, I paid £3 in order to dance for 2 hours right after getting hit by a bus. It was actually loads of fun. I felt a little out of it, but was dancing fairly well. The moves were all hip-hop which was not my expertise, but I tried anyway and did well, but completely failed when we showed it in groups. I forgot everything. But I had fun and thats all that counts. Afterward I went to Leeds Student Medical Practice (the hospital I'm supposed to go to) and found out they were closed. So I called the "emergency" hotline cause they were closed on saturday also. They told me to go to this hopital called "Lexicon House." They tried to give me directions, but they were so weird. They told me to go down to the Merrion Centre and go downhill. Now, the Merrion centre is a whole block long, so I don't know which downhill they were talking about, but I decided to try and figure it out. So I started walking and finally realised I was going the wrong direction. I called again and they were not helpful once more. So, instead, I called my friend and had her open google maps and find where I am and help me get to where i need to be. It took me around 1 hour to walk to the hospital when it should have taken 20 minutes.

So I got to the hospital (which is in the middle of no where) and I sat down. They finally called me in and the doctor was kurdish, aka Iraqi. But having my parents be Iraqi it made no difference to me. So he asked me what problem I had and I told him I got hit by a bus. He asked where it hurts and I told him a couple of joint pains I had and he didn't touch or anything and just wrote it down. And then he asked how I got the joint pains. I looked at him oddly and again said that I got hit by a bus. At this he looked at me weird and asked if I got hit as in *insert hand motion of fist colliding with other palm* by a bus? I told him yes. And he said that he thought I got to the hospital by bus. (Later on I found out, the closest bus station to the hospital was around half a mile away.) So he asked if it hurt a lot and I said no. And then he asked about my name which wasn't "Californian." So I told him and I swear we talked more about my name than my injuries. Then afterward he said that I was free to go. I looked at him weird and asked if I should do anything in particular just in case. He told me if I wanted I could take ibuprofen or paracitemal (sp?), but that I didn't need to. Then again I looked at him weird and asked if I should rest for the night or the next few days, you know, to let my body recuperate. He told me that I didn't need to. If I felt fine than I could go out. Oh stupid doctor, jokes are for blokes. But he was stupid, but of course I took his advise. I ended up leaving and calling a taxi. The taxi said it would take an hour. So I walked half a mile to a bus stop, took the bus into city centre and from there walked the rest of the way home. That night, as the doctor ordered, I got no rest. I went out at 11:30 and partied until 3:30 at Fruity, which is the club the union holds on Fridays. it was tons of fun!

And that was my first experience. My second experience was not as dramatic, but was a lot of fun. Last night I went to a gay club for the first time here. The drinks were each £1 and entry was only £1.50. So of course I was planning on getting wasted. We didn't start to dance until around 10:30 or so, even though we got there at around 8:30. When we started dancing I noticed not many people were full on dancing like they did in the states. There was definately more dancing than in the straight clubs, but still not enough. But there was enough that I was able to enjoy myself and dance. Now here is where the new experience comes in. As I was dancing one of my new gay friends told me we should go up and pole dance. Yes, there were 2 poles in this club. I told him I didn't know how and he said he would show me. So I went up with him. He did some basic thing, and being the dancer I am I took what he did, changed it up a bit and did something different. He looked at me all suave and we started our pole off. He did one thing, I twisted it and did another. My grand finally was when I climbed to the top and stood on top of the pole and started hip thrusting. Afterward I climbed upsidedown down the pole and flipped and landed with my ass on the railing, my legs open the hole time, still holding on to the pole. At which point I did some more hip thrusts and let my butt slide down. I help myself in position with my head and started using both arms to spank and stuff. I then slid all the way down and straddled the pole in front of me on the railing. I fondled it, got up and took the big pole again and did a little turn thing and that was about all. It was super fierce. Everyone in the club was staring and I felt good. Afterward everyone was asking if I had ever pole danced before cause I was doing good. I told them no but it felt good to know that I could pole dance really well. I can't wait for my next pole dancing experience.

So those are two of my favourite new things. There are more new things that will come up as the days go on so stay tuned as Aram's life continues to add drama to yours.

With excitement,
Aram the Garmo

Last 2 days of Edinburgh and my travel to Leeds

2007-09-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

Hey again. Sorry this is taking longer than I expected. Life here is dramatically crazy, but is slowly starting to settle down. Pictures will hopefully come soon. As for now I will continue where I left off, the beautifulness of Edinburgh and how I got to Leeds!

