GEOGRAPHY LESSON: You may have met these...

GEOGRAPHY LESSON: You may have met these types: They live in Costa Mesa but say they live in next-door Newport Beach. At Triangle Square--smack in the middle of Costa Mesa--employees at its new music store wear, and sell, bright red T-shirts that say “Virgin Megastore Newport Beach.” . . . . Explains spokeswoman Sally Duffell: “We just felt that Newport Beach was more widely known to people around the world than Costa Mesa. And since it’s only a mile down the road, we didn’t feel we were out of order.”

WILL TRAVEL: The San Joaquin Hills toll road is backed by federal loan guarantees, so county tollway finance boss Wally Kreutzen is in Washington seeking the same for the Eastern toll road between the Riverside and Santa Ana freeways. Kreutzen is used to jetting around. . . . In October, the agency sent him on a $3,000 trip to give a speech in Paris. “I got to know some European toll road contractors and heard their views about the Eastern project,” says Kreutzen.

HAPPY BIDDER: Shawn Womack, 32, of Irvine took up bridge in 1980 to have something to share with her mother. She got hooked. Result: Not one, but two championships at the nationals in Seattle, Wash., last week. One was with mate Joe Quinn, a Fluor-Daniel engineer. Womack will now prepare for the internationals in Albuquerque, N.M., next year. “I never really played cards before bridge,” she says. “But it has so many layers to it; I love it.”

WHERE’S THE RUSH? You’ve heard of people leaving Orange County because they’re tired of the traffic? Few go to the lengths of Fullerton College criminal justice professor Bill Whisenut. He leaves this month for a post as special prosecutor for the Republic of Palau, the westernmost of the Carolina Islands in the South Pacific. Population is 17,000, plus 40,000 tourists a year, mostly for the scuba diving. Says Whisenut: “I really wanted a change of pace; this ought to do it.”