Roaring Forties

The Race Continues from Ep. 4

Dec 21 – The contestants bottled necked at the Auckland airport as the next leg of the race moved on to Tokyo, Japan. In Tokyo, Sawaka & Daichi had home ground advantage and surged confidently into the lead. Marc & Rovilson followed closely in second place as the contestants went through their challenges.

The first task was to get from Narita airport to Shiba Park. Pam & Van proved that their sense of direction was totaly hopeless when they got lost again. They met up with Paula & Natasha who were faced with the same predicament and the girls teamed up together, arriving at the Shiba Park in second last and in last positions. I guess working together took off some of the pressure, knowing that another team is together with you.

The next task was to go to the Sony Building in the Ginza District, used a Sony handycam and record a stranger singing the evergreen Japanese song, “Sakura“. Marc & Rovilson proved to be morons when they coached a stranger to sing the lyrics according to a tune they made up when they don’t even know the song. Naturally, they had to do the task again and lost precious time. Henry & Terri got lost and dropped from 5th place to the last position. Terri was back to her screaming self and threatened to quit.

From the Sony Centre, the contestants had to proceed to the Shibuya District and locate a young girl who is dressed in “anime” fashion. The clue was a picture of the girl in a digital camera. All teams did reasonably well in this task.

Then they faced a road block with a choice of “Catch It or Cart It” tasks. In the “Cart It” task, they have to locate a dry cleaner, retrieve a piece of clothing and delivered it to an address given. In “Catch It” they have to scoop up 40 goldfishes from a tub using a scoop made from rice paper which dissolved in water quite easily. Surprisingly, the first 4 teams chose “Cart It” and the last 3 teams chose “Catch It”.

The highlight of the “Cart It” task was when the Malaysians mums who asked a motorcyclists to bring them to the address to deliver the laundry. They told the motorcyclist “You ride, we run” which they did duly ran behind the motorcyclist.

The next task was to an Ice Bar in the Roppongi District. The task is to decipher the name of a major city in Japan from alphabets in ice blocks. Van looked the most lost and frustrated in this task. When she finally completed the task, she left her ice blocks in tact which Henry took advantage of by copying.

Their next task was to travel to Fukuoka and this was another bottle neck at the train station. Whatever lead which Sawaka & Daichi had, came to nothing as everyone caught up. In Fukuoka, it is all square one and everyone raced towards the finish line. The Malaysian mums, Ann and Diane beat everyone to it and finished first only to find out that they still have to continue on racing.

In the fifth episode, the three strongest teams still appear to be Marc & Rovilson, Adrian & Collin, and Ann & Diane. The weakest are definitely Pam & Van and Henry & Terri.

It was also interesting to find Rovilson getting cuddly with Van.

Are they ….??

The Warlords which hit the cinemas on Dec 13 promised to be an exciting epic war movie with elaborate costumes and a cast comprising of Jet Li, Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Xu Jinglei.

The movie kicked off in the late 19th century with a bloody massacre of a Qing army lead by a General Phang who became the only survivor when he feigned death. Phang’s army was massacred because another Qing army who were supposed to support them in the battle, betrayed them.

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Dec 13 – I have been living in Mentakab, Pahang for more than ten years without any major events occuring. On the day I was visiting Bangkok, the biggest flood since 1971 hit town. By the time, I returned to Mentakab on Dec 17, the roads were opened and the flood waters were subsiding. But the floods which has eluded me, had brought a lot of hardship to thousands of inhabitants.

It is really sad when you lose everything which you have worked for all your life in a flood. I know at least two persons whose houses were under 6 feet of water. No words can describe their loss and grief.

The following pictures which were taken by friends who experienced the floods in Mentakab would cast some light to this display of destruction by mother nature.

Main Street Mentakab

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Dec 16 – No matter which teams, Manchester United beats, it is always special when they beat Liverpool, more so if they did it in Anfield.

Carlos Tevez (pic below) scored the only goal of the match in Anfield two minutes before half time in a match which Liverpool dominated.

Liverpool had 60% possession of the ball, they ran up and down the flanks, they managed 20 shots compared with the Red Devil’s 5. Liverpool did everything but score. Liverpool could not capitalise on the two rare mistakes from Edwin van der Sar, the first occasion when Harry Kewell shot straight at Anderson while Fernando Torres headed wide in front of an open goal 6 yards away.

The 1:0 win over Liverpool stretched Manchester United’s unbeaten streak at Anfield to 6 years. More importantly, the win caused a killer blow to Liverpool’s title ambitions.

