By Mabel Doge Luhan
It’s finally time! The MVA crew has embarked on its Langkawi vacation!
In Langkawi, they can enjoy a selection of complimentary tours!
https://www.routesonline.com/
Which fabulous tour will it be for our MVA darlings? The SkyCab Adventure? Or the Dream Forest Tour? Maybe Underwater World? Of course, the choice is obvious: why choose only one, especially when the CNMI public treasury is paying?
As long as they can make it to gorge themselves on all the sparkling wine and canapes:
https://www.routesonline.com/
There’s a welcome reception, and a networking evening, plus networking lunches, and networking breaks! Whew! That’s a lot of networking, and I can only hope a lot of twinks! There’s even Fast Track, where you get “5-minute handshake meetings with multiple airlines.” That’s quite a circuit party!
Yes, yes, I know that MVA is in Langkawi for our own good. After all, they couldn’t have possibly missed Wednesday’s “Keynote Interview with Riyadh Air,” followed by the very interesting speech “Navigating a Sustainable Future” — these are all highly relevant topics for our cash-strapped CNMI, and not information that could have been obtained without traveling to a five-star resort in Langkawi.
There are some airline exhibitors to meet too, and they didn’t bring their hot pilots, but I’m sure they are handing out swag, so here’s a helpful guide:
https://www.routesonline.com/
Don’t forget to visit Air Cairo at desk A38, Air India Express at B19, and Royal Brunei at B17! Every time you get a free pen from them, that’s $100,000 in exposure value for the CNMI. Mabel said so.
After all, “[T]he event aimed to be a platform to support Malaysia’s aviation, tourism and economic development.” ( https://www.nst.com.my/
That’s MVA’s job, after all. Supporting Malaysia’s aviation, tourism, and economic development. I’m sure Langkawi’s local economy is grateful for all the CNMI taxpayer funds being spent there!
Our MVA darlings are on vacation, but they did leave us a little something-something to keep us entertained in their absence, almost a “don’t miss us too much” note: the Marianas Tourism Brief, February 2024 edition!
It’s great to see that MVA is using their abundant salaries, offices, and expense accounts to diligently produce a magazine promoting themselves. All it needs is a boudoir shot of Chris!
Speaking of exposure, the very front page of the “tourism brief,” says that the CNMI being in a YouTube video is bringing $500,000 in publicity exposure value! If you’re going to just make up numbers, why not go big? Why only $500,000? Be like IPI and claim $7 billion in exposure value! Don’t be shy — you never are when spending our money!
And so what you’re saying is that on the open market, having a YouTube video set in the CNMI is worth $500,000. That lots of buyers would be willing to pay $500,000 to have the “It’s Me On Tour” video set in their location. Where are those buyers? Who’s paying $500K for some YouTuber to make a video on their island? Who’s even paying $50K for that? The closest is the $100K or so we paid for Deer Meat For Dinner, but who’s counting?
At least Deer Meat has three million YouTube subscribers. These Korean influencers? Well, one of them has 1.4 million. That’s almost as many as my girdle ASMR channel, but again, who’s counting? If you’re claiming $500K in exposure value, why not claim that “It’s Me On Tour” has a hundred trillion subscribers? It’s just as much of a total lie as the $500K figure, so don’t be shy!
There’s of course the implication that MVA somehow brought these YouTubers to the Marianas. Which might very well be the case, if they are “supporting” these YouTubers’ travels? MVA? Any comment? Or any response to the request for your travel expense records that Kandit emailed you some two weeks ago?
Until we receive those travel expense records, we only have MVA’s tourism briefs, I mean brief to go by. Page 2 shows off the MVA crew happily posing at their five-star resort in Seoul. It looks remarkably like a high school yearbook photo. There’s even a mention of two safety signs installed by MVA! In Saipan, not Langkawi! Excellent! We sure are getting our money’s worth for all the millions we’re giving MVA.
The next page has a ton of machine-translated Korean text about something called homeshopping promotions? Apparently this means some people booked trips to the CNMI online? Two hundred fifty people booked tickets to the CNMI! That’s great to know! We’re really getting our money’s worth from MVA here. Let us know when those two hundred fifty people go to McDonalds in Garapan. They might spend well over a thousand dollars here!
There’s also a listing of how many Koreans traveled abroad last year, by month, which is fascinating information for those interested in how many Koreans traveled abroad last year, by month. Whoever put this together seems to have taken a screenshot of an Excel sheet, then stretched it to fit in this space, with some kind of weird truncated graphic above it. Oh, who cares: their minds were already on Langkawi!
The MVA’s briefs even include their travel schedule, in case you’re wondering where they’re setting off to next. April 12-14, they’ll be at the Asia Dive Expo in Singapore, no doubt educating themselves quite a lot about the SCUBA diving industry, for the Commonwealth’s benefit. And September 26-29, it’s off to Tokyo and the JATA Tourism Expo, for the Commonwealth’s benefit — we don’t have any Japanese tourists, and Chris previously said that’s out of our control, but why not verify that, especially while it’s still not too cold to enjoy Tokyo!
I, for one, am glad to be funding these travels! In fact, I wonder why we need to pay other travel influencers to promote the CNMI, when we have our own travel influencers right at home? The MVA crew counts among Asia’s most prolific luxury travelers. Why can’t they promote the CNMI on their own Instagram feeds? They certainly travel more often, and more luxuriously, than the influencers they claim they’re bringing to visit us.