Day 2 of Edinburgh was our meeting day. Even though I was jet-lagged I woke up at around 7 am and decided to get up. Left the hotel by around 8 and then realised the study centre doesn't open until 9 am. So I walk to starbucks and order a coffee and a croissant, not realising that the hotel offers a continental breakfast. At 9 I walk to the study centre and just chilax and talk with folks and go online for a bit. Then I help them get the meeting started at around 10 am. We have a nice meeting until around 12 at which point I realise that I have no sweatshirt for the day and since it was already cold I decided I needed to buy a sweatshirt stat in order to not freeze. So I walked to Princes St. by myself since no one else wanted to go shopping and I finally found something in my size at gap. It was really cute and only £35. I mean yes, that is $70 but really everything was around the same amount. Then we met up the scottish parliament to walk to the top of the mountain. They call it Arthur's seat! It was such a fun walk to the top. It was a 4 mile climb and was amazingly fun. Everyone else was tired of walking and hated it, but I was running and dancing and having fun. We got to the top or Arthur's seat and it was AMAZING. You can see almost all of Edinburgh from there. I took a couple of panaramic pictures and I hope that they will end up looking nice. The top was really windy though. I swear the wind was around 60 mph. It was a lot of fun though cause no one moved at all and I was the only one willing to take pictures of people cause I was able to control my body to be able to handle the wind. At the end of the hike we started going down to go to a chinese buffet. I thought that this was weird. Going to a chinese buffet in the UK? But I decided it would be fun to see if there was much difference between American chinese food and British chinese food. We got there and it was actually pretty good. We again didn't have to pay for it so it tasted better but it was still pretty good. They didn't have too many vegetarian options, but it was still enough to survive. That night we decided we were going to go clubbing. Apparently there was a fun club that was going to play live music. So later that night a few of us went to the club. The drinks were very pricey compared to America. It was £3 for a vodka redbull. Odly though it was only £2 for 2 shots of vodka. So I got a vodka redbull and 2 shots of vodka and was ready to dance. No one was dancing though. So we, being the crazy Californians as we are, decided to go ahead and dance ourselves. It was alright. The music was hard to dance to cause it was rock music, but we somehow managed to do it. And after we started dancing, it seemed like everyone else was dancing also, which is a good sight to see. At around 1 am the band finally showed up and started playing. They were not particularly good, but they had good sound. After they stopped playing we went home and went to bed.

The next day was much more lax. I got up late and headed down for the complimentary breakfast where I ended up seeing a few EAP students. We chatted and decided to head to the study centre again. At this point I went there in order check email and a couple of other details that needed to be worked out before I went to Leeds the following day. After a few hours of this we went shopping and we all bought cell phones at the carphonewarehouse which is a nice store that has many pay-as-you-go options. At this point we were made to go on a tour to Edinburgh Castle. I personally wouldn't have paid to go there, but it was still a fun time to walk in the castle and see the grounds. Afterward we went out and got italian food and then set out to our Ghost and Ghouls tour. The tour was at 9 at night and was an ok tour. The guy was from Leeds and seemed to enjoy his job, but there was nothing really to creepy persay. It was fun to hear some of the stories, but eh, again I wouldn't have paid for it. The last part was in an underground cavern which was actually pretty cool. He kep trying to scare us, but it never really worked. After this I just went home and slept, cause I had to be up at 4 in the morning cause our train left at 6. So I went home and slept, it was midnight.

Finally it was saturday, 15th of September and it was time to wake up at 4 in the morning in order to get ready. We decided to meet downstairs at 5 in order to be good to go. I got downstairs at around 4:45 and I called home to let them know what I was up to and such. Finally at 5 everyone came downstairs and we called a taxi and took it to Wavereley station. We got there about an hour before our bus came, but we just sat and got our tickets. We were all hungry and exhausted from the previous night out. Finally at 6 the bus came and we loaded and got on. We took the bus to Newcastle. The drive was very beautiful, but I was so tired I slept the whole way. I think most people did. At newcastle it took us only 5-10 min to find our train and board. We took up almost the whole luggage area which was fun, and we each had our seats next to other people. I sat and read during this trip and made a list of everything I needed to do when I got to Leeds. Finally we hit York and breezed into the next train to Leeds. We were worried because our ticket said we only had 8 minutes to catch the train at york, but we found out that the train from York to Leeds was actually a small company that did a train every 20 min and that we can catch any of the trains. So we waited like 15 min and got on the next train. It was a short train ride to Leeds (only 30 min) at which point we unloaded and met up with the meet and greet service which took me to Clarence Dock. I was the first person in my flat to be there.

