In fact, I cannot even remember the last time I have seen one of these. It is the classic analog clock-style indicator of which floor the elevator is in. This is in the Vinoy hotel.

Where and when have you last seen one of these?

Upon Sandra’s advise, we hit the historic district of Pass-A-Grille after getting up in the morning. And walked up to St. Pete beach. The water looked beautiful and the beach was filled with shells.

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.