Time for Photos!

Walking along South Road here in Smith's Parish, a relatively open and in-the-boonies area...shots out to the ocean (next stop Azores or Europe); of the nice little sandy beach and bay maybe a quarter mile away; South Road use - this is a major road here in Bermuda (South, North and Middle - someone very practical named these highways!) For the record, this actually IS a wider road than, oh, 90% or so of them. The stone 'hut' is a typical bus shelter - you either have nothing or you have this nice protection; the bus stops are marked by pink or blue poles - pink goes into town (i.e. Hamilton), blue is coming away from town.

Often not a heck of a lot of room at the side of the road to wait for that bus, either.

Hurricane Fabian, about 8 years ago (a hurricane impacts the Island about once every 8 years on average, but most of them sort of mess with power lines and trees and inadequately secured windows. Fabian, tho, was a biggie), hit South Road east of here pretty hard. You can see where the repaving took place - the road was washed out and undercut, isolating that end of the island. The metal railing - I think this may be the only instance of it on the island - is tied into a sort of retaining system to keep the road in place.

I think I mentioned moon gates earlier - this is a nice one, tho the ironwork needs some help.

A horse-drawn carriage just went by - I see them on nice weekends or for wedding parties, but it is now after dark so that was a little unusual.

Met my neighbor in the unit immediately below me - Jen, a pharmacist and runner. Seems a nice sort.

My work on the Dockyard EIS is, I think, done, and I got bosslady the answer she needed re status of National Sports Centre plans. She seems satisfied so far. I asked about more casework, and so will be leading on the Sports Centre filing, the Coral Beach/Horizons revamp into a Four Seasons resort (right now for the staff housing proposal, but the rest of it is coming in), and another 8 or so proposals. It is a great way to learn the island. I reminded her that things I could walk to from my apartment or along the bus routes were very doable.

But I'm glad the EIS stuff is done for the moment. I kept overdoing it for what she needed - the California experience prompting way more analysis and explanation than the Board wants here - and eventualy succeeded in boiling the discussion on impacts on water quality, marine ecology, noise and vibration, air quality, etc down to a couple paragraphs each. That stuff kept me up (along with these stupid chickens!) the last few nights (again PG experience has cast a long shadow), so tonight I should collapse early, and NOT wake up at 5.30 to write reports.

More photos in a few minutes!
Hugs, all (I'm generous); I love hearing from folks and actually could do with the contact right now, at a lonely-feeling point.

That explains it!

I've been wondering how Bermudians kept their cars so very very nice-looking. After all, this is a place with narrow lanes, narrow roads, lots of rock-wall-edged corners, blind intersections; it is a damp and salty environment, relatively speaking. Parking space standards for cars are 15' long x 8' wide, but you often see lots laid out so tightly it seems they parked the smallest vehicles available quite tightly together and drew a line between them. It sure doesn't seem like a situation geared towards keeping cars undented and in good shape.

Turns out you have to have your car inspected every year, not so much for the mechanics of the safety and operating system as for making sure - I'm not kidding - your hubcaps match, no rust shows, dents and dings are repaired, and your locks work.

Wow.

I'm still collecting for the new apartment. I bought three sets of drapes last night, tho I may combine two sets. The owners are leaving the island (always when the best deals are found), she liked to change out her drapes to change the appearance of her 1 bedroom apartment. The less expensive set was originally bought for $28 a panel, with 6 panels to the set. The heavier lined silk drapes probably set her back $180 for the pair, but are big enough for sliders. I got the 3 sets and a couple of fabric lined baskets for my wardrobe for $120. Now I need to explore Masters, the downtown hardware/supply store, for curtain rods etal. (The windows have vertical blinds, with a black-painted wooden valance hiding the working part of the system, and they are fine but this place is all hard surfaces and I want to soften things.)