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The Race Continues from Ep. 3

Dec 14 – The Race continued where Rovilson and Marc again dominated the field by finishing first again. This episode however showed that they were not as  informidable as they appeared to be in the first 3 races where tiny cracks appeared in the power boat task.

Adrian & Collin proved that they were ever ready to take over if Rovilson and Marc slipped. They followed closely behind to finish second place.

Paula & Natasha have proved to be two tough beauties when they finished third. Malaysian moms Ann and Diane continued their consistent run to finish fourth.

Sawaka & Daichi managed to bypass Henry & Terri to finish fifth, followed by Pam & Van.

Henry & Terri self destructed in the Episode with Terri succumbing under pressure and resumed her screaming antics. It is becoming tiresome to see the behaviour of Terri and the puppy response from Henry. They were very lucky because the last team to start, Sophie & Aurelia were seven hours behind.

Sophie & Aurelia had no chance at all in the race. How could you win a race when you are seven hours behind in a race totaling about 12 hours to complete. Their elimination was already determined from the begining. This was what made this episode boring and watching it is like going through a formality.

Hopefully, there will be a bottle neck at the airport in the next episode so that the teams can all restart on an equal plain.

Farewell, Sophie and Aurelia

Dec 13 – Five Hindraf leaders namely; P. Uthayakumar, M. Manoharan, R. Kenghadharan, V. Ganabatirau and T. Vasanthakumar has been charged under the Section 8 (1) of the ISA and it was reported that they will be held for two years.

The Hindraf memo was totally absurd and they would have been made a public laughing stock had the government approached the matter more objectively rather than to embark on a media brain washing campaign over the last week and finally invoking the ISA on these five guys. The government has done nothing but made martyrs out of these previously unknown characters.

Any sane Malaysian would have concluded that the Hindraf Memo was a case of gross exaggeration.

If we were to review the Memo, I think Hindraf has grossly distorted the truth when they made claims of “Ethnic Cleansing” in Malaysia, “Mini Genocide”, statistics of one person killed in police custody every two weeks or that they have sent hundreds of letters of appeal.

By imposing the ISA on the Hindraf leaders, the government has taken the easy escape route and avoided their responsibility to the rakyat who appointed them.

The government should have taken the golden opportunity to bring Hindraf to Court and charge them openly for sedition, of which the Hindraf leaders are likely to lose due to their own undoing. I felt that the government would have won the case easily and proved to the rakyat that it is fair and transparent. Such action would have restored public confidence and shut the critics up permanently.

Putting the five guys under ISA would only make the rakyat question the motive of the government even more. What were they trying to hide? Such action would make the normal unassuming and docile rakyat who has no interest in politics to suddenly start thinking and asking;

Hey! What’s going on?

I think the government just did it-self a huge disfavour.

Dec 9 – We had only two reasons to watch “The Golden Compass”. One was that there wasn’t much choices to choose from and the second was because Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman were acting. With no prior knowledge of the movie and not knowing what really to expect, we decided to try our luck.

We later found out that “The Golden Compass” is first part of the “Dark Materials” trilogy by author Philip Pullman. The other two installments are “The Subtle Knife” and “The Amber Spyglass”.

Coming back to the movie, it all started in Jordan College, Oxford, in world which is parallel to ours with young Lyra Bellaqua (acted by Dakota Blue Richards who auditioned for this movie and beat thousands of others to get role) as a rebellious young girl who came across a plot by the Magisterium to poison her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig). The Magisterium appeared be trying to hide some divine secret about the origin of life and what was known as “The Dust”.

The people in this parallel world had a daemon accompanying each person and these daemons come in the form of animals. This was the highlight of the movie where you will find an animal walking, flying beside each character. Lyra’s “daemon,” is named Pantalaimon, or Pan, which starts out as a cat kept changing through out the movie as mouse, ferret and a bird.

Lord Asriel took upon a journey to discover the secret to the “The Dust”. Meanwhile, a Mrs Coulter (Nicole Kidman) appeared and invited Lyra to accompany her to look for her uncle Lord Asriel. In her care, Lyra discovered the true identity of Mrs. Coulter and escaped with the help of Gyptians.

Lyra discovered that her best friend Roger (Ben Walker) was abducted by “Gobblers” and the magical golden compass came into her possession. With the golden compass or “alethiometer” as it is known, Lyra went on a journey of her lifetime to find Roger and her uncle.

