Moon Jelly

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post.  This was mainly due to having spent the last week or so studying for an exam.  Being nearly 30, I was hoping to have left exam taking behind me the best part of a decade ago.  The company I work for wanted to apply for a Microsoft scheme, but needed a certain number of the engineers to be Microsoft certified in order to be eligible.  Losing a couple of guys last year who were certified and then employing me, who was not, had swung the balance just under the required number.  So with study guide in hand and practice exam papers loaded up I embarked on attempting to become MCTS, or a Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist, for those of you not familiar with our IT acronyms.  Now, it wouldn’t be true to say I had to teach myself to learn again, because I generally keep fairly up to date with new technologies and take strange pleasure in reading text books; but the thought of having to spend three hours proving I could do the job I have been paid for the last 8 years or so to do, was a little daunting.  I went into the exam genuinely feeling it would be touch and go; with a 70% pass mark, the percentage of people who pass is not that high and  the practice papers I had been taking were all coming out around 70%.  Luckily for me, when push came to shove, I got through fine and am now happily certified! More importantly though.. I can relax again and write a blog!

The last couple of weeks haven’t purely entailed fourteen days of study. For example, I spent two evenings in the company of Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris! Yep, the Chelsea legend was on island doing some charity events.  First up was the football quiz at the Swizzle Inn.  Teams of four, lots of footie questions, a bit of booze and a sprinkling of banter. Lovely old job.

A few days later was a ‘Night with Chopper’ in the Robin Hood pub.  Chopper was with his mate, a stand up comedian called Mike Pugh. Mike did some stand-up before Chopper told some anecdotes.  Here’s a picture of me holding Chopper… He looks as chuffed about the quality of photo my new phone takes as I am:

I’ve always love a quiz, so when Michelle mentioned that the International Women’s Club were holding their annual quiz, it was obvious we would have to put a team together.  Held at the Dinghy Club, a private club on the other side of harbor, we grouped together some friends and booked in a team of five.  Sadly we didn’t win, but third out of about 16 teams was not bad.  It was a decent night and I’m on the lookout for a pub quiz now to scratch my general knowledge itch on a regular basis.  Team Supanova:

On the basis we’d not done much over the last week due to the studying and Chelle having started her new job we decided to get out a do a few things this weekend.  Firstly a bike ride, along Middle Road to Flatts Village, down the side of Harrington Sound to Tuckers before coming back along the South Shore road.

We stopped off at a jetty on the sound to check out the fish.  Under the jetty was a little group of jelly fish! Google makes me think they were ‘Moon Jelly’ – although the ones we saw were tiny, maybe just 5cm.  I was fascinated though…

The bike ride passed through one of the many golf courses here; and as is standard here, there were chicken on the greens:

Today Chelle and I headed out to the south shore for a walk on the beach.  We headed down to Warwick long bay.  This was really cool.  Firstly, because, contrary to popular belief it seems Bermudian’s do go in the water in the winter:

And secondly because further down the beach (it is a large beach by Bermudian standards), it was just Chelle and I on it.  Lovely.

Chelle was obviously in a good mood about this; she even went it the sea to sit on a rock when I asked her to 😀

Fish and chips and a couple pints in the Swizzle on the way home topped off a great weekend that was much needed after all the study for me and work for Chelle of the past couple of weeks!

I’ve officially entered the ‘Bermuda Bubble’

Firstly, aren’t we naughty…over two weeks without saying hello!  I do apologise, time flys when you’re in the Bermuda Bubble.  Yes, that’s right – ‘Bubble’, not ‘Triangle’!

Our good friend Karen has often referred to the ‘Bermuda Bubble’ phenomenon.  You don’t realise it, but having left behind 12-14-16+ hour days, the requirement to still work weekends to get the job done, crazy traffic jams to get anywhere, regular grey skies and drizzly rain…you move here and instantly aclimatise.  We actually think this life is normal!  It was hard for me to appreciate this as much when I wasn’t working – I had a different lifestyle anyway and the mild frustration of not being challenged actually takes a bit away.

