BULEUROPE 06

Not so sunny Bermuda - an island of contrasts


After two weeks of whirlwind sightseeing, shopping and other general activities to ensure that New York was firmly entrenched in my mind, on 15 April I boarded a plane for the North Atlantic remote tax haven of Bermuda. The visit was intended to serve as both a sunny break after a bleak New York winter and as a recon mission to assess the viability of ever living and working there.

Bermuda reminded of my time in Fiji. The island is tiny with only 60,000 people but 20,000 of these are expats. This definitive quota is driven by Bermudian law which limits the workforce to 1 expat for every 3 Bermudians. Such `anti-expat` senitment permeates through to the Bermudian social fabric - editorials are filled with letters laying the blame for all of Bermudas problems squarely on the expats.

This did not take away from the islands stunning beauty - the weather did a pretty good job of that. It rained - and rained hard for most of the two days spent there. Nonetheless I could envisage how beautiful and picturesque this place could be in the summer. Not even the threat of violent hurricances could deter one from returning for a longer period. Prices are exhorbitant but so are wages and it could be on the Bule planner over the next few years.