In her journey, Lyra managed to hire a Winchester carrying aeronaut named Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott) and secured the services of a whiskey drinking ice bear called Iorek as her guardian.

The wasn’t many parts in the movie for Daniel Craig. The movie was deeply anchored by the acting skills of Dakota Blue Richards which is admirable for an actor in her first role. Nicole Kidman played a major supporting role.

I loved the mysterious flying witch called Serafina played by Eva Green.

The story line is not bad but the script and editing is a bit sketchy. My main complaint is that the movie looked like a “Harry Potter”, “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “Lord of the Rings” all blended into one. But blending everything together doesn’t mean that you have the best of all worlds. In fact, “The Golden Compass” appeared to have gotten the worse of all three. “Harry Potter” is more imaginative and original in its ideas. “The Chronicles of Narnia” would be more appealing to children for its simple innocent story line. “Lord of the Rings” will never be surpassed for its costumes and cinematography.

Nevertheless, if you do not compare with the other three predecessors, then “The Golden Compass” is actually quite good and viewable.

Dec 7 -  What started out as an international 4WD Adventure in the rainforest had turned awry when a bridge was washed away by floods leaving about 100 participants stranded near Sungai Trong some 200 km from Kota Baru.

It is mind boogling why the authorities would organised the event which was officiated by Terengganu Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh on the 1st December 2007 during the monsoon season. Even an idiot would know that December and January is the peak of the monsoon season and states like Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang and Johor are flood prone. Having such an event during this period and in the flood prone states are just waiting for statistics to catch up with you.

It does not only put the participants’ life at risk but now would cost the government a lot of time, cost and effort in the search and rescue operations. When would the government officials start practising common sense and being more responsible.

Does it take a tragedy to wake them up or human lives are no longer important?

Dec 3 – Ronaldo continues to prove why he is the second best player in the world by single handedly winning the game at Fulham for Manchester United by scoring both the goals in the 2:0 win, in the 10 and 58 minutes. Kaka who was voted as the No 1 player in the world ahead of Ronaldo made a very realistic comment when he said “The only difference between him and Ronaldo, is that AC Milan won the Champions League last season while Manchester United did not. He admitted that he might not have been voted as the No 1 if it was the other way around.”

So now it more of what Manchester United can do for Ronaldo than what Ronaldo can do for the Red Devils. It is a proven fact beyond doubt that he is the most infuential player for the Old Trafford outfit. Each time he is on the field, they flow smoothly. Whenever he is not on, they struggle.

Dec 8 - Ronaldo  anchored the team again in their 4-win over Derby. Ryan Giggs capped his long illustrated career at Old Trafford by socring his 100th goal for the team. His opening goal opened up the flood gates with Carlos Tevez proving his salt by scoring two goals and Ronaldo finished the rout but adding a fourth taking his season tally to 14th.

Way to go Ronaldo!

The Race Continues from Ep 2

Marc and Rovilson is turning the Amazing Race into a one horse race. They were absolutely strong, competitive and focused in the 3rd episode. They looked awesome at the rock climb and appeared to have enjoyed themselves very much.

Adrian and Colin came charging strongly in this race to finish second while Malaysian mums Ann and Dianne continued their 3rd placing streak, three times third in a row.

Scream queen Terri did an excellent bungee jump even though she was  initially terrified. She and Henry came from behind to finish fifth. They provided the drama of the episode with Terri doing her usual screaming antics and Henry cried like a giant baby.

Sawaka and Daichi performed beyond my expectation in this episode showing more enthusiasm for the race.

The race has taken its toll on the rest of the competitors with Paula and Natasha slipping to fifth. Pam and Van had a car accident which delayed them for about 25 minutes and ultimately caused a drop to seventh position. But they did provide the most memorable part of the episode where some of the other teams were screaming away in the “haunted house” but Pam just brushed “ghost” aside and said “get out of my way“.

Sophie and Aurelia fared equally bad with Sophie losing her cool and provided one of the most memorable the quote of the episode when she scolded Aurelia “Can you please keep quiet for one hour?“

The biggest loser of the race were Brett and Kinar. They were absolutely lost. Nothing went right for them. At the end of the race, they were so far behind, that they couldn’t finish the last two tasks because one of the venues was already closed. There was no dispute at all, that they had to be eliminated from the race.

Farewell Brett and Kinar. The best looking couple and Kinar, undoubtedly the best looking girl in the race.

If there was a contest for Ms TARA 2, she will win in by a mile.

More in Episode 4