I just watched 15 mins of The Amazing Race. What I think is really 'amazing' about this race is how, dare I say, amazingly Americans cannot fit into anywhere else in the world. Everything about them clashes with the local environment. They can't communicate in any language other than english, they don't understand/appreciate local culture. They can't even pass their short stay in each country without being glaringly different. Another thing is how amazingly short tempered they are with each other.

Just now's 15 min of the program, the last 4 teams landed in Shanghai, China. All the teams couldn't get a taxi to stop for them and take them to their next destination. Talking between themselves, the figure that the problem is that nobody speaks english! Starting to get agitated that they can't get what they want, they start raising their voices at each other when the only people who know what their talking about are themselves. Soon it starts to get personnal... "Why not then you try to get a cab!" and rude "Anybody speak English? (yelled loudly at passerbys)" Tempers flare, raised voices become shouts, hands flung up in exasperation.

If we freeze the frame and look at it from any random passerby's point of view, a chinese in this case....
What are these 2 angmohs doing? Screaming and shouting whatever they are shouting, waving their arms and making monkey gestures at me... I better walk further away. Noisy angmohs.. don't know what they want.. I'll just carry on with my own business. Better not look at them or they might want to try and get me to help them when I also don't know how to talk to them.
No wonder no help was forthcoming.

Another thing that was very very peculiar... almost none of the taxis would stop for them, let alone take them to where they wanted to go. How could this be happening? What might be the reason? The taxi drivers surely don't speak english but they understand hand and body signals enough to know that the Americans want to hail their cab.. and the teams had the location's name on their route clue so that the taxi drivers can see where they wanted to go.

I have a speculation. Because these Americans were dressed very informally in tights, bermudas, singlets, sleeveless tops, tank tops, T-shirts and carrying a huge backpack, they actually do look like they are very poor and have not much money. Couple that with the one major problem with chinese (generally from all over the world) is "No Money, No Talk" The taxi drivers at one look would assume that the Americans were poor and would not be able to pay the taxi fare once they were at the destination.. and to make matters worse, they couldn't communicate with each other and the taxi driver had no way to get them to pay up. Aaaahhhh..... probably they should brandish a few greenbacks when flagging the taxi.

Before this scenario was the night before. They had to take a taxi from the airport to a park. The taxi drivers drove them there but along the way, it was very dark as it was near midnight. Some of the women in the teams started to get worried and made comments about the streets like 'slums' 'harlem' 'spooky'. Maybe they really feared the taxi drivers would drive them somewhere dark and rob them.. but these guys really don't have much money on them. Why should they be so afraid? And they've got a cameraguy who's always following them around. In any case if they were robbed and dumped somewhere, the camera guy should have some satellite phone or some way to ensure that they won't be left stranded in a foreign land. Would be really quite something if at one season, a team gets robbed and then lost in a foreign non-english speaking country.....

Oh if you're American (or you are one of those white-wannabes) and you managed to read so far, I'm sorry for saying such nasty things (in the case that you are a white-wannabe, I'm not sorry) but it's what I observe and not necessarily true. But actually why do I bother typing this when prob no angmohs would stumble on my blog.

Pangy was pricked and bled at 10:16 PM