Now that I am at Clarence dock I will stop. I am super hungry and must go make myself food. I hope to get this week online soon and hopefully with pictures. Eventually though this will be converted into a private journal, or be very exclusive on the details given. So that is all, I hope you all have fun and chat then.

With love and hunger in his belly,
Aram the Garmo

Edinburgh: Travel/Day 1

2007-09-13T13:05:00.001-07:00

Hello again world, I am back! So no photos yet, but they should be uploaded once I unload myself in Leeds. For now I will just explain everything that is happening with the travel and my experience in Edinburgh!

My travels were amazingly simple. I took a plane from LAX to SFO then from SFO to London Heathrow. I was flying United, which I highly unrecommend. Never use united if you can stand it. Talk about 9 hours on a plane, and they don't even have decent music. They don't even give you movies to watch. So, basically, if you want to not be bored the whole trip, you bring your own entertainment. I assumed I wouldn't need entertainment though cause I thought I would sleep on the plane. In fact I relied on that since I woke up at 7pm on 10 Sept CA time and left SFO at around 1 pm 11 Sept CA time. So I assumed I would sleep a few winks on the flight. Not true though. I couldn't even sleep. Near the end of the trip I slept around 10 minutes or so before the freaking flight attendant came and woke me up in order to give me breakfast! Stupid waitor, if I am asleep, leave me asleep! But, oh well. I got to London and had to stand through immigration... which is HELL! Talk about standing in queue for an hour in order to just enter the country. Once I got up there it was fairly quick to go to baggage and off to the London Tube. The tube was fun also. I heard some new interesting words like foof. It was used in the following contest "I didn't want to foof around with my emails." Now I have this urge to use that word. I don't even know why. I also heard them use the word goodo! Now that is a fun time. And they used the phrase "speak then" it reminded me of GJ and home. At the end of the tube journey I then proceeded to go to the train station in order to take my train to Edinburgh. At this point I ordered my first food item from the UK! I bought a sandwhich. It was not very good, but it was much better than the US food. At this point I took the train up. The train was funny because they booked my seat to 2 different people and there was no room for my luggage... so I had to sit on my luggage basically, and the other person just sat next to me since the person who reserved the seat next to me never showed up. I felt sorry for the girl who sat near me though because by this point in my journey I was smelly due to BO since I had been running and carrying heavy stuff and hadn't showered in over a day! So once I got to Edinburgh I took a taxi to my hotel and checked in and took a shower. And that is how I got to Edinburgh!

Now time for Edinburgh. Edinburgh is such a beautiful city. I may just move here instead of London when I am done. Once we got here we walked to a meadow and hung out for a little and then went to a restauraunt called Monster Mash. The food was pretty good, but I was able to order my first alcoholic beverage which was fun. I ordered a heineken! The beer here is soooo much better. So that night we all went to a pub called the black bull and just hung out trying to beat jet lag. During this time I watched some football and had another pint and a half. So by the end of the night I was still sober but content :). By 9 at night we couldn't stand it any longer and meandered our way back to the hotel. At around 10 at night I crashed.

And that was 12 Sept! I will talk more on 13 Sept later, but for now I must hang out and meet more people so I'm out!

Pleasantly not completely sober :-P
Aram the Garmo

1st stop - Edinburgh, Scotland!

2007-09-13T01:21:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! I am coming to you LIVE from EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND!!! Can you tell I am excited? I do not have much time since I am on a public computer at the Edinburgh Uni, UC Study Centre. So I just wanted to let you know pictures and details are coming soon. So far I will mention that this place is amazing and I highly recommend it to anyone who is thinking of traveling to the UK or even Europe. So that is all the time I have, and I will talk with you shortly!

