Red lights in Bermuda are just a suggestion

Another common activity on the streets is the optional red light. Today, I'm at a red light. Actually I'm 3 cars back of the light. The pedestrian light is flashing. Bike, licence BN412 (yeah, I know, pointless) goes around everyone, looks quickly in both directions, then rolls along onto Front Street like nothing.

And like I said, this is not an anomaly among especially bike riders. And either it's tolerated or ignored by the powers that be, oblivious to the safety hazards that this entails.

Ho hum. Apathy breeds anarchy and the cycle (no pun intended) continues ad nauseum. How many 'accidents' this week?

By-election thoughts

To be honest, I don't have many. This particular constituency isn't one that would be considered representative of Bermuda's population as a whole, and unless one of the following happens:

• The UBP candidate surprisingly wins
• The UBP candidate gets slaughtered and gets say 20 votes, tops

then there's nothing to be learned about how Bermuda's voting base may lean.

Now, while both candidates are well spoken for, I've realized that it doesn't matter to most Bermudians and it's the party machine that really does count, unfortunately.

Business as usual. The Gazette has a piece about it online, with some speculation and analysis.

More cricket woes

After getting comprehensively beaten yet again in a home international, I think it's now officially safe to say that Bermuda cricket has fallen to new lows.

No, I don't want to hear that we lost our senior members to retirement and had to deal with people pulling out at the last minute because wearing national colours pales in comparison to county games, et al. Uganda had a number of issues to deal with in terms of just getting a side over here to play and our team simply wasn't good enough, especially in the four day game.

I used to beat up on the Cricket Europe ratings but I'll defer to them from now on. Sigh. Bermuda cricket, I'll still support and encourage, but there's little optimism or expectations from this uninspiring unit for the forseeable future.

Who's the translator?

So I'm reading up more about Ryan Brathwaite's great win and IAAF has a profile page titled 'Flash Interviews' where he apparently gives an interview after his victory.

But the text is extremely bizarre, especially the last three. Did they translate from English to German and back again or something? For example:

"It was not good. I hit the last hurdle and it slowed me down. I cannot afford to do this - especially not at the World championships. Ryan is a young kid and he became a world champion. It is something above his ability."

"I am just a boy from a small village who got into the big athletic world. I am happy that I showed to all Czech athletes that it is possible to get so hight. This is my dream and I believe that if I did not have the health problems during this season, I could have ffight for medals. But I am very satisfied with this and I want to send a message to the world that I do not give up and they have to count with me."

What the hell does that mean? I'm sure he didn't say it exactly like that. Ah well. Still celebrating the historic victory for Barbados athletics.

Proud to be a Bajan

Ryan Brathwaite has won the first gold medal for a Barbadian athlete at the World Championships today, in the 100m hurdles final.

With only a 0.01 second gap between him and the two guys taking silver and bronze (both Americans, I believe) and a photo finish needed to show who crossed the line first, it must have been agonizing and breathtaking for the athlete.

But I'm excited and congratulations to all the folks back in Bimshire.

Clayhouse Inn revisited?

It's waay past time but it's good to hear that there are plans to do something with this eyesore of a property.

According to the Gazette article people are already objecting to it, but when you have to choose between a derelict building that could very well be home to people of poor repute and an attraction for rodents and other vermin and a prospective new development that makes your neighbourhood look better, come on.

To channel Ronald Reagan, "tear down these walls".

Dreaming about blogrolls?

Strange dream I had last night. I was reading the PLP blog and they had written something or other about BeachLime being ill-advised or something or another and my link was no longer on their blogroll.

Maybe my sub-conscience was reacting to me slighting the ruling party over the past few months, or I'm probably on blogging/posting overload... which you'd expect when you start dreaming about blogs.

For the record I don't know exactly why my blog has been in the PLP blogroll - I'm certainly not a member and don't think my blog is generally supportive of them. I think it's still on the level of 21 Square which is a far more worthy politically-themed blog in terms of affiliation with a political party. I guess because it's more harmless it's considered acceptable to them, for the time being. And that every now and then I say something along the lines of 'UBP sucks'.

Another blunder for our bus system

Basically, this is another example of making changes to our public bus system just because the idea sounds cute rather than considering what the public actually needs as well as how it's going to work in practice.

