Working this week in Bermuda!

[wfooshee]

A friend of mine with a media production company has hooked me up with a working vacation in Bermuda. His company is doing the video for a concert here tonight, Robin Thicke and Mary J. Blige. Our job is to put performer images up on the big screens beside the stage. Arrived Tuesday, spent some of Wednesday and most of yesterday setting up at National Stadium. Today we go out mid-afternoon and finish connecting cables, show starts about 7:00, runs till midnight, then we pack the gear. Probably a good 12-hour day.

Weather has been gorgeous, mid-80s, sunny. Much like home, actually.

Our hotel is on the waterfront of the Great Sound on the interior of the island, in Hamilton. We've gone into town within walking distance, and been driven to the stadium for work. Been her almost all week, and still haven't actually seen the Atlantic Ocean.

Scooters are the major transport for the locals, ranging from 50cc 2-strokes up to 150s. No big bikes on the streets, apparently the largest that can be tagged is 150cc, although I've seen a few real bikes with shifters and everything, most of the rides are scooters. Most of the cars are really small, too, tags are priced by overall length.

A few pics:

A panoramic of the hotel, the Fairmont Hamilton Princess

Parking lot at the ferry terminal

Biggest bike I've seen so far

150cc limit apparently does not apply to the long arm of the law

Hamilton's Front Street from the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club's marina

A regatta Wednesday had its finish marker behind our hotel

We are here to work, though. Lights being installed

Seating setup

Scaffolding ready for screens

Front-of-house sound and lights. Two of our cameras will be on this tower, on the "second floor."

Screen and projector alignment

Lights crew doing programming

Packing up for the night

Today is gonna be a long day. Going out in just a half hour or so, final setup of the cameras, concert starts about 7:00, ends at midnight, and we pack up the screens, projectors and other gear before we leave. We'll have some time to kill before we fly home Monday, though. Maybe some tourist time coming up.

 

[johnny80s]

Enjoy yourself. Looks like a hard life.

 

[BwanaDik]

Tough duty to be sure! Well Done!

No babes?

 

[Auburn]

Life's rough! enjoy B)

nice pictures

 

[playgtar]

Sucks to be you...........NOT!

 

[wheatonFJR]

beach bikini pictures? Where?

 

[drc32-0]

Are you guys hiring :yahoo:

BTW...I bet those chairs are going to be a mess in short order...Are they even tie- rapped together?

 

[Patriot]

I'm waiting for the tankini pic of Jan on the beach ...

 

[wfooshee]

beach bikini pictures? Where?

Haven't seen a beach, yet. There's been some nice traffic at the hotel pool, though.

I was just thinking earler today, we've been in Bermuda for 4 days, now, and the place is less than 20 square miles of land, and over 600 miles from the next piece of land, yet we've not set eyes on the Atlantic Ocean since the taxi ride from the airport Tuesday. For these people the whole Universe is 15 miles by 5, most of that space being water, with only 20 square miles of land. But we've not seen an ocean beach yet, being in Hamilton, an "inland" city on the sound inside the island.

There are no rental cars here, even residents are only allowed one per household. Scooters prevail, like I said before, but non-residents have a 50cc limit. There's even a Bermuda Motorcycle Racing Club with a corner of the airport tarmac fenced off for their track. They race stuff from mini-bikes up to 600cc sportbikes, with a lot of scooter classes. It's just as well that you can't rent a car . . . they drive in the left lane here, and even as a taxi passenger I've been scared shitless several times as the taxi made a left turn into the near lane.

BTW, talking about motorcycles, I mentioned earlier that I think the largest you can register for road use is 150cc. Well, I saw a 2-cylinder bike this afternoon, but didn't have my camera. Could not identify it, but it had two pipes on one side, cruiser-style, even though it was a parallel twin, but it's the only multi-cylinder bike I've seen all week!

Any of you peeps thinking about getting here, have gobs of money ready. The Bermuda dollar and the U.S. dollar are used interchangeably, but everbody seems to want a whole lot more of them than you think they need. Most restaurants are 30 bucks and up for dinner entrees, and in the grocery store, a load of bread is 5 bucks, and a 2-liter Coke is over 4! Minimum wage is 30 bucks an hour, I think, but folks that make that don't live any better than minimum wage workers at home. It's minimum wage, after all.

