Nick Teh

Success!

2008-11-13T07:20:00.003+08:00

i finally got the DIY support cable to work!!!! yes, it's 7.20 in the morning and i stayed up till 1.30am on a work night but i just had to see if it would work.

when i accessed the main unit parameters it showed bullock settings like +20% fuel at 6000 rpm and +0% on all the other A.A.V. settings! also, all the jumper and rotary switch settings made no sense especially the bit that was for the number of cylinders in the car was set to 0! wtf.

anyway, i just set everything back to zero and updated the main unit. calculated tuning NOT based on throttle position to commence this weekend unless i backside itchy tonight which may probably be the case.

oh well. off to work.

note: the bluebird's 'Super Pearl White' will be sprayed today. will post pics once i get back.

oh yeah, and thanks Monash for awarding me with the 'Best Award - Final Year Project' for Mechanical Discipline. All those nights of ANSYS-ing in the dark and measuring sure paid off i suppose.

Failure.

2008-11-10T08:31:00.002+08:00

scrap the DIY support tool cable for now. it just isn't working. maybe because the DKU-5 i bought is missing something that the original one has. oh well.

i'll just have to do more research on how to get the thing to work. i can get the cables instruct the GReddy support tool to go ONLINE, but no data is bring received from the e-manage.

back to the drawing board i guess...

i-Manage to e-Manage.

2008-11-07T23:57:00.003+08:00

it was like deciding between the red or the blue wire, with thousands of lives at stake. only this time, it was whether my car would start or not.

as i mentioned previously, i had purchased an e-manage and actually hadn't thought of fitting it till over the weekend, but being the impatient bugger i was, the moment i reached home from work, i started to tinker with the anodized blue box.

i shall let the pictures explain because people who surf love to see pictures and not words. if they wanted long winded paragraphs like this this one, they would've sat on a comfy chair and read a book.

total install time about 2 hours due to horrible crimping tools that came randomly for free with useless household appliances people buy. wiring was hell for me too cause i had to contort to awkward angles. if only Beat was there to see how flexible i was. :D

time to go beddy-bye (shower first) and figure out how to tune it tomorrow or something. cause i've a long day ahead of me, what with the prospects of the cortina coming back home tomorrow.

next article would be the DIY cabling i'll be doing to pick the e-Manage's brain.

Prep Time.

2008-11-07T00:02:00.002+08:00

guess who's got his dirty grubby hands on an e-manage?

ME!

one of the many things left to obtain before the new autocross season begins. just remembered i'll be in singapore taking part in another race, so, i won't be able to make it for the 2nd round of the KKS Autocross 2008 series. Oh well.

Bump!

2008-11-03T23:16:00.002+08:00

the painter's putting everything he has into this car. he's gonna keep undercoating until the surface is near flawless! kudos to him. however, it has begun to rain unpredictably, again.

soon, it'll be this car's turn. unless i can get my hands on a very sound condition starlet KP61. :D

some parents just don't feed their kids enough, check out this kid.

Undercoated And A Hint Of Future.

2008-10-26T10:10:00.002+08:00

got a call from Ah Long the painter who said that he'd just did the undercoat. excited as i was, the whole family went to the paint shop to view the transformation from 'granny-green' to 'toighty-whitey'.

as this is the first layer of paint, it would have to be sun-dried for a day or two (weather permitting) then sanded down to remove imperfections before another layer of undercoat is sprayed. Ah Long estimates I should be getting the car back by end of the week. so, come to think of it, this rebuild is considered faster than the cortina's, which is saying something. sigh.

the future bit is about my next project car which at the moment would be:

1. nissan cefiro a31
2. nissan laurel c33 or c34
3. toyota starlet kp61 (3 door preferably)

ah, i'm reliving my childhood but instead of buying micro-machines, i'm buying 1:1 scale cars. :D

Washing The Car. Everyday Phrases Taken To Literal New Heights.

2008-10-24T20:18:00.005+08:00

The car being given a thorough wash before it gets covered in paint.

may not be much but it's still progress considering the torrential rain we've been experiencing in Malaysia. real bullocks weather for painting if you ask me, but what can I do?

the guys at the paint shop say that I'm crazy for spending so much money on a car like this because usually, people don't bother with restoring it to this extent, but you've to look at it from my point of view. If you're going to do something like this and have some money put aside for it (i can see my money depleting), might as well do it to the best I can rather than paint the bloody car in a half-assed manner only to regret later on.

what do you guys think? should I use those rubber side trim bits that come with the car or leave the sides bare as it is?

here's some undercoat applied to the driver side doors and such.

oh, did I mention that the colour being used is called "Crystal Brilliant White"?

been thinking of going with bride style seats and bride fabric for the interior but have absolutely NO IDEA if it'll look good or not. time to scour the internet for ideas...

Quick Update.

2008-10-08T23:09:00.002+08:00

Just a quick update regarding the progress of the bluebird. Surprisingly, not many places to weld unlike the cortina which consumed copious amounts of sheet metal.

looking good here. neat welds, but then again, nothing too major except to mould the piece of sheet metal to fit. notice the welder plug welded the centre section of the two mounting points rather than doing spastic spot welds along the edge of the sheet metal. good stuff.

as you can see, most of the areas were in need of some putty. the windscreens are due to come out by this friday. a quick check beneath the chrome bits around the windscreen reveal a slight surface rust which will be easily cured. what a relief that is, really.

the welder says that the car is '7-7, 8-8 complete' which directly translated from cantonese means that welding will be completed really soon so i will need to decide on a paint colour and whether to spend RM1300 for solid coloured paint or RM2000 for metallic/2k paints. i think the latter is a better investment don't you think?

will have the colour chart up by this weekend hopefully. need to decide fast because apparently the panel beater will have to call in a 'sifu' or master if you will should i choose the latter.

...

on another note, was mucking about the putra and was wondering if i should remove the rear spoiler as it weighs 2.8-3.0 kg.

with

without

thoughts and comments welcome as always. :)

"Bulu-bird"

2008-10-01T13:47:00.002+08:00

That's how my welder/painter guy calls the datsun bluebird i sent like a month or so ago.

Welding and painting should finish in about a months time. very impatient because i've got two cars that are waiting for me to drive/drift/whatever in, if most of you remember, the other one is the mk3 cortina.

yes, the cortina is still alive and well and i've not junked it. head on to the cortina blog for updates and pics.

i digress.

it's always a dilemma when it comes to choosing a colour for a car since it's a specification that could make or break a car's character. in short, the current "Green de Grandma" has to go in favour of solid white all over the car except the under carriage.

why white? first of all, it's cheap(er) than going with some other colours and also because the interior can retain it's original colours (somewhat beige) therefore saving some extra bits of Ringgit here and there.

here's some pics to whet your appetite, you picture whores. :)

notice the new steel rib that will be welded into place. looks similar to the original so, it's good enough for me.

rib location

very nice bit of detailing by my welder. notice the folds that were done to give a neater almost factory look to it.

i'm on the fence with this bit of welding. why don't they seam weld the plates instead? could it be because of possible distortion of the original steel beneath it?

good patch work over here.

had to remove at least 1/2 the sheet metal in this area as it was quite rusted. good work here too.

layer of primer i believe just to keep it from developing surface rust while other parts are being welded.

until the next update, feel free to leave your comments on anything and everything regarding the car. maybe even help me pick a colour!

Streamyx Throttling.

2008-08-09T09:04:00.002+08:00

is it just me or is streamyx throttling http?

i'm sure most of you streamyx user have noticed downloads speeding up after 12am and slows down to an unbelievable 20-ish kB/s.

reasons you should be pissed off:
1. most of us pay RM 88 a month for the 1 Mbps line which should give at download speeds of at least 90 kB/s.
2. hence, your money is being ripped off.
3. blocking P2P is fine, but blocking http is just crazy as i don't think any one ISP in other countries block ALL http connections (local or international)
4. what's the point of waiting till after 12am to utilize the internet? most of us need to work the following day anyway.

if you think about it, streamyx charges should be reduced and its changes reflected in the coming phone bill. but obviously, TM is never going to allow that to happen but i'll try to give a breakdown of what I should be paying for the current service i'm provided.

i get about 240 kbps for the first 12 hours of the day and then about 1320 kbps for the remainder of the day. so, let's take the average bandwidth i'm given by streamyx or "Nazis" as we shall refer to them from now on, is about 780 kbps. so, all we need to do is take this number, divide it by 1536 kbps (which is what i'm getting) and then multiply it by RM 88 (or whatever amount you are paying). Hence, i should be paying only RM 44.69 which is almost half of what i'm current paying!

if this goes on for the next 12 months, imagine the amount of money TM would make. assuming that everyone has the same connection as i do and with streamyx subscribers of about 500000 nationwide, that's RM 268,125,000 worth of service denied to the customer!

as fred durst of limp bizkit said in his song, "just think about it".

Proofread, Anyone?

2008-08-02T13:45:00.003+08:00

i happened to come across THIS article in today's edition of the Star, which is one of the major newspaper publishers in Malaysia and if you read the article and look at the picture given, something is not very right at all.

you guessed it, the article says that a Play Station 3 (which is actually spelled as PlayStation 3) was given to a kid as part of some collaboration between Sunway Pyramid Sdn. Bhd. and the Children's Wish Society of Malaysia when in fact, they gave him a slim PlayStation 2!

take a look at the orange box that i placed in the picture from the article to highlight this for you, and now for comparison as well as for those of you who've never seen what a PS2 or PS3 console look like:

a freaking huge pic of what a PS3 console and its box look like courtesy of Wikipedia Commons, 2008.

and this is what a PS2 console courtesy of philregalo.com, 2008.

and there you have it, undeniable proof that the person in charge of this article did not proofread or s/he did not know the meaning of the word proofread as Wikipedia defines as,

Proofreading traditionally means reading a proof copy of a text in order to detect and correct any errors.

so, who do you think is to blame for this? did the people sponsoring the alleged PS3 know that a PS2 instead was purchased, you could literary get 3 PS2 consoles for the price of 1 PS3 which leads to questions of corruption. finally, have the people responsible taken actions to errata the article or to exchange the PS2 given in the article for a PS3?

anyone working for these organizations and happen to read my blog, please drop me a comment or email.

seriously, do you really want to cheat a kid from owning a PS3?

New Priorities, New Responsibilities.

2008-07-24T16:00:00.002+08:00

I've finally graduated and can finally use the word 'Engineer' under the occupation section in forms that people fill.

like the title says, new priorities and new responsibilities. i must now work like the rest of the world, contributing my knowledge in minute ways. i am starting work beginning august 2008 with Boustead International Heaters (BIH) which is an oil and gas company dealing primarily with furnaces/heaters and similar thermo-applications related to oil and gas. you can google the company if you want.

time to pay back the government for the loan that they gave me. also to lighten my dad's financial burden by contributing to the putra's loan (yes, it's still on loan) and whatever outstanding bills. all in all, a monumental goal has been playing around in my mind, which is to be debt-free by age 30. i use the term 'debt-free' quite loosely here because i think i will still owe the bank for the house loan.

anyway on to more interesting things. i've been contemplating if polyurethane bushings would have a longer service life than the regular rubber bushings sold by proton and other oem parts manufacturers. i was very interested in getting a similar set of bushings like those done over by Backyard Special, however i didn't commit just yet because i was considering getting a replacement for all four mountings. a couple of days ago, i found a solution.

from top to bottom you can see that we have the original front and rear engine mountings by a local oem manufacturer and then below that a set i bought from the breakers yard which i was told came from the first generation of mitsubishi evolutions and then finally at the bottom, the ones that are in the putra as i type. below you will see a picture of the replacement bushings that need to be hydraulically pressed into the older bushings steel housing which is also shown below (in colour) that shows the reason why engine torque and oscillations from having stiffer suspension can cause premature failure of these bushes.

now i won't be putting up lengthy calculations as that would be quite boring for most of you. so instead, let's imagine the cross-sectional areas between these three mountings and as you can imagine, there's ample room for deflection of the rubber bushes. therefore, the best way to reduce rocking of the engine when accelerating/braking/etc., is to limit the amount of space for this deflection to occur. there is a negative impact on the comfort level because of this since more vibration is transferred into the cockpit. i can assure you however that acceleration is achieved quicker because the engine doesn't waste energy rocking back and forth upon sudden accelerations.

in short, acceleration seems quicker because there is less rocking of the engine due to the absence of space for this deflection to occur compared to the original mountings.

so now, it all boils down to the life span of the bushes because the oem ones last about 6 months before they fail. the Backyard Special guy's polyurethane mountings have lasted him 2 years according to one his recent posts so i'll report back when the thing fails.

finally, here's a picture that i wanted to share.

Week 9...

2008-05-02T21:58:00.001+08:00

busy lately with thesis work. running back and forth to the fabricator.

almost final thesis presentation week so i've gotta work extra hard. 24 hrs just isn't enough lately.

here's half of what i've been busy with.

have to test the LCA at the designated spot. hope it doesn't fail.

Air-CON job.

