Fingers crossed, but it looks like we’ve found our island abode…

So after many a mile on my faithful little scooter, I think we’ve found ‘the one’!  It’s been a fun experience finding somewhere to live in Bermuda. Firstly, Bermuda is a little pricey!  There are some stunning apartments and cottages and it would be easy to get carried away in order to ‘live the dream’, see the sea every morning over breakfast and have a spare room for guests.  Alas, we’d probably not afford that life for long!  Secondly, this tiny little island is surprisingly diverse.  It’s very difficult to directly compare any two properties.  They all tend to have a ‘good’ feature, a ‘bad’ feature and the rest are average.  It’s therefore a decision over which features you’re happy to compromise on.

And then came along a new property…’average’ at everything!  Unheard of but it seemed like the best option to us.  Very safe, but hey, we’re not here to go crazy!

We’ve signed the contract, just waiting for them to do the same and hopefully we’ll be collecting the keys next Mon.  For the travelers among you, don’t worry, we may not have a spare room but we do have a sofa bed! 🙂

 

Other little updates from paradise…  It’s rains.  It really rains!  On our travels we’ve been used to ‘tropical rain’ which may be heavy but at least it’s over quickly.  I was told to expect the same in Bermuda but unfortunately that’s not what we got this weekend.  We had standard rain interspersed with tropical rain!!!  Sadly, when the weather’s like that our already flaky wireless connection effectively dies leaving us with a book each, a pack of cards and US cable television!  We can now see how easy it is to get cabin fever!

Thankfully it dried up long enough for us to get our Halloween costumes and head out for a few drinks on Saturday with Toby’s colleague, girlfriend and a few others we picked up along the way.  Toby makes a great werewolf (strangely turning slightly camp when he put his teeth in!) and I had SO much fun painting his face!  I’ve kept the facepaints and might see what other excuses I can find to do the same again.  I myself was a 50’s chick with the most fetching pink and black polka dot dress.  Photos taken but can’t be uploaded until we get our shipped boxes with all the cables! :-S

Sunday offered a couple of hours ‘drizzle’ rather than heavier rain so we took our chances and went for a walk along ‘the Railway Track’.  Don’t worry, now disused and even in it’s heyday I believe they were horse drawn carriages so not too much of a risk.  A nice little walk and we got to see a bit more of the island.  One thing which we’re nearly used to is the ‘tree frog chirping’.  As the sun goes down the rather large local population sets to it’s nightly chorus of chirping/beeping/generally making a noise.  We’ve been told these frogs are as big as a finger nail but it’s HIGHLY unlikely we’ll see one.  Toby, a man of facts, is not going to believe this!  “It could be an urban legend, if no-one’s seen them, how do they know?”  I like his inquisitive nature but sometimes answers aren’t that easy!  Anyway, our luck was in.  We found not one, but two frogs on our walk and subsequent research confirms they were indeed the noisy tree frog that will keep our guests awake when you visit – at least we can speak with confidence when we tell you just how small they are! 😉

A driving test! Eek!

So we continue to settle in nicely to our new life.  Toby sets off each day for the office and I continue with my planning for setting us up with our new life here.

Every day though, seems to throw up a new ‘thing’ to learn about.  Yesterday we learnt that in order to buy a scooter and save ourselves rather high rental charges, we’ll need to take a motorcycle test!  The thought of re-sitting my driving test wouldn’t exactly fill me with joy but we’ve only been on these hairdryers for a week!  They have a thorough approach – we’ve had our medical, we’ll have to sit a theory test and then have the practical.  Toby’s colleague Jamie seems like a smart, athletic/good hand-eye co-ordination type of bloke….he failed 3 times!  I keep thinking back to my turning circle and worry I’ll be following in a similar vein…

There is one good thing about the scooters though, that I found out today….  Costs in Bermuda are definitely higher than the UK but thankfully having come from London it’s less of a shock.  A loaf of bread is $3, a ‘cheap’ bottle of wine is $10 and a frozen pizza starts at $8.  My daily grocery bill will be anywhere between $40-80 and I only get one bag for that!  After put-put-putting round the island on my little scooter viewing properties and doing laps of parishes to check them out I finally needed to fill up.  It cost $7!!  The joys of 50cc!

I’m pleased to report we’re getting rather busy!  We’re off to a Halloween themed party on Saturday….and need to dress up!  The American influence is definitely helping out here!  I feel like a mother having to dress my kid up for a school play – what am I going to put him in?!

