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A data scientist from Guernsey walks into a meeting in Japan. His two Filipino colleagues recognise his island home. How?

It sounds like the start of a Facebook brainteaser, but the reason they knew about Guernsey was no riddle.

Neither had visited the island, but both had come across it through a Filipino social media star sharing snippets of everyday life in the Bailiwick with his online followers.

That star is Ralph Jusi, a 37-year-old accountant better known as Rappy Bee, whose videos are giving viewers thousands of miles away a glimpse of life in Guernsey.

From office to algorithm

By day, Ralph works as an accountant for a global fund administration firm.

Away from the spreadsheets, he’s become an online window into island life for people who may never have heard of Guernsey.

His videos aren’t packed with dramatic stunts, exotic locations or carefully choreographed adventures.

Instead, they capture the everyday: a stroll around St Peter Port, a view of the seafront, a trip to a local cafe or simply going about his business.

It’s precisely that ordinary perspective which makes them interesting to people watching from the other side of the world.

With more than 125,000 followers, he’s clearly doing something with mass appeal.

Ralph moved to Guernsey from the Philippines four years ago, and started making videos in 2025.

What began as a way to document his life abroad and explore a creative hobby has grown into something much bigger.

“I started vlogging just for fun and just like kind of creative outlet for me because I work in finance,” he said.

He wanted to record his experiences so he could look back on them in years to come, particularly if he eventually moved somewhere else.

“It’s a good way of documenting my life here,” he said.

Speaking mainly in Tagalog, one of the Philippines’ official languages, Ralph shares his experiences with an audience that includes people back home and Filipinos living overseas.

“Sometimes they don’t know what and where Guernsey is,” he said.

But the appeal goes beyond simply introducing people to an unfamiliar island.

Many of his followers are immigrants themselves, living in countries such as the UK and France, and relate to his experiences of building a life away from home.

A family of content creators

Ralph wasn’t the first in his family to get into making online content.

His older brother and his brother’s husband run a popular Philippines-based TikTok account called David and Rye, with more than 1.5m fans, and helped inspire him to give vlogging a go.

In fact, his brother had been encouraging him to start making videos as far back as 2023. Ralph admits he was too shy at the time, only taking the plunge two years later.

His brother even gave him a DJI camera as a present, to help him take the hobby further.

There is no competitive rivalry between them, either.

Ralph said they support and encourage one another, with two of his other brothers also involved in vlogging.

The audience has grown, though, and with it have come some unexpected moments of recognition.

Before our interview, a Filipino cashier in a Guernsey coffee shop asked Ralph for a selfie to show her grandmother back home in the Philippines – as she was one of his followers.

On another occasion, a local approached him at Kings Health Club, after recognising him from TikTok.

“I was quite surprised. Like really, you saw my video? Amazing,” he said.

And then there was the meeting in Japan, where two people who had never visited Guernsey told a stranger they already knew about the island because of Rappy Bee’s videos.

A second home

Behind the TikTok account is the story of someone who has made a life thousands of miles from where he grew up.

Moving to Guernsey was Ralph’s first experience of working abroad. He said being so far from his family was one of the biggest challenges.

“You’re thousands of miles from the Philippines and you don’t get a chance to go to your parents or to your family whenever you wanted,” he said.

The weather is another adjustment, with the Philippines’ tropical climate a far cry from Guernsey’s changeable conditions.

But the island has gradually become somewhere he feels settled.

“Guernsey is my second home,” he said.

He described it as quieter and more peaceful than life in the Philippines, and said he felt safe here.

The local Filipino community has also played an important part in helping him settle.

“It’s quite nice because you have a sense of home, in spite of being thousands of miles away from the Philippines,” he said.

Being able to share the same language, culture and experiences makes a difference, particularly when adjusting to a new country.

And while he enjoys the Filipino cafes and food available in Guernsey, such as Lasa in the arcade, nothing quite replaces being back home with his family.

When he returns to the Philippines, he said, the first thing he wants to do is reunite with his family and eat Filipino food.

There are plenty of things about Guernsey he knows he would miss if he left, though.

“I think Guernsey has its own beauty.

“I think you’re closer to nature and to the sea,” he said.

He also has a particularly high opinion of islanders.

“I believe that 99% of the people here in Guernsey are very nice people,” he said.

No plans to quit the day job

Despite his growing online audience, Ralph has no plans to swap accountancy for a full-time career as a content creator.

He enjoys his job, and the money he makes through Facebook is modest, nowhere near enough to cover his expensive St Peter Port rent.

For now, making videos remains a creative outlet and a way to share his experiences with people far beyond Guernsey’s shores.

His advice to anyone thinking about starting their own channel is not to get too caught up in making everything look slick.

“You don’t need to be perfect or polished,” he said.

When he first started, he tried to make sure every video was spotless.

But he’s since realised that audiences are more interested in seeing something genuine.

“You just have to be genuine and authentic in the contents that you’re making,” he said.

It’s a fitting approach for someone whose appeal lies in showing people what life is really like, rather than trying to make it look like something else.

Whether it’s to France, the Philippines or even Japan, it just goes to show ordinary life in Guernsey can travel a very long way.