So, now I’m working, and it’s great!!  I can officially ‘relate to the Bermuda Bubble’ because I have a 15 minute walk to work, I’ve been doing a few 8:30am – 6:30pm days (for those outside Bermuda, this could be seen as a ‘long day’) to get a few things up and running but it doesn’t feel at all like a stress!  I’ve a LOT to learn about insurance/reinsurance/finance but I think I’m going to love it.  There’s lots of exciting projects and initiatives to get involved with – I’m going to be very happy!

There is an unfortunate side effect though.  I was a full time housewife and as such made sure nothing needed doing in the evenings/weekends so that time was all for us.  We don’t have that luxury now!  And with us both playing sport 2/3 times a week there’s not so much time to get those unexciting chores done.  Last weekend Toby was studying (he’ll explain himself) so I did more than my fair share and I’m happy with that.  This weekend though, is different!  This morning I asked him what job’s he was going to do….I immediately saw panic on his face – he’d forgotten what the jobs even were!  It’s been a while since he’s even had to think about that!  I could see him searching round in his head and then victoriously he shouted “hoovering!”  “Very good, anything else?” I asked.  More panic.  I offered to write a list of what needed doing and he could pick, I’d do the things he didn’t want to do.  Relief from Toby.  He picked his list based on what was ‘less gay’ and of we went!  A friend from badminton, Ro, warned me that when her and husband Mark moved back to Bermuda, she didn’t have a job for a year and then when she found one it was too much of a stress to try and split the load again so they got a cleaner!  In the Bermuda Bubble with all our free time it seems crazy to consider it, but I can see we just might!

I’m very aware we’ve been lacking photo’s recently.  We’ve actually not been doing too much worthy of a photo.  As the island is so small, Jamie was asking what we’d do after 6 months when we’d visited everything, would we be blogging, “and here’s the Botanical Garden’s for the third time…as you can see from our previous visits in winter and spring there is a difference here in the summer because…!”   So I’m going to resort to a few random pics because that’s all I have!

The week before I started work we tried to make an effort to meet up at lunch and enjoy those last few days.  It looks nice out, but as Toby had been sat in an airconditioned office all morning it wasn’t quite working for him!

Last night we went out for a meal together.  Toby was feeling extravagant I think….look at the size of his signature!!!  He questions what I put on here sometimes – as you can see I’ve been very careful!

When we got home, we poured another glass of wine but probably didn’t need it.  I headed off to bed first and Toby followed.  In the morning he started laughing as he opened the fridge thinking I’d been frugal and was preventing waste.  Funnier still, it wasn’t me, it was him and he couldn’t remember….

 

That’s enough for now.  We’re out tonight so hopefully will have photos and fun to report back with!

Hope you’re all keeping well.

x

My final days as a lady of leisure…

I prepared myself that I might not be able to find work out here.  I’ve not got skills that are in demand out here…permits are hard to get…expats are being sent home…  There are plenty of stories about how difficult it can be.

I’m therefore feeling VERY fortunate that as of Monday I’ll be back in employment.  I’d done my background work before I got here so I had a few people to meet when we arrived.  All leads seemed to lead to Toby’s boss though – everyone knows her!  I therefore asked her advice about who else I could approach and how I should position myself to these companies.  On talking about my experience it turned out that there was a need at her company.  The more we talked about it, the better the fit seemed to be!  I know I’ve vaguely mentioned this before, but until the work permit paperwork had passed through immigration I didn’t want to get carried away…but it’s now official, I have a job!!!  And the paperwork!

I’ll be a Business Development Manager responsible for product/consulting business development, marketing and some operational duties.  Three categories but SO much within each one!  I love it!  Plenty to get involved with and it’s such a dynamic company I can see it will be an exciting journey.

Of course this does mean I’ll be working with Toby!  I’m confident we’ll be just fine together.  Thankfully our skills complement one another and don’t overlap too much so we have our own territory! 🙂

 

This does leave me thinking about how much less time I’ll have.  We’ve been here 3 1/2 months and as we like to explore together I’ve been focusing on ‘domestic duties’ and volunteering during the day so when Toby get’s home everything’s done and the time’s our own.  What now?!  I’m sure this week I should be enjoying my last few days of freedom but while I’ve been a little more relaxed, gone out for lunch, met friends for coffee and taken my foot off the gas a little, my week has still been largely like any other which I hope I don’t regret.  Shouldn’t I been on the beach in the morning and the spa in the afternoon?!