With great enjoyment,
Aram the Garmo

T minus 8.5 hours

2007-09-11T01:32:00.002-07:00

Hello once again! Only 8 and a half hours remain until I leave California, friends, and family and start my adventures in England!!! I have come up with a nice strategy plan to make sure I get minimal jet lag when I land in England. My basic plan? That's simple! Just stay awake until 10 am which is when my plane leaves LAX to San Fran. At San Fran we switch planes. On the plane to London, I plan on taking a nice long 8 hour nap. This sleeping time should coincide nicely with the time in England. By leaving San Fran at around 12ish that means I would be in the air around 8pm UK time. By sleeping around 8 hours in the air, I would wake up around 4 am UK time. Although this may sound early, it is much easier to wake up at 4 in the morning and catch up on sleep, rather than stay awake for almost 2 days straight! Which explains why I am up so late at night. I must hold ground for another 4 hours. At 5:30 am I plan on taking a shower, at which point at 6 am I will wake up my dad. I will finish packing and we leave the house at 6:30 getting to the ariport in an hour and leaving 2.5 hours until my plane departs. Those last couple hours will be difficult, but I'll find someway to handle.

In the meantime, I have a duty to accomplish much in these next 4 hours and so since my gaming system (PS2) is not working, I thought I would write a blog about my last week with my dad. It was a normal father experience and I must say I came to some conclusions about my father which make me get even angrier, but more on that later. First, let us first begin from the end of last post... Thursday

So at the end of Thursday, around 10 am, my father decided that since my brother was so hurt and anguished with pain for having to leave me and not see me for a year, that my father and I would drive all the way to phoenix to see my brother again for the weekend. I almost wanted to shoot my father, and for 2 totally seperate reasons.
1) I had been travelling almost non-stop for 2 weeks in cars, in planes, and everything and I just wanted to rest. I did not feel like being in a car, stuck with my dad, for 6 hours, absolutely bored out of my mind, when instead I could be sleeping, resting, playing games, and other things that would allow me to relax. I guess I should mention that I really do not like cars at all, and I hate driving in them long distances, and I hate driving them long distances even more. So I was really really not up for driving anywhere anymore. I had just landed in LA, and I planned to stay. So this problem was easily fixed by being able to convince my dad to have my brother fly out here instead. Sure it cost my dad $250 to fly him out roundtrip, but that is the expense my dad was willing to pay apparently.
2) The next reason I didn't want to see my brother again was due to the pain it would cause. It was hard enough leaving my family behind in Arizona, it had caused enough trauma, but now my dad had the gaul to want my brother and I to experience the pain all over again. I don't think he realized that saying goodbye once is difficult, but saying goodbye more than once is unbearable. But of course, even with me trying to explain to my dad that this would cause more pain than healing, he refused to listen to a word I said and thought it best to allow my brother to come over. Apparently my dad was only thinking of himself and not the well-being of his two children, which again shows how horrible of a human my dad is, but more on that later.

So we had my brother come up on friday. Almost directly from picking him up from the airport we went and saw a movie. "Stardust" was a very good movie. I do admit it was very cheesy near the end, but the whole gay subplot in the movie just made it so good. It allowed my imagination to soar. And with all the reading I have been doing the past couple of days has made it even better. So we went and saw that and then of course went to the bookstore and such. Saturday was filled with almost nothing as we sat at work all day and at night all we did was go to the mall for no particular reason. Sunday was the most productive day of all. Firstly we went golfing, since my brother and dad for some reason now love to golf. I find golf particularly dry and not very fun. I am not a golf player and don't really enjoy it. I find it a rich person's sport, and since I don't want to be rich it repels me. But of course my brother and dad who dream of riches nonstop love the sport of golf and so they sat and hit some balls. They tried to get me to hit some, but I had to force and insist that I didn't want to. It's like they were trying to force me to be just like them, golf players... yuck. At the end of the golf playing we went to the Glendale Galleria to look for watches. I found a nice Diesal watch which we bought for $150 and my brother found a nice Swatch watch for $140 and my dad paid for both of them and it made life good. Then of course Sunday night my brother left for Phoenix again, and again I was filled with pain. Of course, my dad is again pretty stupid with things. My brothers plain was supposed to leave at 7:45 but ended up getting delayed until 10pm. My dad decided it would be a good idea to drop by YET AGAIN and see my brother before he left. So basically my brother came out of the terminal to say hi for an hour or so. At this point I was angry at my father for not realizing how completely stupid he was being and for not listening to me. My brother should have stayed inside in order to figure out what was happening to his delayed plane and to see if he can get on an earlier one. Well, of course my brother didn't try and get on an earlier one, and so I had to go and talk with the people myself in order to get him a flight at 9pm so that he can get home. It seemed my brother and dad wanted him to just spend the night and take the 7 am flight out of burbank even though my brother has school at 7:30 the next morning. Does that make sense to anyone? So that was thankfully fixed.

