Culturally Preconditioned

so.. no major thoughts yet, although I already found out who got eliminated. *le sigh*

hopefully I’ll be able to catch a repeat of this episode tomorrow.

OHGODDAMNFUCKINGSHIT

There I’ve said it.

Well that was what I was thinking the first 59 minutes of tonight’s episode anyway. Can’t say that this was unpredictable, as they did the same thing with Terri/Henry from last season (saved from elimination back to back).. but I thought this would be a To-Be-Continued leg. Am I happy with the outcome of this episode? I dunno.. I’m kinda torn, but I’m glad Ida and Tania are still in the race.

Teams started off from the last leg (Sam/Vince were first to start the leg at 5:47am, and Ida/Tania were last to start at 9:57am). Teams had to travel to Mongkok Market and collect two goldfish and deliver it to an aquarium. Perhaps one of the most WTF challenges this season. I mean, it’s not like catching and delivering live chicken on foot somewhere. All they had to do was carry two bags and get on a taxi and wait for the aquarium to open. Teams were stalled with the Hours Of Operations as the shop only opens at 11am (sorry but what kind of a lazy ass opens his shop at 11am?).

Next they had to get on a ferry to Macau. Sam/Vince actually ran on foot to the ferry station, and got a huge lead, Major home advantage if there was one.  Tisha/Geoff swapped for a ferry that leaves 5 minutes earlier than AD/Fuzz and Henry/Bernie - which proved to be an excellent move on their part cause that contributed to the lead that they maintained the rest of the leg. Even 5 minutes makes a difference, y’all. Ida/Tania took a ferry much much later than the rest.

Once in Macau, they had to go to Senado Square on a petticab (?) aka trishaw and get their next clue. Caution : Yield Ahead. Sam/Vince mentioned that they might yield someone but they didn’t mention names - but I already knew they were targetting Henry/Bernie, way before Sam high-fived Tished later. I mean, that only made sense. Geoff/Tish were the next to arrive, and THEY yielded Henry/Bernie. I’m not their fan, but that was totally understandable, and justified IMO. It’s about time the rest of the four teams realize that Henry/Bernie are the alpha-male team this season, and they need to be stopped if the rest really wants to win this race.
The next Roadblock was to ‘climb the ladder of success’. Teams had to climb up Macau Tower and climb up the tower mast. Hmmm challenging roadblock, cause I would’ve been petrified myself, but we JUST saw this challenge on Monday on TAR13. *shrug* Anyway, Vince finished first, followed by Geoff. Fuzzie was overtaken by Bernie (whose yield lasted for only 15 minutes). Tania came soon after. While doing the challenge, Fuzzie and Tania were basically given their clues before completing the challenge, because of bad weather. Hmm another lame mercy fucking clue. When will this stop? Shouldn’t they be given some time penalty for that? Yeah I don’t care it’s bad weather. Nevermind lah.

Next the teams needed to go to Dragon Boat Pier and select a marked boat and paddle it around a bouy. I thought this would’ve been too much on the person who just did the Roadblock, because both tasks require strong upper body strength. I can only imagine how exhausted those racers were. Next was a Detour and teams had to choose between (1) Dance - complete a lion dance, or (2) Chance - win 9 rounds of blackjack in a casino. All teams but Geoff/Tisha did Chance. Not much drama here, although it was fucking funny watching AD and Fuzzie’s look of disbelief when they saw the dress. I was so laughing my ass off with their comments about that. Sam’s (seriously I don’t know which one is which.. so… sorry if I get the names wrong) switching the name tags on Henry/Bernie’s attire was a pretty ssts (snickering silently to self) moment.. but between this and their desire to yield Henry/Bernie, I guess they’re even more fake than Geoff/Tisha. I’m just saying, ya know?

Once they finished the detour, the teams head to the Ama Culturally Preconditioned Village where they had to arrange the chinese lanterns according to the Chinese Zodiac, before they were allowed to go through the doors and straight to the next pitstop. I thought this was quite an interesting challenge, before finding out that they actually had clues to help them determine the order. But oh well.. at least it was quite an attempt to include some sort of cultural thing into this leg.. I mean, they really should, seeing that they’ve stayed practically in the same region for the last few episodes.

