Living in Grand Cayman

I recently had to go to the UK for a few days on business.  I always enjoy going to London ; a lovely city with much to see and do.  Of course, I don’t usually have much time for sightseeing.

However, as regular readers of my blog will know, I try to see some sights, even if on a restricted schedule.

So last Saturday I did just that.  I went a bit off the beaten path to a place I have wanted to go for a few years now.  Its related to WWII and to Cryptography – and was incredibly interesting.  In fact, I had planned on a 2-3h visit and after over 5h I am sure did not see all there was to see.

So, where did I go?  To Bletchley Park which is a 45 minute train ride north of London.  What’s that you ask! It’s where the British, in WWII, cracked the German Enigma machine codes.  If you saw the 2014 movie “The Imitation Game” or are a history buff you know all about this.  If you have not seen the movie, I highly recommend it.

Here is “The Mansion” seen in many pictures of Bletchley Park and where some movie scenes were shot.

In the museum, they have quite a few Enigma machines.  If you thought your odd of winning the lottery are slim, consider this.  The possible combinations generated by this machine are of 158 Trillion – or 158 Million Millon! So defeating it was not a simple task, especially with 1940’s technology.

The man who was instrumental to this endeavor was Alan Turing, a mathematician.  Here is a statue of him made entirely of 500,000 small pieces of slate.  Amazing!

Turing’s genius was the design of the “Bombe”.  No, its not a “bomb”. The bombe was nickname for the device seen below that was used to ultimately defeat and crack the German Enigma codes.  The machine works (i’m over simplifying this …) with a series of rotors which are able to “find” the Enigma settings (which was the key to decrypting the German messages) much faster than any human can. The Bombe is recognized as being the first modern computer.  The Bombe seen below is a working recreation which took 13 years to make, since all of the ones built during the war were destroyed by the Government at the conclusion of WWII.

In one of the “huts”, essentially very rudimentary office buildings, was Alan Turing’s office.

My friend David and I in Turing’s office.  David is a former work colleague in Cayman. I met up with him at the train station in London and spent a lovely day visiting the exhibits with him.  It was great to spend a bit of time in Turing’s office – rich in history.  It’s widely accepted by historians that Turing’s accomplishments (and others on his team) shortened the war by approximately 2-years and saved over 14M lives.

As a final picture.  If you have seen the movie, this is the bar which can be seen in a few scenes, notably in the “eureka” moment – the best part of the movie.

If you want to know more, below are some some links for additional reading and a link to the museum should you wish to visit the next time you are in London.  I highly recommend visiting Bletchley Park – plan to spend the day; there is much to see and learn.

Alan Turing

The Bombe

Bletchley Park Museum

One of the favorite races, outside of the Cayman Islands Marathon, is the “Cross Island relay”.  I ran this race a few years ago in a team with Julie.  Had not been in it since … until this year.

This time around I ran with a bunch of guys from the office.

Of course we all have to be a bit nuts to get up and run on a Sunday morning where it would be much easier to simply stay in bed.

The concept of the race … wait for it … is to run across the island 🙂  Thus, we are 6 runners per team and we each run 4 miles (a bit over 6km).  The race starts in the East End at 6am and finished at Smith Cove in South Sound.

Here I am passing the baton  to my teammate.  I ran leg 4 of 6.

The finish line at Smith Cove.   This year there were a lot of teams.  Sure is a popular event now.  There were 95 teams entered into the race this year.  We came in at a very respectable 11th place overall and 4th corporate team.

The prizes for the winners!  Note the dark cloud on the back.  Just before the end of the awards ceremony, it started to pour down. I am very glad it did not rain during the run. Running in wet running shoes is no fun at all.

The teammates – well 2 of them anyway. We took this picture in quite a haste, seconds before the massive rain started falling.  One South African, one Aussie and a Canadian.  This is definitely the Cayman Islands – a big mix of nationalities which is awesome.

So every year there is the Cayman Alternative Investment Summit.  Financiers from around the world network, listen to experts and mingle.

Once business is done, there is time for some fun.  At the end of the week, there is the “Legends Tennis” where ex-pros and celebrities play tennis while the regular folk sip champagne on the sidelines in the VIP section 🙂

First person I got to see was Sir Richard Branson.  Note the stitches above his eye.  The story is that he walked into a glass door at a local store.

Next up, the lovely Anna Kournikova, definitely a (male) fan favorite. Anna was one of the top tennis players in the world in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.