Of course my brothers visit was not the only thing that occured this past week. Yesterday I had the enjoyment to be able to go and visit my Aunt Armen and Maggie Nene. I went there for lunch and we sat and talked the whole time. I must say it was the most fun I had all week. We just sat and had a cup of tea and it was like good old times. I must say I enjoy my mom's side of the family much more than my dad's side of the family. My aunt gave me some names of people she would like me to try and find while I am over in England. I don't know how I will find them, but of course I will try and look for them for her.

So a couple of things that happened at my father's work. Well, it just so happens that when I get to my father's place I don't really ever relieve myself sexually due to the fact that I am always around my father. This makes it difficult to look at gay porn/read gay porn/even just go to the bathroom and wank off. And so for almost a whole week I found myself sexually extremeley frustrated. I was checking out the ugliest men in the world and was so horny at that moment I didn't care. I think I was going through heat or something. But the point of this is that my dad has a worker named Eddie who is decently attractive. I mean he is not completely attractive, but his personality makes up for it. Oh, and did I mention he is utterly straight too, and metro? So anyway, of course every time I saw him I was almost instantly turned on. Mind you no one over there knows I am gay so I had to tone down the whole thing. Imagine being stuck in a car with someone you just want to jump for 10 minutes when it's just the two of you, and all he sits and talks about is the girl he went out with the other day and how he thinks she has a sexy voice! Let's just say, it is hard to live sex free for this long. I need to find myself a mate, and quick.

Another thing I would like to mention is the ordeal of my father. As time progresses I grow more and more sick and tired of my dad. I always think 'oh this time he will be better,' but he never is. Some things to note about my father.
1) He is extremely sexist - I had noted to him that he has no women working in the office and I asked him if there was any particular reason he never hired a women. He flat out said that women were stupid and could not do the jobs he needed. At that point I was angry and told him that he should hire a women by the time I come back from England. He said that he would hire a women and that she would stay in his office naked the whole time. I mean how disgusting is that. Is that the only way that he thinks of women? An object to play with and do as you please. He is so ridiculously stupid in that regards it makes no sense to me. And then later on that day after I mentioned a story about the macy's attendants who were helping me try and adjust my watch for my wrist, and all three that were helping me were women and I was describing how we couldn't get it off, and my father has the gaul to say that this proves that women are stupid. How about NO!!! We couldn't fix the watch not because we didn't know what we were doing, but because the manufacturer didn't send us the correct supplies. It was NOT because the people helping me were women. Of course I wanted to jump and slit his throat, but I couldn't.
2) He is impulsive - My father likes to make a decision in split seconds without thinking about the consequences or whether or not it is the best thing to do at the moment. An example of this was my brother coming to visit. It took my father a whole of 5 minutes to decide that he wanted to see my brother in order to help him with his problems. My father didn't sit and decide whether this plan would be good for my brother, for me, if my father could even afford this plan. Instead he just set out to do it, impulsively. He has done this in the past with buying my external harddrive. I had been saving up for an external harddrive, and when we were in radioshack and I was browsing through the external harddrives, my father bought one without even looking at any of the details and gave it to me saying that I should have what I want instead of waiting for it. He didn't think about what he was doing. He wanted the harddrive and he wanted it now. Which I guess is a good saying for how my father works, if he wants something, he wants it now. So he never thinks about anything and just does things on impulse, without any structure, and I can't handle that. I need structure in my life.
3) He only thinks about himself - Again this is shown with having my brother come down for the weekend. My dad wouldn't listen at all that my brother coming down would maybe hurt him more than help him, instead my father only thought about himself and proceeded to have my brother come down. He also does this at his job. I know that since he owns the business he must look out for profits and such in order to continue being successful and so he must look out for only himself, but there are limits. One of his employees, Gary, was working for him for a few months. Recently Gary's son ran away from him. Of course Gary was in shambles and couldn't go to work for a couple of days. Who wouldn't be that crazy when their only son just ran away from home and you have no idea where they are? So, then eventually Gary finds his son (I think he found him Sunday), and my dad decides that this would be the best time to fire Gary. He fired Gary monday. I mean this guy just went on an emotional roller coaster for the past couple of days having to deal with his lost son, and now you are firing him? Yes, it may hurt your company a tiny bit, but the least you can do is at least wait a week or two before firing him. I found that completely selfish of my dad. My dad also has this thing where he tries to get everyone to work for him. He has been trying to get my brother and I to work for him for years now. He has succeeded in almost getting my brother to work for him, but he doesn't sit and think what would be best for my brother. My brother doesn't fully want to work for my dad, but instead is only doing it cause he thinks it would be an easy job (even though it won't). My mom and I have finally convinced my brother to follow his own dream instead of following in my father's footsteps. My dad has also been trying to get me to work for him, which is funny since I have already made plans about where I will be working and all that. And he tries to sneak it in, like he will try and get me to write him a email for him using HTML and to teach him, and to do that for him, and that. So this week I gave up on him and was like, 'no, you want to write an email using HTML then go learn HTML yourself, you can't rely on me to do it for you.' So I showed him a website and let him go at it. Of course he never even looked at the site and went and did other work. Again this shows he doesn't care about other people, only himself. He doesn't care that I want to be a math teacher in High School, he only knows that since I'm smart and good in math I can help him to make his company stronger and better.

