Friday, April 03, 2009 | 10:05 pm
I just watched this show with uncle on some channel. It's a game show about some Americans in a Japanese game show. It's like survivor series, there are 2 teams that compete with each other in various games, the loser team has to kick someone out until only 1 person is left to win the prize of 25m yen. The episode I was watching has 1 team with 4 person left(team penguin) and the other with 3(team monkey). Yeah weird names. So today's challenge was quite weird and funny lol. Japanese people are really very erm...innovative. You know in those carnivals there is this game where people can sit inside something and it would auto spin around and around for sometime? Yeah so it's something like that. The contestants have to dress like babies; sit inside that thing and let it spin around for sometime. Then 1 judge would press a button and it would stop, letting the member closest to exit and the machine would start spinning again. The released guy must collect some milk with 2 jugs and get past various obstacles. The very first is to walk through some spinning disk. Imagine spinning for quite some time before and you have to balance yourself on some spinning disk lol. The worst thing is, you cannot fall off the disk or you have to go back to the first disk and advance again. And even if you spill all the milk, you cannot refill and you must complete the whole circuit nevertheless. After getting past the disk, you have to climb over some small obstacle and be distracted by some mist then finally pouring whatever milk left into a milk bottle before quickly going back to the spinning machine and press the button, releasing another team mate to do that circuit while you have to go into the machine and get spinning. The whole cycle continues until time runs out. I did'nt get to watch how team penguin did. My uncle just randomly switched channel lols. But we watched a part of team monkey. This guy out of the 3-person team was bad, twice he did the circuit, twice he did'nt manage to pour any milk into the bottle cause he spilt all of it during the spinning disk. Another girl(A) did slightly better only. Girl B did the best. She managed to keep lots of milk. But in the end, team monkey lost and they have to decide who gets eliminated.
Their elimination process is something like survivor also. Lots of politics going on. The team would vote on who would be left out of the elimination process and the rest would fight in another event and the loser gets eliminated. I like it that way, rather than voting to eliminate someone directly. So logic says that girl B, who performed the best, should be exempted from the elimination process and let that man and girl A fight it out. However, the beauty of life is the unpredictability of it. Apparently, girl A and B made a pact wayyyy before about how those 2 would work together and will not vote for A to be in the process. Man steps into their conversation and politely states that if he's in the fight, he would fight no matter what, no matter who, to ensure he stays in. So girl B faces a dilemma. Should she do what she had promised and let the man and her do battle? Or would she do the logical thing by backing out and let the man and girl A fight instead? In the end, girl B chose the former. And in the end, the guy won the event and girl B, arguably the best member, was eliminated. It was kinda weird to see that. Uncle and I thought that the girl would break her promise but she did'nt. In my opinion, that's a huge mistake.
What is the right decision? Is sticking to one morals and doing what's promised right, or is doing things logically even though it may be morally wrong the right choice? The world is not black and white; we live in a grey area, where good and bad are separated by a very thin line. But what exactly is good or bad anyway? Can we say that a robber is wrong? But what if the robber is only doing what he does best to provide a living for a family? Then what he does, in a certain point of view is right. But we do not have the power to judge what things are. Society does. Society tells us what good or bad is. It may not be correct, but we always stand by the opinions of the masses. If you think otherwise, you will be left out and viewed as an outsider, someone in the wrong side. That's why leaders always try so hard to garner support during an election. It's always easier to lead when people agree with your ideals. Who would listen to 1 man whose ideals may be grand but no one cares? Ultimately any 1-crusade are doomed to failure cause you're only 1 man standing against the world. So was girl B right? I don't know. To me it's wrong. Why sacrifice yourself when you know you are much better? Why bother helping someone much inferior just because you made a promise earlier? Rules were meant to be broken, promises made to be forgotten. I guess I do not have the right to judge her. It's her choice, and we have to respect that. What would you do however, in that situation? Put yourself into trouble because you made a promise, or would you play safe and remain in the competition to compete for the 25m yen. Food for thought.
'A good general manager makes good decisions, not the popular ones.' - Chris Jericho