2008-04-25T16:05:00.002+08:00

after a few days of driving the bluebird around, i'm starting to discover its quirks.

before i explain, lemme just say, my putra is damaged again. some fucker tried to break into my car...probably to steal the OMP suede steering wheel and one recaro seat. fuckhead. for nothing my driver side door handle was damaged and the key barrel was removed probably for him to make a set to open it the next time he came back. so it has been agreed upon that the putra will not be seeing much seat time except for track days. :( (i'll post the number plate of that sohai later. maybe you guys can keep an eye out for it).

back to the story. so Chong, the previous owner, told me that the air-conditioner blower was not working but everything else does, which was fine to me because i expected to service the thing anyway. in the midst of a traffic jam, i decided to fiddle with the aircond fan switches and thermostat and other buttons on that particular panel, suddenly, there was wind. cool wind i tell you along with some dried leaves came out from the vents. i was happy and glad i wouldn't need to spend money fixing it.

however, the moment i switched it off and back on, the blower would not function. i was annoyed and started flipping the lever that selected recirculated or fresh air. one violent switch later and the aircond blower started working again, along with some dried sponge, glass and random crap that fell into Beat's not-so-new Hush Puppies.

anyway, i think i'll need to fix the damn thing anyway and check the gas levels. and the locks need tweaking too.

Prince of Burungbiru.

2008-04-23T08:56:00.002+08:00

did you all guess what car it was? well, this pic will give you a better idea.

i bought my own car. ahh, a 27 year old datsun bluebird 1.8 sss. seems to be a japan recond vehicle cause there's a japanese shell service sticker under the bonnet. oh well. car is in good working condition and comes with twin carbs! the sound is awesome.

thanks to Chong for a smooth transaction. at about 2pm today will be the JPJ inspection which is required when transferring ownership of the car.

on the way back, last night, managed to kick the tail out and went sideways a couple of meters, all under 3k rpm. i was surprised how easy it was to kick the rear out. done 120 kph, no problems so far.

car has some rust spots which aren't anywhere as bad as the cortina or beemer. i would say for the price, one cannot have extremely high expectations. i think it's about the same condition as when i first got my putra, which comes with rust spots and bad panel beating FREE

ta-da!

looks in good shape dunnit? anyway, there's things to be done over the next year (i hope) which include but not limited to:

1. fix air-cond blower (could be a fuse too)
2. fix engine oil filter, gearbox, rear axle leak (probable a gasket issue)
3. fix sticky locks and power windows
4. refurbish interior
5. rust removal, panel beating and painting
6. balancing propeller shaft
7. come up with some ingenious aluminium bits to provide cooler air (a post dedicated to poor design some time in the future)

some interesting engine facts:

L18T

The L18T was basically the same as the L18 but had Twin SU carbs, a high lift cam, 2 mm bigger inlet valves and 1 mm bigger exhaust valves. Fitted to 910-U Bluebird 1.8GL "Hardtop" coupé for UK market. It produces 110 hp (82 kW).
Wikipedia 2008

the reason is clear now as to where the power comes from. higher lift cams, bigger inlet valves. this is starting to sound really good! but due to the age factor of the engine, i'd estimate the WHP to be in the high 80s region.

i'm currently looking for information on obtaining some parts for this car. preferably new ones as i was told that tan chong motors in segambut still stocks quite a range of old bluebird parts. hmmm.

btw, the putra's back but it's shabby. the panel beaters messed up the locking mechanism. fuck.

I'm Back!

2008-04-22T13:37:00.002+08:00

it's been 7 months since my last post.

i've been busy. with work and uni, among other things.

after spending a long summer vacation working under dr. H. T. Eik for 3 months, i mustered up some cash...though not equivalent to that stipulated in my contract...i still had some cash to spare.

i worked on my thesis, getting suppliers, getting the design right, and getting monash to fork out some cash for me to get my sensors up and running, which took quite a while...took even longer for me to get my money back since i had to fork it out on my own due to blardy fucking redtape.

march came, and it was back to uni. no difference to me, still felt as hectic as my so called summer vacation was.

i fixed up my drum room. it now has profile-cut acoustic foam to prevent horrible echo that is synonymous with small and square-shaped rooms. i've picked up my double pedals again. currently fabricating a sound barrier to prevent transmission through the crappy wooden door. ingredients include, wood, rockwool, fabric and time.

my putra was involved in an accident. i was turning into a parking lot in sunway at 8.55 am when a taxi t-boned me. apparently it was my fault, hence the fine. which was waived thanks to some magician. however, insurance would still destroy my NCB thus raising my premium for next year. fuck. you can go to runningmuchdeeper for pics of the damage. if i had no roll-cage, the damage would have been much more severe. i'm getting back the putra today after 1 week at the panel beater. hope they did a good job.

the cortina is still a work in progress. apparently the paint was supposed to go on yesterday but after i sms-ed a certain person regarding it, no reply was received so one can assume that it still hasn't been completed yet. however, after the undercoat went on, the car looks good. all starting to take shape. here's a teaser:

i'm still working on my thesis like a mad person since i've 3 more weeks before my presentation. my fabricator is KAMCO. good people. they are everything and anything aluminium. i never knew 6061 flat bars were affordable. supposed to be checking the prototype this week though. hope it checks out without much dimension changes.

came in 2nd place in the Monash Engineering Club Go-Karting weekend race. thanks to Jaryd for letting me race in the finals due to me coming in 8th in the pre-finals thanks to some thwat smacking the chain loose seconds after the rolling start. at least apologize la cunt-faced-motherfucker. still waiting for the trophy though.

later that day, a mr. wong came to view the beemer. its up for sale by the way. going for RM3k, negotiable. make that VERY negotiable as i need to make way for my latest addition to my car collection.

for the first time i can actually say, i bought this car with my own money. even though it didn't cost much, it's still money earned during the summer. let's just say it's a japanese rear-wheel drive sedan that costs less than the price of a decent laptop. and the condition is good for a car that age. you all slowly guess la.

ok. i guess that's enough for the next 6-7 months. :)

Are Lighter Rims Worth The Money?

2007-09-29T14:21:00.000+08:00

been seeing posts in forums pop up where people are asking if lightweight rims are worth it.

well, i myself have been toying with the idea of lighter rims. not only would they look better on the putra but they'll be lighter! by alot.

now, i'll try to make the calculations here explained as clearly as i can. however, if you don't understand or if i have made a mistake with my theory, then please correct me! i don't like to give wrong info so help me work towards providing the right answer if you can ok?

now back to the topic.

let's look at the wheels i've chosen for this comparison. wheel weights were taken from WheelWeights which is THE best collection of wheel weights. really.

i currently have the 15x6.5" Enkei RSF-2 which are these:

quite ugly to me as the spoke design is quite 'ugggggh' to me.
these rsf-2 weight according to wheelweights, a hefty 7.4 kg each without the tyre.

the rims i'm interested in are these white Desmond EVO Regamaster. i've no idea WTF 'regamaster' means but it's a really lightweight wheel that looks the business.

these wheels weigh only 3.88 kg each without the tyre. check out this jap guy's page regarding the wheel: Kotori's Homepage.

ok so if you do some basic math, the rsf-2s weigh in total 29.6 kg compared to the evos which are only 15.6 kg! you'd save 14 kg in unsprung mass. it seems a lot right? but how do we quantify something quite abstract like this? i propose that we look at the price-performance ratio to see if spending about RM2500 for a set of SECOND HAND condition evos are worth it or not. because sadly, the company, Desmond, does not make them anymore. neither can i find the company on the internet. so, oh well.

first, take a look at some formulas i'll be using. we have the rotational inertia of a hoop about a central axis, I=MR^2. where M is the weight of the rim (assumed as a hoop for simplicity) and R is the radius of the rim in meters(m), which is 0.1905 m (taking it as a 15" rim). then there's the kinetic energy equation for a rolling body and since a rolling object has two types of energy: a rotational kinetic energy due to it's rotation about its center of mass (COM) and a translational kinetic energy due to translation of its COM, we use:

K = 0.5*(I,com)*w^2 + 0.5*M*(V,com)^2

I is the rotational inertia as mentioned in the paragraph before, w (actually greek for omega) is the angular velocity of the wheel, M again is the mass of the wheel and V,com is the velocity of the wheel's center of mass.

now we proceed to obtain the rotational inertias of each wheel. I1 is for the RSF-2 and I2 is for the evos.

I1 = 7.4kg*(0.1905m^2) = 0.2685 kgm^2

I2 = 3.9kg*(0.1905m^2) = 0.1415 kgm^2

already, you can see that the lighter wheel has a lower rotational inertia which is obvious. but we still can't quantify it in terms of performance gains. so we must press on to the next set of calculations.

we need to find the kinetic energy of the rolling body (ie. the wheel) at a fixed speed. let's make it 100 km/h which is represented by V,com. converting from km/h to m/s we get

V,com = 27.7778 m/s

this is done to make sure we are working in the right units. next up, is to find the angular velocity of the wheel.

w = V,com/R = 27.7778/0.1905 = 145.82 rad/s

now that we have the necessary information needed, we can plug these values into the equation for obtaining the kinetic energy of a rolling body which for the RSF-2 is:

K,RSF-2 = 0.5*(0.2685kgm^2)*(145.82rad/s)^2 + 0.5*(7.4kg)*(27.7778m/s)^2 = 5709.564 J

and the Desmond Regamaster EVO:

K,RSF-2 = 0.5*(0.1415kgm^2)*(145.82rad/s)^2 + 0.5*(3.9kg)*(27.7778m/s)^2 = 3009.023 J

J stands for Joule which is the unit for energy however, we you guys wanna see it in terms of horsepower (hp) right? so, let's convert these values to hp. i'll convert Joule to Watts first, but in order to do that, we need to divide 1 Joule with 1 second (i assume 1 second for ease of calculation) in order to get it in Watts (W) which is the unit for power. now from watt to hp, we use this conversion factor

1 watt = 0.00134102209 hp

now do some basic maths again, and we can get the required horsepower to keep rotating and translating this wheel at 100 km/h (on the horizontal plane ok, cars don't defy gravity :P)

Power required, RSF-2 = 7.65 hp

Power required, Desmond Regamaster EVO = 4.04 hp

now, how to interpret these values? the difference between these two wheels would give you the amount of hp that you could 'gain' which would be

Nett power gain = 7.65hp - 4.04hp = 3.61hp

this is for only one wheel. so by right, for both driving wheels since the putra is a front-wheel driven vehicle, the total hp gained would be an optimistic 7.22hp! just from using lighter wheels.

let's not get ahead of ourselves here. i should include a 'confidence' factor to that value to bring it down to about 6 hp gained. so, spending RM2500 for this rims to gain 6 hp would give mean 0.0024 hp/ringgit malaysia(RM). let's compare with a camshaft upgrade from powerzone (assuming their cam prices for the 4G93P is RM1500 from their catalogue), based on their claim of up to 20% increase in hp, gives you 0.0154 hp/RM. hmm, so it's up to you actually whether you'd wanna spend that amount of money for the little gain in hp. but don't forget, lighter unsprung mass gives you better handling characteristics and because the overall mass of the vehicle is reduced, you get faster acceleration as well.

man, it's insane if you wanna play NA...so many things to tweak to get the same result if i'd be less stubborn and put a turbo kit.

any monetary sponsors are always welcome regardless of whether individuals or companies wishing to advertise their products (space for sponsor's company logo available and for individuals wishing to sponsor, your name will be placed around the boot/rear wing location of the putra).

This Is Malaysia.

2007-09-23T16:22:00.000+08:00

in malaysia, you get to see buses like these run around town unnoticed by the local authorities.

i mean, for fucks sake man, think of the hazard of leaving a metal object scrapping the road producing sparks near the fuel tank. need more hints? then let the bus blow up and send bodies flying onto the street and walls then ONLY will SOMEBODY take action.

some people in certain bodies aren't doing their jobs well if not at all.

there's the number plate, so if you have contacts or power with people in high(er) places, do the general malaysian public a favour and make sure things get done.

Sheet Metal Brackets.

2007-09-23T16:13:00.000+08:00

ah, it's holiday time so i decided to fabricate some brackets to keep my banged up apexi power intake which has actually been held by some cable ties over the past few months. so, after much procrastination, i finally went and did it.

took some stainless steel sheets i had lying around my garage and cut it to size then the end product is a very shiny, sturdy and functional piece of fabrication. :)

while i was working, my dog decided to pose. so here she is, ms. brandy.

and a little something i made for deardear with the spare stainless steel bits. shabby i know.

Guess Where This Is.

2007-09-23T15:58:00.000+08:00

rate this pic guys. and if you can guess where this is, i'll give you bragging rights. ok?

Go Go Go-Kart Sunday!

2007-09-23T15:15:00.000+08:00

it's 9.30am, the spirit of competition was high. when suddenly, BANG!

yup, that's me crashing into john sabah the moment the race started. one lucky cameraman was there to capture it digitally. so how did all this start?

well, Monash Engineering Club decided to hold a 'non-competitive' go-karting event. but how can you NOT be competitive when it comes to racing where fast lap times and 1st, 2nd and 3rd placing count!?!?

yup, which was why i crashed into john sabah. both of us were late-braking into the first hairpin and our brakes didn't bite thus me crashing into john, but things got worse when one of my wheels was up on his, his brakes bit. so i practically smacked john sabah's head with the nose of my kart. oh well. sorry ar john.

but we all had fun. finishing 2nd despite that crash was the most thrilling part for me as after the crash i was down in 10th placing (out of 10 drivers).

preparation. no 'X' pit-stop strategy here.

walking the course to get a feel for it. never been on this track myself so thought it might be a good idea.

shortly after that, we were called back for briefing.

now fast forward to the grand final (fastest 10 drivers compete).

and shortly after that pit-lane bickering, this happened (refer to the beginning if you forgot).

me trying to catch up.

after the race, john sabah describing how the crash affected him mentally and physically.

but at the end of the day, competition or not, we all had fun. :) great day guys! round 2 after the finals yeah.

results for those curious.

