May 24th was "Bermuda Day". It's Bermuda's Independence Day. The day started with a half marathon, followed by a parade on Front Street and then other activities. It's another fairly self-segregated events where most of the Black Bermudians attended the parade and the White Bermudians and Expatriates attended the Dinghy Races at St. George's.

I watched the marathon from a friend's house and then rode into town to watch the parade. The marathon was participated by more than 500 runners. I found out that you needed to be living/working in Bermuda for at least a certain number of months before you could participate in this event. This all stemmed from races held in the past where runners from outside Bermuda came to Bermuda to participate, and outclassed the local runners easily. Before this rule was in place in the past, a group of moped riders went as far as riding in front of the leading foreign front runner and creating a smoking fume so bad that the foreign runner collapsed from the fume and had to be taken to the hospital.

The parade was colourful and loud. I was told that in the past, people prepared the floats far in advance to create beautiful floats and displays. Nowadays, most floats are hastily put together. There were floats, marching bands, dancing girls twirling batons, gombey dancers, more twirlers and more gombey dancers. Some floats and the carnival dancers are nice, but most of the others are either uncreative or just a mere contest of who was the loudest - let it be huge speakers driven on vans and blaring music or poor sounding brass sections.

The theme for the parade was Heritage, so I had no idea why there was a large group of fume churning bikers and a pack of mini go-carts doing donuts a few feet from smoke-choked, but delighted crowd without any crash barrier between them and the carts.

I think I got a good dose of the parade to last me the next 10 years, not that I'm staying that long anyway.

A duck race (yes, DUCK) was held at the Royal Naval Dockyard the following weekend with a good turn out. It was a fundraising event for the Agape House Hospice supporting the terminally ill people. The ducks are rubber ducks with numbers under them. These ducks are sponsored by people and corporations where people with the winning ducks receive prizes donated by people and businesses on the island. With a good current, the ducks are released in groups of hundreds and drifted from one end to another. It was a nice and festive event.

Travelers and Visitors beware! The local newspaper is reporting break-ins and purse snatching targeting mostly unsuspecting tourists. Make sure you travel in groups at night and you hold on to your belongings tightly. Make sure your windows and doors are locked. There were many reported burglaries where the victims were inside the house or an establishment and being held up by machete wielding thieves.

When you ride a moped, make sure your valuables are not just sitting loosely in a basket behind you. There some reported incidents were the thieves would ride past the victim in their faster mopeds and snatching the valuables from the basket behind victim.

Bermuda might look like a beautiful place where it's safe and people live in harmony, but it's always a good idea to be careful and use common sense while here. The racial tensions are a lot stronger than I have ever experienced. If you look in the local paper, there are numerous weekly reports of controversies and complaints from Black Bermudians about not getting jobs that are given to White Bermudians and Expatriates. Bars and clubs are mostly self-segregated too. I will have to admit however that people here are more pleasant to each other than most everywhere else I have been... except for some of the people in the service industry where their jobs are in guaranteed.

The Bermuda government is an example of a bureaucratic nightmare. Just by writing that previous sentence, they will probably threaten to revoke my work permit and kick me out of the country. For a country the size of 22 square miles with 60,000 people, Bermuda has the largest number of government officials per square mile. There are 51 elected and appointed paid politicians (11 in the Senate and 40 in the House of Assembly) here. The two parties are constantly at each other's throat, happily vocalise any missteps the other makes.

The tourism industry is in decline because of the high prices for meals and lodging here. Casual travelers from the U.S. and Canada are favoring the much warmer and cheaper Caribbean countries and Florida instead of Bermuda. Tourism has been in the decline for more than 10 years. 3 large hotels sit empty here because they simply can't make a profit from the lack of tourists and the high expenses of labour and rent they have to pay here. The Marriot Castle Harbour Hotel recently announced their closure by November this year.

Service in Bermuda also suffered because there are enough jobs in the service industry to guarantee every Bermudian a job. Since the job is guaranteed, and a 15% gratuity is automatically added to your bills for your "convenience". As a result, they tend to not expend too much energy to increase your dining experience. Tourists from the States and Canada are not used to having gratuities added to their bills, so they frequently do not see it on their bill and add more gratuities to the bill. A little known fact is that you do not have to pay any gratuities if you do not want to, especially if you received crappy service.

I recently refused to pay for the gratuities on my bill because we sat a whole 20 minutes before our order was taken and the simple glass of order never appeared. When I requested for the gratuities to be taken off at the cash register, the person standing there asked "why?" in a very annoyed manner instead of apologising and asking what they can do to make it right. I guess I'm getting a little snobbish by living here for a while but that was simply unacceptable. :)