Journal3_Aug20

With my impending departure from Bermuda, I have been reflecting on my experiences derived from almost 3 years living in this desert island paradise. I thought that I would write a journal entry about my experiences so that in 10 years time I can look back and think to myself �I remember that�.

Bermuda, I believe, represents the world in a microcosm, it has many different nationalities, races, religions (or rather, bizarre variations on a Christian theme) and strokes of folks. All of this distilled into 60,000 persons and 58.8 square kilometres.

�Ex-patriot� the all pervasive label

As a foreign worker living in Bermuda there is really no getting away from the �expat� leitmotif. It permeates every aspect of your life. It is a term habitually used by Bermudians (or �locals� if one wants to adopt the appropriate nomenclature) in the derogatory: �He is such an expat�, �What would you expect from an expat� etc. N.B. the question mark in the latter quotation is deliberately omitted.

The first point to make is that most expatriots do not help themselves or their eclectic race in living at peace with the locals. The vast majority drink in the expat pub (called The Robin Hood; perhaps The Robbing Hoodlums would be more appropriate), socialise with fellow foreigners, play on expat dominated sporting teams and are more likely to see Haley�s Comet on the weekend than a Bermudian.

Having said that it cuts both ways. Most locals treat the expat with a thinly veiled layer of frost and don�t attempt to disguise that they consider them an unnecessary evil, taking away Bermudian jobs (or at least the good ones), pushing up the price of housing and ruining the culture of the island. Whilst there is an element of truth in all of these accusations in many other ways the expatriot allows the local to enjoy his heady lifestyle.

Bermuda is the third richest country in the world, its principal industries are offshore finance and insurance. Tourism, where it initially made its name, is fading fast as the modern traveller with the world as his oyster realises that he�ll get much more for his buck elsewhere. Nowadays the only big block of tourists that enter these shores are octogenarians onboard cruise ships. As their food, beverages and lodging are all included in the package and their jetski, pub crawling and disco dancing days behind them, their contribution to the economy is moderate.

Not that I blame the holidaymaker for sending their hard earned holiday loot elsewhere: Bermuda is very expensive for what you get. The Minister for Tourism will tell you that Bermudians are the friendliest people on earth but every Minister for Tourism says that. Amicable they may be to the temporary visitor but I don�t care if the girl at the Supermarket has a smile so broad it makes a Cheshire cat look poker faced, I still resent paying $2.50 for one red pepper.

This veneer of genuine hospitality is soon shattered once it becomes apparent that the person with the strange accent is here for the slightly longer term, being a labour mercenary. A government M.P., Dale Butler, recently announced in Bermuda�s Parliament that European women were �plain� and did not wear deodorant before coming to live on the island. Fortunately however, according to Mr. Butler, this only lasts a few months before such expatriots climb the dizzy hygiene and physical appearance heights so as to arrive on the same plateau as those with a passport that bears the word �Bermuda� on its cover. This is just one example of the �expat bashing� that goes on and no doubt many of the 1,320 voters that previously flooded to the polls to give Mr. Butler his popular mandate inwardly share his mantras.

For my own part I have experienced some corking examples of naked racism, a word I normally shy away from. I was apprehended by the police driving at 61 kilometres an hour along a straight road. The magistrate gave me a $300 fine and a six-month ban from riding motorcycles. A black Bermudian lady in my office was clocked travelling at 74 kilometres per hour. Her sentence, imposed by the policeman at the scene, was to permit him to take her out to lunch the following week.

Similarly I received a $250 fine for Driving Without Due Care and Attention. My offence was �undertaking�, that is passing cars on the left-hand side. No one was hurt or indeed ever in any danger. A month later whilst driving to work a black Bermudian lady crashed into my motorcycle, resulting in a whiplash injury to me and breaking my pillion passenger�s leg in two places. I had seen the lady edging out and had, as the Highway Code mandates, properly sounded my horn but still she ploughed into me. A witness at the scene told me that she wouldn�t have heard my horn as her stereo was pumping out tunes so loudly. �Surely they threw the book at her?� I hear you ask. Well no actually, she received a caution for Driving Without Due Care and Attention. You tell me whose conduct displayed less Due Care and Attention? No matter which way I contort the facts, twist the logic and make allowances for the investigating officers, I arrive at the same conclusion:-my fine and conviction were attributable to my complexion and accent.