Whether it be accessibility issues, convenience of routes or access to purchasing tokens, our bus system needs much more than the pop and sizzle of swanky new rides and free access to schoolchildren if it's to become more utilized on the island.

Cockroaches, Hell's sentinels

Personally I've always despised the standard flies more than any other creepy crawling thing if only for their tenacity at buzzing around, defecating every time they land and being a general irritant to me, but today was one of those days when my ire at the insect kingdom was switched to the great insect survivor.

And in Bermuda, many of the roaches have wings developed enough to glide and fly around.

Which can be startling even for a seasoned battler of Bermuda bugs. This morning I was alerted to a roach on the bathroom door. Gathering up the not-as-trusty-as-the-1980s version of Baygon and a handy sneaker for the coup de grace I entered the bathroom and spotted said roach lounging around.

Not in a good position to nail it with my shoe, I fired a slight stream of Baygon to try to get it to move to the wall or drop to the floor.

Nope, it goes into aerial mode.

I quickly step backwards, forgetting momentarily that this is a small bathroom. The back of my legs hit the tub and I tumble backwards. Reaching outwards instinctively, I only succeed in grabbing the shower curtain, which promptly collapses, taking the tension rod with it. I land painfully in the tub, the shower curtain all about me and the rod on my chest.

The roach? It ran to a spot near the toilet where I think the spray got it squirming. At least that's what my wife said; I was too busy trying to shake off the pain and (more) embarrassment. She wished she had a camera to take a precious memory of the incident, I said I would have to kill her if she did.

Cockroaches are evil and hell-spawned and are now my sworn enemy for life. Die, vermin.

East Broadway near Corkscrew Hill

Apparently the junction is a well-known 'accident spot' to even the Police and Government, however there haven't been any great efforts to make it safer by the powers that be. Since the unfortunate death of another person on the roads this weekend, a number of people have discussed the pitfalls of that particular area, such as the unusual banking of the road going contrary to the curve of it.

What we continue to have in Bermuda is the Opposition, spearheaded by Senator Michael Fahy, recommending a number of Government-led initiatives to enhancing the current road structure, namely skid-resistant surfacing and cats-eye reflectors; while the Government has adopted a keep-quiet-and-hope-it-goes-away attitude, preferring to push the cries of "be careful" on the motoring public.

Apparently another 23 collisions on the road resulting in injury and a further 18 vehicle-damage-only incidents this past week, according to the Gazette. Yep, current policy is a rip-roaring success.

Cup Match - again, only in Bermuda

Only in Bermuda is the MVP of Cup Match not selected on the same day that the contest ends. On occasion, we don't know who the MVP is until weeks later. I think one year, they didn't even choose a MVP because the adjudicators couldn't agree on a person or something.

I'll put the over-under at Friday 2pm this time around but wouldn't be surprised if it took them until mid-August.

Just another 'quaint' tradition of our archaic-at-times summer 'classic'.

Craziness in cricket

I'm actually speaking about the West Indies cricket team, this time. The Windies just finished getting whitewashed by Bangladesh in both the Test and ODI series, the players association and the Board continue to seem to be at loggerheads and the latest news is that the WICB have selected a preliminary squad for the upcoming Champions Trophy in September that only features one of the players (Fidel Edwards) who was part of the senior men's squad earlier this season.

Clearly the WICB are sticking by their guns and refusing to give the upper-etchelon players like Sarwan, Gayle, Chanderpaul and Bravo a fair shake.

A recent report from Cricinfo contains some interesting commentary from the legendary former captain Clive Lloyd. He's pretty much told off both sets of antagonists for trying to milk the profits for themselves and being stubborn with their demands.

Basically, the biggest losers are fans of the West Indies and fans of cricket in general who wish to support the best players giving it their all and not have to wonder why politics is determining which players don their national colours.

I, as well as a few others, wonder now if this is the beginning of the end of the West Indies as a cricket nation.

Here's a great essay. Not many people in Bermuda know any of the heads of state of a Caribbean country, but they definitely knew about Brian Lara or Viv Richards and probably know Chris Gayle or Shiv Chanderpaul.

August 11. That's the date for elections with the WICB. It will be interesting, the next couple of weeks in the cricket world.