Toby’s found a Tues/Thurs lunch 5-a-side league to join.  (Sorry Chris and co – you’re not easily replaced but he’s trying to get over you as best he can.)  There’s an evening 11-a-side league which is described as ‘similar to UK Saturday leagues, so better than Sunday pub teams’…they say that, but Shaun Goater plays for one of the teams!  Aside from the Cravens I’m not sure how many will remember the Manchester City FC favourite Shaun the Goat – if you feed him, he will score!  We’ll wait and see whether Toby fancy’s joining the league!

I myself have found a Tues/Thurs night badminton club which boasts a mix of standards so I’ll fit in somewhere!  As my racquets are currently in transit I wondered about playing a sport that needed no equipment.  Netball seemed like a good option.  I was ‘good’ at high school and when I played again in my early-twenties with a bunch of 20-40 year olds no one seemed to have been practicing much so I was still OK.  Checking out the leagues here the teams have head and assistant coaches!  Some fly certified coaches over from the UK to improve standards from time to time.  Like Toby and his ex-Premiership opposition I’ll be checking the standard before I sign up!  Either way, the Bermudians take their sport seriously.  I think we’ll like it here!

Toby’s ‘first-day-at-work-call-with-a-prospect’ went well – he’s going to be onsite with them for about a month!  A great start.

Potential good news on the accommodation front.  I viewed somewhere this afternoon that ticks all our boxes so I’m taking Toby back this evening (they’re leaving the door unlocked in case they’re out…guess it’s a safe neighbourhood!).  Fingers crossed he likes it too!

Toby’s first day

Admittedly, Toby’s first day was Monday and it’s now Weds but hey, I’ve got a hectic life out here you know!

So, I’m pleased to report Toby seems to have really landed on his feet.  It’s a small but well formed team.  Very friendly and he’s already got a heap of respect for his boss who seems both friendly and personable but also knows how to get the job done.  A great start!

Having got the admin out the way for the first part of the day, he had a call with a potential customer who had actually interviewed him to work for their company before Toby accepted this job…now what was it I was saying about this being a small island and bumping into people?!  Strike 2!! 🙂

He was then given a project for a new product they’d like to launch early next year.  I’m sure he’ll really enjoy this having been working in banking where there’s always a moving target and projects take forever.  This will make a nice change.

Yesterday he started getting thoughts down on paper for the new product and in the evening he attended a product launch for one already in existance.  In at the deep end, but as we know – that’s just what he loves!  From what I can tell, all went well.  Yey!

While we’re covering off Toby’s world of product launches, client meetings, drinks and canapes I thought I’d introduce you to my office where planning our life takes place from.  I have a couple of interesting challenges.  The laptop only lasts for 10-15mins without being plugged in and to get wireless signal you need to be right by the door/preferably outside.  I have a tiny area in which I can operate.  Here’s my solution;

Michelle's Home Office

The salt’s in the fridge, but that’s just fine!

A job and therefore something to fill my time with is likely to take some time…first I have to wait for Toby’s work permit to come through (6-12 weeks) to allow me to look, and then I have to find a job remembering I’ll never beat a Bermudian with the same skills and then wait for my own work permit to come through.  I’ll be a house wife for at least 3-6 months even if luck goes my way.

Luckily, life in paradise takes some adjusting to and I think I’ll enjoy trying to overcome it’s little challenges!  I’ve started reading ‘Tea with Tracey – a woman’s guide to survival in Bermuda’.  (Thanks Mum!)

So, ‘Tracey’ warns me that humidity can be a bit of a pain.  Toby knew we’d bought some salt and asked me where it was – “in the fridge of course” I replied!  Dry things don’t remain dry too long, and so the salt, pepper and jerk seasoning live in the fridge.  Along of course with my make up!

Having lived in Florida I know a lone crumb left out on the work surface will quickly call a band of ants to rescue it!  We’ve therefore been keen to tidy up after ourselves to reduce the ant interest.  Unfortunately I opened the cupboard yesterday to find a lone ant scaling up the side of the cerial box. What to do?  We have no tupperware!!  And so we came with the solution of keeping the cerial and bread in the microwave!  I’m not sure what our first visitors will think of us!

