Fellow Disher Richard let you know about the controversy surrounding The Amazing Race and the Juno Awards on CTV. What he neglected to mention was that the Race consistently outdraws a national institution in Hockey Night in Canada. Meanwhile, I managed to set my VCR wrong, and ended up taping half of 60 Minutes. Hence, you’re getting this on Tuesday.
What else happened this week? Oh yeah, I got let go from my programming job of two weeks. To say I’m a wee bit pissed off about it is an understatement. I probably should have seen this coming when my “on the job training” for a programming position involved reading a textbook and not getting any help or direction whatsoever from my “mentors”. Apparently this type of “training” happened with a couple of other recent hires, as they also didn’t fully understand the system we were to be programming in. The official spin on my dismissal (garnered from a friend who is also a friend of one of the owners) is that I had an attitude problem and that I was “playing (political) games”. I suppose that that was their interpretation of my complaints (in private) about the lack of training, and the solicitation of help from my co-workers, because I don’t see any point in “playing games” in a company of 8 people.
The net result is that I think I’m better off not being there. The whole point to my joining the company was to grow and learn with the company, and if you’re not prepared to teach your employees, then I don’t see how either is possible. Good riddance, and to the newer guys there, get out while you still can.
That felt good. Let’s talk about the Race.
Leg 7
Flights
Mirna’s condescending attitude ended up costing her team and the Cha Cha’s their lead, as she managed to rattle her agent and they ended up waiting seven hours to get tickets that “just” opened up. Meanwhile, the Beauty Queens, Uchenna and Joyce leapfrog past them.
And in Kilimanjaro, The Guidos, Eric and Danielle ran into even more bad luck in missing their provided connecting flights. Uchenna and Joyce, meanwhile, also missed their flight as they arrived too late, which ended up costing them their position.
Detour – Perfect Pitch or Perfect Angle
One of the problems here seemed to actually FINDING the Detour clue. Teams were having a lot of problems navigating in a country where most people don’t speak English.
The Beauty Queens flew through the Pitch task – unsurprising given Dustin played the fiddle as her talent. Mirna, Charla and the Cha Chas had a lot of problems because they didn’t understand how to properly tune an instrument. Eventually, Mirna and Charla gave up and switched tasks. Uchenna and Joyce had no such problem as they took their time with the task. And Eric and Danielle, despite knowing nothing about pianos, managed to stumble their way through the task.
The Angle task may have actually been faster. As Mirna noted, the lab was not that far from the department store, but finding the clue was a little tricky, and probably required a little but of luck.
Leg 8
Travel
This was the first time in a long while that a team started a leg before others FINISHED the previous leg. And I’m pretty sure that that leg involved the Guidos as well. And because of the fact that there were six teams and such a time discrepancy (and of course the whole Marked for Elimination thing), we of course got a bottleneck with the charter shuttles.
Mirna, of course, went into her usual histrionics, bitchiness and condescension when she couldn’t get her car started and yelled at a taxi driver while trying to get help. Even Charla got pissed off at her, but it doesn’t matter, because everything revolves around Mirna.
Intersection
A bad taxi caused the Beauty Queens to wait some four hours for the next team. Meanwhile, The Cha Chas, Uchenna and Joyce went for the Fast Forward. Other teams got to do a Detour.
Fast Forward
The teams had to count steps, which would probably be difficult if there weren’t, you know, four people counting and verifying with each other. If you’ve got that many people, at least one person’s gonna get it right.
Detour – Eat it Up or Roll it Out
The girls decided to eat sausage… and there’s probably a ton of jokes you can make right here. And of course the producers made sure to throw in a bunch of them. Meanwhile, Eric, Danielle and the Guidos were going to do the bagel task, but couldn’t find the bakery, and switched tasks. We found out that two feet of sausage is a helluva lot of food, as Eric, Danielle, Mirna and Charla all had some problems putting the sausage down. And of course we were subjected to scenes of people puking. Lovely.
Roadblock
Inexplicably, Charla decided to take the Roadblock, but things would probably go better if Mirna wasn’t back seat guiding. But with the teams so close together, and the Pit Stop right at the Roadblock, the end result was pretty obvious. I think it’s safe to say that the last three legs pretty much did them in.
Auschwitz
A very emotional time as the teams visited the concentration camp at Auschwitz to pay their respects. It was nice of the producers to arrange this and show us the emotion caused by visiting.
