Another driving twit, this one a teen

I must be in a pissed-off mood concerning idiot drivers. This female,
clearly an MSA student judging by the uniform, riding <b>909 AF</b>,
gets Booked for the multiple annoyances of bad overtaking of both myself
and a taxi who was preparing to overtake a bicyclist, plus honking their
horn as if they were tapping to some over-hyped song. Girl, go back to
Project Ride, pronto.

Not comfortable behind this particular driver

This is a short entry here, but it had to be done. I'm booking the
driver of 15828, whose blue car already looked like it had been
in its fair share of collisions, for firstly meandering too much on that
middle line and coming within an inch of knocking an oncoming car's side
mirror right off, then doing the very bizarre gesture of putting on his
left turn signal just because we were on a left bend. There was zero
reason for it. No wonder the car looked worse for wear.

I'm Avoiding Politics

An old friend suggested that if I wanted to draw in more traffic to this website, I could consider adding a political aspect. Something where I'd invite people to comment on the issues facing the island.

Limey does a great job on his own and there are sites such as Christian Dunleavy's out there for viewing as well. So it's not like I'd be a pioneer for discussing local politics.

While I do fall under the seemingly large quantity of people who are dissatisfied by the system and dissatisfied with all political parties and their tactics of blame-game, etc., I'm also dissuaded from venturing into that arena. For one, it's a subject that gets heated all too quickly and falls apart into unwinnable 'debates' between inflexible minds. I don't have the strength of will to moderate such a forum. If someone were to raise such a topic on the Beachlime Forums, I wouldn't hesitate to acknowledge and discuss freely but as part of the general web experience here? Ah, no.

I attended the wedding of a close buddy yesterday. Actually, I got put on music duty so didn't catch the ceremony itself except what I overheard or peeked in to see. And it sucked when I discovered that the player did not like the CDs provided and we wound up with no music anyway, but I digress. I like weddings, especially the type that we had yesterday. Nothing flamboyant or gaudy, but classy and dignified. The reception afterwards was a nice affair, and the couple clearly were tremendously into each other. It was touching. And no, I didn't catch the garter. Actually I don't know what happened to it. I think the groom kept it to himself for later in the night, heh.

I'd like to think that I'd be in that situation one of these days.

Goodies of the week

The silliest exerise in driving: putting on your turn signal two seconds after actually beginning your turn. So to the driver of 32176 who of course was yakking away on his cellphone and couldn't maintain a steady speed at all, you're Booked. Dishonourable mention to the truck driver who (twice) figured the zebra crossings actually granted him the right of way, not the people trying to cross the street.

Here's an interesting Letters to the Editor section, namely the portion that asks about using 'abandoned' properties to help with the problem of housing so many of us. However, as always, there is no tangible incentive for property owners to create rental units for regular joes when you can set up condos and get more buck for your bang. Sigh.

There have been reports that Bermuda may be considered as a location to shoot the next James Bond film. That would be awesome for many reasons, including a great promotion for the island that would beat most of the tourism campaigns pushed forward recently. However, Bermuda is an expensive place to shoot and I imagine there would be work permit hell for the producers to deal with. But it would be nice to have something filmed here to wipe away the stench of the mediocrity that was Bermuda Grace.

Finally, and this was totally at random, I bumped up on the site for the Holy Trinity Church in Bermuda. Putting aside the lamentable fact that the page is still in an "Under Construction" state, it's pretty sad that of the four nearby tourist attractions, only two remain available. The Castle Harbour Golf course I think has just reopened after renovations, the Glass Blowing place is no more and the Perfumery closed down this year, to be replaced by a house (or a set of condos), and for some reason neither had been protected as a Historical Site. And I won't even get into the issue with who the site still lists as the Rector.

All's well for now

Hurricane Nate passed to oue south-east sometime Thursday morning, bringing wind and rain but nothing severe. There's Tropical Storm Ophelia hovering off the coast of Florida and right now nobody's certain what it'll do over the next few days. Two years ago at this time, we were at the "F" name level fot storms, now we're already at letter "O". At this rate we may go right through the whole alphabet of names!

The Department of Statistics produced a survey dealing with incomes that I think is quite misleading. For one, they surely never interviewed me because the weekly income numbers that they're quoting are way above what I'm making so I'm already bitter before everything else. Anyway, they've split the results by race. It would have been far more useful to split the results by nationality. Compare numbers for expats and locals and if need be, further split it by race. There are several black expats and several white locals on the island. The only thing I realized from this: I need a raise. Or another job. Oh, and also that if I lived on my own, I would be well behind the median line! Crap.

Tropical activity

I've yet to really comment on the devestation of Hurricane Katrina. News of it is everywhere - the massive flooding, the possibly thousands of lives lost, the anger at people that the federal government has been so slow in providing aid, the questions of race being a factor in the rush to assist,...

It's absolutely crazy. For such a catastrophe to take place in the world's richest and powerful nation and for there to be such a delay in providing assistance, makes you wonder about things. I know that I would be driven insane by the situation if I was caught up in the chaos of no power, water, food, dodging looters, in sweltering heat and humidity. My thoughts are with the folks in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

The post-Katrina situation has weighed a bit more heavy on my mind today as I see that Tropical Storm Nate is hovering in the Atlantic and projected to come within a couple of miles (single digits!) of Bermuda sometime Friday morning. How would Bermuda cope with a Cat 4 storm if Nate got to a Katrina level? Our building codes are of course very stringent and our houses (if you can afford them, heh) designed to withstand hurricanes. We wouldn't likely suffer flooding and our reefs would help against any storm surge. Tornados could be an unavoidable problem, however.

Hurricane Fabian (a strong Cat 3) whacked us pretty well not too long ago - direct hit - also resulting in four local deaths. But I'm still concerned, the next one could do even more damage.

Who was the smart guy who decided that the term "www" needed a shorthand version? I heard a TV commercial where the woman promoted a site as "triple w dot whatever". I think it's pretty bad when people have to invent net lingo for something as simple as "www". But I don't hate it as much as the announcers who forget how many letters they use... "double you double you dot whatever" - Somebody proofread his typecopy already! It's Three Double-Yous! Okay, let me get off this rant.

And one more rant before I'm done. I saw the reappearance of the "Gourmet Pizza's" sign and figured that I need to get that on camera or something. Even if I have to buy a disposable and scan the image. Just to give my gallery something new to gawk at. Or provide you with impetus to say "that guy needs a life instead of snapping pix of tacky signs".