One more example before I move on, lest this whole journal entry reads like a philippic monologue. One day I decided to walk home from work. It had recently rained but the weather was clearing up nicely and there is a very pleasant nature walk which gets me ninety percent of the way to my front door. As I was traversing the pedestrian crossing in order to get to the aforementioned nature walk, a car comes tearing over the hill going much too fast (as you�ll have guessed from the tales of speeding offences above, the limit here is a supersonic 35 kilometres per hour), sees me making my way across the road as I have every right to do, slams on the brakes hard and because of the wet surface the car comes to a skidding halt six feet away, me having stood transfixed like a rabbit even in the absence of headlights. At that point the driver�s side tinted window is opened and a black Bermudian lady exclaims �Next time I�ll run your @#$% white ass over!� Ever since that day I have sunbathed naked on my chest to give my posterior a pinkish hue that can be brandished by way of retort should such an incident recur.

Work permit shackles

Moreover this dichotomy is exacerbated because every expat fears that one squeak from them in the wrong ear would result in them being summarily deported, work permit revoked. Whilst the government back-bencher above was given a rap on the knuckles by his employers, there are stories of expats of ten year�s standing being sent to Coventry for skinny dipping on New Year�s Eve. One would have thought that the government would be pleased by this, I mean at least those Europeans washed.

Locals know that expatriots fear being shipped out for even the most minor misdemeanour and often utilise it to their advantage. My friend Steve for example was having an argument with his Bermudian landlady over the return of his deposit. They were at loggerheads and Steve was threatening to take her to court so I offered to send her a quick note, make his points in a non-partisan way and enquire if the impasse could be resolved. Such a note was duly delivered. Instead of addressing my points the landlady instead rang up the Immigration �hotline� and reported me for performing a function that I did not have a work permit to undertake. I was forced to issue an apology to all and sundry in order that my status on the island was not jeopardised. Looking back on it, it is this abrogation of my civil rights that upsets me most and is the paramount reason why I am kissing the rock goodbye. Why should I have apologised? All I offered were good intentions and an attempt to avoid litigation. If a Nigerian intervened in an argument between my tenant and I concerning a London flat I owned, I would either address his points or tell him to mind his own business, either way it would never even occur to me that he should be summarily deported for having the audacity to attempt arbitration. Such action is indicative of the siege mentality that pervades the Bermudian psyche.

The workplace � time out on this local v. expat thing

The animosity that is prevalent in the private sphere is for the most part suspended 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. Firstly it is obviously contrary to workplace policies to be openly hostile to someone solely because of their accent and if one wants to move onwards and upwards, one has to get along. Secondly I think that familiarity does not breed contempt but instead mutual tolerance. Remove the labels and the person sitting next to you has the same worries, hopes and hatred of the boss as everybody else.

Unfortunately though this love-fest is often left behind at the end of the day. I once overheard one Bermudian say to another (who had invited an ex-patriot work colleague to her apartment for dinner) words to the effect of �It�s ok to be friends with expats but why do you have to bring them into your home?� It would appear that whilst in the public sphere we�re all cool like Fonzie, in the private sphere we expats oft remain persona non grata.

Fishbowl syndrome

My diatribe thus ended, another of the peculiarities of Bermuda and something that applies across the board:-expats and locals alike, is that everyone knows everyone else�s business. Whilst I concur that nosy parkers are disbursed in even amounts world-wide, at least the local busy body in the UK can be avoided by going for a drink in a nearby town. Bermuda has a population that would comfortably fit inside Cardiff Arms Park (Wembley being currently out of commission) and Driver, Three Wood, 5 iron would probably see Tiger Woods propel a golf ball from Bermuda�s John-O-Groats to its Lands End (well not quite but you get the idea).

With there being a distinct lack of things to do, many make gossiping a full-time profession. My 75 metre walk to the sandwich shop every day regular sees me bump into half a dozen people I know and they all want to know your business. If Planet Earth reused raw materials half as well as Bermuda recycles second hand, third party personal information, the Rain Forest might still be expanding.

Patience is a virtue

If I have learnt nothing else from my time here, it is the importance of the above maxim. The service is atrocious period, full stop, end-of-sentence, new paragraph. Half of the problem is that 15% is automatically added onto bills �for your convenience� which doesn�t exactly encourage the server to go that extra half mile. Another factor is that, in a country with full employment, jobs are easy to come by so what incentive is there to bust your gut in your current vocation? Again some illustrations may assist the reader.

My friend Carla is over visiting from Atlanta. I take her to The Northrock for lunch. When Carla�s salad arrives she very politely asks for some Italian dressing in order to garnish her tasty morsel. The waitress replies with disdain �This is not America dear�. England could have lost a whole test series against the Aussies between the time when we finished our appetisers and the arrival of our entr�e. The crowning glory came after main course when the waitress said �Would you like anything else?� to which I replied �Yes I�d like to see a sweet menu please�. Unfortunately I was quickly informed �Oh you can have desert, the chef has gone home�. Wonderful � and I suppose scooping some icecream or cutting a slice of pie is more than your job�s worth? Why did she even ask the question � did I look like I was secretly yearning for 3 sugar cubes or something else that was in her power and disposition to supply?

