A Composition in Three Movements with Prelude and Postlude

The University of Patras and Rio

(where all stories begin)

Prelude

Before these chapters could be started, we required a little pretreatment

(as with the standard inactivation protocol):

a visit to our favorite beach at Kalogria and coffee at George's (Kostopoulos) cafe

After pretreatment but before the exam - we start with transport of the special post-exam sweets to the lab and then .....

1st Movement: BEFORE

waiting and waiting

waiting and waiting

and waiting with such frustration with frank that it must be near the end of the waiting period

There was a distraction, though, the Romanian marfia was hard at work, distracting Adi from the next moments

Bobby, Adi and Alin

2nd Movement: DURING

Then there was the presentation. It was super, of course (MH)

The committee and candidate(s) gathered for the usual post-exam process

The third movement: A Continuation of the Celebration - the Romanian Mafia + 1

(Ovidiu: insert the dinner party stuff here!!!!! - Toro !)

So here is happy Adi, finally its over ------- and Bobby telling what it feels like to be really finished

And then there is the usual discussion about who's boss - Cris or Alex, or, in this case, Bobby reminding Laura who the real boss is :)

Postlude

The next days

brought a wonderfully light rain and a full rainbow - both signifying the start of something new.

And of course, we discovered rule 21 (actually 2 variants: + and - )

Later, the sun said hello, Ovidiu, Laura and I want to Rio to watch the construction of the new bridge and simply to enjoy the ocean air. And there was a surprise - a touch of Thailand, the ship "Gulf of Siam"

Riding in Adi's objet d'art, we revisited our Kalogria hide-away with

Ovidiu and Christian

Happy Alex and happier Andy

We passed a shepherd as we returned from Kalogria and he was returning after a long day of shepharding: symbolic of our struggle through the past 5 years

and so ended the final chapter of one story, while another story continues as a work in progress, and a new story was started.

Copyright 2002 C. Frank Starmer, Ovidiu Zainea, Adi and Laura