Thursday, 20 April 2006
The End

The Tuesday discussion group had adjourned to Carla's deck, so that we could enjoy a warm, sunny day of April. We sat eating pizza and drinking wine and beer until it was so dark that we really needed the candles Carla brought out just to avoid a misstep. There Wei Wang finalized his invitation for a farewell lunch with Chinese food.

Two days later we sit in the Center lounge. The chinese food is from the restaurant Wei identified as the best--and we did not question his authoritative judgment. He chose well. The beans were great and I especially liked the beef loaded with lots of hot peppers. This was the time finally to open the bottle of Australian Shiraz that Malcolm had brought to one our early dinners at Lillia's.

The event has the mood of the last day of summer camp. It's been fun and we'd like it to go on forever, but we know our time has passed.  The attendance is thinner than we expected. The end of term fragmentation has already started. One Visiting Fellow's wife arrived the day before and the two of them are already on their way to Hawai. Another has his parents visiting the US for the first time. And another just has to finish something or other.

We have a new face, Alexey Kryukov, who will shortly be giving us a technical tutorial on "Functional Relativity of Quantum Mechanics." Our talk is distinctly unacademic. Cigarette packets in Canada and vodka in Finland. It is the relaxed chatter of old friends and I get so engrossed that I keep forgetting to take photos.

John D. Norton

20 April 2006