Amazing Race

The Amazing Race perhaps is the only TV reality show which is the most awesome to me. Although awesome does not necessarily mean I am following it =x I just watched episode 2 and 3 of the latest season 19 because they went to Indonesia! Wow cool! Really amazing to see them do crazy things which I never even did as an Indonesian. Haha..

One great thing about the show is the travelling part. It is so nice to be able to "travel" around the world and "immerse" myself in the traditional activities associated with each location. The more lovely part, however, is the lessons and realities of life that it presents. I find that most of the things happen due to fate or luck. Bad things happen to everyone like dropping their clues, not reading the clues properly and have to re-do the task, getting tired and frustated and lost, quarrel with your team mate, make new allies or make new enemies etc.  You can be the first from the last and vice versa.

The team who came top 3 in the episode 2 happened to be lucky too. Or rather, more alert to read instruction. The earlier teams did not read the instruction carefully and had to go back and do the things they missed. 

In episode 3, one team had their taxi broke down in the middle of the journey so they had to run 1km to Borobudur. In the end, they caught up with everyone as this became a blessing in disguise. They needed not to go back to the taxi to pick up their bags or paid their fares and could directly proceed to the pitstop. Some other teams with taxi ended up wasting time because of losing their way to the exit. Similarly, the team who came first ended up in second place because of 15 minutes time penalty. They did not read the clues well enough in the previous task and got the 15 minutes penalty.

It's life, isn't it? Play by the rule. Things change so fast and are not always according to our plans. We may get frustrated over something but in the future we may realise that it somehow helped us. Sometimes we feel so high up on the air only to have everything bad happening in the next moment. But the most touching part of the show is always to see their effort and determination. I find that most of them came last out of sheer bad luck and not because they are not trying hard enough. And that's why all who got eliminated would feel damn sad because they had put their best effort, felt very tired, and had to go home. But still, they were satisfied and that is a proof that they did try their best.

The last season I was following was the time when I had a mother-son favourite. Haha.. Usually I always love the dynamics of elderly couples or the parent-child teams. For this season, I hope the Grandparents couple can do well. I am happy to see how they are always being positive (and in episode 3, it was quite poor thing that the Grandma fell 5x on the rice field.. ouch!). There is a father-son team but I like the dynamic of the mother-son team from the season-number-what better.