Have not seen a single dog or cat, yet they have pet supplies in the stores. I guess they have to hide them from off-worlders.

It's also a bit odd to read things about National this or National that. For example, the motorcycle club has a national championship series. The biggest class I saw has 5 guys running in it! My home county (no r) has 3 times as many people as this country (with an r) and 38 times as much land. And not a single National level motorcyclist that I know of. (Wait - that guy that did a SS1000 2-up on a water buffalo is from Bay County!)

As for Jan, unfortunately the wives could not make the trip. We each have some making up to do when we get home, but plane tickets, feeding them for a week, stuff like that, just wasn't in the allowed trip pricing.

 

[Gizmo]

*******

 

[wfooshee]

Just to be annoying, more pictures from the tourist day we had after the concert. Got back very late Monday night, finally gone through the pics. Had to go back to work, y'know.

Pass to get around on show day

There was supposed to be a concert Saturday night as well, which didn't happen, so we tore down Friday night and Saturday morning. Had a crew dinner Saturday night. Because we were supposed to be working Sunday we had a free day before our flights Monday afternoon.

3 of us took a walk around Hamilton Sunday morning.

Hamilton City Hall:

Bermuda's cathedral. There's something incongruous to me about palm trees around a cathedral!

The Fairmont hotels provide a free ferry for guests to use to get from one to the other, as guests may use facilities at both hotels. This is a view of the Princess from the water, with the yacht Venetian departing to the left. The yacht is for hire for dinner parties and cruises if, as the magazine describes it, you are the president of a large corporation or a small country.

When you work for a professional video production company you get to carry around much nicer video cameras than most folks. 1080p HD 3-CCD, for example.

Some other scenes from the ferry ride. Very nice houses!

A shuttle bus took us up the steep hill to the Fairmont Southampton hotel, where we got directions (sort of) to an Italian place for lunch. Here's the hotel as we started on our exploratory lunch walk. By the way, there is almost no place on the island that cannot see this hotel, sitting as high as it does.

A view of the golf course. The curvature is not distortion - the slope of the course is that severe!

The Fairmont Southampton's beach

After lunch 3 of the guys gave it up and rode the ferry back to our hotel, while 2 of us decided to walk to the lighthouse for pictures.

Here's a shot from the base of the lighthouse

Ready to start the 185 steps up

My buddy David at the top, looking southward

From the top of the lighthouse, the ferry returning to the Hamilton Princess with our 3 lazy friends aboard, probably already passed out from the exertion.

I have a Quicktime360 I made from the top of the lighthouse. Click here to get it. You should right-click and save the file, then open it on your computer, rather than simply opening it in your browser. You can enlarge it to nearly full-screen, get a better view. It's about 20 megabytes, and we don't have the greatest upload speed, so be patient. You'll need to have Apple's Quicktime installed to view it.

While on the subject of 360s, I have another one here that is the waterfront courtyard of the hotel.

After the lighthouse the two of us rode the bus to the Dockyards tourist processing station. It's a bunch of shops, museums, play places, and restaurants built in the buildings once serving as a British naval base. The British attack on Washington, D.C. in the War of 1812 was launched from this base. Anyway, what with all the time walking, waiting almost an hour for the bus, nearly 30 minutes for the ride, we got there just as it was closing. Apparently the bus that dropped us off was the last bus, too, as we discovered when we got bored and went to the bus stop and examined the schedule to see when we'd get picked up. The schedule posted there was different from the one I had in the hotel, and apparently the hotel's was incorrect. Two other groups were in the same predicament, so we all split a taxi (7-seat minivan) to Somerset and caught the bus back to Hamilton from there. Anyway, pics from the Dockyards, which is also where the cruise ships put in.

These military buildings are all shops now

Cruise ship in port

Front Street in Hamilton, after our walk/boat ride/bus ride/walk/climb/walk/bus ride/walk/taxi/bus ride/walk self-guided tour.

 

[Old Michael]

Man, I'd love to visit that place.

Thanks wfooshee.

I gotta get out more.