REALITY TV

Meet & Greet The Amazing Race Asia 5 - Indonesia

2:59:00 PM



Yup! It's happening! Meet & Greet session with this season's Indonesian representatives at The Amazing Race Asia: Childhood Friends Treasuri & Louisa and Travel Hosts Vicky & Rachel. Located at Holy Smokes Senopati at South Jakarta, the meet & greet concept sets during lunch time and chit-chat session with the racers as we are able to know some of the off-camera scenes they didn't aired and another interesting things inside. Here's my personal coverage.




Seriously, we don't expect that the demand would be this much as what we think is we're going to make a humble meet & greet session with the racers. But turned out that there are 50 participants and they came from various cities around Indonesia. And what makes it crazier, there are 1 participant flew all the way from Kuala Lumpur in order to attend the event. Yes, it's jaw dropping.

Another surprise is the exposure from local media. We seriously didn't not see that coming as well. Because we initiated this because we love the show and to be exact, we love our racers. Knowing the support from the media is something that we feel that it’s quite crazy at the beginning because we purely do this with no official sponsors.



The signature t-shirt I designed special for our lovely racers. And yay, it fits them well!







 During the chit-chat sessions, we’re able to know that what’s happening on-and-off camera. And being able to know those things gives us the experience of knowing and understanding the race system from another point of view. Another thing is, season 4’s finalist Om Hussein Sutadisastra made his way to the venue in order to drop a quick hello because Om Hussein was pretty busy with his schedule. Another sweet little thing to the participants, eh? And we thanked Om Hussein to dropping by and say some words to us. We do really appreciate it!



Last set of the event would be the autograph session, where the participants are able to ask for the racers’ autograph in a little post card. And at this point, we thanked Louisa & Treasuri and Vicky & Rachel for being very humble dealing with our countless questions and curiousities!




---

SHOUT OUT FROM THE TEAM BEHIND!

Okay, so. Jadi di section ini saya mau kasih shout-out buat tim belakang layar dan gimana kita ngerjain ini semua. First of all, kami tuh emang kenal dari forum The Amazing Race Asia yang udah di provide sama AXN dari season 1, dan itu tahun 2006. Dan dari season 1 pun kita rutin bikin nonton bareng dari jaman Mardy & Marsio. Lanjut terus sampe terakhir 2010 kita masih ngadain gathering bareng Hussein & Natasha sama Yani & Nadine juga.

Nah cuma karena acara nya sendiri ini vakum sekitar 6 tahun, jadi forumer-forumer yang lain ada yang udah di belahan dunia mana, ada yang udah nikah, ada yang udah ini, ada yang udah itu. Udah mencar gitu, lah. But seriously we maintained our friendship through The Amazing Race US Version juga kadang-kadang. And yes kita jadi kaya temenan di real life gitu. Sampe akhirnya tahun 2016 ini mereka bikin lagi season 5, dan akhirnya secara nggak langsung forumer-forumer ini pun reunited lagi satu sama lain.

Sampe akhirnya setelah episode 9 yang heart-breaking itu, nah kami-kami ini mikir kayanya bisa banget kalo bikin 1 lagi gathering untuk mengapresiasi Louisa & Treasuri karena emang menurut kami tuh, mereka emang race very well, mereka berhasil banget bikin Indonesia terlihat kuat banget di hadapan tim lain dan ya sedikit banyaknya harus banget untuk di apresiasi. Jadi ya akhirnya yaudah, kami inisiatif untuk bikin 1 gathering terakhir dan melibatkan temen-temen fans juga.


Disini ada Gaga (Airlangga) yang sebenernya kami nganggep Gaga tuh sebagai Pak Ketua gitu, ya. Karena emang Gaga yang paling sibuk buat dealing ini itu nya. Terus juga ada Sheila, Windy sama Evan yang ikut ambil bagian soal flow pendaftaran sama logistik & offline sponsorship. Lalu ada Tika yang akhirnya kami daulat untuk jadi MC & moderator meet & greet. Lalu sama ada saya, deh. Nah disini tuh saya responsible untuk graphic design support nya lah, ya. Dari segala banner, spanduk, post card, dan grafis baju yang dipake sama participant & racers-racers yang dateng, dan ending nya jadi dokumentasi, deh.

