Opportunity for bananas

We should take advantage of the banana-laden ship being forced to stop in Bermuda by buying some of those Caribbean bananas and avoid those hormone-laced Dole and Chiquita variety we keep on importing, perhaps...

So that's a third lane

Third-laning in Bermuda, to me, refers to situations such as rush hour on East Broadway or the Paget traffic lights where traffic is pretty much at a standstill and bike riders overtake several cars at a time while traffic in the other lane may or may not be flowing.

However, after seeing the rider of O067 (it's a rental bike) fly down the center stripe while traffic was free-flowing in both directions, I'm going to have to dismiss the earlier definition. It's amazing that he went through without getting clipped by a car or truck...

Just for laughs, UBP

I am a little curious to know what else the UBP machine would have had lined up on their "light touch of humour" pre-election Flash animations, titled "Fishing for a Better Bermuda". Surely, others must have been produced and slated to go live, before the first one was panned mercilessly by people on all sides and forcing the project to get shut down entirely. Sorry for going back to 2007 times, but heck.

Come on UBP, give us something to smile about. Just for the fun of it.

Stop spamming me, Digihell

Today I got this SMS message on my mobile phone:

"Text the letters VIP to 5307 to enter the draw to win tickets to the Bermuda Music Festival. All text entries cost $1. Tickets given away weekly! Digicel"

Well the bright side is that at least I didn't get a phone call from them. However I think I want to check my Terms of Agreement with them to see if I'm liable to receive regular spam from the company that's not a service notification. At least I haven't received a Netherlands Mobile Promo scam recently.

I'm not fond of raffles in the first place, so I'll let them earn their money from everybody else. They can use the cash they get from those who do participate, to improve their service or something.

Son of the Hummer

Wonder if someone at TCD is getting paid off...

Now there's a stylish luxury Lexus RX 350 roaming the streets, licenced in Bermuda as an *Intermediate-size truck*...
The car sizes up at approximately 15 1/2 feet long, 6 1/2 feet wide.
The length puts it well beyond the maximum length of a Class G private car, however the licence fees for an intermediate truck are less than a private car of such length. Then again, the Sunday licence fees for a truck may make it all square...

And it only seats 5 people, same amount as any other car on the island, heh.

Guess it's only a matter of time before we see Cadillac Escalades and Lincoln Navigators roaming along Harbour Road and Town of St. George's...

Sneakers on power lines

There's a pair of sneakers hanging over the power lines on North Shore Road near Store Hill. Been there for quite a while, actually. I don't know what the safety hazards are for this (like, could a large truck catch the sneakers and yank the line down, for example?), I suppose Belco will deal with it eventually.

Why would somebody tie up a pair of sneakers and hoist them over the power lines, though? Apparently another thing we've copied from our American friends, I searched online for possibilities.

They range from the clowning-around variety:

• bullies take them off defenceless kids, then sling them up out of reach as the ultimate taunt
• overly puffed-up boys who have just lost their virginity or otherwise passed a sexual milestone look to signal the event to others
• graduating seniors mark this transition in their lives by leaving something of themselves behind; namely, their shoes

to the more serious and or possibly dangerous possibilities:

• the work of gangs marking the boundaries of their territory (in Bermuda, I don't see that happening, just because the gangs seem to already know each others' "territory")
• a location where one can buy street drugs (I wouldn't doubt this, but it seems like a lot of overkill; besides, why tip the cops off?)
• creating an informal memorial at the spot where a friend lost his life (possible, but the Bermudian tradition is just to spray paint the roads with messages and hang up bedsheets with messages written across them, so that's maybe a little doubtful)

What do you think?

ZBM's Olympic Adventures

They've taken a lot of heat, some of it misdirected (seems like Cablevision was passing the buck, for once), but it would appear that Bermuda Broadcasting has been trying hard to deliver a comprehensive Olympics package in recent days. They've delivered coverage from NBC, CMC and CBC (Canada) over the past few days, which ought to get us better overall coverage than any other country singularly.

Unfortunately today highlighted another misstep from the company's button-pushers. This morning we were shown CMC coverage, which predictably showed track and field. The coverage was live, which was great, however the commentary slanted too much towards the 100m and there was an analysis piece thrown up which interrupted the women's 3000m steeplechase, which promised to be interesting to watch.

Anyway, we were all set for the live 11:30am (Bermuda time) 100m women's finals... then at 11am we're thrown for a loop and sent to NBC which was focusing their morning coverage on a women's basketball match, the USA versus cannon fodder. While I already have my beefs with NBC for choosing to showcase Americans blowing out some other team (in this case New Zealand) over an event that's more competitive, I was stunned that the ZBM monkeys couldn't wait until the 100m live event was over.

I'm assuming that ZBM had preprogrammed the feed switches to something like 1am switch to CBC, 7am switch to CMC, 11am switch to NBC, lather rinse repeat, instead of a station manager making the decisions on which feed to show at what time.

Sucks, but I'm still giving ZBM a B for effort instead of the F that Gazette readers have been blasting over the past few days.