Geoff/Tisha was the first team to arrive at the pitstop, their FIRST, I believe. They did well this episode, so good for them. I was actually glad that they were first to arrive, than the HK boys who seemed pretty overconfident this episode. Sam and Vince followed closely behind. Surprisingly AD and Fuzzie came in third place, even though they finished the Chance detour after Henry and Bernie did, who apparently had a tough time looking for a cab. And because of that, Henry and Bernie came in fourth place. And fucking finally, the beautiful Ida and Tania. I was devastated. I really thought that they would be toast this episode, if not for the NEL. But it was close. Ida and Tania were saved from elimination. However, they must come in first place in the next leg, or they will incur a 30-minute penalty.

I can only hope for miracles to start happening next week. PLEASE DON’T LET MY GIRLS GET ELIMINATED!!!!

I usually abhor ads during the show, but can I just say that I love Hugo Boss’ new advert? It was weird seeing him ‘out of character’. I have a totally new found respect for Jonathan Rhys Myers after watching The Tudors.  They couldn’t have found a better King Henry VIII. Nope, not even Eric Bana was as good in The Other Boleyn Girl.

Okay, so this episode started off in La Paz. One of the things that I look forward to at the beginning of an episode is where we see their arrival times at the pitstop. Now, there were less than one hour sparating the eight teams - makes you realize how close the gaps were between these teams.. something sorely lacking in TAR Asia, I’m afraid. Teams received their clue to fly to Auckland, New Zealand. Was this the longest direct flight in TAR history? From La Paz, Bolivia to Auckland, New Zealand?

All teams were on the same direct flight and there didn’t seem to be much airport drama. Once in Auckland, teams had to drive to Gulf Harbour and untie some kind of knot. The knot itself didn’t look particularly difficult, as I saw one of the team untangle it like a ball of yarn. What’s interesting was that they put the strip of clue at the end of the knot, visible to the teams once unravelled.

A Fast Forward awaits for them. For the Fast Forward, teams had to drive to Auckland Sky Tower and climb up from the sky deck to the top. Can I just say that this was probably one of the most scariest Fast Forwards I’ve seen on the race? The way the tower was swaying in the wind.. wow. Major kudos to Ken and Tina who completed this challenge and rode a helicopter right straight to the Pitstop.

As for the other teams, they had to drive to the summit of Mount Eden (all except the divorcees who are “too stupid to live” who parked their car at the base of Mount Eden and walked right too the top - but even then they finished the challenge before Dan and Andrew who drove past them to the summit. I honestly can’t tell who’s stupid, and who’s stupider). At the summit, they had one of the more interesting Roadblocks yet. Teams were given a picture of a tattoo, and they had to match it with a Maori who’s doing the hakka dance. I can’t believe Terrence managed to complete this task during sundown. Wow. And it was way funny watching the warriors rin and take the clue away every time they gave a wrong answer. The nose greeting was kinda cute to watch too. Way to inject some cultural stuff into the show.

Next, teams had to drive and find the City Life Hotel, get on the rooftop and use binoculars to spot one of the Travelocity Gnomes spread throughout the city. I honestly don’t mind if the obvious product placements are obvious as this, if they do it right, and sparingly. But ohmagahd… I would’ve hated this challenge! It’s even worst than finding Where’s Wally. Madness. The gnomes were placed on different buildings, in parks, under trees, on balconies, etc. Again, a really interesting challenge in my honest opinion.

On finding the Travelocity Gnome, teams had to get their next clue at the Kiwi 360 landmark. Once there, a Detour awaits them. Teams had to choose between (1) A matter of time - where they had to crush kiwi fruits using their feet to yield 12 glasses of juice, and drink 2 of them, or (2) A matter of skill - where they had to assemble a flow cart (?) and complete 3 lapse around the track. All teams chose the first detour, but somehow, four teams decided to change the detour midway through - I’m not quite sure how some of the teams seemed to breeze right through the challenges, and the others did not. I noticed the more ‘weaker’ or ‘lighter’ teams managed to complete it with ease - Terrence/Sarah, Divorcees, Southern Belles. *shrug*

On finishing the detour, teams headed to the next pitstop where they were greeted by Phil’s Dad. Yay! In the order of their arrival at the pitstop :

Show Me The Spoiler

Well, that’s it I guess. I enjoyed this episode more in terms of the challenges and tasks. Here’s hoping that next week’s episode will be better.