The rain dance

As I’ve mentioned before, all the water we use is collected on the roof, trickles (occasionally gushes!) over the lime paint and then down to the storage tank where it gets pumped back up again when we need it.

This has so far worked very well and despite Toby’s concerns about birds on our roof, we’re happy and healthy drinking the water the sky has provided.  On Friday night I noticed the water pressure was a little low…was this a sign we were running low?  My early morning start on Saturday confirmed we were out of water!  My emergency text to the landlord was quickly responded to and at 7:30am he was round, checking the water and switched us over to another tank which unfortunately was running low and wouldn’t last more than a couple of days.  Eek!  What are we doing wrong – we’ll get even less water in the summer!!  To compound problems, when I went to put on a pot of coffee, this is what the water looked like;

Must have stirred up some sediment…tasty!  Thankfully by the time we returned from our bike ride, it was clear again and we threw caution to the wind and started drinking!

A couple of days passed with just one heavy shower and otherwise little more than a sprinkling of rain.  Were we going to have to call the water truck out?  How embarrassing when I volunteer for a sustainability charity!!  Thankfully we had a good dousing last night and it’s still going for it now.  I even gave Toby a lift to work to get him there quickly rather than pedal his way through the puddles.  The rain dance worked!

 

Going back to Toby’s last blog.  Poor thing is distraught about the phone.  So much so that he forgot that there are other ways to take a picture, including on our expensive digital SLR camera that we took!

And he seemed so happy at the time…! 🙂

No post would be complete without me mentioning…humidity!!! 🙂  This time on a positive note though.  Mike and Petra also live here and have been offering advise via the blog on how we should be dealing with various things…obviously encouraging us to buy a dehumidifier to move me onto other topics! 🙂  Mike came up with a great piece of knowledge this weekend – winds from the north bring dry, cool air and those from the south carry more moisture.  Therefore I should only be opening my doors and windows when we have a northerly wind…I could have been doing more harm than good with my daily airing of the house!  Thanks for the tip Mike!

So that’s what it does…

We didn’t bring a huge amount of things with us to Bermuda. This was intentional. We were quite happy to take the opportunity to de-clutter and have a simpler life.  A music system, two mobile phones chargers, a laptop, a wireless router and a Wii make up the appliances with plugs on them that were shipped from the UK.  Six is not a big number.  Six is, however, bigger than two.  The latter being the number of UK to Bermuda plug adapters we have.  This was getting annoying. You can have the laptop and internet but no music; and if both phones need charging, you can forget about anything else.  As we’ve now been here about four months, I figured we were probably overdue a solution to this particular problem.  So, with a solution identified, Chelle headed out to grab some Bermudian plug sockets from the local hardware store.  Now, as solutions go, and in hindsight, this was probably not going to threaten the list of the all time greats. I did however think it was a worth a go.  Starting with the music player, things were going smoothly.  One UK plug cut off (you can’t unscrew plugs these days – they’re all molded shut – plus they don’t have real earth pins, just plastic fakes!) and one Bermudian plug rewired, things were looking good.  The possibility of music and internet at the same time was now a reality! This is where I should have stopped.  Instead I reached for the charger to my fairly expensive smart phone and decided he would be a good candidate (now I had my eye in).  Now, my charger, like most, has a voltage adapter built in to the plug.  I can only assume so that you can plug it in to the mains and it won’t fry the low voltage phone.  This concerned me for a while.. but I’ve learnt to get over these things. So onward… The cable was cut, the wires were stripped, the new plug was attached and aesthetically, at least, I was happy with a job well done.  Then I plugged it in.  A large bang and a very hot phone later, my phone can no longer be described as a phone. Bad times indeed. Safe to say, the voltage adapter was probably more of a necessity than the nice to have I hoped it may be.  And this from a man with an A* in GCSE electronics…

 

So, I’m sorry to say, this blog is not going to have too many photos in. I usually like a visual filler but my photos along with all my contacts went up in smoke with my phone.  New phone order though and hopefully we’ll be back in the photo blogging zone next week.