Practice and Qualifying
Finals
Grand Finals (Top 10)

Bad Practice.

2007-09-14T20:07:00.000+08:00

i was at MPH earlier today flipping through a local car magazine which i won't mention here, and i was going like 'hey, nice car...' when suddenly i saw this:

can someone tell me what is fundamentally wrong with the rollcage of the car?

well, for starters, the front 'A' pillar bars are useless in a frontal crash because:

1. tubes were crush-bent.
2. even my cage by safety21 is BUT the difference is my bend angle isn't as much (about 20 deg. max at some points) as this guy's one which from the pic is like more than 100 degrees!
3. due to the stupidly bent tubes, in a roll, the bend region has already in a sense (crumpled) due to the inherent flaw of crush-bending method.
4. if he really wanted to avoid cutting his dashboard to fit the cage, he should have fixed a diagonal at the biggest bulge of the faux-cage to in lay mans term 'push' that portion AWAY from the driver.

well, i wish the guy best of luck and if anyone reading this blog/post knows the owner of the baby blue dc5-prelude, pls inform him to properly design his rollcage for his occupants and his own personal safety.

people nowadays.

Weight Savings 2.

2007-09-12T21:08:00.000+08:00

mum fixed the seat good. all in all cost like RM50 if i include the 10 hrs of labour my mum put into the seat.

tada! i know it isn't the best pic but it was late and all i had was my k750i.

considering the amount spent, i'd say it's a well worth investment, having your mum to stitch these minor damages. nuff said. i mean, RM50 vs RM450, which are you gonna choose considering when you look from the outside of my car, you won't notice the difference until you go up close to it.

well, here's what it feels like to drive a car that is about 100kg lighter than factory. i notice that acceleration is quicker but the key handling characteristic i'd like to point out is that due to a decrease in weight to the passenger side of the car, cornering is not so much linear but more like exponential as in when you start slipping the tires up front they loose traction and then bite the road...the word transient comes to mind. it's funny but i can only assume at this point that it's due to the bulk of the weight up front and biased towards the driver side (the side where i put my ass at).

after putting back the refurbished seat, tools and spare wheel, i decided to whack the same corners again (i'm not telling where but it's a very nice short stretch of downhill road where you can easily hit 100 kph through the corners :D) and found that although the acceleration was not as quick as it was before, BUT weight shifts (left to right) felt more linear than before. maybe i should try without the passenger seat and whack those corners again. or lower the moment created by the backrest of the passenger seat by reclining it till it is almost parallel to the floor pan...hmmmmmm.

oh, and here's rajiv's 4th wife.

Weight Savings.

2007-09-09T10:12:00.000+08:00

the car above has gone through a lot. however, let's just focus on the diet program its been on since i got the car nearly 3 years ago. i shall introduce you, the reader to my thesis/final year project which is currently underway where i am designing a lightweight lower control arm replacement for the proton putra.

since i started autocrossing, i've been a fanatic at keeping the weight down as much as i can. and what i've done thus far is remove most of the sound deadening material although there's still some left on the cabin-side of the firewall, most of the insulation material, carpets, plastic trimmings, roof liner, back seats, radio, speakers and antenna, stock air filter box and replaced the driver-side recaro njoy to a sscus non-fia bucket seat and finally replaced the stock muffler with a 2.1" ID pipe. believe it or not, removal of these items has reduced the weight by approximately 40kg. so, from the kerb weight of the car which is ~1050kg, it has now dropped to 1010kg.

on race day, the weight drops by another 35kg with the removal of the passenger-side recaro njoy (notice the torn parts? mum's trying to stitch them back to save me RM450 so results will be posted when she's done with it.);

and the spare wheel plus the tools required to jack the car and change it.

the items mentioned weighed in at 16kg for both the njoy and the spare wheel and about 3kg for the tools. this brings the weight of the car further down to 975kg.

now, why should we reduce the weight of a vehicle? take a look at the proton wira which had a kerb weight of 1050kg 12 years ago when it was first introduced and look at its replacement the proton persona which weighs 1170kg. bare in mind, both wira and persona compared are the baseline 1.6 models with automatic transmission and no ABS. where does this weight come from? it can't be from the slight increase in length (~10cm longer than the wira) but it could be from the added safety and luxury items due to customer demands and advancement in automotive safety.

now if we can reduce the weight, what can we benefit?

1. improved car handling characteristics (Puhn, 1976)
2. fuel savings (Borns & Whitacre, 2007)
3. decrease environmental impacts from reduced CO2 emissions
4. increase in engine performance

just to brush the surface of my points, Fred Puhn states in his book that reducing the sprung and unsprung mass of a car would result in better handling. handling consists of not only cornering or maneuverability of the car but also breaking performance of the car.

fuel savings as mentioned by these two Alcoa Industries reps, have been proven by companies like BMW who have reduced the weight of a test car by 10% and thus experience better fuel consumption by providing 2.5 extra miles per gallon. due to this reduction in fuel usage, impact on the environment from vehicles can be reduced from the reduction in CO2 or NOx gases due to internal combustion engines. since fossil fuel is not a renewable source of power, this reduced fuel consumption would enable our fossil fuel reserves to last just a little bit longer.

on a more personal note, i have experienced quicker engine response due to this reduction in weight due to the fact that the lighter the car (ie. less mass) the less load there is on the engine to propel the car to a predetermined speed like the 0-100 kph time for example.

tune in next time when i discuss the topics of interest regarding my thesis.

ps. all SSG batch mates, there'll be a Alumni dinner in SSG hall

this hall, on the 29th of September, 2007 and all the teachers and current principal would appreciate if we, the pioneer batch of SSG would attend this dinner. have to buy tickets though at RM50 i think. to purchase these tickets, just head to SSG's Principals office and look for his secretary.

Catch Dry?

2007-09-06T23:02:00.000+08:00

was at bangsar village doing my weekly grocery and while waiting in line at the checkout counter, i noticed amongst the cigarette racks there was a mini fridge/cooler that had a sign which said,

Dear Smokers,
No chewing, no smoking, enjoy.

or something like that, but yeah, it caught my attention because it was an alternative to tobacco. before i begin, NO, i have not started smoking again...that phase has been long behind me now. just wanted to give this product a shot, because it wasn't your regular nicotine patch or gum that smokers use to get their fix.

so i picked up the 'Cassis Menthol' pack and paid my RM6.90.

this is what you get,

inside, there's about 16-20 little packets with material if not similar to your little tea bags to allow your saliva to wet the 'baccy and you get the 'baccy juice. not too sure how the the older generation used to chew baccy and beetle nuts to get high (were they?). anyway,

so what you do is you take a little packet and stuff it behind your upper/lower lip and 'ENJOY' as the container says...but i was far from enjoyment/ecstasy or what-not.

firstly, you look like you've got serious buck-teeth problem or someone punched your lip to make it look swollen.

secondly, it smells good (like various fruity shesha scents) but tastes BITTER and SALTY!!! wtf man.

so to my parents amusement at the weird facial expressions that i made while the thing was in my mouth i left the thing behind my upper lip while sufferingly swallowing the baccy juice bit by bit.

i tell you, this product would make you rather have a damn ciggy because of the stupid way you look and also because of the taste. to me, it just puts me off.

high? well, i did feel light headed for like 10 minutes but after that, nada.

so was it worth RM6.90? to me, hell NO!

say, TAK NAK to CATCH DRY! :P

however, if you wanna know more, go to GothiaTek the creators of this smokeless tobacco product.

Impak Maksima.

2007-08-31T17:24:00.000+08:00

yup, for those who are not familiar with the title, it basically translates to english as 'Maximum Impact' which is the a film produced locally by Ahmad Idham.

i knew i just had to go and watch it. but didn't want to go alone like when i watched 'gengster'. don't ask...but let's just say 'gengster' was a bloody waste of time and money.

moving on. (spoilers ahead)

here's my honest opinion on the movie and if anyone affiliated to the parties involved in the making of this film reads/stumbles upon this, well, just take it into consideration for any future movies you plan to film. i'll try my best to be as neutral as possible with this review.

now after a long string of advertisements, we finally see the intro, which is a 3d model of the internals of the engine working and they go through the turbines (from my POV, the turbine blades were not balanced at all, it was rotating of it's axis and in the real world would have caused it to fail prematurely, but anyway) then you get a visual of the 3d modeled engine bay finally at the very end of the intro you get a view of an exhaust particle escaping the exhaust tailpipe, which signals the start of the action. so thumbs up for a rather detailed model of the engine but there's room for improvements.

after the first race, we are introduced to most of the characters and the thing that bugs me the most is the slang and 'poser' type language used. it's as if they're trying to be hip-hop and at the same time speak in malay, for example when two characters meet each other they'll go 'wassup bro?! malam ni ada game tau? *weird hand gestures* takpe aku setting kereta engko untuk drag la! best punyer!'
hope you get an idea on the way the talk. it's hard to describe really. but anyway, after about 10 minutes of listening to that sort of dialog you become used to it.

nice selection of cars by the way, interesting to see a levin/trueno with a turbocharged F20C engine from the S2000 if i'm not mistaken and some other usual cars that compete/participate regularly in our malaysian drift scene. i'm guessing most of the drifting was done by either ah fai (ser ming hu), tengku djan or the owners of the respective cars themselves.

one awful aspect of the movie is the cliche-d boy-girl romance. firstly, i feel that it wasn't well developed and ended up looking like filler material. it should have been removed from the script to allow more time to elaborate on the cars or the path that 'aye' the main character (don't know how the hell you spell his name) would have taken. we know he was supposed to be a professional driver for proton's R3 but did his brother allow him to go for the tests that he was supposed to take? there was no continuity on that part of the story, which i think would have been more interesting.

on the subject of continuity, people who aren't familiar with KL or subang roads would not have realized but the drifts that were done at the ss15 banked U-turn that connects to the federal highway were linked straight away to merdeka square and then to klcc. i mean how is that even possible? BUT the choice of drifting locations were good despite this illogical progression between scenes.

computer graphics. now i understand that you wouldn't be able to trash someones precious D1 drift machine, but at least try to blend the car into it's surroundings. and also add some realistic physics to the movement of the cars modeled this way. people who have watched it would know what i'm talking about as the cars were too cartoon-like which made it very distinguishable, the real from the not.

all things aside, i went into the cinema expecting something slightly better than 'gengster' but i came out feeling a little better about spending RM9 for this movie and this movie deserves somewhere between 4.5~5 stars out of 10. it was good that they actually concentrated on what the movie was about which was drifting but better scene continuity, computer graphics and dialogs would have given it in my opinion a solid 7 out of 10 stars.

having said that, hopefully the malaysian film industry can only move forward when producing movies like these. we shall wait and see how the next 'big' local drift movie would be like which is - Evolusi KL Drift, which looks promising from the youtube footage of the stunt where they crash an rx7 HERE.

The 3 'T's Rule.

2007-08-13T21:21:00.000+08:00

Time, Tutes, and Thesis.

these are the 3 'T's i live by coming into 4th and final year of engineering. ughhhhhh.

anyway, a typical monday morning, i see myself camping in the library from 9-ish am all the way to about 1pm.

trying to catch up on tutes due to lack of TIME!

also got my thesis and all the background reading i've gotta do. headache.

upgraded my workspace to accommodate for my CAD stuff, more desktop space = GOOD.

lemme just say that 20" LCDs are the way to go. it's actually damn friggin huge man. i can fit about two heads into the monitor albeit abit squished.

just a pic i found amusing. if you don't know what 'irony' is, well, THIS will give you a rough idea.

well, gotta go. got a test tmrw...study study study.

"Thesis + Tutes = Not Enough Time"

Buddy-Buddee.

2007-07-22T00:26:00.000+08:00

a night of meeting the 1st year students...i feel a bit old honestly amongst them. like there's that mentality gap or something. childish, that's the word. but who am i to judge eh?

anyway,some quick pics for those who didn't attend the event like a certain short ah beng named timothy. haha!

the winning tower (screw the other team that won due to miscommunication)

dear's brother acting out his lewd fantasies with kon 'chibai' wai luen.

my group's drag queen, a freshie named ervin. he really acted the part of a fussy feminine super-model, voice and all.

ms. 'forgot to shave leg hair' melvin

ms. 'fergie look at my lumps and my humps' charles

sorry to the rest of you whom i know not your names but have tainted my mind as the most horrid set of drag queens ever. :P (a tribute to your sporting-ness)

our lovely panel of judges

*shudder*

ms. 'chibai', a winner and most of all a man amongst women

if anyones got pics of me after i climbed the roof top terrace's roof, please let me know ok.

Teaser Beemer.

2007-07-18T08:38:00.000+08:00

it's finally here. and here's a small teaser of what i have sitting outside my house waiting to be done up. it's in better condition than the cortina and the interior is in very good condition. the downside? the car can't start because the keys don't match! so will have to get a locksmith to settle that part and then fill up the oils and stuff to see if it'll start.

i don't think this car has run since 1989 though. :P but what the hell, free car what.

the VIN is still intact!!! :D

all the memorabilia found in the car. not listed is a durex condom which dates back to the 80s if i'm not wrong haha! threw it away unfortunately...but it wasn't opened though.

Not As Bad As I Thought.