First up, that was possibly one of the more enjoyable episodes this season - although in all fairness, nothing can possibly be worse than the episode that was show last week. Secondly, I loved the short recaps from the first episode to the fifth episode - although it was kinda stupid that they totally edited out the real reason why Mai and Oliver was eliminated last week. Thirdly, I have never been so glad for a Non-Elimination Leg till I saw this race. I honestly thought this was going to be a To-Be-Continued episode, what with the extended recap at the beginning of the episode and all.

Teams started off from Taipei from the last leg. Sam and Vince had a comfortable four-hour lead, which led to their constant lead throughout this leg. Henry/Bernie, AD/Fuzzie and Geoff/Tisha were within an hour and a half of each other. Whereas Ida/Tania were trailing more than seven hours behind Sam and Vince. Usually after Fast Forwards, there usually would be an equalizer for the next leg, but that wasn’t so in this case. Takpe lah. No use harping on the flaws of the shortsightedness of The Powers That Be.

Teams were to fly to Hong Kong. Not much airport drama, but I just LOVED the blatant zoom in on the Standard Chartered credit card when they were purchasing the tickets, don’t you? Once there, they had to run through a rugby field in Kowloon to get their next clue. Although, kind of a pointless thing here, I suppose it was kind of fun for the racers.  After getting their clue, teams had to take a taxi to central Hong Kong to the next Detour.

The Detour was between (1) Fishy - where they had to clean, gut and scale 15 fish, or (2) Lucky - crack through 300 fortune cookies to get their next clue. Although it seemed a little lop-sided, only one team did the Fishy detour - Henry/Bernie which didn’t surprise me. I know it’s crazy, but I would’ve done the same thing. Can you blame me? I get an instant hardon everytime I use my Zwilling knives. Bite me. The fortune cookie challenge proved to be the easier one though.. and I HAVE to search for that particular Confucius proverb about backsides and waking up with a smelly hand or summink or nuffink (channelling Vicky Pollard - God I love that bitch).

After the Detour, teams had to get on a taxi to Central Pier, get on a ferry and head to Ladies Market for their next Roadblock. The Roadblock clue was : “Who’s got an eye for the ladies?”, which resonated particularly well with AD & Fuzzie.. awww how sweet. The roadblock was to choose a handbag, and spot the exact same handbag among the people and shops at the Ladies Market. I’ll tell you one thing, I would’ve DIED if I was to do this. Sooo not my thing. This is kind of a needle in a haystack type of challenge  thingy.. but I thought it was pretty original. And LOL @ Bernie keeping the handbag. Next was the pitstop, and in the order of their arrival :

Show Me The Spoiler

Yup.. pretty good episode indeed. And if anyone missed out on the past TARA3 episodes, this episode would be a great place to start - especially with the short recaps that was shown in the first five minutes of the episode. I hope Ida/Tania will be able to make up some grounds in the next leg, cause I do think they are at least 5 or 6 hours (if not more) behind the first team at the next start of the leg.

After the dreadful, dreadful episode of TARA3 last week, I was so looking forward to tonight’s episode of The Amazing Race. Teams started off from Fortaleza, Brazil. It’s surprising to know that teams #3 to #9 all arrived within only 90 minutes of each other at the last pitstop. Anyway, teams were to fly out to La Paz in Bolivia. The city sits above 12,000 feet above sea level, which promises this leg was going to be just a little harder than the rest because of the elevation. Teams arrive in La Paz with surprisingly no airport drama. I have a feeling they were given two predetermined flights out fro Fortaleza, as the producers had to ensure they would all arrive in La Paz in time for the morning paper.

Once in La Paz, teams slept overnight at some plaza while waiting for the morning newspaper. We see once again, a rehashed challenge where they had to spot in the newspaper on where their next destination was going to be. The clue that they were looking for (”a hat sale”) personally didn’t indicate anything to me that it was a TAR clue, so I would assume that was the one and only English advert in that paper today. Once at the Narvaez Hat Shop, teams receive clue to the next detour.

