May of 2007. We still were living in Dallas. The last vacation we took from Dallas was to the Smoky Mountains. The girls were really young (9 and 3). Our live in nanny Nancy was traveling with us too.

On our way back home, we stayed overnight in a hotel in Atlanta. Next morning, Sandra met us in the hotel and introduced herself as the real estate agent assigned to us to help in our relocation to Atlanta. That morning was spent getting to know each other and trying to scope out what kind of house we would be looking to buy.

That started our friendship of two decades. The last time I saw her was probably when we had called the previous owners of the house and her over to have lunch with us in our house. After that, it was mostly phone calls – sending references, birthday calls and so on.

She then moved to New York and subsequently to St. Pete.

It was so great to see Sandra after such a long time. Like that first meeting, this time too she gave us a good lay of the land in terms of real estate in St. Pete. Also some more places to visit in and around St. Pete. We will hit those areas tomorrow before we head back home!!

I had never heard of this town north of Clearwater. Sandra had texted us to visit this place. The cute downtown lived up to the expectations she had set. Very pretty. The best find was this waterside restaurant called Bon Appetit. The food was incredibly good. I will have to come back here again.

I had come here two and a half years back after receiving my first Covid vaccination. That time I was visiting the area with Avi. This time with Sharmila.

31 years to be precise. Rajiv (we spell our names slightly differently) and I went to MBA school together and then joined the same company – COSL. More importantly, we lived in the same apartment in Bombay (Mumbai).

Obviously, we had some great times then. We were all bachelors and there were too many drinking sessions over the weekends with singing and dancing. Believe it or not, I was the designated driver those days. Well, I did not exactly drive so much as made sure things were kept at a level that would not bother the folks upstairs or downstairs. (All the three apartments in that floor of Dharm Palace residential complex housed employees from COSL) But sure as heck, I had not touched a single drop of alcohol till thenn. Actually, it would be so for another few years after those days.

Then Rajiv married Rekha and moved off to Japan. My last meeting with him was when he had come back from Japan for a short visit that year. He sat me down and encouraged me to move over to the Operations side of business instead of just Technology. (I loved software). This was 1992. I eventually took his advice – but much later.

From Japan, Rajiv, Rekha and their three daughters moved back to India. Midori and Hana came to the USA for studies. And then a few years back, the other three moved over to the USA too.

Sharmila and I got to meet Rajiv and Rekha for dinner today!! As you can imagine, there was a lot of catching up we had to do. We also got to meet Naomi.

The highlight of the evening must have been the story of the bathroom toilet with a Wifi router. I will let him expound on that!!

Last time I met Bhaskar must have been around 2004 in some Infineon customer meeting. I left the company (i2) the next year and subsequently moved away from Dallas. He went off to India. Ever since he came back to the US, I had been threatening to meet him. Today, I made good on that threat! Great time catching up on his transition to India and then transition back to the USA.

A great way to get around downtown St. Pete… all for free!

… once you get out of the rooms with all his incredible creations…

I am not into art. I am not into fine art! I am not into anything “fine” in life.

But she dragged me (almost literally) to the Dali museum.

While I did not come out any wiser for the wear, I did learn some crazy facts…

1. Dali Salvatore was a rebel (well, at least now we are talking)

2. He split his time between America and Spain (this I had no idea about)

On that last point, I had no idea about the Abraham Lincoln painting he did. My picture does not do any justice. In reality, if you stand in front of the huge painting, the whole thing is a blur… you will only see the surrealist painter’s painting of the nude woman from the back surrounded by random colored blocks. One of those blocks has, what appears like, a pixellated picture of Abraham Lincoln.

And here is the crazy thing… if you see the picture from a distance… it suggests twenty meters on the writeup … or you can simply try to look at the picture from your iPhone camera… all those individual blocks meld together to produce a smooth picture of Lincoln … and the nude woman is just not visible… The telescopic effect is unbelievable.

I know I do not get art… but I do get visual effects. That was too cool !! To do that without computer effects… totally unreal….

And there was I… quietly taking in the beauty of the water… appreciating the rocks in the water when Her Highness rudely interrupted my peace …

“Did you see these?”

“The rocks?” I asked

“These are not rocks. These are manatees!”

And that is how I came up close and personal with rocks that apparently move… and are called manatees!!

Jokes apart, there were three of them. We had no food to give them. But they hung round and were sweet.

One unfortunate part of those creatures in their natural habitats co-existing with us human beings… you can see the propellor marks o one of them… somehow it got too close to a motor of a boat.

Reminder to all boat riders… be on the lookout… especially in shallow waters… keep as close to idling as you can before you are in deeper waters.