Palm Beach

I have been unusually slack in blogging recently, I realise that. Just that I have suddenly been drawn more into the "real" world vs the "virtual" one which I have been inhabiting over the past year. By choice in both situations, just that now I think it's time for me to re-join the real people, have real social interactions, interact with friends of flesh and blood rather than spending all my time chatting on the IM which served as a good distraction for most part of the year just past. I guess in a way it is a new year's resolution, to live a more "real" life. I feel somewhat like a prisoner being re-integrated into society, not seriously so, but in some ways, and without even knowing it myself. Maybe not harshly thrown back into society, a little more like cruising in on a wave, with some smooths and some bumps, like the body boarder in the photo.

Anyway, this week has been the first real hot week since Spring started. Well, there was really no Spring actually, it just went from Winter to Autumn again and then skipped into Summer finally. It was 37C today, we were going to Palm Beach. We stopped for coffee and grabbed some food and finally arrived. Staggering into the sand was a shocking feat. The sand must have been about 45C or more. Even wearing thongs (as they call slippers here) was not protection, a bigger mistake was removing them as they got sucked into the sand as I tried to scurry as quickly as I can to get to cooler ground because, without the little rubber between the heat and my soles, I think I've got some blisters forming now. My feet felt prickly and painful after I completed my trek, I had to run to a tap and run water over them, like a burnt victim. Even now some 5 hours after, my soles still feel prickly. I think I now know what the devotees who walk/run on hot coals at the Hindu temples go through during those festival days. Except they probably feel no pain because of their undying faith or whatever it is that keeps them safe. I, on the other hand, felt like instant blisters were forming on my soles with each painful step I took on the sand. The sanctuary of the cooler sand looked so near, yet so far from my sufferings.

The water strangely, was icy-cold, about 20C I would say. The news had reported a cold current this weekend and boy, was it cold. I probably got up to knee deep (and that was not by choice either, but to retrieve a frisbee that I had thrown accidentally into the sea) before I decided I should get out of the numbing waters with the pounding waves and strong current pulling me in. It was so icy your feet actually hurt from the cold. Of course that didn't stop the guys, including one who was not even wearing a protective suit, from getting into the water for some action.

For the most part, I sat under a big beach brolly on a chair, with my cotton long-sleeved shirt on. I got some sun and some colour but not burnt which is good. I got up after lunch to throw a frisbee around and after that, retreated back to the cool protection of the brolly. It was a pleasant, lazy day. I should able to sleep well tonight, after almost 2 weeks of very bad, fitful nights of insufficient sleep.