Auto-Biography of Rami E. Kremesti BS, MS - Chemist, Photographer, Published Author, Environmental Scientist

I was born in in Beirut, Lebanon in the mid seveties to Elias Abdallah Kremesti, my Lebanese father and Ivanka, my Bulgarian mother. My last name is Greek, it's the name of a village and beach in the island of Rhodes. It refers to the profession of making vine scaffolding - the word itself refers to something suspended between Earth and the Heavens.There is a monastery in the island of Crete named Kremasta, exactly because it sits on a high ledge, like it is suspended between earth and sky... it is a word steeped with deep meaning... It reminds me of the Cross of Jashuah Al Moshiah, connecting earth and the heavens....

My ancestors escaped brutal Ottoman persecution and moved to Lebanon via Mardin, Turkey. My grandma from my mother's side, Maria, is Macedonian. My dad's mom Teta Wardeh or Rose spoke Assyrian the language of Jesus. I like to believe that I am from the same country as Nikos Kazantzakis and that I am related to Alexander the Great. Years ago I did a DNA test and I found out that I am zero percent Arab, 50% Levantine, 13% Turkish and the rest is European.

My childhood was spent in bomb-shelters in Lebanon or in queues for bread and water. It made me despise religion and politics in my teens, and turn to science and the sea for escape. I used to do a lot of fishing in Beirut and collect sea shells like the famous Phoenician Murex. My parents met in the famous Black Sea resort of Varna in Bulgaria, so the ocean is in my blood. High-school in Lebanon was Hell, I was a nerd, a book warm, top of my class, no time for girls, lots of stress. I found chemistry particularly fascinating. In AUB in Lebanon I pursued my passion and majored in Chemistry. I was also passionate about the Humanities and read a lot of Nietzsche books and I also took an Art Appreciation class in which I presented a paper on Nietzsche's book The Birth of Tragedy. Fast forward three decades, it appears to me that the thesis of this paper, that Europe has become too rational and materialistic for its own good seems more relevant than ever... We have become superficial pleasure seekers. We have forgotten about the metaphysical in life, the Dionysian....

Most of my classmates at AUB were pre-Med, they wanted prestige and money... I despised them... I was looking for the Truth. I graduated and made it three times to the Honor list. Then I couldn't wait to get the hell out of Lebanon when I got a scholarship to go to graduate school in U.N.T., Denton Texas. William Arthur Ward, a famous motivational speaker, did some PhD research there. I still remember clearly I was the only one smiling at the Beirut airport, all my family were crying because I was leaving...

In Texas, between 1996 and 1998 I earned my M.Sc. degree in Chemistry (specializing in silicon surface science and ultra pure water production, contamination detection and control). Two things happened: I had an existentialist crisis and I accepted Christ as my LORD which happened at the same time I was getting more and more disappointed in Science and the pettiness of men of science due to bad experiences with research professors. I couldn't find a job in Chemistry when I graduated in 1998, because the semiconductor market was down, so I took computer classes and became a webmaster in no time. It was the golden age of the Internet and .com craze and I caught the wave. I honed my Photoshop and web design skills at U.N.T. then moved to Irvine, California where my friend Joe Saab was living and working. It was a memorable trip in my 1986 Chevy Camaro with T-tops driving through the surreal New Mexico and Arizona landscapes. It was a very exciting time... The future was limitless and very promising. When I crossed the Arizona-California border and saw the first palm trees, my heart leaped for joy.... I had found my home away from home...

For three years I worked as a webmaster/consultant for startups, myself and a Fortune 500, Spherion. In August 2001, I was laid off after the Internet Bubble burst. I was devastated. I started working in a Soul Food restaurant in Sherman Oaks as a dishwasher then I became an assistant cook. In the meantime I was building a photography portfolio. During my visit to Lebanon in April 2001, before my lay-off, I took an awesome collection of photos with the manual Zenit TTL that my dad gave me. That's when I discovered my true calling in life... The invisible world of the spirit had stirred inside of me... I completed the circle... after not finding the Truth in Materialism, in science, I lept forward into the Metaphysical which was pulling me....

For a while I tutored chemistry in Los Angeles and I pursued beauty with my camera and at night I read Rumi poetry. One of my students was Lauren Mayhiew, a singer/actress. I used to be crazy about women in general and Middle-Eastern women in particular. I lived the Bohemian life. I surfed, I fished, I photographed beautiful women, I worked odd jobs, I lived for the day, Carpe Diem.... This went on until 2004 when I became 30 years old, I had no career and I realized I need to make a change. I hitched a ride with an Israeli driving his van from LA to Manhattan, NY where I met a cute Pakistani girl. I flew back to Lebanon, got a job in Saudi Arabia as a water treatment specialist and my Water Treatment professional career took off...

Since 2006, I have lived and worked in Europe/UK my new home.... I find water treatment very fascinating, challenging and rewarding spiritually. Protecting the environment for me is a job with purpose...

Current/Former influences: Russian literature (Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Pushkin, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Pasternak), music and films, Jewish Kabbalah, Eckhart Tolle, the Poetry of Rumi, and the photography of Leonard Nemoy. I also went through a phase of discovering Bulgarian and Macedonian classic Literature like that of Anton Donchev and Dimitar Talev. I recently finished reading Robert Graves' books on Greek Mythology which are fascinating. His book King Jesus blew me away I highly recommend it. I am discovering, while living and working in the UK, the nobility and depth of the British Soul. The word Britain comes from Bara Tanak, meaning the Land of Tin in ancient Aramaic the language my Cana'anite ancestors spoke in the Holy Land. The ancient Phoenecians sailed to Cornwall to trade with the locals and buy Tin to make Bronze.

I am an avid reader and I like to cook and write for a hobby. I cherish time spent with my girls and in my village home in Bulgaria (Villa Kremesti in Trankovo bei Radnevo). I love to play guitar and I have some songs recorded on my YouTube channel under Rami Elias Kremesti. As a person who has been lifted from a state of spiritual ignorance to one where I am capable of experiencing the Sacred Awe, I realized that the highest mission of a person in life is to lift him/herself and later on, others from the misery of ignorance.... I have published two books so far and the third one came out in 2025.

These days I work as a water treatment specialist based out of High Wycombe between London and Oxford, and I photograph mainly my beautiful girls Lulu and Krassi. I enjoy meditating at the Maritza River in Plovdiv when I am there on vacation. In the UK, you can occasionally spot me playing guitar on a park bench/Satollo in Marlow or at the Costa in High Wycombe. I have recently started to hang out in London too where the people are so posh without being arrogant or vain. The dogs are nice in Beaconsfield and Marlow I tell my friends... In Bulgaria, pet dogs are mean... street dogs are very kind... Tells you something about the owners.

In closing, I want to quote from Pakistani poet Muhammad Iqbal, about the importance of the aesthetic education of man:

"The moment you discover beauty in this world, you stop being a slave."

And finally, I am also inspired by a quote from Boris Pasternak, author of Doctor Zhivago:

"Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary."

Rami E. Kremesti M.Sc. - Photographer/Author/Water Treatment Specialist

Eccé Photo: Philo-Photographia

"For Love of the Sacred Awe"

High Wycombe, UK

Last updated August 18, 2025