Hafa Adai!

For those of you who may not be familiar with the picture I posted in my last article, I actually am in Guam.  :P  And since I stalk my blog everyday (hahaha!!), I finally have a heart in my MapLoco for this USA territory. (See red circle below to locate Guam in the world map.)

Some of the few things I gathered within my 2 days of stay here:

1.  Hafa Adai!  It’s the welcome sign you’ll often see in A.B. Won Pat international airport but it’s weird that you don’t hear it from the locals. It should be spoken often like Mabuhay, Aloha or Sawasdeeka right?  But from my researching, the number of people who speaks the native language are declining and the main language is being replaced by English which brings me to my second discovery.

2.  Chamorros.  The indigenous people here are called Chamorros.  They’re not Guamians (joke, joke, joke, wahaha!!).  And that explains the name of that delicious cookies served during the flight.

3.  3.  Guam is the southernmost of the Mariana Islands.  The CNMI (Commonwealth of Northen Mariana Islands), which is in political union with US, is composed of 15 islands but the other 3 significant to me (hmm because it’s where the focus of the customer’s business here) are Saipan, Tinian and Rota.  Well, I already researched these beforehand because I was checking out for uhmm, some sidetrips.  Mwahaha!!  Saipan is actually a 45-min flight away from Guam.  And from some discussion with a CEO this afternoon, he emphasized that Guam is smaller than Singapore by mere 20 square miles.  But after that, I checked in Wiki it’s actually about 60 square mile difference. :P

4.  4.  I was reading some pamphlets while waiting for our meeting yesterday and one of our customer’s offering a business solution for typhoons.  Typhoon can occur year round for this country which is I guess I should’ve expected because of its location right? 

5.    5.  Guam’s economy depends on tourism, mainly Japanese – which explains why there are quite a number of them here in our hotel.  I mean, of course there are a lot of Filipinos here but they sort of learned the language also to talk to them.  Cool!

But seriously, I think if Guam really wants to boost their tourism, they should allow Cebu Pacific to fly here.  Three and a half hours away from the Philippines, palong-palo!  Hahaha!!

Hey guys, I bought a travel buddy with me for this trip.  Hahaha!!  His name is Mumble, isn’t he the cutest?  I got it from Ocean Park in HK early this year.  I haven’t blogged about it yet noh?  Haha!

P.S.  I totally packed the wrong outfits for this trip.  This is a beach and I’m the only one walking in boring corporate outfits amongst a sea of floral/Hawaiian dresses of girls in our hotel resort and spa.  What happened to my packing intuition??  Tsk!  Hello????  No sunblock???  Tsk, tsk, tsk!

And here's a quick preview of where I am staying at:

After seeing the beach and visiting the malls, me and Mumble are already won over.  We heart Guam! Hehehe. :P