I've picked up a couple space/closet heaters. Closet heaters are pretty universally used here, year-round, to keep the damp out of storage areas like closets and large cupboards. And I go look at an area rug (that noise thing - I've been asked about the echo chamber sound effect when Skype-ing with family.) The family with the oriental rug for sale is having a yard sale this weekend, and I get first crack at what they've got. Maybe I will have more than 1 skillet, 1 sheet and 1 towel by the end of the weekend!

Tried doing laundry last night - washer works quickly and seems to work well. Dryer tumbled fine but without heat and was all kinds of fussy about it. That will need correction!

I must be adapting - I didn't notice the chickens last night. Part of it is that we are on a deadline for a major project EIS report and I've been struggling with that both at home and at the office. I tend to be way more thorough in my write-ups than is necessary, so there is more time required to adapt the report as I adjust it to the desired standard.

Today one of my co-workers took me to Bolero, a quasi-French restaurant on Front Street (wave at the nice sailors on that big ol' boat in port across the street!) and I all but fell into a yummy risotto with artichokes, chicken, mushrooms, goat cheese, peas and truffle oil. After my salads and sautes of veg and grain (yes, my clothes fit differently, I think I'm down a size!) that tasted decadent. Michelle is a sweetheart, working in forward planning but comes out of development control background, from Canada, and friendly and competent.

Done for now - going to go walk until the sun sets. (We've a development proposal on a lot up the street, and I want to see what the sight distance is like.)

Ciao!

GOOD MORNING!!

So – why is my post title SHOUTING?

Because I really hadn’t thought about how noisy these chickens are!

It is an untruth, or at least an incomplete truth, that chickens crow at dawn. I’m persuaded, on 2 nights experience, that any crowing at dawn is purely coincidental. They crow all the time, just a little bit less at dark.

And there are a lot of them. I found one sitting on the mat at my front door when I came home this evening.

I moved into the purple house apartment Saturday. A co-worker, Roy, showed up Saturday to load up my stuff and bring it over. Before then, I’d stopped at two yard sales and picked up a pair of pillowcases and a blanket, a yoga mat, a few hangers and a towel. After we dumped all the stuff here he went out on his boat and I went into town to get a set of sheets ($48 for the cheapest, and thankfully in pink OR navy blue so I wasn’t stuck with pink!) and a skillet ($32, on sale for $19). While the days were warm, the nights have been breezy and cool, so I layered the open-weave blanket and the ‘Provencal’ yellow-&-blue tablecloth atop the sheets, and that works for now.

I scrubbed out cabinets and washed dishes and unpacked my bags. Still plenty to do, and a good cleaning (breaking out the toothpicks, etc for a detailed clean result, as my family knows I like to get down to) is a great way to get to know a house. I hadn’t thought to ask about mail delivery; when I noticed an envelope on the laundry room floor today I realized there is a slot built into the wall by the doorway, the laundry room being where it lands (hey – it works!)

Garbage pickup – must be in degradable plastic bags – Tuesday and Friday. Recycling – must be in blue bags, and only glass and metals (they don’t recycle paper or plastic, at least from home).

Given the cost of power, I am vigilant about its use; the cost is something like 330% of what it is at home. I see the meter spinning every time the rather large refrigerator kicks on, and my various electronics are on a power strip/surge protector that can be dead-switched on the power-drain side. I don't turn on a light until even using candles gets ridiculous.

Water is the same way – those who don’t use water conservatively find themselves without. I’ll be putting a filled water bottle in the toilet tank to cut down on the water usage – it is an older fixture, in great shape but a heavy water user.

I swear I hear a cow bellowing. My mind must be going.

Brought home two large projects to work on tonight, especially since I bowed out of the office around 2 to be home for the internet installation (tho I’d also edited reports for about 5 hours this weekend.) The Dockyards Cruise ship Terminal EIS is back in our hands and we have to kick a report out by the end of the week. My boss isn’t back from Canada until the 11th and needs to hit the ground running on it. In fact, she is probably furious at my not being at the office this afternoon; we had already spoken a couple times this morning, and I’d warned her this installation appointment was on my schedule for today, but deadlines are deadlines – how well I understand that!

And on that note – bye for now, y’all!