2007-07-16T21:08:00.000+08:00

first day of life as a 4th year uni student...nothing has changed much aside from the scenery.

well anyway, since the putra505 is more or less problem free for now (been 5 days since engine rebuild) i decided to get it dyno-ed so that i could have a baseline for any future modifications done to it to compare.

first feelings after getting the car back from the workshop was that there was definitely an increase in power and the engine revved without hesitation. it's 0-100 kph timing (timing provided by my trusty k750i's stopwatch) before the rebuild was ~10.8 seconds whereas NOW, it's ~9.3 seconds.

from these figures, i could derive an estimate for the horsepower that i could achieve since the car needs to overcome air resistance and as it gets faster, air resistance increases so you'd need more power to overcome that resistance and more power would equal a lower 0-100 timing yes?

ok, i did some hand calculations based on the manufacturer's claims regarding engine horsepower (which i converted to estimated wheel horsepower based on average losses experienced throughout the drive-train) and from there...(long boring theory stuff that most of you won't be interested in)...i got my estimated horsepower BEFORE the engine rebuild which was about 105.89 wheel horsepower(WHP) and i had predicted that due to increase losses due to friction from the crankshaft bearings, connecting rod bearings, etc, my actual WHP should be around 115.91.

i did try to calculate the actual work done via a stoichiometric combustion process but i didn't have actual data on the petrol i use (shell) so i just used the standard value for gasoline given in my thermodynamics text and let's just say the value was pretty close to my other calculation.

back to the point of this post. after getting the result sheet printed out, i was rather disappointed with my WHP as i only got 115.7 WHP but happy because my hand calculation was 99.8% correct. and here's where i have more work to do.

ok, the green line represents the torque(Nm), blue is the Air/Fuel Ratio and red is for horsepower(HP).

just to give you an idea of what the problem is, notice the blue line. in an ideal case (ie. stoichiometric) the line should be a straight line across the page at around 14.5 but in the real world that is not the case and also due to the fact that at stoichiometry, the engine will operate at higher temperatures and has a higher chance of detonation/pinging occureing due to the octane levels we run at(higher octane fuels can run at closer to stoichiometric a/f ratios because a higher octane rating denotes it's susceptibility to detonating at higher temperatures/higher compression ratios). a good air to fuel ratio would be between 13.1-13.8 for most naturally aspirated engines, but mine goes below 13! and drops to around 11 at peak horsepower...which is very very bad.

the guy who did the dyno warned me that i would have to correct this or else my car would overheat on track somewhere around the 10th lap. so, i might not be ready to compete just yet. have to settle this hiccup. can't risk destroying this engine now. so i'll be hunting around for a good piggyback ECU to help my fueling because that is what i need. more fuel to increase the A/F ratio back to a healthy 13.x. if any of you could help me out further on this, i'd be glad to listen. so let's discuss this in the comments ok?

Finally.

2007-07-11T00:50:00.000+08:00

so i got the putra back after 9 days of waiting. i can say that the car is pushing at least 115 whp at the moment. hope to find out soon after i get a few runs on the dyno.

but there were hiccups along the way. everything was find until i discovered that my clutch pump was not installed properly or something (has not been diagnosed and probably will never be) and that caused 90% of the clutch fluid to squirt out as i engage the clutch. luckily i made it back right to my front gate when i lost all gear. called the fuckhead mechanics and ordered them to come fix my car now. they did.

but it wasn't until 8.44 p.m. that they finally fixed the clutch pump. their remedy/reasoning was that my clutch pedal was too high, bullshit, it was fine before i sent the car to them now wasn't it. idiots.

after they left, they didn't bother looking for the cap for the grease nipple/zerk fitting, so i have to go to the workshop tomorrow and order them to give me another one. hey, i fucking paid for it man. also, my front brake heat shield was in contact with the disk brake so it scrapped off quite a lot of metal from the shield leaving a small step. so, i had to get this fixed by knocking and bending that metal sheild back into shape, that was around 10.30pm earlier.

i just hope my car doesn't fall apart tomorrow.

that would suck.

"An Affair To Remember"

2007-07-08T00:14:00.000+08:00

just got back from a wedding reception at subang national golf club. simple wedding, nothing fancy. just couldn't stand the half-assed singing and lame 'jokes' from the MC.

it was my baby-sitter's son's wedding by the way. she's the one responsible for getting me hooked on to indian food! haha. i basically spent the first 10 years of my life at her house while my parents were at work. so yeah, thanks aunty bobby for bringing me up and to love indian food :D

couldn't recognize most of the kids that she had looked after until my cousin pointed out who's who and i was really shocked at how much they've changed. like there's this brother and sister combo who's i probably 4 years my junior; well the brother looks geeky but the sister's hot! she's got that indian model look, the high cheekbones, the nose, the whole package la put it that way. sorry guys, no picture but if you can dig into my head then you might be able to find it there.

i sat there feeling old. how many of you have felt that eh?

here's the couple walking down the red carpet:

dinner by the Big Rajah

shake that thing...glen(right) is putting on his 70s/80s dance moves

and amidst all the chaos, a kid runs on stage and starts dancing! i swear, it's the funniest thing i've seen in a while, made me feel older though. because if i were to do what that kid did, i'd be seen as an idiot, not that i'd mind la but these are ppl who might get a heart attack if they knew my 'extreme' side.

the star of the night, totally oblivious. kids and innocence i tell you, something none of you readers including myself have anymore.

Temporary Disappointment.

2007-07-07T17:21:00.000+08:00

I finally got my chin up bar fabricated after 2 fucking months. but the blardy genius of a welder didn't follow my design. he added U-shaped hangers for the handle bar to be placed in. and this is stupid because when you try to use the bar, it's gonna cause a moment/rotation around the U-shaped hanger! so the bar will be spinning around as you try to pull yourself up! damn pissed off...not only that, they painted it the same green paint you see on fences...i dunno exactly what green to call it but i'll call it 'school fence green'.

anyway, the good thing is, this is a temporary fixture as after many a complaint to the fabricator, he will make another one to my design and in stainless steel at no extra charge. will take approx. 1 week. so we'll see how it goes. but in the meantime, i'll be using this.

my only mistake was that i mounted the bar 1 inch higher than i initially wanted it. forgot to take into account the 1.5 inch box section. sigh.

seconds after i mounted the thing onto the wall

road to sparta (it works see!)

officially my gym

Busy As A Bee 2.

2007-07-06T01:55:00.000+08:00

well, i finally decided to not procrastinate any longer so i finished porting the intake manifold in a record time of 1 hour! thanks to lessons learned from porting my old intake manifold.

test fitted it with the throttle body and it is 99% a round 60 mm inlet :D

i then set out to grind of the excess weld that was covering about 5 mm of the Powerzone extractor that i bought about 2 years ago. that's the problem with mass produced stuff, they don't really care what it looks like on the inside, as long as the exterior looks good. ah, fuck it.

so i ground the welds till they were flush with the surrounding region. ah, looks alot better and would most probably improve flow of the exhaust gases. i then decided that it needs a colour before it gets put back into putra505, so i decided to go with a flat black high temperature capable paint. bought a can from ace hardware for RM26.90. to help me paint it, i did make a painting stand/post or whatever you call it to get a even coat of paint throughout the object painted. it's the same device that aided me in painting my 'pimp my vice' vice.(refer to previous post).

see how much easier it is to spray the undersides and also a good stand to leave it while the paint flashes. flat black is cool...look for more flat black items coming this way.

the end result:

to end the day, i decided to beef up my painting stand/post/frame/thingy by bracing the legs (something i should've done when i first built it but had no time to). and we end the day with a glorious view of my empty garage/driveway.

now, most of you know that i've got a cortina being restored...but wait, i'm just so itchy that i've found another car. an old BMW 2000 sedan apparently. now i won't say more but here's how the car looks like:

hmmm, tempting no?

Busy As A Bee.

2007-07-04T00:12:00.000+08:00

been occupying myself with a whole list of stuff that needs to be taken care of.

but first, a ridiculous pic i took while in ss2 last week with my dear. it's ome abstinence walk bullshit thing.

i think if this is the kind of sex-ed they're teaching in schools nowadays, we have a very misinformed generation in the making.

one item that i've restored the past week was an old vice that my grandpa gave to me. was rusty and all but quite good in terms of build quality. so i decided to get my wire brush point attached to my handy drill and grinned of most of the heavily rusted areas. then came time to prep it for painting. and i decided to go with a colour that wouldn't normally be used on a vice. black and fluorescent orange. tell me what you think.

another item on my to-do list which is probably the most consuming, financially and time, is the rebuilding of the putra505's engine. i decided to get the help of the workshop near my house (~3 minutes walking distance) to rebuild this engine closely to the workshop manual that i have. so i commute by foot about 3-4 times a day to supervise the rebuild. and now, the engine's out.

following the removal of the engine (i'm not gonna start with the number of things that need replacing) i can now finally port my intake manifold to match the 60 mm outlet of my MIVEC throttle body. from porting my previous intake manifold, i've learned that having a jig to keep the manifold in place is vital in ensuring a quality finish. so here's the jig i made to hold it in place and work shall commence tomorrow.

Bling! Bling!

2007-06-25T23:37:00.000+08:00

ah, exams are over and what's the first thing i do? purchase RM300 worth of tools for my garage.

in preparation for porting the intake manifold to match the outlet of the 60 mm throttle body, i've sanded the rocker cover (the new one) and now it shines! more or less. took 3 hours of wet sanding with 600 grit sand paper and this is the outcome

look at the difference! now, the only thing remaining is if i should paint it or buff it?

what do you guys think?

my to do list(board):

it will be filled up with things to do during my 2.5 weeks break. so stay tuned for more putra prepping. hope all goes well by august.

Hans Will Wear A Kilt!

2007-06-05T23:27:00.000+08:00

well, a sad day for me as my heng dai flies to scotland to finish the remaining 18 months of his course.

so, that leaves me, the only one of the 3 heng dais to fly the malaysian flag solo. also, no mischief for the next 18 months. because mischief by ones self is like wanking ...pleasure for one. haha!

hans getting a call from heng dai mkuku!

that guy is the owner of MSL Travel. they're a student travel agency or something.

hans chugging down RM45 worth of J.D. before hitting the runway.

van also chugging down RM45 worth, but it's a double shot of Bailey's.

Rock, Paper, Plane Ticket!

failed attempt at some artistic thing that i tried to create in photoshop but ended up like this. :S

hans does the crabman. imagine him doing that in a kilt!

(L-R): ev, shan, sungz, foozilla, aravin

so yeah, mkuku, hans didn't cry. so your plan failed! haha.

take care bro, 18 months will fly by so fast, you won't even miss the smell of the mamak maggi goreng. :D

This Course Is Crazy!

2007-05-28T20:24:00.000+08:00

i needed some help with my final assignment for MEC3469 and decided to visit Dr. Chong's office. timing was perfect as he was just getting back from lunch. his door was ajar as i reached his office and did the usual knocking on the door and waiting for a reply, just to be polite.

i realized that he wasn't responding and i was thinking that he's insane to think that he can evade my questions by pretending he's not in when his door was ajar! so i decided to push the door open a little and there it was i saw this!

wtf was he doing you ask? well if you analyze the picture, you'll notice his shirt is sorta bloated with air. this is because he was standing in front of the fan with his shirt open to cool off! hahah! damn blardy funny man. this lecturer already has two posts on my blog regarding his behaviour. more funny ones to come hopefully.

after that he saw me then he buttoned up his shirt as he walked towards his desk. here's the conversation that ensued.

chong: i've actually got a class at 1, so i need to eat my lunch now actually.
nickteh: just a quick question sir...wah sir, very hot ar today?
chong: *flutters his shirt to fan himself* yes yes, it's quite hot today actually.
nickteh: anyway, sir, how do you get a gantt chart from such little data? (boring stuff regarding assignment question here).
chong: actually, this course is crazy i tell you! *waves arms frantically*
nickteh and beat: *stunned*
chong: i'm also cracking my head for the second part. maybe i come up with something for you all is that right?
nickteh: er, ok la sir, you have your lunch first la.
chong: ok, bye bye.

i scamper of with beat, and in between her 'that old man is soooo cute!' i'm imitating him by saying, 'this course is crazy you know!' adding his famous 'huh huh huh!?!?' for added humour.

monash-ians, be proud of yourselves. :)

L'Oreal of Goliath, Strikes Back With Chin-Ups!

