Local Amazing Race

April 22, 2012

Hellooo! Yesterday I was attended 2012 AmCham Professional’s AMAZING BIG DURIAN RACE. It’s like The Amazing Race, in a small distance area. Yes, the race was on around Jakarta Area. Scott Hanna was behind of all this.

I knew this event from my friend from Raja Pindah, Ramot and Vivi. They sent me information about this race and asked my opinion. I said, “go ahead!” without any further thinking. So, we registered our team afterwards. And there we went. Joining The Amazing Big Durian Race.

First time I thought about this race was something’s up with Durian. What I was thinking was that we had to find Durians, ate it, or collected as many as we could. I had no idea what this race was about because they told us nothing until 2 days before the d-day. Thank God we’re waiting patiently.

Two days before the d-day, we got information by email what this race was about. In short, “it is giant scavenger hunt where contestants armed with cameras, race around the city taking pictures and collecting items from various locations. This wild exploration of Jakarta will highlight key attractions, restaurants, and retail outlets while promoting teamwork”. Additional excitement written was the Young Professionals had confirmed participation from a contestant from The Amazing Race Asia reality show. Well, it surely had provoked my instinct of competition. :p

The race began at 2 pm from Amigos Restaurant – Bellagio, Mega Kuningan and closed at 6 pm at Café de Burse - Equitity Tower, SCBD. We’re allowed to come early (12.30 pm) to begin strategizing and enjoy free flow of soft drinks & beers, yet we came a lil' bit late at 1.15pm due to some traffic madness. Hihi..

The race was only 4 hours. In the mean time, we had to finish the tasks. The tasks were divided into two categories: things to gather and things to photograph. The photos we took must include at least two members of our team, so no need to ask a bystander every time (which is quite a waste of time). The photos taken also had to be actual things, persons, and places. We’re not allowed to take photos of a photo of something, cause that will earn no points. Our team that appear in a photo must be wearing official race t-shirt to earn points.

here's the official race t-shirt

There were so many things we had to photograph on the lists (125 lists more or less). Our strategy was list things in the same place first so it wouldn't be a waste of time. Then went to the place afterwards in a hurry. We're not allowed to drive motorcycle that's why we took taxi for the whole time. It was quite helping that the taxi driver was so kind to help us finding the place and waiting us done photographing things.

What's more exciting was they added risk by having Twitter Challenges. So, we had to check our timeline to complete the tasks given on twitter to get extra points. Twitter challenges had 1 condition: you posted it first on Twitter, you were the winner and got extra points. It actually could abandoned our strategy and the risk not being first were there. Yet, we kept thinking positive that we could get extra points from it. Voila! We were the winner of Bank Papua twitter blast! Seriously, the points we got from twitter challenges were far bigger than we got from photographing things. :)

Overall, it was such an enjoyment I had during the weekend. I forgot how it feels to wear t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, racing around the city with good friends. It was totally awesome experience. Not to mention that we were the runner up winners,we're having so much fun!