In my worries about costs (I’m such a Naggy Nellie!), I searched the Tourism Brief high and wide for any line-item detail about MVA’s budget and spending and how much all this is costing us. Amazingly, I didn’t find it anywhere! I did find some completely irrelevant and useless statistics about our tourists’ ages and genders — why are we bothering our guests with filling that out when they land? What good is that information, other than for MVA to spend our money “analyzing” it?
I was also eagerly searching the Tourism Brief for any mention of anything MVA accomplished. Walang! I mean, unless you think that YouTubers coming to Saipan, or cruise ships stopping here, have anything to do with MVA — or even if they did have anything to do with MVA, that they’re worth the millions of dollars we spend on MVA.
What if we took that MVA money and used it to pay some actual influencers at actual influencer rates, no more than $20K or absolute maximum $100K per campaign? Then spent some more of that on cleaning up our beaches, getting working public restrooms, and making our airport a little less like Cambodia? And then handed out the rest of the money to the suffering people of the CNMI?
Of course, that might go against MVA’s goal of supporting Malaysia’s aviation, tourism, and economic development. Or their status as Asia’s foremost travel influencers.
_____
Mabel Doge Luhan is a woman of loose morals. She resides in Kagman V, where she pursues her passions of crocheting, beatboxing, and falconry.
4 Comments
They call me Joe
03/02/2024 at 5:05 AM
Mabel Doge Luhan is a woman of loose morals? So when can the CNMI expect you to run for office? (by the way, nice play on your nom de plume).
Since you seem to be on some type of crusade, and I’m guessing pulling down a six figure investigative reporters salary considering you are trying to expose the MVA cartel, I’m wondering if I could interest you in a fine selection of watches I keep inside my covert undercover raincoat? (I have a few ladies Bulova’s with real diamonds that were made in China?). Barring that, maybe you are in the market for some hacked data about nefarious CNMI politicians? I once worked with Eddie Snowden in the Kunia facility and dare I say it, I had constant fantasies about his stripper girlfriend after he introduced her to me when we bumped into each other by accident (actually I planned it) at the local Costco in Hono. Sure, she claimed she was just a performance artist dancer, but I knew better – considering I was monitoring all of her social media communication (in the dark, in private, in my little cubicle underground on Oahu?).
Which brings me full circle to you Mabel. Good god, please quit posting those risque photo’s? This is the second hard drive replacement I requisitioned this month alone. GSA procurement is going to investigate me – and let me tell you, those hard drives are home grown (agency quality), not that imported garbage that you find for sale in Saipan at your local computer 200% mark-up reseller ripoff store.
Let me know if you are into decoder rings and other kinky activity? Respectfully yours (with bells on) – Joe.
Legal disclaimer – all of the above, sarcasm, opinion, denial, whatever.
They call me Joe
03/02/2024 at 7:27 AM
Apologies for yet another comment in reference to Mabel’s ongoing investigation into the MVA cartel, but I just crawled out the dust covered archives and as we speak, I am holding the holy grail (mother of all files) from many years ago, in which I was assigned the task of tracking the travel habits of one individual, code named – ” brown – size thirteen shit kickers”.
Legal disclaimer – a parody, a denial, not realistic, a fabrication. And beside that, ask yourself – who in the hell wears “brown” size thirteen shit kickers and travels on the CNMI’s dime? No one. But just in case anyone is interested in how a document dump works, I am willing to exchange some private computer tutoring lessons for a “short time granny lingerie companship raincheck” in case I happen to be in your part of the world?
They call me Joe
03/02/2024 at 7:29 AM
Apologies for yet another comment in reference to Mabel’s ongoing investigation into the MVA cartel, but I just crawled out the dust covered archives and as we speak, I am holding the holy grail (mother of all files) from many years ago, in which I was assigned the task of tracking the travel habits of one individual, code named – ” brown – size thirteen shit kickers”.
Legal disclaimer – a parody, a denial, not realistic, a fabrication. And beside that, ask yourself – who in the hell wears “brown” size thirteen shit kickers and travels on the CNMI’s dime? No one. But just in case anyone is interested in how a document dump works, I am willing to exchange some private computer tutoring lessons for a “short time granny lingerie companionship raincheck” in case I happen to be in your part of the world?
Duplicate posting with spell check corrections for the grammar police.
They call me Joe
03/02/2024 at 7:32 AM
Apologies for yet another comment in reference to Mabel’s ongoing investigation into the MVA cartel, but I just crawled out of the dust covered archives and as we speak, I am holding the holy grail (mother of all files) from many years ago, in which I was assigned the task of tracking the travel habits of one individual, code named – ” brown – size thirteen shit kickers”.
Legal disclaimer – a parody, a denial, not realistic, a fabrication. And beside that, ask yourself – who in the hell wears “brown” size thirteen shit kickers and travels on the CNMI’s dime? No one. But just in case anyone is interested in how a document dump works, I am willing to exchange some private computer tutoring lessons for a “short time granny lingerie companionship raincheck” in case I happen to be in your part of the world?
Triplicate posting with spell check corrections for the grammar police.