2007-05-24T20:21:00.000+08:00

been a while since anything interesting's happened. and i guess this post would sum-up the weeks happenings.

early this morning i was minding my own business around uni when this l'oreal promoter chick called 'amy' passed me a flyer that said, "5 minute free hair styling by our l'oreal stylist'. beat decided it'd be a good idea for me to go stylo-milo my hair up a little for fucks. as hessitant as i was, i went for it thinking 'hey, it can't be that bad right?'

so off i went to the promo tent and sat down wondering why the hell am i doing this. so i told the stylist 'whatever suits my head la'. she just looked at me and went on to squeeze the bottle of gel or whatever sticky substance that makes a farting sound when it comes out of a plastic bottle into the palm of her hands. she started to massage my head. hmm, this isn't so bad.

she tried to make my hair stand but it just wouldn't work. so she used more and more gel. then after a couple more squeezes from the bottle of gel, she decided to use the hairspray. lots of hairspray. beat came by and said to the stylist, 'stuborn hair hor?' the stylist replied 'ya, very stubborn' and i in the midst of breathing in all this hair-product fumes said 'yah, just like the owner of the hair' haha. the stylist having no sense of humour or maybe she was having her period or whatever just continued to poke at my hair. after failing to do so, she just tweaks it a little bit more she sends me off.

oh and also i got a face FULL OF BOOBS everytime she would massage my hair or try to make it stand. haha, so i guess it was worth my 5 minutes then.

after that one of the l'oreal guys wanted to take my picture for reference and all that bullshit. my pic turned out like crap needless to say.

and the end result:

damn lousy la the results. oh well. here's that dreadfull tent.

apparently, one of our engineering lecturers went and styled his hair after i did.

so later on, we visit wei hong, the goliath of foosball, pool and now (wtf) PING PONG! this fad is insane i tell you. so wei hong somehow is a magnet for midgets. take alex who was featured in the last post. something about these small people wanting to defeat bigger people. i call it the "David-and-Goliath Syndrome".

timothy did manage to defeat wei hong. now, wei hong's ping and pong spirit is uneasy, but he shall ping today and pong tomorrow. whatever the hell that means.

i've set out to design and fabricate a wall mounted chin-up bar for myself (part of my 'spartan' workout thanks to the movie '300') so i decided to tryout the one that's at monash's hostel side. i thought i could do at least 10 pull-ups in a row but was i wrong. i managed to break up the work out into 3 sets of 3 reps each. mind you, under the hot afternoon sun. now i've got a basic idea of the correct height i should mount mine at and other technical stuff.

finally, the one and only.

Ping Pong Fad?

2007-05-19T10:06:00.000+08:00

is ping pong making a come back? well, it certainly seems so. at least in the monash student lounge. seems that people are just playing ping pong everytime now. and these same people, who are ever so familiar with the rules of MUSA, keep coming back asking if we have bats and balls for loan.

and the answer we give everytime is, "sorry no bats, bring your own balls." :D

and we'd usually get some guy who would laugh after we've said that but sometimes you get people with no sense of humour and instead stare cock at you like he got really offended by you saying 'balls' or something. some people nowadays. sigh.

so anyway, alex and wei hong have decided to join in the rest of the MUSA ping pong-ing crowd by buying their own bats and balls! they spent about RM30 for the bats and 3-star balls and a bag. quite a good deal but the rubber on the surface of the bat is very soft so you don't get much bounce of the ball. oh well, you get what you pay for.

the MUSA has got 3 ping pong tables and at any given time after 10 am, it's usually in use. except for the tournament table, butterfly brand or something. don't know. don't care. i'm not a ping pong fan myself (i'm not saying this because just because i suck at it).

so yeah, here's a modern day david and goliath pic.

and here's wei hong after a surprise ammount of wins against the rest of us. what an ego booster for the big man.

finally, here's the wei hong workout. a continuous animated gif that shows wei hong doing a very silly move that looks like he's doing some aerobic exercise.

Is That Right?

2007-05-15T20:36:00.000+08:00

many would-be engineers in monash malaysia know who dr. chong kong ming is. many also are aware of his favourite phrases such as "is that right?", "huh?! huh?! huh?!", "this student is too much...", etc. there's just too many wierd nanyuk phrases that he blurts out.

anyway, he's currently teaching the last section for MEC3469 and what he does is, he just reads from the lecture slides. word for word. sentences stated on the slides such as "more of this will be elaborated in the next slide" is also uttered by our favourite old man.

as a result, people sleep. even i myself found it hard NOT to fall asleep before i took this picture.

cheers.

Shell-Ferrari Promo Toys.

2007-05-13T20:36:00.000+08:00

i've finally gotten them all. after 2 weeks of my dad and myself pumping shell and also with a little help from uncle terrence, i've got all 6 ferraris.

what am i talking about? well, shell is having a promo till the 30th of june 2007 or until stocks are finished of these little 2 speed hot wheels cars.

i felt that i might as well collect things ferrari since the laptop i'm using is a ferrari 4002, i've got 2 free oversized ferrari shirts and now i've got 9 un-opened ferrari-shell promo toys and 1 opened one that i decided to play with. trust me, it's as boring as a stick.

i hope in 30 years that these cars will be worth something.

Talk Of Propaganda.

2007-05-12T21:08:00.000+08:00

please do not label this an offensive post. i will not judge. this is an issue i feel that i should bring forth so that the relevant authorities can look into the matter (if they see the need to).

while getting the putra's tires changed at SS3, i decided to stop by Syed's mamak for a quick lunch. i so happened sat facing a pillar that had this poster stuck on it:

for those of you who don't understand what's stated in the poster. it's basically asking fellow muslims/malays i believe to boycott companies that apparently have helped/are helping the jews in israel. as most of you might know, the tension between the arabs and israelis started way before i was born. for more info, feel free to increase your knowledge regarding the Six-Day War over HERE.

so anyway, one thing led to another as i noticed that on the poster there was a website stated. however, that URL wasn't valid but a quick search on Google produced the actual website which is HERE.

now i've got nothing against there being such a group of people who are interested with the well-being of our fellow halal friends. but it's the discussions that go on IN the official forums of this website that is worrying. i do believe it is overlooked by most people because i don't think a chinese dude would browse through such a forum. anyway, feel free to look at the topics being discussed by members of the forum HERE. check out the site, you might find it an interesting read. i did.

Mind Your England.

2007-05-01T21:57:00.000+08:00

since my usual diner is closed for today, parents decided to try this new place that one of my mum's friend was talking about. apparently she eats there everyday. so off we went and when my mum pointed out the shop, i told her that from past experiences, diners like this often serve shit food and charge kidney-selling prices for quark-sized servings. her reply, "if you don't try, you won't know."

the moment we stepped in, the ambience was crappy. but hey, you don't usually go for ambience at a chinese restaurant, you just wanna sit down, eat and talk as loud as you want. we were offered (4 of us) a rectangular table. the wooden kind that isn't seen at all in chinese restaurants cause usually you'll be ordering a variety of dishes and a rectangular table is just stupid due to the lack of space. we asked for 2 rectangular tables joined instead.

now to cut a long story short, the reason why i'm posting this is because of the menu. it was the only thing worth paying for really. *the food was so-so but the price was cut throat*

just click on the thumbnails and you'll see what i mean. pay attention to the highlighted words.

Should be: 'steam', 'garupa', 'thai sauce' and 'pomfret'. don't know wtf 'sauce king is though.

Sos is bahasa melayu. should be SAUCE!!! and 'steaw' should be 'stewed'.

'sweet sour' -> 'sweet & sour'. 'bakend' -> 'baked'. 'oyster souce' anyone? and also 'slide ginger' the one and only drifting ginger.

who'd want to eat 'sour pork'? means it's gone bad or something. 'fried with fillet'??? another D1 drifter, 'slide pork soft soup'. wtf is soft soup?!?! 'stim with 3 kind egg'...i also 'stim' already.

'spinach with soup' -_-" two seperate dishes? 'binjal with salted and pork' should be 'salted brin-fucking-jal and pork'! brinjal=eggplant for ppl who don't know the coloqual term.

'cantonies', a newly discovered chinese sect. 'fried pak koo' translates to 'fried china prostitute' doesn't it? and wtf is 'fried vedi'? i really don't know what vedi is. felt like i was at a mamak or something when i read that.

the rest is pretty much self-explanatory.

same shop, different menus, different error. JESUS H. CHRIST!!!

hope you had fun. :D

Cortina Goes For Surgery.

2007-04-30T17:38:00.000+08:00

for those of you who are still in the dark that i have a cortina that's being restored, check out my blog on that HERE as the project is picking up pace.

IMU Ball 2007, Legend Hotel.

2007-04-22T15:39:00.000+08:00

after a mad night of nonsense, rain and other stuff...it turned out ok i guess.

so let's see, we got there wayyyyy ahead of time. was chilling with hans in the hotel room and watching some stupid taiwanese/singaporean game show where the games are designed so that no one wins. pfft.

we went backstage the first time to see Mia Palencia (miapalencia.com)

Mia Palencia.

her band.

her autograph

then up came the aspiring pianist and violinist of IMU. i could tell they're all violinist because of the way they looked. ok honestly, no offense to violinist but do you even think that THESE guys WANTED to learn how to play the violin? i don't think so. i bet it's their parents. it's always the parents...they probably were like, "mummy, i don't want to play violin..." then *SMACK!* "you don't talk lidat to me you little brat!" and then he/she/both start beating their kid to the ground unconscious. hahah.

minutes before the show began, we were walking around setting stuff up and guess who decides to pose.

then before this, we figured that i'd go on stage to do a cameo appearence. so we came up with this. i go on stage and do a super magnificant drum roll and then stand up and shout to the crowd "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, HANSEL TAN!!!!" with my drumsticks crossed in the air ala rockstar style. and then, i do a silly dance while getting off the stage while hansel does a similarly ridiculous dance onto the stage. well, we managed to pull it off, but the part where i stand up got messed up because i left my cam on my lap, and in the heat of the moment i forgot about it and thus dropped it which caused the audience to laugh. oh well, part of the show ma. hahah. so as i go off stage to start filming, my cam isn't switching on! i then check the batt area only to find that the batt isn't there. so it must've popped out when i dropped it at the drums earlier...true enough. so started it and fired up the camera to start filming and this is what you get:

and here's some pics i took while filming hans and jo.

hans during wheelchair-man.

hans and jo take the stage

jo: hmmm, what comes next ar?

still rocking away with cannonball.

after that to cut a long story short, we stole a box 'gold'. i'm not saying what happened to it, but let's say it went to a good cause la.

then i was so fucking hungry because all i had was a filet-o-fish at 6 something pm (i know it's not a spartan diet but no choice ma). so after the gig, we decided to hunt for food. it was 1am already.

we circled around and eventually wound out at chow kit where i accidentally found the way to the spicy pan mee! and hans pointed at an 'agua' who was soliciting a customer and i was yelling at him like "wtf! don't point at them weh, i don't want to die in chow kit!" hahah.

so anyway, we ended up having the famous beef noodles around jalan alor. and it's really good! the beef slices were very tender and tasty...end of discussion.

prices are as follows, small:RM4.50 medium:RM5.00 and large:RM5.50.
iced chinese tea is RM0.50 so it's alot cheaper and filling compared to eating at the shops along jalan alor. you can expect to pay minimum RM7.00 for something good but small portions.

end.

Garage.

2007-04-21T12:35:00.000+08:00

i've finally got my work table. now i can do all the wood/metal work i need in piece of mind. designed by me, and very functional.

what my 'work' area looked like before. not much space to do anything.

out with the old, in with the new.

ample workspace.

neat, tidy, accessible.

among other things, here's the new RC shell. out with the old orange subaru and in with the 'new' s15 shell. (thanks to justin for giving it to me FOC, great paintwork too, better than mine by leaps and bounds).

here's a pic i took in uni that gave me a feeling of vertigo. monash-ians should be able to locate this spot. (hint: it's in a high place)

that's all for now. expect updates tomorrow as i'll be with hans covering the IMU ball which he will be performing at. apparently he wasn't supposed to perform, and i quote "it's a long story la...". so we'll find out more about that story later on.

Nottingham Ball 2007, Shangri-La KL.

2007-04-14T13:38:00.000+08:00

ah, what a night. a night of music, belly dancing and pompous rockstars.

anyway, our performance was well recieved by the ~800 strong crowd of nottingham people and our vocallist got a rose from one guy as well in the middle of alicia key's "if i ain't got you". here's the video. might take awhile to load but it's worth it i guess. :D

the sound engineers were really helpful in getting our sound right and the instruments provided were top notch. it's fun not having to worry about setting up the instruments and do the sound check by yourself but instead have these pros do everything for you. all you've got to do is sit and play and the rest will be adjusted by them. ah, the life of a pro. :P

why pro you ask? well, hans and myself can be considered pro musicians because we got paid RM 5/min! so we made RM50 per person. it's a pretty sweet deal if you asked me. plus all the pizza backstage one could ask for (which we only managed to finish 1.5 pizzas).

here's some pics to put things into perspective.

hans is thrilled with the stacks...a lifelong dream

mr. singapore himself during sound check

the backstage pizza. semi rockstar-ish

jules and prem from fly.fm were the MCs for the night

group shot: (L-R) Nick, Seng Chye, Joanna Hans

another shot:

singapore, singapore!

dear² giving support all the way. also she and vanessa as camerawomen of the night

guess who was there! percy the belly dancer!!!! wooooooooo!!!

ps. i know damn potong stim la the pics. when i get better ones i'll post them here k

on the way home, i just couldn't understand this sign. look at the bottom sign. does it mean no fires allowed? but then it's just silly, cause who'd start a camp fire in the tunnel? or if your car catches fire then can the cops give you a ticket for open burning there?

it was a good night despite some minor setbacks not worth mentioning. but i do wish to say that pop shuvit can shuvit up theirs (at least their vocallist la).

thanks to foo for giving us the gig, thanks to the sound-engineer uncle and his family for setting up our sound real good and all the people who supported and laughed with us before the show. :D

Resurrection Of Apexi Power Intake Filter.

