After nearly 6 weeks of singing and judging, the third season of Brunei Darussalam’s first reality television show ‘Paspot to Fame’, or commonly known as P2F, completed it’s final elimination round last weekend. At the end, 18 talented contestants were chosen to participate in the live concerts of P2F 2010, which will begin in March this year.

The Third Elimination Round was held over two days on 15 and 16 January 2010 at Studio 4, RTB Sungai Akar. 42 contestants were divided into two groups and sang on separate days, with the result being announced on the same day after the second group performed. Judges were the familiar faces of Joe M, Marieta Delmar, Hans Anwar and Summer Ho.

Some may consider this as the P2F 2010 semi-final, the Third Elimination Round adopted a slightly different format, where the contestants were finally singing with music. In addition to the song choice, judges’ main comments were the contestants’ facial and body expression, or rather the lack of it. However, they were very pleased with the overall performance. "Many of you did very well. I think we'll have a hard time picking the finalists tonight", said one judge.

It took the judges over 90 minutes to decide who should proceed to the next round, and when they finally came out from the deliberation room, everyone was clapping loudly in anticipation of the result to be announced. All contestants were arranged into various groups and received a mock passport when they stepped onto the stage. Those with a star inside meant that they have successfully entered the door of P2F 2010 Finals. Towards the end of the night, just as the contestants who didn’t get a star in their passports earlier, thought their dream had evaporated, the drama unfolded. Originally vying for top 16 spots in the P2F finals, due to the high quality of the contestants this year, the judges decided to put through two more contestants, making it Top 18 to compete in the much awaited round of Live Concerts.

The four judges each held a signature passport and announced the remaining four finalists whom they would like to give a chance to. They noted that they did not simply make their decisions based on the performance in this round, but also taking into consideration of the previous rounds including audition. To date, this was by far the most competitive and most emotional round, as many of them sheded tears of joy, sadness as well as disappointment, due to the reason that they have already built up some level of friendship even though they have just met since the competition began.

Between now and 20 March this year, the 18 finalists will undergo various trainings such as vocal and dance trainings, as well as motivation and so on. All the trainings and other activities will be recorded and edited as diaries of P2F 2010. Meanwhile, the recorded episodes of audition and elimination rounds will be telecast on RTB2, every Sunday starting from 24 January 2010 at 3.30pm.