Both the girls are in New York today. Natasha, of course, lives there. Nikita is there for some UN program with a few other classmates from school. Amazingly enough, throwing all that much-too-common sibling rivalry at home to the air, big sister is taking little sister out for dinner and give a glimpse of her city tomorrow.

Of course, Sharmila and I have nothing better to do than sit at a bar and have a Hendricks and tonic. And constantly text to make sure the girls are having fun!!

If I had planned this better, we could have actually escaped to some place nice for a few days… Ah! Well!!!

… driving on the other side of the road!!!

Saw one after a long long time. The waiter came by and put one on our table at the bar outside and immediately it brought back memories of very early childhood when I and my two siblings used to study for school homework by these lanterns. We had two of them. Mom needed one for cooking and the three of us used to sit in a circle around the other lantern to do our studies!!

Fortunately, no studies for me this evening…

I have never been to Cuba but have heard a lot about the country and its people. Today, for the first time in my life, I saw Cuba – albeit from nearly thirty five thousand feet above. That city down there is called Matanzas.

From the cerulean blue to the deep azure, just about every possible hue of blue was covered in the ocean waters. Even the Delta engine made its presence felt with its navy blue color…

This was a few miles south of Cuba.

… we do something in the Cayman Islands that we cannot do anywhere else in the world – Shopping!!!

… right next to where our feet were…

When you get out of the airplane… walk in a file on the ground from the airplane to the airport, and before even you can hit immigration and customs, you are treated to live calypso music out there in the sun right next to the airplane!!!

… yes, fish have teeth and they are not afraid to use to it to pry open food from our mouth.

I was peacefully giving peas to the school of the fish and trying one big one to not eat them all. So, it promptly retaliated by biting my finger to see if I would release the good. When it came to chasing it, I was no match for its swimming skills 🙂

… and I was taking a picture of that probably gives you a rough idea about how much interest we showed in our wives’ shopping spree…

… that he has gone in so deep in the waters to fish when there are hundreds of them eating from your hand near the shore…

Or

… that in a stunning diversity of colors, he chose to wear a blue shirt this morning …

That makes this the 14th country I have run in…
Olivia Naeger, for the record, we are working hard too 🙂 🙂

After the morning 3 miles of run, we spent 4 hours in the water. And 4 mojitos to go with it. Then we got this crazy idea to run 4 miles on the beach. Sanjib had his beast mode on. I was a few respectable seconds behind…

(Olivia, we are still working 🙂 )

Pretty cool!

I know. That was a terrible joke 🙂

… now for some crazy traffic logjam in Atlanta!!

… it was in fact beyond beautiful. Back in New York, Natasha, rearranged her schedule to fit Nikita and her UN program activities and then visited her. In fact, she took her around New York a bit and even took her to her dorm. What is more, the rumor on the street has it that they talked about boys!!

Then they sent this picture to us. Cayman Islands lost all its beauty at that point to me. I really wanted to be in New York. Watching the two girls get together as siblings without the parents and bond with each other (for the record, I am not insisting it had to be about boys 🙂 ) – somewhere, somehow I felt that Sharmila and I might have done a few things right…

Today was the pinnacle of my driving on the “other” side. The goal was to take wiperless turns. It took me some time to get used to changing the transmission drive with my left hand and that short left turn and looking to the right at the roundabouts and all that. But try as I might, I never could program it in my mind that the indicator light controls are on my right.

Every single turn, I would go – “Okay, I am turning left. That is a short turn. I need to look to my right. Got it. I am prepared. Now, let’s get everybody else prepared.” Then I should have gone “here is my left turn indicator blinking……. and….. and …..here I turn”. Instead it went something like “here is my left turn indicator …. and… WHOA! Where did the wipers start swinging from?”. Total confusion!! Not that having the rain wipers on on a bright sunlit day is  not ridiculous enough. I would be panicking at that moment – “where is the danged turn indicator”?

A quick fraction of a second later, senses would come back to me. Swift push up on the stick out on the right of the steering wheel and a swift push down on the stick on the left and the world ostensibly would be alright again.

I would pull up to the intersection, the left indicator flicking merrily and I looking to my right with that “I got this one” attitude towards my fellow passengers when that imbecile of a wiper would sweep again! What do you know? I had not pushed the stick all the way up. So, the wipers were still operational – just with a slower speed.

After three days of driving thusly, today’s sole goal was to make completely wiperless turns. And I might add, with great satisfaction, that when I pulled the car into the rental car center, I had successively done so.

Now watch for all the fun once I reach Atlanta and pull our car from the parking lot 🙂 🙂