water can save you, it can also drown you.

the advancement of technology can help the world or destroy it

the convenience of information saves time and the laziness of the user hinders

while the internet allows fast info to be disseminated, it also give rise to information overloading or misrepresentation

a series of information blunders, now needs to wait for the dust to settle.

Everything has an expiry date.

canned pineapples
library loans
road taxes
Our rides ...
even nike shoes, speaker cones and ntuc plastic bags.

When people say they will have certain things in their memory forever, they dun really mean "forever". There is an expiry to it too. As soon as we die, our memory will be gone with us. Unless we can do it like Total Recall where memory transfer and re-pets or re-humans are possible.

with the agreement thaty nothing is permanant. shouldn't we cherish everything we have? from friendship to material possessions to memories.

so should we also make the best of every minute we have?

let's live like there is no tomorrow!

no regrets.

Recently noticed that there are some folks out there who feels that just cos they have an early registration date or a change of car and they automatically think they belong to a class of people call "old bird".

I'd say this:

Who gives a shit about "old birds" if all the do is act cool, condemn and criticise when necessary but do little to help or take initiatives and has limited knowledge. Do they command respect just cos they are the first few to change car? So what if they change car first?

Recently, one such "old bird" asked me or hinted indirectly to me on what I have done to warrant my right to express my opinions openly?

While it is not my habit to count my contributions to those I call "friends". I guess I just wanna shut some gaps. Afterall, this is MY blog, myu personal space.

For those who remembered, there were hardly any meetupz for the ES group in the initial years (exclude the zone meets). We had our firdt meetup IC then. For those who consider themselves old bird, if you don't know who he is, then maybe you should do your homework first.

Went on a hiatus? That's pure excuse to me so do your homework!

Remember?

When we had our first window decal. followed by a second one?

Then the tradition of EVERY FRIDAY meets?

Then the tradition of location 2?

Then our first numbering system and sticker.

Then our first polo tee?

Then our own forum site?

Then the second polo tee?

I do not claim credit to all this. But for those who remember all this, they knwo the faces behind all these activities.

Need a school annual to remind you?

While I am not the least bothered by such folks, I will stress that I slso do not like to take things lying down.

I do things WITH MY FRIENDS. Am still having fun doing it. Don't need others to award me any points.

Does our love have an expiry date?
If it does have, I hope the expiry date is never

PS: I consider Lao Jio bo ah?

The day I got Dubster, he has already adopted a core concept - to be the dubster amongst jap rides. Although there are many areas that dubster had kinda fell short of his yankee homies, (like riding true dubs, chop tops, super black tints, branded upholstery etc), he has not lose sight of his core concept.

So it's time dubster move on to his next chapter of transformation.

The first chapter sees dubster going for the stealth street look. Smoked angel projectors, matt vinyls, CF wing, etc. All in all, dubster went thru about 5 transformations in its looks in chapter 1.

That's nuff for Year One. (Chapter 1 - "Year One")

the next chapter - Chapter 2 - "Phase Two" is gonna see a change in dubster's focus and attitude.

On the pipeline:
Vinyls, interior styling and lightings.

Pushing the button ...

Star of the Show

There is a star of the show in every situation.

At a neighborhood coffeeshop, the biggest star is the drink server. He would walk around, ask for orders, shout out the orders in his thunderous voice to the drink counter, serve the drinks, collect money, make small talks, disturb the kids, suggest horse racing tips, 4D laments, current affair discussion.

He is also the see all and hear all.

Even the best public speaker wouldn't have outshined him in his home turf cos they would not be as comfortable as he is in that setting and their topics would not be as heartlandish.

We can all be a star somewhere, sometime.

Exaggeration or what?

Can our ride do 220km/h? Can it even hit 200km/h?

If possible, what distance does it need to achive that speed? Some claim they hit 220km/h, but to me, it seems like a lot of bullz.

To hit 220km/h I estimate a distance of about 3 km of unobstructed road. It's easy to hit 100km/h, about 300 to 400 m for some. maybe less for some even. to hit 200km/h, I estimated a more than 1 km to 1.5 km. so to hit 220, you definitely need about 2km or more.

And, in an obstructed or moderate traffic situation, hitting 220km/h on a ES is .. should I say impossible..?