The next detour asks the teams to pick either (1) Musical March - where they had to pick musicians and lead a marching band on foot to two different plazas, or (2) Bumpy Ride - where they had to choose some classicial bicycles and ride in down to .. mm somewhere. Interesting to note that two teams failed to read their clue, and picked a taxi, instead of going on foot, to reach their next detour. Terrence/Sarah realized their mistake and went back on foot, whereas Bill/Mark didn’t realize this till much later in the leg. I’m a little puzzled as to why teams chose to go with the musical march, cause you can only go as slow or as fast as the marching band.
A U-Turn awaits at the end of the detour, and there was almost some U-turn drama… but not really. Seems like we’ve gotten one of our weirdest fights ever on TAR so far. SPORTSBRAGATE. lol i mean.. wtf? The whole divorcee/Starr tiff was unnecessary drama IMO. SO this little tiff almost caused Star to U-Turn the divorcees, but she didn’t. She did, however, tell Aja/Ty to U-Turn the divorcees. Actually it kinda made sense if they were the second last team.. but oh well.

So they get to a roadblock about 8 miles away, where the next Roadblock was fighting Cholitas. One person from the teams had to go through a wrestling training with a chica. They had to successfully complete six different stunts in order. A pretty original idea, and was kinda fun. I would expect this roadblock gave a chance for some of the teams to relax and have a laugh, which is a good thing. After the roadblock, teams head to the next pitstop. In the order of the arrivals at the pitstop :

Show Me The Spoiler

All in all, it was an okay episode. Looking forward to next week’s episode where someone breaks an arm after being told not to. ssts.

Sorry I missed writing the recap for last week’s episode.. a little pre-occupied with Eid and stuff, but I thought it was one of the best episodes so far. Ida and Tania making it to Number One exceeded all of my expectations for this team. And I also liked the fact that Henry and Bernie tumbled to fourth place. Don’t get me wrong, I seriously love both Malaysian teams this year, but I wouldn’t want them to totally dominate the race. So, onto this week’s episode!

Teams arrived in Taipei in the last leg, and remained in Taipei for this leg too. Urgh.. wish they had gone somewhere else though. Not that I have anything against Taipei, but I’ve never been a fan of multiple episodes filmed within the same country. Perhaps AXN will get more advertisers so that they can allocate more moolahs for the logistics team next season. ssts. Anyway, there was a gap of almost 2 hours between the first and the last team at the pitstop last week.

First clue of this leg directs them to Sony Style Store at the Sogo Department Store. Hmmm you KNOW, what’s coming your way when you hear that clue right? It’s disgusting. Once there, they had to search through one thousand Blu-Ray discs and find the correct disc to get their next clue. You know, when I first heard about this challenge.. I thought I’d cut this challenge some slack, despite the extremely disgusting blatant and unashamed product placement (note to producers : seriously, do you need me to buy you a dictionary and highlight the word “subtlety” for you? Because I could and would gladly do it), because it kinda reminded me of the challenge the Goddesses Charla and Mirna did when they were in KL. You know, the find a clue in selected cookies :

And for old times’ sake

LOL.

But then I remembered.. that was a Detour. They had a choice to either do this, or another task. The Blu-Ray challenge was a task that they HAD to do. And this was 100% based on extreme dumb luck. WTF? All teams finally managed to find their clue, except for Mai and Oliver who was actually GIVEN the clue because the store was closing. Seriously, this is the closest thing to a LAME MERCY FUCK if there was one on the show. Another epic failure by the producers. Well I guess that’s what you get when you actually focus and center your challenges around the product placements. Such a shame, but kudos to Mai and Oliver for not giving up. They seemed to have handled it well that I would ever have, believe you me.

Anyway, Sam and Vince was the first to finish the lame Blu-Ray task (within .. what? five minutes? and Mai/Oliver prolly took.. mmm what 5.. 6 hours?) and opted to the go for the one and only Fast Forward on this race. Turned out that the Fast Forward was to get a tattoo. Seriously now.. what the fuck? Can’t these lazy fuck producers come up with a more creative task than doing a blatant copycat of an FF from the original TAR? FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!!!! Whatever lah.. I’ve already given up at that point… but thankfully that segment gave a few ssts moments - (paraphrasing) “Oh, it’s not that bad”, “Dude, he’s just sketching on you with a pen”, “OMFG YOU HAVEN’T STARTED??”. Anyway, they did the Fast Forward and was the first team to arrive at the pitstop. The end.

