Sabahans in Akademi Fantasia

My sister was the first to be tried out by Ajai and company when she went for auditions on the 25th of last month. She didn’t get the cut though.

Still, I wonder how AF’s going to be this 5th season. Since Akademi Fantasia (Wikipedia) opened its doors for Borneons to join during the 2nd season, our fellow Sabahans has been monopolizing as 1st runner ups — Linda in AF2, Felix in AF3 and Lotter in AF4. Will we ever manage to get numero uno? Will the 5th season bring a wind of change? Will Sabahans suddenly get richer this year, resulting in an overwhelming feeling of generosity towards Astro, that we’d be willing to spend thousands of ringgit each week (like Mawi fans have) to vote for a fellow Sabahan, thus ending the 2nd-place syndrome and finally having him/her become the first ever Sabahan champion?

Or would any of us Sabahans even care? Looking at the track record of our runner-ups, their shot to stardom post-AF has not been impressive. Even Felix, who was recently nominated for Berita Harian’s Popular Star Awards (Anugerah Bintang Popular), has not been exploited to his full potential, appearing and disappearing in the local entertainment news like the Chipsmore cookie. Adam has faired better under KRU Corp‘s care despite being 3rd in AF2, although I remembered an article a few years back where CEO Norman mentioned how the corporation planned to focus more on its filming ventures due to the ease of piracy in the music arena.

In any case, I am quite frustrated with the level of achievements of our fellow Sabahans from the reality shows thus far, so I’ll see how AF 5 goes but I won’t be spending my SMS credits just yet.