 

This weekend just passed was quite a busy one for Chelle and I.  Friday night was spent with Michelle’s badminton friends down at L’Oriental.  A really great Asian fusion (that’s how they describe themselves) restaurant in town.  It’s the type of place that has a chef in the corner putting on a show with knives and fire while he’s cooking. Tasty and entertaining. What more could you want.

Saturday arrived as it often does here with a suggestion of a hangover; but nothing our home-madeish cinnabons and a pot of coffee can’t sort out!  Hangover dealt with we headed out on our bikes to check out Hog bay park.  The park was a pleasant surprise, more of a cross between a farm and a forest than a park; but big enough to get lost and a great view over the west of the island.  I borrowed this picture off of Flickr:

Chelle’s keen for me to point out her an I cycling there and back was actually about 35K, which was further than the 25K I made a fuss about before!

Sunday was pretty much all about the Superbowl. I met an old friend for lunch I had worked with back in London who was on the island for the weekend before Chelle and I headed over to our friends Tim and Tia’s house for a Superbowl party.  We’re not massive American Football fans, but I’d watched the playoffs and was getting quite into it.  Happy to report that A) the food was top notch B) The game was pretty decent and C) I drove! Chelle had the chance to not be designated driver and I had the chance to use my licence for the first time!

The logistics fascinate me!

One of the first things we did when Toby was offered a job in Bermuda, was work out EXACTLY where it is!  We could roughly place it, but it was still a surprise to see just how far away from any other land it is.

You have too zoom out a long way from a map of the island before you come in contact with any land!

Now, as a Brit I’m used to living on an island.  But an island of 60 million people.  Quite a different draw for companies wanting to ship their goods to that island!  Fancy going to all that effort to get your food, clothes or general ‘stuff’ to Bermuda, only to have a population of 65,000 to sell to.  No wonder shopping is expensive! 🙂

Being the principle shopper I’ve worked out which shops to go to for different things.  Our nearest tiny convienience store for example does well for cheap wines and Toby’s favourite BBQ ribs, not so good on bread.  Bread; I found a different shop for that.  In a shop I’d visited for the first time a few weeks back I spied Warburtons!!!  Warburtons?!  How did THAT get there?!  And sat next to Roberts…that gets baked down the road from my parents…  I went to grab a loaf, only to find it was a little damp.  Trying another, I found that too was damp.  A ha!  Genious!  The bread was being frozen, brought over, defrosted and sold to us ‘remote people’!  A lot of food is shipped in in that way.  Very clever!

I chuckle to myself while touring the shops.  I’d never seen Ribena before and it popped up in our local.  Result!  I then visited two other shops that week to see they too had Ribena..there must have been a shipment! 🙂

 

Following our discovery last week of cockroaches living in the cupboard, I had a big clean out this week.  Taking no prisoners I set to work removing crumbs of food which would make the ‘roaches feel welcome.  The kitchen got a super clean, emptying all the cupboards and cleaning round.  At the back of the cutlery draw I found cockroach poo.  Lovely!  While I was at it, mould was targeted too!  Once I got my eye in, the mould was subtly everywhere….the TV cabinet was slowly ‘fading’ under a downy mildew…the ceiling in the the bathroom was looking a little grey…round windows (standard!)…round the seal on the fridge (yuck!)…  It was a bigger job than I expected even though I’ve been onto this invader for some time and clean the ‘hot spots’ monthly!  It’s starting to look like we’ll need to take the advice we’re being given to get a dehumidifier.

 

Onto a nicer topic, sport!  Toby started training with the Robin Hood Football club shortly after we got here.  Here are the likely lads from last year, including Toby’s colleague Jamie….

What with Christmas and work he’s been a little distracted but is now back training.

At the same time the lovely husband and wife team of Ro and Mark have been badgering me to join the badminton training rather than just going to club night and playing games.  Sunday was my first session.

We’re now starting to understand quite how passionate Bermuda makes people about sport!  Neither of us had done a ‘drill’ or practiced a technique since leaving school.  As an adult, we just play for fun…we’ll try hard, but within our capabilities..right?  Wrong!  We’re both being put through our paces, working on skills and fitness and if a little bit of sick doesn’t come up…well, you’re not trying hard enough!

Toby’s response?  New boots!