When was the last time you looked directly at the Sun?

It's been hazy for the last few weeks (as you might have noticed from my last post), but this just took the cake.

This is a picture I took when I was taking the ferry to Batam to play a round of golf. Mind you,
this is in the morning!

Normally, the sun is strong enough for you to reach for your suntan lotion bottle, but this time the sun was barely visible, let alone powerful.

You could barely see the light reflecting in the water, which is usually reflecting so harshly that there is no way of avoiding your sunglasses, and all around was this grey gloom which pretty much looked like it was a worldwide phenomenon (which, come to think of it, it is).

Made me think about how the dinosaurs would have felt (assuming our theory about the meteor hit is true) when they were engulfed with dust. I felt so miniscule in the grand scale of things. A fire somewhere had an impact (currently just an irritating one, but impact nonetheless) on my life in another part of the world. How we are all interconnected to a large extent.

And how fragile our ecosystem is. And how much we abuse it.

Reminded me of Sting's "Fragile".

On the way back, I took another picture. This one, you can barely see the sun. As in the first
picture, I have marked it just so you know where to look. Cause the sun looks like a remote spec in the sky.

No longer the mighty fireball that we associate with, but a meek blip on the horizon.

No blue skies, no more clouds. I can't remember the last time I saw a clear blue sky since I landed here.

It threatens to clear every day, the wind notches up a bit to raise hopes, but the haze presses in the next day, reminding us that it's there for a while.

How long is this going to last? When do we see the skies clear? When will I get the chance to curse the equatorial heat when I play golf?