By Ka‘ipo Ho
While various events took place around the island last Friday to commemorate 50 years of statehood, Outrigger’s Company Services Alaka‘i team organized their own celebration with a Summer Carnival, complete with food booths and a wide selection of games. With summer coming to an end and the conclusion of a successful Outrigger Value of the Week program, the Company Services Alaka‘i team thought it would be a great idea to break up the normally hectic workweek for our corporate worker-bees with an indoor carnival.

There was mini-putt golf, ping pong, mini-hoops basketball, ring toss, tic-tac-toss, and a cleverly-created magnetic darts game, where players had to match lettered darts with corresponding values. And of course, no carnival is complete without food! Corn dogs, popcorn, ice cream sundaes, and a chocolate and caramel fondue station helped to satisfy the afternoon hunger pangs of our Company Services ‘ohana.
One of the highlights of the carnival was a “scavenger hunt” that had participants traversing the OHANA Waikiki East Annex building and the Executive Offices to collect items, including a photo with an executive, a Values card from the 5th floor annex kitchen birdhouse, a tattoo from Lili Hallett’s store in the OHANA Waikiki East Lobby, an Outrigger logo pen, initials from a hotel guest and the name of their town of residence, a Hawaiian flag, and a Hawai‘i quarter or a rubbing of the quarter. One of the tougher items on the list was to continuously twirl a hula hoop for ten seconds. The currently reigning and undisputed hula hoop champ is Kathy Foley, with an astonishing time exceeding three-minutes!

One of the inherent situations with working in the Corporate Offices is that, other than walking to and from a meeting, nearly everyone is situated in their offices throughout a good part of the day. Events such as the Summer Carnival and our May Day is Lei Day event are great social events that get people interacting, even if for a brief moment.

Special thanks go out to our Carnival Committee and Company Services Alaka‘i team, Char Luning, Chad Teramae, Mercedes Lanza, Kathy Hansberry, Terri Escritor, Val Tanaka, Michelle Dubach, Angela Brown, Beverly Villanueva, and Kathy Foley. We would also like to extend a very big mahalo to Mark Burson, Robert Dutcher, Barry Wallace, and Outrigger Marketing for their generous donations of services and other goodies.