The passion and the motion. We travel the world in search of these elusive, perfect fragments of nature, Jyotish quality, natural gemstones. Our travels have been our experience of life. Seeing the places, the people, the history, the circumstances of living, the exchanges, the difficulties, and the rewards.

The passion is the pulsar. The motion might stop, depending on the physical abilities. The Passion stays. 

But there is a beginning. Growing up in Northern Italy, on the outskirts of Verona, where the beginning of the plain countryside starts and forwards to the south, with the beautiful mountains in the north, and orchards, streams, farms & stables across home.  My childhood has been a cornucopia of colors, smells, noises and interactions with people and animals. Seasons were seasons, and life was great. The best life a child like me would have wished for.

My family is of poor descendance, and everyone was working humble jobs. Because of my ever-moving and curious nature, there was a possibility for my father to send me to a catholic boarding school in downtown Verona for the length of middle school. "So, it will cool down, over there", his favorite and caring sentence was. It was an expensive school by the standards of that time, only for the richest kids, and through a priest relative in good terms with the cardinal of  Verona, my family obtained a substantial discount due to hardship associated with low social status, and I obtained the possibility to move on. 

Thus, It happened in the Salesiani boarding school in Verona, Italy, during my middle school years. Don Rizzo, the priest  science teacher, after seeing my thirst for everything knowledge, he presented me with a gift, a yellow transparent, plastic shallow container, divided into squares , with a lid that would close the whole box. These little squares may be a bit less than 1" x 1", a total of 32 squares, and within each square space, was a different mineral, some in form of crystals, some transparents, some opaque specimens. I remember vividly, dolomites, crystal quartzes, chrysocollas, azurites, malachites, micas, pyrites, calcites, various agates.

I have learned so much during those 3 years in terms of knowledge, even latin was taught, and cherished my first collection of minerals. In the following years, I obtained a degree in petrochemistry, worked a few years here and there, and moved to the USA in 1991.
The rest is history , as they say here. The passion stays, the rest is history.