And although there is more to talk about my dad and how horrible of a human he is, I figure that is enough about my father for one day. I have written for about an hour on here so I
will stop writing so much. I am going to continue packing up my stuff and maybe play some more sudoku since the game Myst is no longer working :(. If I get utterly bored, I may come on here to write a review of something or other, but who knows. As of now it is T minus 7.5 hours until liftoff of my aircraft, and I am patiently waiting for the flight to come so I can leave this hell hole called my father's house.

Loves and Kisses for probably the last time from Los Angeles,
Aram the Garmo

6 Days until departure

2007-09-06T08:44:00.000-07:00

Hello once again!

This time I am writing to you from Los Angeles, CA! I just landed yesterday at around 1:30pm and was picked up by my father. I am spending all of the coming up week with him before my departure to London!

The hardest part of yesterday though was the leaving. I was leaving my family for a whole year to a far off place. You would think my family would get used to not seeing me, noting that I see them only around 2 or 3 times a year currently, but I imagine this time since it's only once in a year it is taking a toll on them. At the airport my mom started crying while she was hugging me. It was a very emotional moment because I knew she would truly miss me. She needed me as her anchor. I was the one she would turn to for advice and help and anything else that she may need. I was always just one phone call away, but now we don't even have that. While abroad the only way she can talk with me is through yahoo instant messenger or through email. She wants me to call her everyday, but I think it would be best to make it about once a week so that she gets used to the idea that her son is away. Of course I won't start straight away with that but will gradually ease into it. I don't want to hurt her feelings anymore than they already are.

My brother seemed to be really hurt also. While I was at the bookstore yesterday he called my dad and wanted to talk with me and was bawling due to the fact that I had left. He truly missed me which was a weird concept considering most of the time while I was there we hardly talked and even got into a couple of arguments. He is an odd character, but I hope he will one day become more than that.

So to change topics entirely, yesterday at my Dad's house I started to play Myst III: The exile, and it is a fun game. It is very challenging and forces you to use your brain. I am still stuck using the hints occasionally, but only sometimes. I am getting better. The premise of the game is that Atrus, the main person, writes Ages. These ages are such that they actually exist, so in essence he creates miny planets. The way he creates them is by writing a book about them. Once the book is completed you just touch the inside of the book and you can transport yourself into that age. Well the story plot is that the evil guy (can't remember his name) comes and steals one of the more important ages and so Atrus sort of has you go after the bad guy in order to recover the book. The 1st problem is getting into a certain room. You have to solve complicated puzzles with drawings that are hard to distinguish (which is why I used the hint book because I couldn't see what the monitor was showing, I needed a clearer picture). Once you get into the room the bad guy disappears and basically says you have to complete 3 different ages in order to find him in a 4th age. So the premise is that you have to go to each of the ages and solve tasks in order to get the guy his book back.

So yesterday I played and was finally able to get to the room in J'annin (the age you start in) and finally learned how to get into the other ages. I first tried Amaterea which was not that bad of an age. It took me a few tries to understand what I needed to do, but once I got the concept it was pretty easy. Only one puzzle was difficult to solve in which I need help on (and only minorly). So I finished one age, and only 2 more to go. My hope is to finish the game before I leave here! That should be an exciting goal.

