Greetings everyone. (Click on the small photos to see a larger picture in a pop-up window.) This is first installment of my travelogue about my 2 year stay in Bermuda while working for Paragon.

I finally made it here in one piece. I didn't get much time to explore the island but one of the partners who picked me up at the airport drove me into town and showed me around a little bit. The apartment was larger than I thought, with just 3 rooms - bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. It was a classic Bermuda house with pink salmon coloured exterior and white rooftop. It's surrounded by a lush tropical growth with beautifully manicured garden, with a variety of fruit trees and exotic plants blooming, such as the Birds of Paradise. The apartment was off of a twisty road called Middle Road, fringed with tropical growth that reminded me of the snaking roads in Costa Rica's Manuel Antonio area. The apartment is on the third level on a hill (the one on the upper right side in the picture) so there's a very nice view from the entrance/balcony. There's also a pool on premise too, but it's probably too cold for me to go in until August.

I sat on the balcony and listened to the birds and frogs chirping in the distance as dusk approached. The temperature was surprisingly cool: in the upper 60's in the evening and low to mid-70's in the day. It was hard for feel like I'm in a different country when on TV, there's VH-1 with Madonna and on the radio, the song "Grandma got run by a Reindeer " blared on. I was in no hurry to unpack because the apartment was only mine for a month before I had to find new housing for myself. With the rates for a single bedroom apartment at about US $1500 average, I was not looking forward to it.

The weather was so nice next day, I took my first jog since this summer, and ran down to the shore about half mile away. Since Bermuda is at most 1 mile wide, you're never far from the water. From a small outcrop looking over crystal blue water, I could see Sergeant Majors, a puffer, and a few Cowfish hovering in the water. I stopped by a nearby gas station and asked for the Sunday paper but found out that the daily newspaper is only published 6 days a week, so I got a copy of Saturday's paper. There was nothing promising in it in the area of housing.

I took the bus into Hamilton, the capitol "city" of 2,000 people the next day and browsed the town a bit, but most of the places were closed on Sundays. I was told that "late night" shopping is available on Friday nights until 9:00PM during Christmas time. I did not see much of the city that day, just the main section of the city consisted of about 5 blocks of buildings, most not taller than 3 stories. The streets were very clean as are the buildings with their pastel coloured exterior topped with white trims and roofs.

After walking around town, I took the ferry to the Dockyard and had a drink with Marc & Andreas, who I met over the Internet. The view was nice while riding on the ferry, like this picture of the Watford Bridge. There were some stores open in a small mall call the Clock Towers, but it was sparse with shoppers. I had my first Bermudian Drink - Rum Swizzle. It's a mixture of 7 different kinds of Rum. Marc was nice enough to give me a lift home in his moped because bus and ferry service stop earlier on the weekend, but I almost froze in my shorts and wind breaker as the temperature dipped to the low 60's.

The next day, it rained for the first time and the air was humid - good enough for me to feel a little tropical, not to mention the 7 inch long toads that's hopping on the grass after the rain. Work was OK, I woke up at 6:30 and caught the 7:30 bus into town. Most of my day was spent debugging a video card problem with my new NT workstation and I ended up reinstalling the whole operating system.

That's it for now.