2007-04-13T09:13:00.000+08:00

decided that it was time for me to put the old filter (~4 years old now) to good use in the putra after having been used in the wira for ages.

had to fly to sunway N1 racing to get the MAF type adapter since the old adapter was only useful as a template for me to make the gasket between the filter and the adapter.

you'd be surprised to know that the stock air filter box weighs around 2.x kg (including MAF sensor) and the new (er...old) apexi unit only at ~1.5 kg including MAF sensor. and thus, i've managed to shave somemore weight of the putra. however, due to limited materials, i could only come up with some simply fabricated brackets to keep the filter in place and not let in swing or bounce around while the car's moving. which would give you the result of a mangled filter (see pics for further detail).

stock air filter

apexi power intake

end product

hopefully when my worktable arrives and in the coming months i'll get more tools to help me in fabricating nicer/cleaner looking stuff. then you'll see stuff like an aluminium heat shield installed. since most ppl say that there's a difference in the engine not sucking in hot air and that cold air is more saturated with 02 molecules.

first impressions after the filter, it works! not sure how much whp was gained but in terms of throttle response it's definitely quicker at climbing the revs since there's hardly anything frictional losses because it's air filter->intake hose. unlike previously which had this configuration: 3" hole->space in air box before filter->air filter->fill in resonator space in air box + fill overall space in air box after filter->intake hose.

so as you can see where losses may occur. the may be miniscule but i'll take even .25 whp gained as an improvement. :)

here's a random pic i snapped somewhere near bukit jalil.

it may not look bad form this angle, but from the other side, the whole driver side front suspension was fucked. imagine this, the wheel was perpendicular to the fender. hmmm, talk about full-lock. :P

Mid-Sem 1 Break 2007

2007-04-11T14:57:00.000+08:00

it's already wednesday of the mid sem break and i've amazingly started my assignments. i seem to have procrastinated less lately. i've even managed to finish reading 3 novels which are: The Alchemist, A Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night Time and the first of many in the discworld series, The Colour of Magic. i read all those in a week and am fucking proud of myself.

another thing that made me proud of myself was that i just managed to remove a sheared bolt from the putra. it sheared because the bolt was rusty and was actually used past its service life. so i had to use a 2-3mm diameteer cylindrical metal file and a hammer to slowly tap the tangent of the sheared bolt out of it's hole. the situation was not easy because it was located on the firewall and the only room i had was between the intake manifold and the firewall...which give and take would be about 10 cm to manouver clumsily. however, i persevered and perfected my technique and walla! it's out! i know there are other methods such as welding a rod, grinding a slot, but i do not have access to such tools so i use what i have. and it works. period.

friday's the big day, so expect full event coverage the following day after the gig.

Nothing Without Balls.

2007-04-04T23:35:00.000+08:00

preparing for nottingham's ball. man, the jamming schedule is really tight, but it's something that must be done.

i just finished studying for my test tmrw at 8 a.m. so, i'm friggin tired and going to bed. but first, some random pics of the day.

yesterday's jam session in IMU's LT3

'toilet' Hong getting pinched

the new bassist, seng chye with his 'kerbau' bass

*kerbau means buffalo in bahasa malaysia

Are You Ready For ReadyBoost?

2007-04-02T17:25:00.000+08:00

this section will focus on thumbdrives that are capable of running ReadyBoost. it'll be updated from time to time as i obtain more thumbdrives from friends to test.

results posted are solely based on the reports that are generated by event viewer unless stated.

test setup:
a) any thumbdrive (readyboost capable or not)
b) complete format with default settings applied
c) tests are repeated a total of 3 times to get stable values

let's begin,
* O = compatible ; X = not compatible

1. 256 MB Apacer Handy Steno HN212 (2483 kB/s read ; 3795 kB/s write ; O)

2. 2 GB Kingston DataTraveler DT1/2GB (1616 kB/s write; X)

that's all for now. let me know if you guys wanna let me test your thumbdrives ya. :)

How My Mind Works.

2007-03-27T21:30:00.000+08:00

those who you who know me, would know that sometimes, my mind can come up with the most bizzare scenario or something that no one would have ever thought of. no matter how dumb, dirty, witty, etc it can be.

well, yesterday, i had some free time while attending dear dear's lecture. quarter way through i decided to write an essay from random stimulus from my surrounding. i poured out whatever my brain intercepted and interpreted onto the lecture theater's table.

this is me hard at work

this is the final piece. could have been longer but i ran out of time. don't know if you can read the whole essay so i'm posting it in case anyone's interested.

Rima Round The Roses, Pocket Full Of Posers.

2007-03-24T09:49:00.000+08:00

first, i'd like to introduce to you a girl who frequents the MUSA lounge. she normally wears pants...then again who doesn't. but she adds a unique styling to her pants. she thinks she's damn hip-hop or some trendy-super-lala-mui because she rolls one of her pant leg up to her knee! and she has been seen doing this on two occasions already. one with baggy jeans and another with those lala-mui type pants. i don't even know what the fuck it's called. so here she is, in a sea of more or less normal people, she shines like the hip-hop star she aspires to be.

should she strike back again with her awful fashion sense, i shall snap some photos and post it up her! buahahaha!

on another note, i guess orange shop is really closed down for good. i saw some welders removing the awnings from the orange shop premise. maybe that's what got them into trouble, the fact that the awnings were not approved or something. we'll have to wait and see. medan food court is still having really good business. and so is my favourite penang chap fan stall.

now we move on to the happenings of yesterday. i was supposed to arrive at fatty crab seafood for rima's birthday dinner but i ended up arriving at 7.30-ish. needless to say, most of the food was already eaten leaving only a few slices of toast bread, half a plate of fried rice, 2 sate sticks and some odds and ends of the crab itself. most of you should know that i eat really really slow. so, by the time i finished the fried rice, most of the remaining food had vanished. which is when kuan eng, who was seated next to me, decided to order more food!

there was an awkward pause as the sound of munching and breaking of crab shells had abruptly stopped. i was still finishing my fried rice and half a crab claw. then the food arrived. this time i grabbed as much as i could and put it on my plate, if not sure die one! anyway i was busy eating as much as i could if not i'll end up damn hungry...which i am actually at the moment i'm typing this. my breakfast is waiting downstairs for me. i digress. no pics from the dinner as you know with eating crab, comes dirty and messy fingers so no pictures of the wonderful dining table where 16 ppl; 14 imu, 1 nothingham and 1 monash had joined forces to make the most noise and occupy the most space on the 1st floor of fatty crab (fei hai! hahaha) restaurant in taman megah.

the bill was RM504.60. wah lau eh...food was alright but not worth it for me as i hardly had any food. my tally was 1 crab 2 bowls of fried rice, 1 stick of sate, 1 iced chinese tea. and i paid RM32.50 for that. sigh.

later van,hans and myself wanted to go to williams to chill out for abit, but the pai kia (rima) wanted A&W. so guess who won? birthday girl la! after much hesitation i headed for A&W. thought i would be one of the last to arrive this place, but turns out i was the 2nd one to arrive. the others took like 15 mins to reach. hans took a wrong turn by using 1utama route, don't even know how the hell he did that.

so we got enough tables and chairs for the 15 ppl strong party. "why 15, i thought got 16 one?" well, my good friend kuan eng had to go back home to his girlfriend because she was scolding him for being out until 10 pm! wtf!!! thank god my dear dear is wayyyyy more understanding than that. and i like the phrase vanessa used to describe the lot of IMU guys who had girlfriends, "the guys in IMU are ruled by the skirt," haha. nice one van.

since it was rima's bday, i decided to ask the manager of a&w to bring out their mascot for rima. embarrassed as she was, i went up and talked to the manager but he said you need to 'booking the bear first la'. so that plan failed. but, the manager did not disappoint as within a minute or so after speaking to him, he gave us alot of party hats and bear masks! rima was really speechless and kept on saying 'oh my god oh my god!' hahah.

after much persuasion, we managed to get the pai kia to put on the mask and hat to look like a proper pai kia,

and then we decided to have some fun with the masks. ala psycho killer style:

just imagine the sound when the killer approaches you like in the picutre, CHING CHING CHING!!! scary leh?

i have a video of rima giving her shocked face and telling me what her aspirations are, now that she's *ahem* "19" years "young". so if anyone wants the vid, just leave a comment with your email and i'll send it to you. it's about 2MB in 3gp format. i can't post it on youtube because i promised rima i wouldn't. but there are other ways. haha.

so, happy birthday rima the pai kia! :)

Guys Night Out.

2007-03-18T14:58:00.000+08:00

damn gay night la.

started at decanter in hartamas then after like an hour of talk kok-ing sern liang and myself persuaded hong to go to asia heritage row. he was like, oi meh, diu. haha.

so, me being the only sober one who drank nothing but mineral water as always, was the designated driver for the night. and so, 4 guys jumped into derek's kelisa and off we went to conquer kl.

we soon reached the clubbing district and as usual, faced a massive jam. so we continued to make fun of other drivers and i decided to get out of the car to stretch my back. yes, i did get out of the car while stuck in the jam. i contemplated to dance around the kelisa like a mad fool, but the traffic was about to move.

so we rolled a few feet and were at a standstill again. this time a cab full of ang moh chicks pulled up to my right. someone shouted ang moh chicks! so i turned to my right and one of them was looking in my direction and smiled at me, so the logical and un-malaysian thing to do was to smile and wave. she waved back. then everyone in the car was like "oooooooooo". wtf.

so we kept on rolling until after the shangri-la junction then it was smooth flowing. we cruised along asia heritage row (AHR) looking for a parking and as usual, i asked the guy to give us a cheaper parking rate. it's a good idea too because why should you pay RM10 to park when those so called 'jagas' don't even own the place! so you just ask them how much, they'll say RM10 then you go 'aiyo! cheaper la. RM5?' and the macha wll go 'ok ok' and bobbles his head while saying that. so we parked and went on to maison.

was forced to pay cover of RM35, and like i said, i took mineral water. so we walked around hunting for a table. we eventually found one about 10 feet from the dance floor and next to the bar. while we were head bobbing to music i turned around to suddenly see this eurasian chick standing on my left saying 'hi' in a very slurred tone that only drunk people have. ok la, it wasn't that bad la but she looked wasted, judging from the smeared mascara. so i just waved and said hi and she moved on to the dance floor. i looked at my mates and like wtf? oh well.

then we met zen. a very drunk zen that is. definitely not a zen in a zen like state. anyway he could hardly walk straight, his voice hoarse and eyes red. he rambled on and on about his birthday, opening 2 bottles and getting drunk (so pathetic), and he kept dissing my mineral water bottle! taking my bottle and shouting 'what is this! mineral water?!! tipsy!' then proceeded to smash the base of my bottle on our table several times before stopping to put it down and said 'sorry'. wtf man wtf!!! control yourself! if you can't drink, don't act all macho about it!

here's 2 pics of what being in a 'zen' like state looks like

pics don't do proper justice. i should've taking more. dammit.

so we proceeded to the dance floor. not packed as on a thursday night. man, thursday nights are good. anyway, we starting strutting out on the dance floor when sern liang got gatal and decided to dance with this tipsy/drunk/acting stupid chick who was doing apparently her version of a very bad tango. very bad. imagine incoherent ballroom dancing. her friend who was dancing with this other guy was no better. fuckers almost punched me while doing that hand twirling thing. knnccbk. sern liang got the full treatment, he had it all, a girl whom he was getting er, friendly with and she was grinding him. however, there's always a price to pay, he got uppercut so many times by her while she was grinding him. you see, she's shorter than ah liang by 1.5 heads so she'll randomly grind upwards banging her head against his face. it reached a point where he ad to go to the washroom to clean his glasses from all her oily stains! hahah!

he only managed to get her msn contact.

we decided to end the night at devi's corner in hartamas where we would collect our cars and head home.

that time would be around 4 a.m.

ps. derek 'dances' like a tree swaying back and forth during strong winds or a storm. haha.

I See A Dead Person.

2007-03-17T17:26:00.000+08:00

a few days back while driving home from uni. i noticed a police truck that had a few guys sitting at the back. so i was thinking it must've been those 'operasi' that they had and were headed back to the station but upon closer inspection, i noticed feet sticking out on the floor and further up in the truck was covered with black plastic. yes in malaysia we don't have proper body bags. we use garbage bag like material to transport our dead from the crime scene. talk about sloppy.

i wasn't shocked or grossed out. i just started to think about life. or more like death. when we die, we don't really give a shit about anything do we? assuming there's a God then we'll be judged and see if our final residing place is further than 6 feet below (hell) or somewhere in the skies apparently (heaven). but when we die, we don't care about anything. all past accomplishments mean nothing once you're dead. the only reason why there's such a big huu-haa once you die is because of the living people whom the deceased knew.

the living fuss about the dead. come to think of it, the living fuss about a lot of other things. a dead guy couldn't give a fuck if it was the end of the world! so you see, like that dead guy/gal being transported in the police truck, he/she couldn't give 99 fucks about what's happened/happening/going to happen. the only people who'll fuss, will be the living.

can you imagine? all the things that you've worked so hard in life suddenly becomes meaningless. money, love, friends among other things are of no significance. i'm guessing psychologically, this is why people are afraid to die. especially when they have a gun pointed to their head. the typical scenario would be the victim pleading not to pull the trigger, saying that they've got a wife and 3 hamsters, but when the trigger is pulled, does any of it matter anymore? true the family will suffer a terrible loss of a breadwinner (sole even) but to the dead guy with a hole in his head, do you think there is anything to worry about? the dead don't regret, period.

which is why, life itself is so precious. once you're dead you're dead. there's no coming back to do the stuff you've always dreamed of doing and all that crap. you just sleep an eternal sleep. which is why death if so beautiful. face the facts, people die. it's just the way things are. no point in talking at a funeral about stuff the deceased should have done in his life because it doesn't matter to the dead guy! and nothing you or anyone can say to change that fact.

i'm not looking forward to death anyway. i just accept the fact that it'll happen. dictated by probability and statistics my time will come and so will yours.

so live it. don't kill it.