I do hope however you’ll be very impressed with our use of blinds/windows/fans to reduce our need for air conditioning!  I think we’re getting quite adept and keeping the place cool. 🙂

The other new addition to our life is the scooters.  Nether of us had ridden one before and we were definitely a little shaky to start – it wasn’t till we got to a roundabout we realised we’d mainly been steering with a bit of a lean!  Unfortunately I still have a not very impressive turning circle, but I am at least safe!  To be fair, it’s difficult to not be.  These are 50cc bikes.  We were advised we don’t need to change gear because they’re automatic….I put it to them we don’t need to change gear because there’s only one! 🙂

One great thing about the scooters I’ve noticed today is how sociable they are.  Toby left this morning with the business ‘rush hour’ traffic while I tried to track down some properties to view.  By the time I headed out it was me and the unemployed/retired pootling around and we can say good-day to each other as we pass.  Very nice.

Toby should be home from work in a hour so we’ll update you how that went soon!

Love to you all.

 

We’ve landed and are settling in rather well!!

 

 

 

What an easy start to our adventure we’ve had!

 

Thursday – the move!

 

Those of you who know my experience with travel will know that I have more than my fair share of delays; bad weather meaning we can no-longer land at NY JFK and instead land in Toronto (?!)…actually setting off on time and taxi-ing to the runway only to have to turn around because the man next to me needs to be evicted….crazy storms over Texas which means the poor pilot was changing altitude and direction every 10mins but the journey still felt like we were in a tumbledrier….unfortunately the list goes on.

 

So, it was with a certain amount of trepidation we loaded up the 11 bags into the taxi with stacks of paperwork to hand.  We had to get that lot to Gatwick, onto the plane, across the Bermuda Triangle, off the plane, through immigration (will they have Toby’s work permit, we don’t!), through customs (complicated and expensive duty to potentially be paid), into Toby’s bosses car and onto the guesthouse we’re staying at for the the first month.  It worked, without hitch.  No story!!

 

Friday – get settled quick!

 

The next day was Friday and we aimed for a productive day so we could enjoy the weekend before Toby starts the new job.  I’m pleased to report, we were a success!  Scooters hired, local mobile SIM’s bought, bank account opened, local grocery store located.  We even met a man who can import pretty much anything we want for cheaper than we’d otherwise pay and his friend is looking to rent what sounds like the ideal house.  He’s our new ‘need to see a man about a dog’ person – we’d only be half way through a conversation and he’d be speed-dialling someone for the answer!

 

Having arrived in the evening on Thursday, Friday was our first ‘day’ on the island.  One thing we realised we’d have to quickly learn is how long it would take to get anywhere on foot.  Not because of the heat, not because of the hilly roads, but because of the incredibly friendly people!  Our first 200 metres took about 30mins as we were stopped and introduced to our new neighbours.  Apparently we look like we’re on Honeymoon (who wouldn’t be smiling away having landed here?!).

 

Saturday – it’s the weekend after all!

 

What a lovely day. We set off on our scooters from our parish of Pembroke, around the harbour and down to the south coast of Paget. One of the most popular beaches is ‘Elbow Beach’ and that was our destination. It really is as beautiful as the guide books say. I’m not quite sure whether I’d describe the sand as ‘pink’ but it’s incredibly fine and soft. The sea is a gorgeous clear turquoise and the sky was bright blue and cloudless. We splashed around in the waves for a bit, dried off in the sun and then decided we’d worked up an appetite! As we’re considering living in Paget we thought we’d go for a random wander on the scooters to see what was available and we’d randomly pick somewhere to eat.

 

So we settled on The Paraquet. I’ll remind you, ignoring our neighbours and our ‘man about a dog’ who we’re getting to know, we only actually ‘know’ one person – Toby’s boss Sandra. I didn’t have my glasses on and said to Toby “without my glasses, the lady behind you looks like Sandra!” (Heather – you know better than anyone what I’m like in this situation!) We carried on our lunch and about 15 mins later the ‘Sandra-looky-likey’ seems to have spotted me and is waving away…we one know one person and on our second day we’ve bumped into them. This is a sign of things to come I think!

 

Sunday – EPL (that’s the English Premier League back home!)

 

We’re minutes away from KO. Manchester City v Manchester United followed by Chelsea v QPR. Old traditions die hard! We considered a 9:30am start in the pub but have opted for the Manchester game at home and then off to the pub. Fingers crossed for another successful day!