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TAR CANADA 2 Contestants - Laura Takahashi and Jackie Skinner (Married)
Leafsfan:
Ruth Myles: Jackie and Laura talk about choosing the wrong challenge on The Amazing Race Canada
While Laura Takahashi and Jackie Skinner’s journey on The Amazing Race Canada started on a beach in Nicaragua when they got the call they would be on the show, it ended in Hong Kong when the duo were last to check in at the Pit Stop. I caught up with the married couple from Toronto the morning after the Hong Kong episode aired to chat about out their highs and lows on the Race.
Question: You’ve travelled extensively together. How was this different?
Laura Takahashi: I think that was one of the biggest surprises. Something we didn’t really identify as part of characteristics is how organized, prepared and planned we are when we go travelling. We still leave things, the day-to-day activities, to be spontaneous, but we have an idea of what we want to do while we’re in a city. But then, when you get to the Race and you don’t know where you’re going, what you’re going to be doing, it adds this whole element where you’re in-between fear and excitement. Certain times it’s fear and certain times it’s absolutely thrilling. But having been through the Race, the thrilling part of it is something you can’t get from anything else.
Q: What kept you going? You were contenders, once we saw you in action.
LT: We really tried to bring everything that we got. After the first leg, especially, we were really feeling confident about our ability, our strength. Getting through the flight challenge was extremely difficult but at the same time we passed it so easily we thought we had a leg up. Our downfall was our decision we made between the Detours on this third leg. We went with something we chose based on our experience. At that point, when we made the decision, we didn’t know the list of items we would have and how long it was going to take us to find those items. Even though our experience was to pick that, it might have been the wiser choice to pick something we could have learned. You can say that, but I wouldn’t trade our experience for anything.
Q: How long were you in the market?
LT: Time passes on the Race and you have no idea. You are wearing a watch, but you don’t look at it much. We were probably there for a couple of hours. I know we were running back and forth between the stalls and it was quite hectic.
Q: Did you think the Race was going overseas this season because applicants had to have a passport?
LT: When we were applying for the second season, we were hopeful that the second season would be amped up and take the show to the next level. We thought maybe we could go international, but we didn’t know. The passport wasn’t really a tip off. As we were meeting with the producers, we were pretty positive that we were going to stay in Canada. When we read the clue that we were travelling to Tofino that really solidified in our minds that we were staying in Canada. So then to read the clue that we were going to Hong Kong, it really, really shocked us. Our minds were ready to go. You go wherever the Race wants you to go.
Q: What was one of the high points of your Race experience?
LT: Definitely the high point of my Race experience was really all the moments I shared with Jackie where she was just so encouraging. I have a little bit of demon in myself where I am hard on myself. When I was building the chair in Tofino and when we got set back on the fish challenge, I was having a really hard time dealing with the pressure. Jackie was really good about encouraging me and listening to me and lifting me up to go on. I really value that and I really treasure the fact that we didn’t crumble and we never got at each other’s throats. . . If you’re not racing together, you’re racing alone.
Q: Jackie, Laura shared her high point on the Race. What was a low point?
JS: Actually the fish in Tofino was a moment. I think we were there for two and a half, three hours. Obviously on the show, you don’t get the idea of how long people are actually doing a challenge. When we ran out of fish doing the fileting and we were basically stuck 100 percent on this sorting the fish thing. We both had no idea about fish. . . . Laura normally is my leader in life, so when she looked at me and she was, ‘I completely don’t know,’ I was, ‘I have to be the one to help get through this,’ which is funny because that’s not really my role in this relationship . . . . Anything past that was bonus for us, in our minds because we felt like at that moment we were probably going home.
Q: Viewers got some sense of it, but how long was that day in Hong Kong with the flights and how much of a struggle was it to get through?
JS: It was definitely a long leg. But it’s The Amazing Race and we’ve all seen this over and over again. That’s how it goes. Getting off the plane and running and racing was pretty challenging. You’ve got so much adrenaline going on that nothing will stop you on the days you are racing. So much adrenalin! That carries you through every sort of weakness that sort of weakness you think you have. Of course that challenge that was the reason we got out, but at the same time, it was so much fun. We had so much fun doing that. We were running around and laughing. We had a blast doing that challenge. Doing the kung fu might have been faster, but we don’t know. But it wouldn’t have been as much fun because we are not kung fu people. We don’t kung fu on a regular basis. (Laughs)
Q: Any thoughts of switching over in the Detour? With Tofino, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many teams go back and forth between challenges.