Dari saya pribadi, I thanked each one of you, guys. Nggak nyangka aja sih karena kita ber 6, meeting juga mostly online dan saya yakin banget kalo masing-masing pasti sibuk sama kerjaan sendiri, dan masih nyempetin waktu untuk ngurusin event ini. Dan makasih makasih makasih banget udah diberikan kesempatan untuk mengisi grafis dari event nya biar acara lebih ada tema nya juga. Hehehe.

Nggak lupa juga terima kasih untuk Louisa, Treasuri, Rachel, Vicky dan Om Hussein yang udah hadir dalam acara meet & greet ini. Terima kasih banyak untuk para participant yang udah dateng ke acara ini. Kami juga minta maaf apabila ada kekurangan di event ini. But at last, we hope you’re happy after all! :) Semoga ada kesempatan buat ngumpul bareng lagi, ya! :D

REALITY TV

The Amazing Race Asia S05E09 - Banyuwangi Leg

6:07:00 PM

First of all, I never thought that I’d put a reality TV related blog post into my page. But for this time, I think I have to. I have been watching The Amazing Race since I was only 10 years old. Yes, I am The Amazing Race aficionado. I grew up watching the show. And in short, I think I kinda understand the race elements.

The idea of this blog post comes from the infamous Leg 9 episode of The Amazing Race Asia taken at Banyuwangi, Indonesia. And yes, an episode where they kick out people’s favourite team to be, best friends Treasuri & Louisa from Indonesia. It was such an intense episode, and there are lots of reactions coming on the social media; as I’ve seen (and involved) pretty much on the Facebook fan page, and also in each racers’ personal social media account.


It’s all started when the episode featured both Yield and U-Turn in one leg, which means for me personally, it feels pretty peculiar to watch if there’s a team who got both Yielded & U-Turned, it’s an obvious statement that they’ll leave. But there are lots of things are missing. It’s like this episode is designed to kick both Treasuri & Louisa out from the competition (quoting season 4 3rd placer Hussein Sutadisastra on Facebook), as we already know that they are the front runner by winning 4 legs and being consistent in Top 5 placement since the first leg in Bogor.

Now how I, and numbers of fans out there are questioning the episode is, how the earth they featured a U-Turn before they even done any detour? It’s not like that. From The Amazing Race Wikia, it’s clearly written that “The U-Turn is located immediately AFTER a detour”. Now take a look on the episode, the U-Turn comes even before the team open their clue. Somebody please explain us, ah?


Treasuri & Louisa did the Kebo Keboan Detour first, head to head with Malaysian beauty queen Yvonne & Chloe and they finished before the beauty queens. But another thing happened as Treasuri & Louisa had to wait around 30 minutes until the Philippines team did their Detour (quoting Louisa’s statement on her Instagram page). System error, man. In early seasons of The Amazing Race US, teams are free to choose which detour they wish to perform. And yes, there’s a possibility of an unperformed Detour option, like that one episode of classic The Amazing Race US season 2 in Thailand, if I’m not mistaken. All teams are doing the exact same detour back at the time.


And yes, shouldn’t the team has the RIGHTS to choose the detour they want, eh? Nowadays, they put the first come first serve mode in Detour. So basically, if there’s a team who wants to perform Detour A, and there’s no place left, that team HAS to perform Detour B even if they don’t wish to perform that. Which again, numerous fans are disagree about the modified system. Why don’t you just put at least 4 stand by horses as there are 4 teams left there? It’s a clear disadvantage if Treasuri & Louisa had to wait for 30 minutes waiting for the Philippines team. And if there are more horses, I’m beyond sure they can catch up.

But here’s the thing. I am not promoting hate to the fellow Philippines teams, Eric & Rona and Parul & Maggie, because at the end yes it’s a game. And as a fan, I do appreciate Eric & Rona’s behaviour because they apologized in what they did towards Treasuri & Louisa; both at the telé and at the social media.


Yes, I personally want Indonesia to win The Amazing Race Asia. But frankly speaking, what we-- fans saw is that; this Banyuwangi leg seems designed to kick the strongest team out. I really wanted to know what is the reason behind those multiple Yield and U-Turn back to back in one single freakin' leg, and how the earth there’s a U-Turn before they done any Detour? How is it even possible? Once again, I am not spreading hate about the Philippines team. But I really do wish the Production Team would speak up about how awful the race design is.


Indonesia kalah terhormat, everybody. It took both Yield & U-Turn to really stop them.

Screenshot credits here.