Things that are a little more fun than the Differences post!

Went to the jumble sale by the National Trust at the Botanical Gardens tonight. A little disappointed, but I did come away with a good mixing bowl, 5 yards of cheesecloth (not quite sure what I will use that for just yet, but for $1 I figure I can hang it as a curtain if nothing else!). And the books were 10 for $2, and the help didn't really want to calculate partials so I got 13 for $2.


It was sunny when I went in to the hall, it seemed sunny throughout the time I was in there, but a few minutes into it it suddenly sounded like all the spigots in town were turned on over our heads. A thunderous, roaring, 2 minute rainstorm. With sun gleaming in the windows all around.

When I left, I saw that the roof was still dripping, and the ground around the building was wet for about 15' out - and then dry. They didn't get rain at the other building, maybe 60' away, used for the auction preview part of the sale.

I've -and I don't remember how it came up - found that one of my agents is a woman from downstate Illinois, Mt Olive area. And another recent acquaintance has connections to the Flemington NJ area (Frenchtown being my dad's hometown).

We've had rain off and on all week, with cooler temperatures (people keep talking about how cold it is, but hey - its low 60s during the day, mid 50s at night, and that is NOT cold!), and inevitably some of that rain falls while I wait for my bus. One of these mornings, no bus in sight, a young woman pulled over at my bus stop and asked if I wanted a lift into town. Seems she drops her child off at her caretaker nearby, then she heads into town - and if she sees someone 'safe' waiting at a bus stop without a shelter, she offers a lift. Sweet. She is a CPA with an accountancy firm downtown.

She stopped today too, because she recognized me waiting there.

Life here is like that!

Differences

This posting may be excruciating for those uninterested in development control work – I’m noting some of the differences in the ways things are done here.

Every place, of course, has its own way of doing things – lots of variations, lots of different emphases. A local system depends on the interests and skills of the department and division chiefs, on what issues are seen as problems by the local Board or Council, on local ‘tradition’ (i.e., ‘that is the way we’ve always done it). I’ll describe what things are like here.

In general, applications come to the Counter, which is staffed by a workgroup separate from the planners. The applications are to be vetted against a checklist for completeness, whatever is missing is to be asked for, and the application is advertised for objections. (There are no public hearings on these applications – interested parties can come look at the plans and offer written comments that would be carried to the Board during their consideration of the application. Neither the agents/applicants nor the public is able to attend the Board's weekly meetings.)

Then the applications, relatively untouched, go into an ‘application yard’ – file drawers in a central spot – where they wait until they are assigned to a planner.

Once assigned, the planner ‘books’ the file out to themselves on BEMIS, the local data/workflow management system, which pulls up some base information, keeps track of where the casefiles are located, and coordinates with something like Crystal Reports to make the production of Committee and Board agendas, a few types of basic letters, and Board reports more routinized. Then we start our reviews…

The planner does a site visit, takes photos, assesses the plan against the Draft Bermuda Plan 2008 and reviews it for completeness and accuracy. Once the back and forth with the applicant is done, the case will go either to the Development Applications Committee (a 2-person – sometimes only 1 person – subcommittee) or the full Development Applications Board (12 members, appointed). They will either approve or ‘refuse’ the application.

Often, tho, applicants will take a refusal so they can fast-track to an appeal before the Minister. In that scenario, an outside ‘investigator’ reviews the file and offers a recommendation, which the Minister may or may not accept. From what I understand, the chances are that the Minister will decide for the applicant – one of the many faults of a down-to-one-person’s-decision system.

Approvals are for two years, and can be extended once or twice. Whatever is approved at planning is what is to be permitted for construction, which makes the building and inspections side crazy – the system is not set up to involve them in the application review, and it seems that often things get approved that don’t meet building code standards but have to be permitted.

