Halfway down the Danube

The Ten Richest Men in Armenia

Okay, enough about me.

Apparently Forbes is about to publish a list of the Ten Richest Men in Armenia. The Armenian blogosphere (oh yes, there is one) has already picked up on this, so I'm coming a couple of days late.

But anyhow, you don't have to know a thing about Armenia to find this list interesting. Check it out:

Gagik Tsarukyan (commonly known as Dodi Gago) - businessman; Armen Avetisyan - The Chairman of the State Customs Committee; Mikael Baghdasarov - businessman; Hrant Vardanyan - businessman; Suqiasyan Family - businessmen; Yervand Zakharyan - Mayor of Yerevan; Robert Kocharyan - President of the Republic of Armenia; Serge Sargsyan - RoA Minister of Defense; Andranik Manukyan - Minister of Transport and Communication of the RoA; David Harutyunyan - RoA Minister of Justice;

Gagik Tsarukyan -- the first on the list -- is said to have a fortune of around 400-500 million dollars. He's Armenia's top oligarch, and he probably deserves a post of his own. The last few names are down in the $60-100 million dollar range.

Now, note that we have not one, not two, but six high-ranking government officials here. Including the President, the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Transport, and the Minister of Justice. Interesting stuff.

Is this true? How would I know? I've been here less than a year, I still don't speak the language beyond the see-spot-run level, and Armenian politics is of a complexity that goes past Baroque, beyond Byzantine, somewhere into non-Euclidean.

But I would say that, in my uninformed opinion, this seems... not entirely implausible.

Solitude, Day Two

Another day by myself.

Cold, foggy, a bit of snow. And I saw the damndest thing this morning. Every twig and branch was frosted... not frozen, as in an ice storm, but covered with hundreds of tiny spikes of snow. I'd never seen that before.

The woodpecker turned up again. I spent a couple of hours reading and drinking tea. Did a load of laundry.

It's just so quiet.

Home Alone

Claudia and the boys left for Germany this morning.

A peculiarity of life in Armenia: almost all the flights from Europe arrive between 2 and 5 in the morning, and leave between 3 and 6. So, if you're flying here from Munich, you arrive at 3:30. Flying out to Prague, leave at 5:10.

This is a bigger deal than it seems, because if you're going anywhere in Europe or the US, you change planes in Prague, Munich, or Vienna. So you'd better get used to Zvartnots Airport in the wee, wee hours of the morning.

But not to complain. The departure actually went pretty smoothly. I had my office Christmas party the night before; I took the boys, so Claudia could have a few hours alone to pack and whatnot. (The boys weren't too terribly bored, since there were other children there. And they didn't seem to mind staying up late at a restaurant.)

We got perhaps two or three hours of sleep, then rose just after 2 am to wake and dress the boys and load up the car.

And, you know? It was okay. The boys were sleepy but they've done this airport-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing before, and they've been looking forward to this trip for weeks. (Grandparents.) And we -- by which I mostly mean, Claudia -- have gotten pretty good at packing, preparing , and making it all run smooth.

I follow them in a week. Meanwhile, I'm alone in the house.

So what did I do with my day of solitude?

Nothing.

I slept. (Sorry, my dear.) I woke up and had some Campbell's Tomato Soup from our steadily diminishing store (there are exactly six left). Read a little. Went shopping for food.

Went to the office and checked my e-mail. Went to the Vernissage, the open-air flea market, but didn't buy anything... just walked around.

Had some coffee and a slice of chocolate cake at the French cafe on Abovian street. Went to the Museum of Armenian Art, which I should probably blog about sometime.

Walked around some more. By this time it was getting dark, so I had a light dinner at the Lebanese place behind the Marriot. The borscht soup was bland, even for borscht -- lesson, don't order borscht in a Lebanese restaurant, even in Armenia -- but the hummus was pleasantly garlicky and the salad was first-rate.

Walked around some more. Dark by this time, and ice on the sidewalks. Cold in a "we're nearly a mile up in a dry climate" sort of way. Not unpleasant, even though I'm not someone who loves the cold.

Went back to the office to check e-mail again. Read some of Peter Watts' novel Blindsight online. (It's okay. Reading it online because it's hard to get otherwise.) Wrote this post.

Now I'll go home and read some more and then go to bed.

And that's all. Sometimes there are posts where interesting and funny and exciting stuff happens. This isn't one of them. It's just a day off, and those are pretty rare in my life right now. So.

Snow in Yerevan

First snow today.

Real snow, no light dusting here. Maybe 5 cm (two inches). It must have started falling after midnight, so we were surprised in the morning.

The city seems to be handling it okay. I haven't seen a snowplow yet, but someone is throwing sand on the major streets, and everyone came into work okay.

Alan loved it. Absolutely loved it. He frisked around, kicked it, picked it up and ate it. We threw snowballs at each other. Snow was still falling when we walked to the bus, and we soon had snow in our hair and down our collars.

When you're not-quite-five years old, I guess the first snowfall is like a revelation. Alan hasn't seen snow since last March: nine months ago, a fifth of his life. Now it's back and he is so happy.

So what's winter like in Armenia? I guess we're going to find out.

Astonished 2

When Doug wrote me, saying, "post something obscure", I am not sure if he really meant this obscure. Be that as it may.

Because I'm sure all of you can't get enough of ancient Greek advanced mathematics, let me point out this recent article in the journal Nature about the Antikythera Mechanism, a 2100-year-old geared calculator found in a Roman shipwreck in 1901. And yes, Hipparchus seems to have been involved with that one too.

To my non-stalker critics, you all should be glad I haven't posted about Neolithic dragon dice yet. (Yes, a millennium before Plato discussed the five regular solids, the inhabitants of Aberdeenshire were messing with d4, d6, d8, d12 and d20. To the world's relief, no Ogham Monster Manual survives.)