JS: I know. It was amazing. In Tofino, it was because the challenges were right beside each other, so it was a really easy thing to do. And you were seeing the teams because all the teams were pretty much together at that point. You could see the team and knowing where you were at in the Race and you could switch without even having to get a cab. That’s another thing about switching (in Hong Kong), was where is it? It could have been 20 minutes, a half-hour away from where we were.
And getting cabs in Hong Kong was extremely difficult. All of those things are going through your mind: how many teams are over there, now we are going to be at the back of that line? And then we did see Sukhi and Jinder one point running through the market. We did talk about it a little bit before, but when we saw them, we were like, ‘No, it’s on. We’ll just go and race with the two of them.’ We kind of knew it was down to the two of us, so we just gave it all we had and went for it.
Q: How has being on the Race affected your relationship?
JS: It has been nothing but incredible. It has been so much fun. Since the moment that we made our video and started applying and doing all the stages together to when they told us we were going to be on, we have come together like no other time in our lives. Of course, we got married and do all these things together, but this was really a different angle. A couple doesn’t do on a normal basis unless you are doing something like this. We just did so much fun stuff to prepare for the Race. We wouldn’t have done all those things. Nothing but amazing things came out of it for our relationship. We just love each other every day more and more.
Q: Did you talk about that before how deal with stressors?
JS: Definitely. But really, we communicate like crazy. We talk all the time. We have known each other since we were teenagers. We’ve worked together throughout our lives and we still work together. Of course we bicker and we fight about other things, but when we need to be together, we are together. We know we are way stronger together than at any moment if we start falling apart. That’s just not how we are. Some of the other teams push each other like that. That’s just not who we are and never was, so we weren’t too concerned about that.
Q: What kind of training did you do to prepare to be on the show?
JS: We did as much as possible. Like Laura said, we found out we were going to be on when we were in Nicaragua. So when we were there we tried to do surfing. We were running like crazy, running up and down dirt hills and paths. We did lots of yoga, lots of weight training. We’d never fileted or cut fish so we actually did fish stuff with Laura’s father a couple of nights. We went rock climbing. We did acro-yoga. That was really fun. We did a ton of stuff. We learned how to tie all these crazy knots, from my brother-in-law who is a fireman. We did everything we could have done.
We took dance lessons, which was really fun. I never would have taken a dance class, ever in my life. And it ended up being one of the funnest things we did. We pushed ourselves to do things that we wouldn’t have done. And we moved our couch away from our TV and we set up a gym in front of our TV. We forced ourselves. It was, ‘If we are watching TV, we are working out.’ But the couch went back as soon as we were off. ‘Let’s put that couch back.’ (Laughs)
Leafsfan:
Ousted 'Amazing Race Canada' couple have no regrets
Caution: Being a fan of other reality shows may be hazardous to your standing on The Amazing Race Canada.
And apparently, Alvin Leung is no longer content just eliminating people from MasterChef Canada.
Tuesday saw the first-ever episode of The Amazing Race Canada set outside Canada – in Hong Kong (second home to 200,000 Canucks, if you’re looking for a hook).
And this week’s eliminated racers – married couple Laura Takahashi and Jackie Skinner – took a wrong turn on a detour, when they were given a choice between a Hong Kong “MasterChef Challenge,” featuring Demon Chef Alvin Leung, and a “Kung Fu Challenge.”
“We chose the MasterChef Challenge because we’re familiar with food,” Takahashi said. “I’m a food photographer. And the opportunity to meet Alvin, as fans of the show, just seemed more ‘Us.’”
As it turned out, being a fan of Alvin Leung is not necessarily a good thing. While every other team learned kung-fu moves, Takahashi and Skinner were given a complex shopping list for the Wan Chai Wet Market. And when they thought they had everything, they showed up with fresh chili peppers instead of the Sichuan peppercorns the Demon Chef had asked for.
“Livestock is kind of everywhere,” Skinner added in a phone conference Wednesday. “There’s thousands of people, there’s a language barrier. It’s absolutely nothing like going to a grocery store.”
“We chumped on that right away,” Takahaski said. “Ultimately if we had a chance to replay that leg of the race, we would consider both sides of the detour.”
In other words, thanks a lot, Alvin. Takahashi laughs and says, “Actually, we got to go to his Michelin restaurant (Bo Innovation), and it was so gorgeous. Not too many regrets, and who’s to say we would have been any good at kung fu?”
Certainly, not Rex Harrington. For the second week in a row, the National Ballet legend – teamed with his fiance Bob Hope – chose a physical challenge on the assumption that his dance skills gave him an edge. Last week, he discovered he didn’t have the balance to get on a surfboard. This week, he and Hope were the first to attempt the kung fu challenge, and one of the last to finish.