But, the highlight of the week for me was this guy.  We had Kevin Mitnick, the most famous hacker in the world at the conference. In the 1990’s, he was a bit of a bad boy, where at one point he was on the FBI’s most wanted list and a fugitive on the run.  Anyway, now he is a renowned speaker on Cyber Security matters and has also written three very interesting books (I have read them all). He gave a great talk and scared everyone in attendance with hacking demo’s.

In the mix of it all, I even got to spend a bit of time with him for dinner. Really nice guy.  I took him, his guest and a friend of mine to Calypso Grill in West Bay. He liked Calypso so much that he told me that we went back 2 evenings later. We had a lovely evening talking about Security, technology, global politics and all kinds of interesting subjects.

Long time readers of my blog know that I have a lot of love for the East End of Grand Cayman.  The only thing I like more is diving in the East End.  There are only two dive operators and the dive sites are all in fabulous shape. And … at a few of the dive sites, an area they call “the corner”, there is a family of sharks that usually hang around.

On my dive this week-end with some friends, two of them joined us for our dive.  Luckily, one my my dive buddies had a GoPro camera (I know .. .I should get one …) and filmed the event.  At one point, one of them got to within 30 or so feet of us.  Such a majestic animal.  I want to stress … at NO point were they aggressive or did they shown any interest in us.  It seems like they may have been curious and just swam by to sort of say “hello”.  🙂

Here is the video.  Thanks to my friend Andrew.

On the second dive (when going out with Ocean Frontiers, the dive operator we were with its always a boat dive and we go for 2-dives), we did a Lionfish hunt.  At the end of the video you just saw, there is a beautiful Lionfish.  They are awesome looking, but an invasive species in the Caribbean.  We are encouraged to hunt them down!  Too boot, they are great to eat.  A lovely white meat not unlike codfish. They are hunted with a spear.  So between the 6 of us who were diving we got 10 Lionfish. Plenty for a dockside ceviche after the dive.

Here Cory is fillet-ing them. Note the spines are quite dangerous.  If they puncture your skin it (apparently) hurts a LOT. Glad he was doing this and not me!

Our haul of Lionfish

The final product.  Not that I did much a part from supplying a bag of tortilla chips! 🙂  It was very good. Lionfish, avocado, mango, lime & some other stuff (I’m a terrible cook, in case you had not yet noticed)

So diving in the East was great and the water was calm.  In George Town : Not calm.  In fact the water us extremely rough.  This was taken right in front of Eden Rock.

Another picture taken from the same location, but looking at town.  The waves crashing were so high, that some of the water was going onto the street.

Its somewhat chilly right now in Cayman.  This morning on my way to the office I noted 22 degrees.  I will not say its cold, but for Cayman it sure is not very warm.

December is here and what does that mean?  First, a very quiet hurricane season is over which is great news. Second, its time for the Cayman Islands Marathon which is always the first Sunday of December.  Its been quite rainy recently so fingers were crossed that we not have any rain on the race day.  Thankfully we did not 🙂

At the race packet pickup on Saturday, the day before the race.  The whole process was done with military efficiency.  I was in & out in under 3-minutes.  The organizers have got this drill figured out.  So many volunteers also.

The countdown clock was prominently placed showing us how much time we had before the start of the race the next morning. Not much time left to get ready.

This is where we will all be at 5am the next morning for the start of the race.  The race organizers do the setup in the middle of the night which is quite impressive.  Pasta dinner (see next picture) was on the balcony at Breezes – where the “Pizza” sign is.

Of course the obligatory pasta loading meal the evening before. Had two of these 🙂

Here is the path we ran, a full 21.1km (over 13 miles).  On the way back, the massive humidity hit all of the runners.  For December, the very high humidity as we have in summer, is somewhat surprising.  There were unfortunately a lot of runners that dropped out and a few who were treated for dehydration.  It was definitely a tough race for everyone!  At the bottom of the picture is my pace as recorded by my GPS running watch.  Fairly constant and as expected slowly … getting slower as the race progressed.

So what happened?  I finished in a slightly slower time than last year for the Half-Marathon in 1h42 minutes. That placed me 28th overall for over 820 runners.  Considering the tough conditions i’m happy 🙂

On another note, the Christmas lights are out and plentiful.  This large property in South Sound has decorated all of the palm trees.  Makes for a lovely sight.

This other house is an absolute delight.  So many lights and things to see.  this one is defintely my favorite.  Anyone looking for this place, its along South Church St in South Sound – near Sunset House. If you are in the right place, “you can’t miss it” 🙂

So another half-marathon done.  A part from some more rain today, December weather is here (23 degrees this AM) which is nice. The need for aircon is not as high. I have even driven with windows open recently ; so nice.