You Want Lies With That?

2007-03-13T09:16:00.000+08:00

late last night i watched a movie called 'Fast Food Nation'.

it was gross as there were cows being slaughtered not the old fashion way. but by destructive modern day stainless steeled machines. and it was quite fucked up. you'd have to watch it to comprehend la.

the movie started out as a non-fiction novel written by eric schlosser. more details HERE
should you be more interested.

the movie i would say, might be biased and an attempt by PETA (people eating tasty animals) to promote all of us into becoming vegetarians.

well, i can't function without meat, so there.

to summarize the movie, our burgers have shit in them. i felt horrible for the mexicans who were crossing US borders to earn 10USD/hour but also facing the possibility of loosing an arm and a leg while working at such meat packing facilities. you can also educate yourself on how cows get turned into burger patties. and the process isn't fully explained until the end of the movie where they finally reveal, the 'kill floor'.

so, still wanna eat McDs? or any other processed meat products?

movie details HERE

300.

2007-03-11T21:19:00.000+08:00

his helmet was stifling, it narrowed his vision, and he must see far. his shield was heavy, it threw off his balance, and his target is far away.

that is the best line in the movie. what movie am i talking about? well, if you can't tell from the title of this post, well it's '300' the best movie thus far of 2007. i suggest you watch it and watch it again. because that's what i did, and beat, hans, vanessa and myself were freaking pumped up after the show!

it's purely a testosterone driven show with 2 hrs of non-stop in your face fighting/killing/slaughtering and all out war against the persian empire.

if any of you get a chance to read the graphic novel, you'd notice that zack snyder followed closely to the heart of the novel. almost all the lines from the movie were adapted from the novel even up to the detail of the arrow tips the persian army used. zack snyder, thumbs up to you man.

i'll be waiting impatiently for the original dvd to be released. and i'm also inspired to follow the exercise regiment used by the actors and stunt men for the move as much as i can. read about it HERE.

well the past week i had no connection to the digital world hence the lack of updates but anyway, you may have missed:

1. orange, pink and corner shop are currently closed down due to MPSJ. apparently they weren't operating with a valid license.

check this mofo out.

a disgruntled owner of orange shop

yay yay ada tong gas, yay yay ada tong gas!

by the time i got there, most of the shop was confiscated including water pipes!

well, i couldn't care much for orange and pink but corner shop! no more good wanton mee for awhile i hope.

2. a distasteful malaysian.

now to digress, look at this pic, see anything wrong with it?

if you noticed the guy has one pant leg shorter than the other then you're smart! it looks to me like this wasn't an accident but the fella had cut of a portion of his left pant leg. i guess it's that 'hip hop y'all' fashion sense...or is it nonsense?

3. bad sentence construction.

another thing malaysians are good at, poor sentence construcion. here's a very good example:

now, i have nothing against amoil, but the guy who came up with that tag line is obviously trying to hard to make a catchy sentence which actually ends up being so bad that i and my dear dear laughed our asses off. no offense to the guy wearing his company's t-shirt. for those of you who don't get the joke, what that sentence means is that they use old oil for future engines, which is totally daft! why would anyone want to do that? it should read, 'tomorrows oil for todays engine' ain't that right?

4. futuristic toilets.

another random pic. i was driving past bb plaza and i noticed a new futuristic toilet had popped up on the sidewalk! like those you'd find in australia with the fancy buttons i presume.

things i have missed:
1. pv and foo's drinking party
2. dear dear.

yeah, pretty much it for now.

F☺CK

2007-02-28T17:55:00.000+08:00

yup. you read the title right. but you're probably thinking i'm pissed off or something like that. well, you're wrong.

i just watched a documentary about the word 'fuck'. the show basically consists of video footages of various important people (VIP) who have said the word 'fuck'.

if you feel offended by the word 'fuck', then you'd better watch this movie.

here's the movie poster

click HERE for a better explanation on the show.

what are your thoughts on usage of words like 'fuck'?

and why do you find it offensive?

oh also, if none of you laughed during the entire movie at some of the comments they made, you're sad. i pity you.

Distasteful Malaysians

2007-02-27T20:40:00.000+08:00

this will be an ongoing series. i shall post my findings here. for all to comment. feel free to flame me for doing so, but i believe people should be aware of such distasteful occurrences in Malaysia.

honestly, if you can shed some light as to how something like that is pleasing to the eyes then please share it with me and the entire world because, as the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

i am no fashion critic or have fantastic fashion sense either as i believe in casual wear, such as jeans, t-shirt or polo-tee and a pair of either my favourite puma driving shoes or vans skateboarding shoes.

so, our first contestant shall be this proton wira that's been 'pimped', so to speak. let's take a look at what i think is wrong.

1. it has 2 spoilers. one which is for sedans and the other which is used on hatchbacks. now why would a sedan need a hatchback spoiler eh? better yet, why would a stock wira need a blardy spoiler! downforce and better cornering my ass.

2. it's got a NISMO sticker. NISMO tunes Nissans and i believe they do not make even a single part for any proton or honda or mitsubishi! i really don't understand these people. as a friend of mind said once, the logic is that each sticker from a popular tuning house (ie. JUN Auto, NISMO, TRD, RalliArt) adds 5 horsepower to your car! wow! what a perfect 'after market' part to spice up your vehicle eh? NOT!

3. faux proton perdana. it's like putting socks into your underpants to make it look like you've got a big schlong! it just doesn't work!

4. horrible paint job. there's orange peel from a bumper that obviously wasn't his original one. so i'm guessing he trashed his previous front end and ended up with that and got carried away with all the pointless bodykits and stickers that he's now got a hole in his wallet. assuming he has one.

5. projector headlights. now this would not be totally distasteful, but it looks like a rose among thorns if you ask me.

6. it is parked right in fornt of a pile of rubbish. which is what the car represents, rubbish.

so fellow readers, voice your opinion!

Uni-, Duo-, Tre-

2007-02-26T17:55:00.000+08:00

in case you're wondering, the title consists of numerical prefixes of latin origin which basically translates to 1, 2 and 3 in plain english.

'uni' because today is the first day of the rest of the 3rd year 2nd semester in mechanical engineering for me at monash.

'duo' because i could have refurbished my putra recaro sr seats at RM100 off the total price if i had a set (2 seats) to do so! but i already sold my driver's side to some malay dude a couple of months back. so i'll have to settle with a slightly higher price of RM450. at least it's original recaro fabric, foam and workmanship. will take 3 working days to complete. stay tuned in the next month or two for more updates on the seat.

'tre' because it's almost the 3rd freaking month of 2007. fast ain't it? i guess it's gonna be like 2006 which went by so quickly. soon, hans, foo sze, and vanessa would have left for their respective countries (japan and scotland) and i'll be the one left with my dear² flying the malaysian flag (gotta make a pic of myself doing that). so you see, 3rd month, 3 friends and last but not least, a few more months and it'll be 'beatnick's' 3rd year as a hard-ass crime fighting duo battling bad guys with tommy guns and travelling the world. and some other bullshit that you may want to put here: _____________________________________________________________________. well, that's that.

oh yeah, one lala post. i don't understand why lala girls have to wear totally opposite coloured underwear. take this pic i shot a few days back;

see what i mean? if the back is closed up, by all means wear whatever the fuck you want. but it's army camo green with a red bra! oh btw, a pic that i couldn't get was her bright yellow panties that were hanging out like a flag. i mean, come on, it's not attractive or a turn-on or any sort of thing that could give a hard-on. geez. kids nowadays. her father's (i presume) face has been mosaic-ed to protect his shameful visage. so girl in gong-xi-fa-cai red and yellow underwear if you're reading this, 'hong' (red) and 'wong' (yellow) underwear isn't gonna change your luck for 2007, deal with it.

note: didn't notice if she was wearing green socks, or else she'd look like a friggin traffic light!!! RED YELLOW GREEN!!!!

Cruelty Free?

2007-02-19T03:02:00.000+08:00

could someone tell me wtf does cruelty-free organic foodstuff means?

their range of products span from salts to drinks. so, does the cruelty-free in the poster boxed in red mean that they were produced in a way as to not be cruel to mother nature? the plant? or is it that they didn't employ slave drivers that crack whips at the workers to keep on working for minimal/no wages?

hmmm, you decide. it's a dumb advert if you ask me.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

2007-02-19T02:32:00.000+08:00

may a very prosperous new year begin (if it has not already begun) to one and all. umm, big big business, money come in, good luck...la di da. you know the drill. oh yeah, good health too.

which is why we started out with a family reunion dinner (dad's side) at the good ol' restaurant that none of my parents know including myself, which is why we call it 'len sen shop'. just like we have another good eating place called 'first shop' which is rightfully named because it's the first shop in a row of shop houses. so there.

calm before the storm

what we had (pls translate for me)

food food food good good good

and with that concludes CNY eve dinner. moving on the gong-xi-gong-xi day itself...

slept at 2.30am woke up at 9am to head over to grandma's place. fcking sleepy.
had lasagna and steamed vege mostly. cause it was gooooooood.

i can proudly say i know only 40% of the people in the 2 pictures above. the rest, i don't even know. if you're in the pic and you are the ones i don't know, don't feel bad. cause i really don't know you!

this would probably be the most interesting pic of all, the guy in the pic is mr/uncle latif...er sorry, Datuk Latif. he's the personal physician of the Sultan of Brunei! what up G! hahah. didn't talk to him, cause again, i don't know him and i don't really care.

oh yeah, and the most interesting thing a single person has said to me today at lunch was this:

(everyone's leaving now)
hippy-looking-uncle(HLU): see you ah tong, congrats on getting married (shakes hand)
uncle tong: thanks, see you tonight (shakes hand)
(HLU looks at me while shaking uncle tong's hand and says)
HLU: wah, he's got big hands eh, hope his wife has got big tits for him to grab!
me: o_O"...-_-" WtF? erm...ok....*snigger snigger chuckles to himself*
(they stop shaking hands, uncle tong also in a daze)

so yeah, the most 'WTF' moment of the day.

GONG XI FA CAI to all you pigs!!!

The Orgasmatron.

2007-02-13T13:10:00.000+08:00

yup, here it is for all to see. gives apparently the best head massage every, but so far, it only gives me goose pimples. thanks vanessa for letting us crash at your place for orgasmatronic fun. haha.

close up

licensed orgasmatron operator

Aged Cage.

2007-02-11T20:18:00.000+08:00

since we got ourselves new furniture, it was also Brandy's turn to get a new house, er cage.

her previous one lasted for about 5 years now. and has seen better days. the epoxy is coming off the cage and the tack welds have broken off. so instead of fixing it, might as well get a new and bigger one. since brandy's a big girl already.

hmm, wth is this.

so after about half an hour putting the cage together and making sure all the fasteners were torqued just right. oh and i had to do some alterations to the door latch as the fellas who welded the cage, forgot that metal would shrink after welding...so the end result is a latch that is so difficult to rotate and move around. got my handy metal filer, some heavy grit sandpaper and my rubber mallet.

and the owner of the cage ignores the eviction notice

after all that. the owner likes her new cage very much. she refused to leave it after a test run of her in the cage. had to drag her out of the cage so we could push the cage into it's proper place.

here's a before and after shot.

Lifestyles Of The Rich and Richer Still.

2007-02-10T22:48:00.000+08:00

just got back after a early reunion dinner on my mum's side. i tell you, the house is so friggin huge!

i won't say much but you can pretty much sum it all up by looking at this pic shot from outside the house (the house continues to the right)

and you know you've made it when your house has got one of these

there's a pool out front and 4 garages and like a gazzilion rooms in the house. they just shifted in (my relatives) like a few months back.

personally i think it's overkill. i mean 7 people in the family (mum, dad and 5 daughters) and 2 maids. gosh. madness.

on a side note, remember the sohai 2nd hand car dealer who took ages to renew my roadtax? here's a shot of the company. i shall not say anything else but one word. 'BAD'

Shan's Big Day Part Dos

2007-02-10T16:52:00.000+08:00

ah last night was a night of good food and wine tasting. went to 3rd Floor Restaurant. and i really mean the place is called the '3rd Floor Restaurant'.

we had red wine, white wine, champagne, and dessert wine. sweet like fuck man! so i stuck to champagne.

anyway pics do better justice of the night, so here's the pics in chronological order.

diva arrival meet and greet (hug) session

shan on a cam shooting spree

ev looks different, no?

hoo ha!

ladies in attendance

dinner menu

bguh!

terrorizing nipples

the dining area

hehe

cake and speech time

all in the family

end.

Shan's Big Day Part Uno.

