Just about a year ago (in October'97) one of the class'97
graduates started a page www.angelfire.com/ar/melkonian/. He named this page
"The Unofficial Site of the Melkonian Educational Institute". The name of that
man is Garen Karapetian (crow)….
Here is the story written by the founder
of this site about its past, present and the future.
.
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The HISTORY…… (of the Melkonian Alumni Site)
. Past, present, future…
I have been asked for many times by graduates and even my new class fellows, why did I start this page in the first place and why are we (Garen and Arch) still keeping up such a noble and time consuming duty of maintaining and constantly updating this site? And the answer is: I don't know! I am not really sure what has gone into me. Is it the Melkoniantsi spirit? Or my Armenian pride? Or maybe this is the contribution that Arch and me want to donate to our dear school, to hour second home…Melkonian Educational Institute. Or maybe the combination of these. …well, whatever…..
Past……………
In the beginning this was a page devoted to the class'97 graduates and to
the memory of those great days that we used to have in MEI. The school will
never be the same again. Class of 97 was THE greatest and moreover: it was the
last of it's kind. That is why I had to create this page, so that my friends
would not forget the good times and bad times as well.
Initially, the page was about my memories and couple of funny stories which usually took place during boarding life,….. you know. After the graduation I realised that we are totally different personalities inside and outside of the Melkonian gates. We, as well as the relationship between the former classmates suddenly changes. The distance grows even more over years. We all go back to our countries, different cultures…., entering the real life, new things to take care of - new headaches. Gradually we start forgetting about that small piece of land on the edge of Nicosia, that kept the sense of Armenian identity within our minds. All this happens mainly due to lack of communication. Nowadays such facilities as the Internet, e-mail, mIRC enable a new step in communication and I realised that this is going to be a great deal of help in what we call "keeping in touch".
I found out that most of the class'97 graduates have e-mail addresses. So in order to keep up the communication among us, I started putting the e-mail and post addresses next to the names. There were couple of pix as well, to remind us of the parties and the great days.
The page was reasonably famous among a small group of alumni'97. I noticed that my former class fellow Arch (also known as Doom) was fairly resourceful in HTML (writing pages); so I asked him: "Hey, Buddy, wanna join me in making this site?". He refused in the beginning, but then he agreed. During the first days the new editorial group did not function harmoniously, as we would disagree on such matters as the background colour and the nature of the text. But later we came to a consensus, so it was alright. Together we started editing the page with new wave of ebbulience and enthusiasm.
We had many friends from class'96 and there were suggestions to put e-mail addresses of other alumni as well. Now we were talking about constructing an MEI Alumni web site. This was risky and it required a lot of work. The project may have not been successful and the page would have lost its primary meaning. But Arch and I were eager to do that, after all it was bit of fun. The page was growing in size, getting more and more famous among other graduates as well as around the web.
During the summer holidays I left to Greece and I did not have an Internet connection over there. So Arch has done hell of a job on this page over this summer. When I came back I was both surprised and pleased to see the page with so many updates and new designs. The counter was showing over 1600, which sure was a great achievement.
Present……….
……so, what are we up to by now??? What is this page today? The MEI web site
grows at a very fast rate. We receive new e-mail addresses and photos every
day, and we update the page almost twice a day, that is why our duty is
extremely time consuming. I work from the University of Keele in Great Britain
and my friend Arch makes the updates from the other side of the
planet - Ottawa-Canada. We communicate via e-mail or mIRC chat to decide about
how the design and the text of the site.
The primary goal of this site is to improve the communication among the MEI
graduates, that is why we have the e-mail directory, the mIRC channel and the
notice board. We wanted to create what I call "Virtual MEI Reunion" and I
presume so that we pretty much succeeded in that. So far page had over 2000
visitors. The e-mail directory counts nearly 130 e-mail addresses ending with
the graduates of year 1950. We have created our own mIRC chat channel #melkonian
, where the melkoniantcis can get together and chat. The site became the member
of the Armenian Ring and it becomes more and more famous day by day. We have
received e-mails such as: "Guys, the MEI unofficial site is even better than
the official one….". Well, there are couple of pages about Melkonian
Educational Institute, but the fact is that our's is the best one. The graduates
simply love it. It is easiest of other Melkonian sites to access and download,
and we can definitely boast our outstanding e-mail directory and the fabulous
collection of pix in our photo gallery. This is the site for the graduates and
not the parents, who are thinking of sending their kids to Melkonian. That is
why sometimes we call this site "the MEI Alumni web page"
Future………
Well, the future is always unpredictable. Me and Arch have loads of great
plans for this site. At the moment, we don't want to expose all of them, but
I'll tell you in the next few weeks the site is gonna be extremely surfer
friendly and we also plan to start our own newspaper or a news-letter.
So bookmark our site or put our banner on your page and keep on surfing on the
page of MEI-your home… YOUR HOMEPAGE, as often as you can.
Best wishes and
remember:.
by Garen Karapetian