A trip to a Post Office outside of Hamilton (the capital, where I�ll grant you the clerks are relatively attentive) is something that should be on every visitors �To Do� list. It�s like a step back in time to when Austin Powers was in short trousers (yeah baby). It appears that all P.O. personnel recruitment is carried out at the local Incredibly-Long-Nails-R-Us store. I mean these women have finger nails that live in a different time zone to their wrists. Apparently their manicurists have to bring passports to the salon if they plan to file a particular nail�s end.

One has to pay duty on pretty much everything that is sent to you, which means going to your local Post Office, opening the package for the lady, locating the receipt and letting her calculate the tax thereon. You therefore get to pull up a chair and read three-quarters of War and Peace whilst the lady uses a pencil to plug the numbers into her calculator. This is a necessity, heaven forbid that they should utilise their pinkies thereby jeopardising a finger nail�s stability which the employee has been cultivating since the time when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

Would you believe that the largest supermarket in the third most wealthy country in the world hasn�t yet switched to bar code scanners or that it can still take six months for the telephone company to install a line in your new pad? To the tourists it is quaint, to the residents antediluvian.

Can I get an Amen

Another one of Bermuda�s peculiar facts is that it boasts the world�s greatest number of churches per square mile. Now I myself am aggressively agnostic but I have been dragged kicking and screaming into some of the island�s churches on occasion and have made the following observations. Firstly you could go to the Post Office and collect 15 items in less time than it takes to conduct a church service here. Services are known to last 3 hours and some Seventh Day Aventists I know go to church from when they wake up on Saturday until the sun goes down. I guess their happiest day of the year must be the Saturday closest to 21 December but then I am biased. The clergy however are very clever and they dangle that �School�s Out� sign for a good 45 minutes before a reprieve from death by indoctrination is issued. I could have completed a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle between the pastor saying �Let me say just one more thing before I finish� and the old windbag finally throwing in the towel.

Secondly churches appears to be another facet of Bermudian life which, for the most part, is divided by race. Most Catholics on the island are white so their services are largely all white affairs. I once went to an AME (don�t ask me what it stands for) church service and out of the 70 or so people that were there, I was the only Caucasian. About half way through the service the pastor came tearing down the isle and asked me in full view of everyone �Have you given your heart to Jesus?� Now normally I enjoy a good religious argument. I might be the only person in the world that welcomes the Jehovah�s Witnesses knocking at my door. On this occasion however, such was the setting, that I lied and said yip, I�m one of J.C.�s possie.

On the plus side though the services are for the most part far more groovy than their European equivalents, there�s less automaton like chanting that so irks me elsewhere and the ladies dress to kill. The female apparel is by no means conservative however, I guess �Wear a skirt that covers your knee, get even closer to Thee� was never taught at Bermudian Sunday (or Saturday) Schools.

Beware the wrath of the God Squad however. In my last job people were always sending me �10 reasons to count your Blessings�.1. Because Jesus loves us sinners�� type E-mails. I accept that I ought to have been more mature but such notices just wind me up, so I sent an inoffensive �please remove me from your distribution list as I am not batting for your team on this one�. I think at that point the principal protagonists must have determined that I was a lost sheep, separated from God�s flock as they then started to �cc� me on all their notes. My particular favourite was the �Prayer for the Day� which arrived mid-morning without fail.

Predictably I snapped and clicked �Reply to All� a few days later. In my riposte I included an E-mail entitled �Deity Atrocity � A list of people murdered by God�. If you read the Old Testament, it comes across at times like a Tarantino movie, all sorts of people biting the divine bullet in gruesome ways. Someone (of a similar ilk to me but with more time on his/her hands) has combed through the Torah and made a list of those that have suffered the wrath of the God of Moses and turned it into an E-mail which I, in turn, delivered to Bermuda�s Amen Brigade with a covering note to the effect of �For the second time I should like to request you to leave me alone and stop sending me these religious E-mails. With respect to your �My God is a benevolent God and loves us all� type notes, I thought you might appreciate a list of the people He�s butchered over the ages. Tell Holy Joe to put that in his pipe and smoke it!� The reaction was instantaneous and awful. One dude called Norman sent me a 3 page note telling me how each and every one of these killings was absolutely necessary in order that we could enjoy God�s bounty today. I guess J.C. called him on the Bat Line to tell him that himself? After the initial furore however, I am pleased to say that I was left alone to live my life before no doubt spending an eternity in hell.

