At first it appeared we were fated not to meet. We had just started talking and she was dragged away for a costume fitting; then we were about to start again and make-up needed her, and so on.
We finally met the morning after the finale and it was worth the wait.
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To begin with she assured us that, contrary to some appearances during the show, she had actually got on well with Irshaad and had cried when he left. She agreed that Grant was a hoot and that he should be offered his own sitcom as soon as possible.
Surviving Survivor
She said she entered to challenge herself as she loathes beaches and sand and would even refuse to go camping if forced to at gunpoint. She said she only likes the sea only as a picturesque view from the window of a really nice hotel. This is one entirely urban woman.
"I knew I'd hate every second," she said and admitted she hated the physical component. However, she said she used the experience as a form of a social experiment and wanted to see how the social interactions would go.
For instance, she was intrigued by how Grant, who had planned to remain inconspicuously in the middle, neither so good nor so bad as to attract attention, almost daily undertook some of the dirty work others felt needed to be done on behalf of the alliance or the tribe.
Just like a good lawyer would do, which may be why, although he was determined to keep his legal status secret, he undertook such work without perhaps realising that this was, in itself, rather revealing.
The real Amanda
We reviewed her life story, which is one of considerable achievement and independence.
When she was 16 going on 17 she moved to the USA on a scholarship to continue her studies. She was originally at a Massachusetts small university, then at Drexel in Philadelphia.
As an accountant she interned with Ernst & Young and later worked in Atlanta - fortunately avoiding the Enron debacle, but her group received a vast amount of work in taking over companies audited by the self-destructing Arthur Anderson, Enron's accountants and had to review audits for some years earlier, as well.
When she first saw the American Survivor, she said she was intrigued. Unfortunately one has to be a US citizen to enter and compete.
So when she returned to SA, she applied. But after reaching the last 600, she was rejected. She applied again this year and found the whole process much more impressive and convincing and was selected.
She said her work has been supportive, which enabled her to take part and has since returned to work where she said she was very happy. Although ultimately she'd like to move towards more executive positions in other forms of company and has recently become a company director.
Looking back on the game
She claimed she had no regrets about her performance in Survivor, although she admitted she could no longer face eating any form of coconut. She said that at a recent dinner she discovered that the prawn dish she had ordered came with generous chunks of fresh coconut and had to explain to the chef that she can no longer stomach that ingredient!
Rather like Grant she learned nothing major about herself or life itself. We agreed that in order to find even a rigorous experience like this a profoundly life-changing experience, you'd need to have had not much life beforehand. And Amanda, though she may have come across as a bit of a bubble-headed chatterer at times in the show, is clearly an intelligent, thoughtful and enterprising woman who has held down challenging and difficult jobs for years with clear success.
(Professor M.A.Simpson, aka CyberShrink, November 2007)
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