“I think that Rex’s story resonates with our story about the Market,” Takahashi said. “We chose it because of our experience and it wasn’t necessarily the best choice. It’s not necessarily what you bring to the table; it’s how fast you can pick it up and how fast you can move on.”
The food theme continued in the next challenge, when Skinner had to drink snake bile and eat snake soup. “It was definitely gross,” Skinner said. “It tasted like a shot of really crazy booze. Snake soup was not as bad as I imagined it would be. But just sitting in front of live snakes and eating a snake that I basically saw killed was pretty insane.”
Even after the Wet Market disaster, Takahashi and Skinner had a shot, in a footrace for with siblings Sukhi and Jinder Atwal. “And we all know how long-legged Sukhi and Jinder are,” Takahashi said.
With three straight wins, Olympic gold-medal hockey players Meghan Mikkelson and Natalie Spooner seem prohibitive favourites.
“They’re fierce competitors and incredibly smart and awesome girls. And they’re going to be really, really tough to take down,” Takahashi said.
“But they can be first and they can be last in the space of one episode.”
Source:http://www.torontosun.com/2014/07/23/ousted-amazing-race-canada-couple-have-no-regrets
Bookworm:
I'll miss these two, they were great.
Leafsfan:
HEADING TO HONG KONG BOTH A DREAM AND A NIGHTMARE FOR LAURA AND JACKIE
Going to Asian food markets and gathering local ingredients is one of Laura Takahashi and Jackie Skinner’s favourite things to do while travelling, so it’s ironic that a similar challenge in Hong Kong contributed to their elimination on “The Amazing Race Canada.”
“We have the experience of going to the market and walking around, checking things out, so obviously it’s a whole different game when you’re in a race and you’re under a lot of pressure. You don’t realize how much the language barrier also comes into play,” says Jackie, a Toronto-based musician.
The Detour required them to gather a list of items from the market and return them to “MasterChef Canada” judge Alvin Leung at his restaurant, Bo Innovation.
While some ingredients were easy to find, others like a specific brand of maple syrup, were not.
“We were trying to think logically, trying to go to a bakery store or something like that and it just ended up being the craziness of the wet market in the middle of nowhere so any of our logic didn’t really work,” says Jackie.
Once the team finally found it and took all the ingredients to Chef Alvin, he told them they were missing dried schezwan peppercorns and had to head back to the market.
“We just had the wrong items, again with the language barrier . . . We asked quite a few people and it just gets to that point where you just trust people,” says Jackie.
Even though they found the ingredient and made it back to Bo Innovation quite quickly, Laura and Jackie had fallen behind and weren’t able to make up the time at the next two challenges. When they arrived at the Pit Stop at Kowloon Walled City Park, host Jon Montgomery confirmed their elimination.
But while the team wonders if they might have fared better at the Kung Fu Detour rather than the MasterChef one, the team has no regrets and say meeting Chef Alvin was a definite highlight.
“It was a beautiful restaurant so at the end of the day we chose something that we love to do and it might have bit us in the butt a bit but it was super fun,” says Jackie.
The team is also grateful they got to participate in the first ever international leg of “The Amazing Race Canada.”
“We had always hoped when we started this race that we were going to go international,” says Laura, who works in media development.
“We 100 per cent had an incredible time going to Hong Kong . . . as soon as we opened up that clue on the beach (in Tofino) and it said we were going to China we were like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ We had no idea, we completely unexpected it,” adds Jackie.
They both agree though that going international made the “Race” that much more difficult.
“It was by far the hardest for sure,” says Jackie, explaining that most of the taxi drivers they found had no idea what they were saying or where they were supposed to go.
“The language barrier was huge.”
But despite the challenge, the couple, who got engaged in Vietnam and were married last August, say the experience of running the “Race” together was the best part.
“It brings your relationship to another level . . . It made us both just fall in love with each other a little bit more,” says Jackie.
The couple is also thrilled with the outpouring of support they’ve received during their time on the “Race.”
“People (who have) reached out, either just as fans of the show or people that have personally connected with our story or who we are, has really overwhelmed us,” says Laura.
“The amount of support of us being married . . . It’s just another incredible thing about this country,” adds Jackie. “It’s been absolutely incredible that lots of gay people have come out and talked to us and been on social media and saying we’re an inspiration for them. That was 100 per cent why we wanted to go on the show.”
Source:http://www.ctv.ca/TheAmazingRaceCanada/Articles/Season-Two/amazing_race_canada_S2_Laura_Jackie_elimination.aspx
Leafsfan:
Amazing Race Canada: Laura and Jackie exit interview
Source:http://amazingracecanwithgordandwayne.weebly.com/gords-amazing-race-canada--more/amazing-race-canada-laura-and-jackie-exit-interview
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