Canadians

I cannot reminisce about my time in Bermuda without having a word about Canadians. For the uninitiated there are a number of don�ts:

DON�T ever accuse them of coming from a land that has contributed as much as Madagascar to the world (unless Celine Dion counts but I�m talking about positive contributions)

DON�T point out that their culture is entirely derived from the U.S. and that they ought to put themselves out of their misery and become State 51.

DON�T expect them to buy a round of drinks, Canadians are so frugal that they make the Scottish look like Brewster trying to spend his millions.

DON�T bring it to their attention that their currency has almost reached parity with the Italian lira.

DON�T enquire why, when the first settlers arrived in Edmonton, Calgary and all those other inland northern places one didn�t turn to the other and say �It�s a bit nippy here ain�t it? What you say we head back down south?�

Other memories

Some other things I will recollect and chuckle about in years to come:

(i) Drink driving � I would say that 9 people out of 10 in Bermuda drink drive. If I were caught drink driving in the UK I would have had to lie to my colleagues that I was banned for speeding, such is the stigma attached to driving under the influence of alcohol. In Bermuda however it is very much the norm and if you told your boss you were caught drink driving his/her response would probably be along the lines of �bad luck buddy, it could have happened to me a hundred times�. Whilst I concur that it is not socially responsible, the preponderance of drink driving has led to some amusing stories such as people waking up the next morning with their motorcycle helmet still on, they�d been too drunk to remove it. Another story I was told involved a young man who arose one Saturday morning with a stinking hangover and took a bus into town to retrieve his motorcycle. When he got to his office it wasn�t there, so he assumed it was stolen and reported it to the police. Later that day he returned home to find his motorcycle in his garage � he�d been so drunk the night before that he�d forgotten riding his motorcycle!

I myself had an incident with a motorcycle and drinking (although not drink driving). Here is a report which I sent to my sister:

"When the previous tenants moved out of my place they rudely left this crappy old broken down white scooter in my garden. With summer around the corner I decided that the scooter had to go lest it spoil my aesthetic beauty whilst snoozing out back.

So anyway I get in from the pub on Friday night hammered and I decide that I should take the scooter down the road and push it into the sea. So I am wheeling it down the lane when the police pull up.

The policeman says "Excuse me Sir have you been drinking" and I (thinking to myself what a silly question) say "Yes I'm pissed, thanks for asking". He then tells me that he is going to administer a breath test. Only then does it hit me - he thinks that I was drink driving and crashed into a wall or something which is why the motorcycle is so smashed up and I am pushing it. Of course I can't tell him that that is nonsense I am merely trying to illegally dispose of the motorcycle in the waters of this tropical island so I am in quite a pickle.

I say to the policeman that I have not been driving and look I don't have a scratch on me or a helmet so how could I have been (I'm sobering up rapidly at this point). I then try to put the bike on the stand but naturally it only has half a stand and it falls over, the seat springs open and a battered and scraped helmet rolls out. Oops. Whilst trying to cajole the policeman into feeling the exhaust so that he can see it ain't hot and therefore the bike couldn't have recently been driven I fall over on top of the bike almost taking the policeman with me. Double Oops.

To cut a long story short I finally manage to persuade him that I have not been driving and make up some cock and bull that I am leaving the bike near the wharf as a friend is coming to pick it up tomorrow morning but he didn't know where my house was so I said I'd leave it there for him.

Later on it occurs to me that if the bike is found doing the anchor stroke they'll know it was me who put it there (they took my name and address) so the next morning I go back to the dock and wheel the bike back up the hill and into the back garden once more. Quel domage."

(ii) Names � There aren�t many Bermudians called John, Steve or Mike. I think locals believe that names should be like ships or number plates (no 2 should be the same) but they should at least partly resemble the forenames of those that begot them. Take any parents names at random � let�s say John and Claire for the sake of argument. They would probably name their progeny �Johnita�, �Clairetta� �LeJohn� �DuClaire� �Clairon� �Johnaire� etc. If you�re wondering which are meant to be masculine and which feminine, so am I.

(iii) Johnny Barnes � This is a man who maintains that there is insufficient love in the world. His solution to this is to stand at the roundabout of the main thoroughfare into work from 5 a.m. until 9 every morning telling the passing traffic �I love you! Don�t forget I love you all�. Although he has been the cause of several crashes over the years and some women maintain that he loves them more than their husbands, I won�t hear a bad word said about JB. I think he�s great and I smile without fail after driving by him, giving him 5 and telling him that I love him to. I compare and contrast my previous incarnation in London, travelling to work on a smelly Tube with lots of unfriendly faces packed in like sardines with my current commute which involves driving to the office with shorts on and the sun shining with the piece de resistance being, just before I arrive at my building, a dear old man tells me he loves me.