That is the basic idea. The realities to stuff into that outline are these:

• The vetting process to date has been far from robust. Part of that is the traditional “lets all get along, don’t make trouble” cultural thing. Of course, it just gets passed along to the case planner to nail, which makes for a delay, a heap of frustration and what by then is a rather unexpected expense, since the applicant thinks all is well, having gotten past the vetting stage. Our bosses have no problem with requiring what is needed to adequately review the proposal; as a planner, you get seriously challenged in the case review meetings if you have let things drift.

• Similarly, the advertisements are often far less than adequately informative about the proposal. I required a readvertisement today for a project that went out as “internal renovations, stair and amendments to porch for a second unit”. In fact –and the plan has not changed from submittal, this is all perfectly evident – there was a two-story addition to the building, a second floor was being added, an external staircase was being added, some smallish storage/pumphouse space too - and portions of all that were proposed to encroach into the setback by more than 50%. At least the addition of a second unit part was right.

• The time in the “application yard” is now down to 3 to 4 months; it had been twice that until recently.

• There is no land registry system, which makes it even more important that surveys be a part of the submittal. (They rarely are.)

• There are public roads and private estate roads, and hanging a dozen lots on a 4’ wide private estate road r/w is not at all uncommon.

• At least there is not much in the way of easements to keep track of…primarily, water supply is the result of watercatch on the roof (ergo the stunningly beautiful, tiered and channeled white limestone pyramidical roofs on most buildings – rainwater is caught and channeled into a tank below every single structure on the island.) And, when you depend on rainfall for your watersupply, you are pretty water conscious. If your water tank is inadequately sized or it is a dry year, you can buy trucked-in water to fill the tank. Mostly this is reverse osmosis water, with a different taste and smell and mineral content – and the process results in a highly saline waste stream. There are also a few places on the island where wells can be tapped into the water ‘lens’; the water is not considered potable and is used exclusively for flushing toilets, irrigation, and similar.

• Neither is there much in the way of sewer treatment; most residences and some non-residential development depend on cesspits. (I’m learning all sorts of things about the one sewer plant's capacity issues given that the cruise ships often want to ‘discharge’ when in port, the stuff comes into the system at a rate well above what the lines and pumps can handle – esp with the super big ships that start arriving April 29 -, the plant hasn’t been upgraded in a long while and is scheduled for capacity and equipment upgrades but not yet. Some interim measures to ’step down’ the pressure of the off-loading are to be in place – maybe.) But mostly boreholes and cesspits.

• All comments are written, there is no mark-up, we aren’t to mark on plans, and the phrasing and expectations of how things will be stated in a letter are both very formal. It seems a strange mismatch, given the relative laxity of the requirements and process.

Talking with the Director today, capacity building and outreach in the development community has not happened at all, although it is something he feels should be a priority - staffing is not yet up to the funded level.

• The Board, or Committee, as it might be, get an agenda and the reports a day ahead of the meeting, there are no site visits, no one but staff and Board attends the meeting. The plans are out at the meeting, sort of handed around or tacked to the board.

• The fees are nominal, probably haven’t been changed in years.

• 5 copies of the plans are provided as part of the application, which rarely are distributed to anyone else but are stamped after approval/refusal. Since they almost always need corrections and additions before they can be stamped for approval, this is an area I have some questions about.

Agents tend towards the highly defensive and nasty-tongued., tho there are notable exceptions, and those professional and pleasant people are a relief from the drama queens.

• Applications are recommended for approval or refusal. Refusals can be for a lack of information, refusal to comply with regulation or policy, a distaste for the proposal generally, etc. Most often the Board follows the staff recommendation. A lot of times – a LOT of times – applicants take the refusal and trot it immediately to the Minister for his consideration – a one-person appeal body, and you can imagine how easily that can be impacted.

• You do note that this is the Draft Plan. In the US are used to waiting to apply a code until it has been adopted. Not so, here.
  

And then there are the pet projects from one member of government or another. They fast track, they get otherwise standard requirements dismissed, they get treated very differently than other applications, It is a process that is supposed to be for projects of national importance, but tends to feather out …So projects with big money behind them are held to a very different standard than the little home addition or minor change in use application. Frustrating.