So you think sports cars are cool?
Andrew Tedman

Coming from Britain, I always had it in my head that the coolest people drove sports cars.
In order to be considered worthy by the opposite sex and indeed by one’s peer group it was necessary to have a hot hatch if under 25, a BMW M3 by the age of 40 and either a supercar or BMW M5 before you die. I spent a great deal of time trying to fathom how I could get into a suitable mode of transport in order to be taken seriously in life.

After some fathoming over a number of years, I never did achieve this goal. I simply couldn’t afford it. It wasn’t the car cost I was stumbling upon, as anyone could buy a ragged old GTI for about 10 quid but at 19 the insurance was about 5 million pounds.

Well I did get a hatch and it was hot if only for a few days in August. It was a very small, very feminine, very purple Ford KA. A cheap thing and the insurance was under a million pounds so it made for a great first car. My god that car was slow but she could handle the Great British Corner like, like, like a really rather good car.

Everyday I found myself working up steam before banzaiing mini roundabouts and country lanes like a disturbed mentalist. Ohhh how I must have looked like a total d******* but that car was unstoppable and anyone following me no doubt must have thought I was on crack.

The sad thing was of course that no one, except the informed few knew how good it was so pulling up at the pub on Sunday and slotting in between a token M3 and Elise was a bit of a non event.

Waxing lyrical about the KA was a bit like saying that your new Adidas were very comfortable, no one cared. This was all very frustrating, so it was with some relief that I departed from the land of the rising insurance cost to the land of the rising sun.

Nihongo(od)?

Japan is car crazy and what’s more Japanese cars only cost a fraction of their UK price, so it was with no little excitement that I set about to acquire my very first sports car. As a man of fairly limited means I wasn’t particularly fussy and had visions of a five year old WRX or such like.

This until a cursory look through a publication revealed that a Nissan 350z was only going to set me back 14,000 pounds BRAND NEW compared to 26,000 from Nissan UK. Most bizarrely at the time was the previous generation civic type R that was only made at Hondas British factory and thus exported to Japan, was still considerably cheaper here than it would cost my unsuspecting friends in England.

All this excitement was a little too much for a Ford KA driver and I spent the next few weeks scouring brochures and generally salivating at the mouth.

Around this time I started to feel blue and was gradually losing the will to live but I couldn’t place where the problem lay. Some time later when walking to my local convenience store, I noticed a new Subaru Impreza WRX burbling away in the car park. I like these cars and it was on my shopping list so I took a good look at the driver, as you do.

The driver in question was clearly a geek and I don’t mean that in the fun and innocent sense of the word. He was young, overweight (so are a lot of us), poorly dressed and looked very unlikely to have a girlfriend, or boyfriend as the case may be. Although it was too far to tell, he probably smelt funny and may have been a pervert.

It dawned on me at this instance, that this is what had been depressing me for some time. After continuously seeing these types of people alighting from their 350z, Type R`s and Evo etc I had come to the conclusion that sports cars aren’t the representation of cool that I had thought them to be, at least in Japan. This is all very different from the reality I was used to in the UK.

Here is the thing. The stylish people here drive family cars with automatic transmission and 7 seats, not because they have families but because they have friends and they like to go out together. Buying anything with less than 4 doors can appear a selfish indulgence and one may find their social position diminishing as a result.

It soon becomes clear to people that if you own a Mazda RX8, you are totally useless as a form of transport except for your selfish self, partner and two 3 foot friends. Imagine how respected the Estima (Previa) driving single man is, who can carry 7 people anywhere they wish in reclining swivel seat comfort. I think a lot of Japanese people take this to heart.

Of course these trendy family cars are pimped a little with huge alloys and sports exhausts and so on but by and large over here, currently a Mazda MPV has more street cred than a Nissan Skyline GTR with 500,000 horsepower.

Every time I mentioned to friends that I was contemplating the purchase of a very powerful Mitsubishi Evo, they frankly looked puzzled and reminded me that a people carrier would be about the same price, even though I don’t have children.

After weighing the options and realizing that the car was primarily for 2 people and I really don’t have a lot of friends, a people carrier was not required. However, not wanting to appear totally friendless or indeed socially awkward and not without a little pressure from my wife, I didn’t buy a 350z, RX8 etc. In fact I bought something very ordinary but more about that another time.

Naturally, I’m not referring to every Japanese performance car owner but just to a large group of people that really destroyed my image of fast cars.

Anyway I haven’t lost my love of performance machines and I don’t subject myself to following trends but it is refreshing to see a totally different take on automotive cool. Of course tastes change over time and Japan being a faddish market, surely sports cars will make a comeback.