I was never a fan of the Gulf – but found Marco Island water color last month to be exquisitely beautiful. I never liked the color of water on the Atlantic side (but liked the waves) and now Myrtle Beach water looks so beautiful.

I think after not having vacations for nearly a year, I am suffering from the Covid Blues!!

(I have been here only once before for work)

(Taken from under the umbrella)

The two friends (from elementary school) had a lot of fun!

… as seen thru Sidney’s sunglasses

I have seen some interesting fans during my vacations. Remember the Big Ass Fan in Liberia airport? (I now have a cap from that company).

Sitting at the pool bar at the Marriott property in Myrtle Beach, I found yet another interesting fan… these are horizontal !!

The bartender Christian let me know that he does not think they are as effective… but they look cool !!

After going thru all the posts in FB on Father’s Day, the stickler in me has a question – why do we write “Father’s Day”. It should be Fathers’ Day – right? (It is wishing all fathers). Just like we write Children’s Day (not Child’s Day) and Presidents’ Day (not President’s Day).

Google it up – it is always Father’s Day and not Fathers’ Day. Does not make sense to me.

Also, in that line, even more confusing is “Veterans Day”. There is no apostrophe at all!

I am not saying this impedes basic communication.

After all, It is not a catastrophe.

But still, it is an apostrophe.

On April 4th this year, the concept of loneliness had hit me hard. If you remember from the post, I had left my siblings – who count on me – and had suddenly realized that I am without my parents. Not that I was dependent on them much but the realization that they were not there – to be dependent on me – hit me hard.

This Father’s Day was the first one without him. I let the day pass first so that I could see all the love kids expressed about their fathers in social media. The following day, the family left for home and then the office folks started pouring in.

In the evening, I stepped back from joining them so that I could finally spend some time by myself. Grabbed an Old Fashioned, sat in one of the Adirondacks that Sharmila and I would spend every morning and then listened to music that reminded me of my parents. The evening gave way to night … just like it was that day on April 4th.

Finally some personal time that I could give myself permission to grieve…

“Na jane kyun hota hai
Yeh zindagi ke sath
Achanak yeh mann
Kisikey jaaney key bad
Karey phir uski yad
Chhoti chhoti si bat
Naa jane kyun…”

Roughly translated (improvements welcome)

“Don’t know why
This keeps happening to me
After somebody has taken leave
My heart is suddenly flooded
By memories… of that person…
… of the snippets of dialogs we had
Don’t know why….”

Taken on the iPhone with exposure reduced to minimum

From a few days back?

Well, this is how it looks from below – as I ran underneath it this morning…

Nobody around… everybody left the poolside when the rains came in… excepting me – getting completely drenched… and loving every bit of it…

This was not as enjoyable. It was a beautiful sunny day and there were a lot of folks on the beach. That meant I could not run near the water line. Which meant the sand was loose and was giving in nearly one inch with every step.

The moon is very difficult to capture by a camera. This one is on my iPhone.