Also yesterday my dad and I went to Barnes and Nobles. He wanted somewhere to sit and work on his computer and I wanted a new book. Oh, as a future notice. The book called "The Illuminatus!" by Robert Shea... horrible book. It is a fun read, but also very difficult. I swear the person who wrote it was on some kind of drug because the scenese change so fast. Like within one page sometimes you will go to 4 or 5 different settings with different people talking about totally seperate things (like there are 6 ro 7 plots going on and you have to keep track of all of them). So, it is basically way to confusing. So I wanted another book. After looking at the science fiction section for a while I chose "Ender's game" by Card. I had noted that a lot of people say that this book is a good book and so I decided to sit and read. After reading about 6 chapters I fell in love. The author writes with such grace that you just can't put the book down. You are drawn so quickly to the characters that you have no option but to keep going on with the book. I would highly recommend it to anyone. I hope to finish that book by tonight so I can maybe get another one!

Well, I am at my dad's work and it is getting busy so I should go and start reading my book. Things to do for me today: Go to the bank to deposit any cash I have on me, find Samantha's missing cooking stuff, and find my European money bag.

Tons of love from Los Angeles,
Aram the Garmo

9 days until departure

2007-09-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

So I am still currently in Phoenix, Arizona and I am trying to decide what I want this blog to become. I figure it will contain two main components.
1) My travelings and the places I visit and my ideas of them
2) My philosophical ideas or desires that I so choose to post

Currently, I am 9 days away from leaving the US for a very long period of time. So far in Phoenix I have been working on my scrap book which is slowly coming along and watching some TV shows. The scrap book is a weird creation. It takes more time than I anticipated and I hope I will be able to finish it by Wednesday. The TV shows are mainly history channel or LOGO so that I can catch up on the times a little.

Today I was taking care of my step uncles grandson (I don't know what that makes him), and he is 5 years old, and he is so adorable. I am slowly falling in love with little children. I think I may be ready to have a child. It is sort of weird considering this since I am only 20 years of age, but I am ready for a child. I know it will be a while until I can adopt one, but it seems like forever. Children are so cute and so much fun, I don't know how anyone can live without one. They have so much energy and so many ideas that it is impossible to not sit and try and understand them.

But now that I have explained my main goals of this blog and talked a tiny bit of the past couple of days, I will leave. I am deadly tired from running around with Tyler (step uncle's grandson), and swimming in the pool for a few hours so I am going to head off to bed.

Current Time in Phoenix: 12:10 AM
Current Time in England: 8:10 AM

2 Weeks Before Departure!

2007-08-29T22:56:00.000-07:00

Hello all and welcome to my brand new blog! I don't know how often I will update this once I reach Europe, but I hope to do it at least once a week.

Let's start off with where I currently am. As I type, I am sitting on my bed in my Mother's house in Phoenix, Arizona. Today is exactly t-minus 2 weeks until departure from the states and onto a bigger and broader future. Where I am going you may ask? Well that is a simple answer that will be revealed shortly, but first let me talk about where I will be for the next 2 weeks.

I start my plans tomorrow when I will begin my first ever scrap-book making project. I am compiling my whole college career into this scrap-book. I am also describing myself and my current ideals. This may seem crazy for a normal scrap-book which is technically supposed to hold memories, but this scrap-book is special. It will be turned into a time capsule on completion. When finished I will tie it up, and put a date on it for 20 years in the future and tuck it away safely, not to be opened until 2027, at which point I will be turning 40 and probably hit a mid life crisis.

I will work on the scrap-book for the whole week, at which point on September 5th I will be flying back to Los Angeles where I will spend the remainder of my time in the states with my father. During this last week in the states I will most likely be awkwardly bored with absolutely nothing to do, as is usually the case at my dad's house.

Then finally on September 11th I fly out of LAX and finally reach Europe, finally reunited. Now here is the main reason for this blog. I will be blogging about my time while studying abroad at Leeds University in England. I will be staying there for a whole year and hope that the trip turns out to be well worth the wait.

More information is soon to come, but unfortunately this is all for today. Stay tuned for an update as to what is happening at my mom's house, how my scrap-book is going, and more details about who I am and what I hope to do while in Europe!

With love and *kisses*,
Aram