GCB

Working and living in the Philippines means having to work with acronyms. Filipino's love acronyms. I work for the GIZ, which is a German acronym, but I work for the DRM (Disaster Risk Management) department. Sometimes people get confused about are intentions so we add Reduction so it becomes DRRM. As if anyone outside of a Bond-movie would be interested in working for DRIM (not that I would turn the job-offer down, mind you), or - if they did - would admit it to people often enough to warrant an acronym.
Obviously the DRM department Ms more than one D. We work on FEWS (Flood Early Warning Systems), sometimes calles LFEWS for local FEWS. Other people work on this project called SIMPLE: Sustainable Integrated Management and Planning for LGU Ecosystems. That's right, nested acronyms. LGU means Local Government Unit. There is nothing simple about SIMPLE, it's just to have a nice acronym.

Quite daunting for the initiate, but not for locals. As I said, Filipino's love acronyms, and they use them even outside of the professional jargon. Because divorce doesn't exist in the Philippines but separation obviously still does, some people are MBA (Married But Available). Some people just don't stand a chance in the world of boyfriends and girlfriends and relationships and these are SSB (Single Since Birth). That's a bad thing. And, of course, not all tourists come to the Philippines with the most innocent of vacation plans. These can usually be filed under the category DOM (Dirty Old Man).

But wait, there's more! Some people are so used to acronyms that they start believing abbreviating their names will shave valuable minutes off of their day. I've heard of people named B-boy (no experience in break-dancing), and J-boy (respected politician), for example. But the self-abbreviation is an old phenomenon here. So old, that some people have names that are phonetic spellings of acronyms: Bee-Jay for example (that's an actual person).

Weird.