To be fair, everyone is trying to do a good, and fair job, without being especially onerous about it. The system is in flux, and the changes are not comfortable for anyone.

An Atlanta-based company was brought in to evaluate process and organization, and their report is expected shortly. Everyone who comes into the organization (including the new Director and my boss) sees places where the system needs work, and things that need to change and can change. Inertia can be a big problem to overcome, though – that is not just a localized condition.

Lots to learn!

Snowing at home, not doing so here!

They aren't great pictures (thru the glass), but that is what is behind me as I type this, sitting at the bar at CoCo Reef resort hotel. Beautiful sunny day, normal breezes, temp in the 70s.

Bermudians, I'm told, don't go in the water when it is still this cool; that is left to the Canadians. There were a handful of wind surfers out there with their sails, tacking about at good speeds.

I haven't been down to a beach yet, much less set foot in the water, but it sure looks gorgeous.

I feel for my fellow North Carolinians, with snow in the forecast for this afternoon and tonight!

Yard-Sale-ing by Bus

A different experience...

The apartment is furnished, but one does need the kitchen gear and such, so I got to 3 yard sales today...I brought two of the cloth shopping bags (the most I can carry on the bus) and hoped for the best.

First place - rather sad, the elderly aunt of the folks who were there had been moved from hospital to nursing home and wasn't coming back. A long lifetime's accumulation of stuff, in a definite mess of a studio apartment. Not much could be teased out of it - but I did find a new set of decent-weight silverware, a vegetable steamer insert, some kitchen towels, and two Pyrex baking dishes. And a small vacuum - elderly, but worked, and $15. Paid $25 for all that. I tucked all but the vacuum cleaner in my grocery bag; the husband said he would bring the vacuum cleaner to my place after the sale was over. (And he did - it didn't occur to me not to trust him to do so.)

Second place - one of the moving sales handled by my Good Riddance Girl buddy, today being the last day for it. I picked up a knife block and knives, some more casserole dishes, spatter shield, kitchen utensils, a tablecloth (which may well be my 'door' into my bedroom), a majolica wine cooler, and similar. Lela said to just tuck them in the back of her car, she'd drop them by around 5.30, and just leave the other things too...

(The sales where she thinks I will find things she says she will come pick me up when she heads over to tag things, so I get first pick. What a find!)

Third place - similar but more upbeat version of first story - a fragile elder woman - still sharp mind, but no longer comfortable living alone - was, with a younger friend's assistance, selling things from her condo in preparation for her move to a retirement community on island. Pillows, step-stool, desk lamp, kitchen stuff; she had a fold-out wooden screen and a new looking microwave that I may also get. She moves out Monday, the friend is also her Realtor, who said we would just make arrangements to transfer the stuff to the apartment this week or next weekend some time.

A good day. It was gorgeous here, in the low/mid 70s and sunny, I got a little crispy hiking around in the sun, but had a fun time of it.

Tonight I got an email from the lady who runs the rental organization I've used for my tourist quarters both times, who offers an ocean front cottage, furnished, from end of April on long term lease for $1500/month, if I will check the meter readings at a handful of places as tenants leave. I'd jump on that if I hadn't signed the lease on the Spittal Pond place.

When I set up my Capital G account, I apparently unleashed an ability for 'cooperating firms' to contact me, and as a result I have signed on to be a 'secret shopper' in town. That will be fun.

Lela (Good Riddance Girl) was short one of her staff members today, and I will probably offer to step in in those situations once I'm settled. That would be rather a kick, too.

Next weekend: the Bermuda Trust jumble sale, supposed to be best on island.

And I have been helping some neighbors hunt for their black kitten, who seems to have slipped away. They were hunting in the relative dark last night, as I came home from emailing, and I put my stuff down and went back to help. Buddy apparently is a friendly and lovely creature, the daughter-who-is-away's kitten; he would have gone up to anyone and flopped over to allow his tummy to be rubbed. No luck last night, and when I checked in after returning from my yard sales he still hadn't shown up. Poo.


Hugs all! Write!