(iv) The Soup Nazi. Helmut, the Austrian owner of La Baguette sandwich shop is undoubtedly the grumpiest man in the world. Unlike the reports of poor service above though, the service is fine it is just delivered with an expression that mimics a bulldog chewing a wasp. Being a veggie I eat pretty much the same sandwich every day, there being little variety sans meat. I said to Helmut one day �you know I can get the same sandwich for $2 cheaper at the Deli�. By way of a response he grunted �well you�d better go there then�. Now that�s service. One day, when he looked particularly melancholic, I greeted him with a �morning Mr. Happy� to which he angrily retorted �How dare you disparage me�. Obviously his European catering school didn�t run a course entitled �Die Kustomer ist alvays richtig�. Apparently there�s a restaurant in the States where the waiters are supposed to be rude to you (as a sales gimmick). If they ever decide to go international Helmut already has the Bermuda franchise.

Conclusion � Racism Revisited

I have just read over my scribblings and am worried that the foregoing could be interpreted as some sort of vitriolic anti-black attack which, needless to say, it is not meant to be. I also note that in a few short pages I have offended Bermudians, Canadians, Post Office workers, oh and even God received a glancing blow. I thought about amending the text and toning down the inferences drawn but on reflection I have decided against it. My reason for doing this is that it accords with my recollection and my conscience is satisfied that my views are not based on schooling, conditioning or any other sort of pre-disposition or bias (aligned to the fact that I�ll probably be the only person that ever reads this!) Incase it is not clear above let me say that I like and am friends with (to the best of my knowledge) many Bermudians and I find the majority of their kinspeople open minded. As always we are talking about a small, although not insignificant, section of the community.

I was thinking about this issue last night. I have never heard of a white person making a complaint or alleging foul play against the minority although there must be instances of it occurring. Isn�t it possible that UB40 CD�s might not be stocked by the Harlem branch of Rasta Records? Surely a Caucasian can be a minority within a certain sector, industry or community and suffer discrimination because of it? Why aren�t there many black Quarterbacks? Well it�s because of racism of course. Why aren�t there many white basketball players? Because Jack Nicholson is the only white dude that cares for the game. As one of my friends put it �this is one of the many double standards unfortunately that the moderates among us understand little about and yet tip-toe round with unyielding deference.� It is an issue on which I also profess to know next to nothing so I should probably leave well alone.

All I will say is that it is human nature for the strong to pick on the weak. The basis of such discrimination can be anything that differentiates � skin colour, religion, football team allegiance, sexuality, illness contracted, citizenship and so on. Whilst I lived in Bermuda I was in the minority in terms of nationality and skin colour which was further attenuated by my transient status. Now don�t get me wrong living here was good for me in so many ways, especially after coming from the biggest city in Europe. I saved more money, rejoiced in sunshine, worked less hours and had a negligible commute time. In many ways I think that at some point in my life I will look back to my time on the rock and think �You idiot, you had it so good there � why did you ever leave?� And it is true, I never work past 6:30, as point A is so close to point B, I can be anywhere in 15 minutes, I have some great friends and the weather means that for someone such as myself, who revels in the outdoor life, there is plenty to do. I have a nice house with a decent sized garden and I can even take a ferry to work if I wish � how many can say that?

The flip side of this is an abrogation of my civil liberties and in the end the resentment of my third class citizenship is primarily why I am leaving. I am also at the stage where I want to put down some roots. I�d like to have the ability to buy a house and hang pictures on the wall, knowing that they ain�t coming down again if my landlord decides not to renew my lease. No matter how long an expatriot lives in Bermuda he or she is never be able buy a house or vote, never gains citizenship by virtue of the large portion of his/her life spent here, work permits are still renewable yearly in most cases and the expat will still be one of the �them� in the Bermudian game of �them and us�.

I asked one of my buddies to read this and I was informed that yes maybe the foregoing is a touch on the negative side. If it comes across as such I apologise. As my friend points out, on the British Airways flight to Bermuda I was expecting good weather, blue sea and pink sand so it is unsurprising that I do not note these things with fondness but that does not make them any less glorious. If I have focused on the disappointing aspects of life here, it is undoubtedly because no-one declared them at Duty Free.

So cheerio Bermuda, it�s been nice knowing you.