As for the rest of the teams, (and when I say the rest, I mean, Henry/Bernie, AD/Fuzzie, Ida/Tania, Geoff/Tania - Mai/Oliver got fucking screwed by the fucking lame Sony Style task and never recovered) they had to go to a Coal Mine in Shih Fen and dig through coals to find a souvenir, which turned out to be a silver coin. That was a physically tough challenge, especially not knowing what the ’souvenir’ was. And the challenge kinda reminded me of what I did in Leeds a few years back over the summer hols - shovelling through cartons of fucking coleslaw at the factory LOL. That put me off of coleslaw for months! I literally used a shovel to work with those slaws.

After the roadblock, teams were met with a detour (1) Pick - where they had to retrieve three dolls from a wawachi machine, or (2) Pail - where they had to carry a pail of water using a bucket and a pole and deliver it to a monk. Nothing special about this except the subtitles : “Kalau kita jumpa sami, mesti kita seronok”. Haha. I’m surprised anyone did the Pail detour at all - but Ida and Tania did, while the rest did the relatively easier detour. After the detour, they were to drive themselves to the next Pitstop - the Astronomical Museum.

In the order of the arrival at the pitstop :

Show Me The Spoiler

All these while, Mai/Oliver are trailing so far behind that even a TAR-watching virgin would know they don’t stand a snowball’s chance in Lucifer’s inferno of catching up.  Between the first placers so far ahead in the race, and the last placers who are as good as dead, this is definitely, personally, the weakest non-enjoyable episode of TARA3 I’ve seen so far. A major shame cause we had such a great episode last week.

Okay, I know I’ve been bitching and bitching about AXN, but I have to thank them for taking some stuff off my load.. I mean, with the new tv season in full swing.. can you imagine how busy my downloads have been getting? Just to give you an idea of what I’m downloading and watching every week as of today :

• Mondays - Heroes, Worst Week, Amazing Race 13*
• Tuesdays - 90210 (nostalgic reasons only)
• Wednesdays - Dirty Sexy Money, Amazing Race Asia 3*
• Thursdays - Supernatural, Survivor, Ugly Betty
• Fridays and Saturdays - none
• Sundays - True Blood, Desperate Housewives, Little Britain USA, Californication

That’s a total of 11 shows a week! And soon.. Lost, Apprentice and Top Chef. Someone kill me. Kill me now.

Okay, this might be a quite brief recap cause I’m sneezing my ass off right now. Teams had to fly from Salvadore, Brazil to Fortaleza which is located 650 miles away. Initially I thought there were going to be some airport drama, but since teams arrived at the pitstop within 1.5 hours of each other, they all bunched up on the same flight (which according to Tina, was all thanks to her. Geez.. where do they get such delusional people on this show?).

Once in Fortaleza, they rode a dune buggy on the beach to get to a detour between (1) Beach It - where teams had to drag a vessel across the beach using traditional methods - the rolling of logs, or (2) Docket - where teams had to search for a container at a shipyard. Both pretty interesting challenges, but not interesting enough for me to ramble on. Terrence/Sarah went from 1st to 9th place after failing to locate the taxi stand. Fortunately for them, Toni and Dallas offered some advice. Everyone now.. awwwwwwww. But in all fairness, delusional Tina also wanted to stop and help them. And I started to think that this might be the nicest bunch of racers so far. It sickens me.

The next roadblock was to search for a clue hidden in plain sight. WTF? Apparently there were spanish words and names written all over a grafitti wall. I still don’t get how they were supposed to figure out the destination. Perhaps we’re not seeing the entire wall/clue? I’m thinking it’s a rebus of some sort.. which no one was able to figure out. Anyway, the roadblock was an epic failure in my books, cause everyone ended up just reading from the list of names on the wall. FAIL. And the next stop was the pitstop. In the order of the arrival at the pitstop :

Show Me The Spoiler

All in all, a pretty dull episode compared to the first episode last week, but I’m sure the season is just starting to warm up. And check out my friend Chris’ Tribal Warfare blog for recaps on Amazing Race too (and Survivor!)