Miss Asia 2007

Thanks to lisamm's hook-up, on Sunday my friends visiting from the US - Drake and Tracy and I also decided to go to the 2007 Miss Asia pageant show,  which was held up at the ATV studios in Taipo.  I had ridden my bicycle up near here when I was living in the NT, so I was curious to check out their new studio facilities, and of course checking out a TV live spectacular should be fun too... so we said what the heck.

Despite being somewhat under-dressed we just followed the crowd into the VIP reception area (which hypothetically we weren't supposed to do). 

They had a red carpet area, sign board and a bunch of press photographers....  they also had some of the beauty queens (former and current competitors?) walking around and posing for the photographers.

Lisamm was there with her Soler hardcore fan Army,  and as you can guess that was because Soler was there to do a musical performance during the show (along with a Taiwanese actress/singer I wasn't familiar with). 

We were relegated to the balcony above the studio, which was mostly used just for spotlight guys and crew.  Whatever,  it was free..   they had a fancy catwalk system laid out with the audience split into four groups inside the catwalk.  everytime there  was a commercial break they'd wheel out a section to let people get out. (ps - yes that is Vincent Kok hosting)

The show was kind of weird,  its 'Miss Asia'  but there were like 5+ competitors all from Mainland China...   I think they cheated and said some were representing autonomous regions within China ('autonomous' in name).  Also there weren't that many non-Chinese competitors...  and I can't say they were of 'Miss Universe' quality. (beauty, talent or poise-wise!)

National Costumes By the time we got in they did their national costume march, gave 'best costume' to the Philippines competitor and then immediately eliminiated 4-5 of them (including Miss Philippines!) :-O

I was really disappointed with the Japanese competitor she was wearing a pretty plain blue yukata...  can't you try a little harder?

Talent Competition

Things went from weird to weirder with the 'Talent Competition' part of the show.  Each of the finalists was supposed to do some talent performance of some sort,  but they gave the audience members some sort of electronic remote control.  If you didn't like the performance you could push your remote's button, if enough people pushed it a buzzer would go off and your music would stop (a la 'The Gong Show' tv talent show).  The girls with the shortest time before being axed were at risk for elimination.

The people were pretty vicious a few performers only lasted about 20-30 seconds.  the best went about 60 before being stopped.  its amazing what passes for talent these days though...

In one case one of the contestants did some kind of sexy pop star routine with a bunch of back-up dancers... didn't last that long (longer than the hip-hop one though).

The weirdest was this Russian girl (i assume she was Russian, she was gigantic and blond...)  She got on stage with a pair of rollerblades on and a wicker basket...  I thought 'is her talent to rollerblade around and hand out candy to the audience? no, that couldn't possibly be, thats such a joke...'

then they set up some traffic cones on the stage and I thought ' ok, she's going to do some fancy skating tricks...' 

when she started she went and skated around about 3 cones and then started skating down one of the side runways... throwing candy to the audience!  wtf!?  she lasted about 30 seconds.  pretty lame!  (at least throw the candy faster so people hold off on the buzzer a few more seconds!)

Swimsuit / Q&A I don't think its standard in the US, but it seems like in HK they like to do the Q and A sessions while the girls are standing there in their bikinis...  and they like to make fun of the contestants too... rather than the bland US stuff like asking about charity work and world peace.  From what I gathered a lot of the humor was based on the fact that the contestants couldn't understand what they MCs were saying about them in Cantonese.

They made the Vietnamese contestant draw the locations of the internal organs on the human body....  for whatever reason. :-P

Rock Paper scissors Car Contest They took a break from the competition and had all of the girls (including the ones that had already been eliminated) come out in yet another bikini,  but this time they were competing for a prize - a new car.  After doing a 'Grease' dance number they had them come up in pairs and play rock-paper-scissors... except not with their hands, but using cards given to them by the staff... so the results were actually predetermined (hypothetically they could have been randomized, but I don't think so...)

After half the contestants were eliminated,  they had a second round... in this case they had each girl come up one by one and select a key from a board.  if the remote control unlocked the doors of the car, they won.  After the first 4 in a row lost, I was pretty sure I knew what was going to happen:  'the 2nd to last one will probably get it' -- it appeared obvious to me that it was rigged at this point,  and they had to make sure one of the first few people to try didn't win.  But they couldn't wait til the last person because it'd be obvious that they'd win as soon as the 2nd to last person lost... so it made sense to let the 2nd to last person win...

...Which is exactly what they did.  coincidence?  i don't think so. :-P

Begging for Flowers The last part of the contest we saw before ducking out early was the 'begging for flowers' part...  the last 8 girls came out in an evening gown with a basket.  the audience members had been all given a rose wrapped in plastic.  They stationed two girls in each of the four quadrants of the audience and they had to try to collect as many flowers from the audience as possible before a timer ran out.  But since the audience groups were separated from eachother, it wasn't like you could really give your flower to the one of the eight remaining girls you actually liked the most,  just one of those two in your section... very lame.   We were guessing they probably weren't even going to count them (because we were jaded by this time). :-P

Everyone's favorite model Ankie was one of the celebrity guests who came on stage to give out some of the awards during the course of the show.  I think she gave the 'Best Hair'  award or something like that.

Performance by Soler

They had two performers lined up for the show,  everyone's favorite twins Soler (Dino and Julio) and also a taiwanese singer named Pace Wu... 

Soler was supposed to do two songs but because of time they only ended up doing one... but the set up was a bit weird (like a lot of things this night). 

it was just the two of them on stage with some dancers,  no back-up band.  so the music was being played off a CD... meaning all the guitar playing (one of them, I can't tell which one, had a guitar) was purely for show, no sound!  Thank god they were actually singing though,  but in the auditorium the level between the background music and their singing was off, so it sounded really strange.  Hopefully it was mixed better for the TV audience. :-P

Oh, I forgot to mention that since we were there w/ the Soler fans, we got an inside peek into this side of the entertainment world...

We were given some light up batons to wave during the performance...  not sure who got them, the fan club, the management people or the show organizers:

I had a light-up Santa... it plays 'Jingle Bells' if you put the switch all the way on too...  Drake had a spinning star that plays some chinese dance song...

Here we are during the Soler Song.  They gave Tracy a light-up sign.  pretty snazzy!

Right as we left they had Pace Wu (吳佩慈 - website) come out and do a performance.  seemed to be pretty good (she is attractive...) :-P