2007-02-09T08:44:00.000+08:00

yup, i woke at 6.15am to send my dad to office. why you may ask? is nick being a good son, or is he trying to get more ang pow money from dad this chinese new year. well, the answer is neither (but i think good son is more like it).

here's why. 2 days ago i went to get my insurance and road tax done at Autobarn. lame name i know, but bear with me. this is the dealership where i got my putra from. and i have mixed feelings about the putra but that's a whole other story.

i went at about 11am to settle the payment for the road tax and insurance. after leaving that place for about an hour, kurnia insurance SMSed me confirmation that my insurance has been paid and that road tax renewal was possible. i thought to myself all is well. then came the end of that day and no phone call from auto-fucking-barn (AFB from now on).

i woke up the next day to call them and hopefully get the road tax before noon cause it expires on the 7th of February. after i called one of the bosses, he told me that it wasn't ready at all and that it was my fucking fault for going there at 2pm!!! WTF! he wasn't even there on the 6th and i went at 11am!!! ZOMFGCCBKNNCBKTNSSHPBCTMOFO!!! nvrm, they promised that it'll be done by the end of office hours. so fine. i waited and my dad agreed to pick it up on the way home.

however, once my dad reached home, he didn't have any road tax sticker. turns out, they didn't get it done yet because quote: "CIMB won't allow non-CIMB runners to take out the grant to do road tax. due to company merger" unquote. what the fucking hell man. so my dad gave the usual 'Laurence Super Power Megaphone Shouting Power Nine Dragon' treatment to the boss. and the boss said "wah, you pay us RM10 service charge and you expect us to get shouting like that form you?" lagi la piss my dad off. so he ka me ha me ha-ed them to the next dimension.

so that's that. i can't drive the putra. not until saturday. hopefully later today. then i can terrorize the streets of KL with the noise that my straight pipe makes. yup, i put it back on since JPJ has approved my 'mengubahsuai sistem ekzos'. haha!

here's two random pics that don't fit anywhere

and here's a pic for my friends and a very special someone. i'm not telling who, but i think you know pretty well!

I paid RM500 to get head!

2007-02-06T23:51:00.000+08:00

if you know me well enough, you'll notice that i purposely left an 'a' out in between 'get' and 'head' in order to make a lewd title that would grab your attention.

but yeah, it should read as 'I paid RM500 to get A head'. what head am i talking about? a 4G93T GSR cylinder head ofcourse! too bad i couldn't find the RS version. but that would be a more expensive head since it's so fucking rare.

good head

i think comments with hidden sexual interpretations are funny. and i have been hearing alot and also dishing out some of them myself. wanna know what else is funny? seeing hans trying to prove a point by washing dishes!

yup, he's proving that he's not a person who can't wash dishes before going off to scotland. hans, you're jist a heid banger!

Lulu Bar.

2007-02-06T03:58:00.000+08:00

got back about half an hour ago from lunar bar. can't really sleep yet cause i had 2 roti telur this mamak called pelita.

anyway, attended some IMU medic dude's bday, kah yen i think. yen or yong. can't really remember. cool people.

so i gave a lecture to uncle david about automotive and finance related stuff for a good 45 minutes. then my dear dear called. then spoke to her for a very very good half hour. :D then she had to sleep cause she needs to accompany the little one (egbert, her youngest bro) to school to buy some writing material.

basically, i'm the dull one at the party cause i didn't drink. at least it seemed that way. everyone else was drinking their pants off...as usual.

hans, azree and foo had some passion fruit cocktail thingy called, 'get your honey hot/high' or some ridiculous name like that. tasted alright.

waiting for drinks

passion fruit cocktail thingy

flaming couple, part I

part deux

the vending machine gets a flaming

from this

to this

when we were on the way to drop hans back, both of us heard the song 'walking on air' you know, the one that goes, 'believe it or not, aaaahhhhmmmmm! walking on air...' anyway, we had this vision of someone like michael j. fox from the 80s or 70s doing that graduation jump like this:

imagine him singing that song while doing that! so fcking hilarious man! so yeah, we decided that it'd be a great idea to shoot a photo of ourselves doing that. but alas, due to poor lighting and equipment, the best we could come up with was this:

ready?

believe it or not? i'm walkin' on air...(look at me, moving so fast camera couldn't catch)

yup. that's a detour to stupidity for abit. anyway it's freaking 4.34 in the morning. gotta sleep.

Post working activities.

2007-02-05T11:32:00.001+08:00

well yesterday (sunday) i had to go back to the office to finish testing of the solar demo rig. and was also supposed to eat spicy pan mee somewhere in chow kit.

so i hurried the testing and finished at around 3.40pm. called foo sze to schedule the pick up at IMU at vanessa's place. we reached there on schedule at around 4pm. when azree told us that the shop closes at 5pm!!! wtf! and we still needed to fetch paviter from taman midah and hansel from ampang and then fly to chow kit before 5!

so anyway, we headed out and reached PV's house at around 4.20pm. we rushed to hans place to pick him up at 4.45pm. and guess what? after our driver (foo) who drove like a mad person cursing all the 'blardy sunday drivers!' oh, and with the help of our BIG middle finger to whoever was behind

we managed to reach the pan mee place at 4.52pm! yeah, we got out of the land cruiser like proud amazing race winners who've made it to the last check point and it being a non elimination round.

somewhere in chow kit

here's kin kin restaurant!

the amazing race participants: (L-R) azree, reemah (hope i got her name right), vanessa, hansel, foo sze, paviter (not in pic).

the steps to eating spicy pan mee (my style)

1. get the plain old looking pan mee

2. put 6 spoons of 'gun powder'!

3. and if it's not enough, you'll still have plenty of 'ammo' left.

so yeah, overall, it's fucking grade AAAA stuff man. but not spicy enough. compared to the thailand clear tom yum that made me almost the chili god. haha. the shopkeeper and his workers were cool ppl. making random comments as we waited for our food. like when we ordered mineral water then someone asked for a glass of ice, and after he brought the ice he said 'drink from bottle, more feeling' and after he saw me loading up on the chili he said, 'we love our gun powder!' hahhah! damn random man.

the shops been there for ~25 years already and has been on 8TV's 'Ho Chiak!' apparently. and when you've got a good business, good food, appeared on tv, someone's bound to copy you. there's a shop directly opposite Kin Kin that follows the signboard and chili and everything! except it has air-con and doesn't taste as good (so says hansel). so to all those fakers and pirates out there who wanna ruin a good solid business, here's what the shopkeeper of Kin Kin wrote on their walls to inform their customers:

and our food odyssey didn't end there, we went for food at jalan alor later in the evening. ended the day on a relatively high note.

that's all for now. time to pay attention to my siew yok faan.

New Sofa.

2007-02-05T11:32:00.000+08:00

finally, after many years (7 i think), my parents have decided to move on into the future with one of them fancy L-shaped sofa sets.

we got this set from the LDP Furniture mall at a very low price of RM2700. cheaper than anything IKEA could offer for the same type of sofa.

anyway, enjoy the pics:

out with the old,

in with the new.

my dad modeling,

and finally,

well, it's really comfortable and if you want one, you can get it from:

though i doubt they'll take orders now since chinese new year's around the corner. waiting time ~2 weeks.

Mivec Throttle Body Swap.

2007-02-02T09:53:00.000+08:00

here's a short post regarding the recent throttle body swap that i've done. just for comparison sake.

notice that the 93P inlet although larger, tapers down to 54mm as it reaches the butterfly valve whereas the MIVEC one tapers to 60mm. and that makes all the difference.

still trying to get the idle rev back to around 800-1000 rpm. if an ecu reset doesn't fix it then i'll hae to adjust the TPS.

A Cut Above The Rest.

2007-02-01T23:57:00.000+08:00

the day started out good. i woke up late had roasted pork rice, went to sunway to buy a MIVEC doddle body (:P) and some other stuff which i can't really remember doing.

thenm eagerly i came home to clean the throttle body (TB for short) and decided to fix the thing. ok, so i started to remove the air filter and the old throttle body as what people would say 'out with the old and in with the new!' but beware! his doens't apply to parents you know? hahha.

anyway, while fitting the new one in, there's this hose clamp that's a real bitch to put back in place so i use the usual gripping tools like pliers and a vice grip to aid myself when suddenly the plier teeth slip from the clamp from all the pushing and woosh! there goes my hand. then i notice i got a cut. it's bleeding. it's bleeding real bad. i remove my latex gloves to find blood oozing out from the rather deep cut (~2 to 3mm deep). it didn't hurt. but i was like 'ah fuck, dammit Q^#*$%@#^%$&^&^!@&#^&@' that sorta thing. then i decided to go wash the wound.

even more blood came oozing out. then my mum came then my dad. while washing, i felt a pain in my stomach, like i wanted to take a crap sorta pain. i kneeled down, hand still under running water when suddenly, all sight was lost. i was not unconscious, i just couldn't see anything! it was pitch fucking dark i tell you! i told myself not to panic. rather difficult trying to convince yourself everything is alright at that point of timebut i did. then i kept talking to my dad, i told him that i can't see a thing. last could see were his hands waving across my face. now my eyes were wide open but i couldn't see a damn thing. pretty scary.

after 3-5 mins i still had no sight at all. i was still kneeling down infront of the sink. my dad decided to make me stand up and walk around the house. i did, and slowly my vision came back. first it was purple outlines and black fills. then gradually as i walked around, green came back, then blue. then the rest followed suit. as i relieved!

i had a splitting headache after that and it felt something like a mild hangover. went to the doctor to get the wound washed up and just to check up on my general health. he charged RM30!!! for cleaning the wound, antibiotics, painkiller, cream, and a swell reducing med. what a rip off!

doctor and everyone else agree that i went into a state of shock. but i thought ppl who go into shock usually feint right? i'm weird. anyway here's a pic of the wound filled with what i believe is savlon.

wound doesn't hurt. but as i type this, the rebound from typing is hurting it abit. like a bruised finger.

close up pics tmrw when i remove the bandage.

Internet woes over?

2007-01-31T10:28:00.000+08:00

hmm, is it just me or has the cables been fixed over in taiwan? should be la. cause the net is kinda faster than it was yesterday. and also on lowyat.net, a consortium promised to fixed the thing by 29th, so this means they're late anyway. :P

emule is still being an arse. damn slow still. but uploads are at max speed. been switching between the 60.x.x.x and 218.x.x.x ips but they don't seem to have a huge significance over each other.

anyway, like i said in the last post, i couldn't log in to photobucket but now i can! so here's some pics related to yesterday's post.

top secret solar demo rig (not so secret anymore huh?)

this is ah chan! the man who now looks like rambo with the scars on his face thanks to an exploding acrylic canister that almost blinded him and another co-worker. face not shown due to privacy matters. yeah, we bought 40 boxes of mandarin oranges (lokam) from tesco in puchong for the company's clients.

the stuff loaded into "sifu's" car:

well, today's my last day here. don't think i'll miss working in this place. but at least i do have some contacts to fabricators now! would really help in my quest for designing performance related parts for the putra. also, my technical knowledge has been given a boost since working here. i now know more about pipe fittings, BSP and all those jargons that you hear in hardware stores. sadly, didn't get to learn the lathe, milling or welding machine. only used the cut-off saw for steel and aluminum. oh well. my project still isn't complete yet. as of know, am still waiting for the angle display to be collected from the fabricator in sungei besi. and my supervisor says he'll collect it in the afternoon. and from what i hear, there'll be a jam since tmrw is thaipusam.

oh yeah, last night i managed to calibrate my speedo and my dad's fuel gauge. my speedo is now accurate by at least ±5 kph. here's how you calibrate it:

1. remove your meter cluster from the dashboard
2. carefully remove the clear plastic faceplate from the meter cluster via 6-7 tabs situated around the meter cluster itself
3. after the faceplate is removed, plug the meter back into the dashboard and remove the speedometer needle. be careful not to disturb other needles and do remove the speedo needle with care.
4. jack your car up until both/all driving wheels are off the ground (about 2-3 inches would suffice) and support it well.
5. clear all obstacles in front if possible. secure position of jack/jack stands
6. make sure you have a copy of what your speedometer should show based on RPM (thus assuming your RPM meter isn't busted) from here: Speed/RPM Calculator fill in your gear ratios and all the required info. now, you'll have to convert the values in the table to kph for easier reference. unless yours already reads in mph then good for you.
7. get back in your car holding the readings and now start the engine.
8. engage whatever gear you want. i did the calibration on 2nd gear at 4000 rpm. so aim for something with a lower rpm since your car vibrates the higher the rpm, so we don't want your car falling of the jack and hurling forwards right?
9. now, when you've reached a predetermined rpm, hold it at that rpm as steady as you can and insert the needle back into the speedometer making sure it's pointed at the intended (estimated) speed that you got from the table.
10. just to be sure, change gears and check the accuracy while in other gears.
11. if your aim is bad, then do it again.

disclaimer: i'm not responsible for the results that you might get with this method or steps mentioned. it worked for me, but may not work for you. so exercise caution. make sure you engage gears slowly and smoothly, you don't want the car to jerk violently.

yup, DIY tip of the day. saved me from shelling out money for a new speedometer.

Start the new year with a haircut, among other things

2007-01-30T14:52:00.000+08:00

ah.

this is it. i've finally stepped into the world of blogging. can't say it's awful. it's like talking to a wall really. until someone comes along and calls you crazy (or in the blogging world, submitting a comment). this isn't my first blog though cause i actually started one sometime early this month, so check it out HERE if you haven't already.

tomorrow will be the last day i work at Lotus Scientific. after 2 months of designing and fabrication work, my project is...still not complete! sigh. you'd think that after 2 months a simple solar energy demo rig would be complete. but no. i had to go through company red tape and practically bug the supervisor to let me go out and buy the items myself, since he's like doing a one-man-show thingy with a few other overdue projects. at least i got to test and confirm that my design works. although it takes a friggin 30 mins to heat tap water to 40ºC!

anyway, that's it for today, oh yeah and i had a haircut.

pics will be up in tmrws post as i have problems accessing photobucket.