Oo did it? I'm definitely calling it a plant now.

Indeed


When they went through the list, When they mentioned OUD, the first thing came to my mind was perfume, the same with my wife. I knew what a kandoor was, I have about 4 myself. However I wouldnt have a clue what the difference between a modern Kandoor and a non-modern kandoor is.

Yep, the penny should have dropped with Zee at some point, and he should have thought wait a minute, maybe I am mistaken. Having said, that all the way through the episode I was under the assumption that OUD is a perfume. I was a bit confused as to the contestants going into perfume shops, and not being able to buy some. Even when they bought the guitar, I thought, wtf..thats the wrong thing. So I understand why Zee was insistent on it being a perfume.

I guess none of them have Youssou N'Dour on their ipods.

This was my one and only chance to shine as an imaginary Apprentice candidate -- I know what an oud is. (But crap at business, maths, being organised, design, pouting, bullying, eyebrows and all that. I'm fired.)

Like I said earlier, I don't think it was necessarily that big an error that Zee got it wrong to begin with - that happens. The episode made a much bigger thing of it than it actually was.

But the alarm bells should surely have started ringing at some stage during the day. I understand his defence about bottles and standard sizes, but really it doesn't hold water (or perfume!) The specs for all the products are fairly clear - the kandura had to be traditional, the coffee pot had to be 32oz and brass, the flag had to be 6ft by 4ft and so on. If the task required them to buy a perfume, it would definitely specify the amount, whether it was 50ml or 100ml - calling it 'standard size' would be too ambiguous. Again, easy to overlook, but it was clear from Zee's stance throughout the day that he had allowed himself to get locked in 'know-it-all' mode.

As I've said on previous tasks, there is a big danger in allowing the expert on a task to also be the PM - the same is true in the real world. It leads to tunnel vision thinking and the danger of jumping to incorrect conclusions based on prior experience which isn't always valid. Use an expert's knowledge, for sure, but let someone who can ask the innocent questions and see the bigger picture more easily do the leading.

Yeah, but generic words like that can have specific meanings in other cultures. I'm sure many people will have had the experience of opening an American cookery book and being confronted with measurements in cups. Do they mean an espresso cup or a mug of near stein-like proportions? Really, it means 8 US fl oz, or about 8 1/3 of ours. It's not at all implausible that "standard size" could have a specific meaning in a foreign perfume trade.

They were spelled different tho. I guess theres no rules when "romanizing" a word that is usually written in a different alphabet, and it can be a bit confused if the words in arabic have a similar pronunciation. Maybe one is pronunced "o-ood" and the other is pronunced more like "ahwd" it seems to me. Maybe Zee wouldn't have made a mistake if he saw the actual word written in arabic. Or maybe he is not much into music.

As a curiosity, in Spanish, "oud" is translated as "Arabic lute" and the actual word for lute is "Laud". Very similar actually.

Oh and I also hate American measures! None of my cups have the same capacity

American rappers live in da oud, yoh bro sweeeet innit.

In researching the task, part of the job of the production team would be to map out a specification that would mean something to both the candidates and potential sellers. They're more than just words written on a page at random - hence the specs avoid any ambiguity. If a candidate walks into a musical instrument shop and asks for a standard size oud in Egyptian mahogany - bingo! The fact that Leah's sub-team tried a number of perfume shops and came up blank should have warned Zee that something was wrong. That it didn't was his fault (the original error being actually quite understandable).

While I agree that oud had 2 spellings "oud" was a musical instrument and "oudh" seemed to be a perfume. In the Expensive perfume shop in the mall it quite clearly said in 2' high neon sign "Egyptian Oud" and the camera made a show of it by framing it in the shot as they entered the shop. But the other team weren't constantly told it was definitely a perfume and in the end found the correct product. Zee's problem was he thought he knew it all, and wouldn't accept he was wrong, even in the Boardroom. Alex even told him in the car after looking in the Yellow Pages, that "Oud" doesn't seem to be a perfume.

The teams really ought to have been more aware of the scope for confusion given that Arabic has to be translated into English phonetically, and is therefore subject to different spellings of the same word. (Mind you, Natalie couldn't tell the difference between a cow and a dog last week, so ...)

Of course, I'm sure it was no coincidence that one of the products on the list was so easily confused with another. Or that the flag spec was given to them in imperial measures while the printer (and, I suspect all such printers in Dubai) obviously worked only in metric. While not everything is necessarily meticulously planned, I'm sure that in prepping the task the producers ensure there are a few deliberate bumps to trip up the teams and provide us with something to (a) laugh at and (b) point out that we would *never* make the same mistake if we were in their shoes.

Agree the "Oud" was deliberately put in there to trip them up. Much like the Clouche which can be a bell, a thing waiters use to cover food and a greenhouse/cold frame.

Although in the case of the cloche's multiple identities, common sense - something frequently in short supply on tasks! - would dictate that if you're buying for the Savoy that what you clearly need is the food cover and not the gardening equivalent. I think Sugar said as much in the boardroom, and wasn't there something in the spec (I can't remember) that specified it was silver or steel or something, whereas a garden cloche is always transparent so it can let sunlight in? I also think there was a size specification (2 ft diameter or something) which made it obvious it wasn't a bell.

Damn my failing memory!

Oh yes I agree, the clue is always in the question with these type of tasks.

Yeah, the mistakes commonly made on all tasks (not just this one) can often be traced back to one of two things:

1. A person seeing only what they want to see - rather than what is actually there.

2. Missing something in the heat of the moment which they would probably spot if they were watching on TV, like the inches/centimetres thing.

The reality is that (most of) the candidates aren't half as stupid as they're made out to be, and if we all had camera crews following us around for long enough that they would catch us doing or saying something similarly stupid too. Which is why you'd never catch me appearing on one of these programmes!

Oooouuuuuud
Praise the high priest of Oud

BIB - but its not, if you read some of the post in this thread, there are a couple of examples were the perfume is spelt OUD. I added a link to a website that spelt it OUD. There was a shop in the mall, that had a window display, that read "Egyption Oud", then had some bottles of perfume. This was on screen for a couple of seconds, as one team walked into a perfume store.

If the locals spell perfume as OUD or OUDH, what chance do a load of foreigners have knowing the difference?