Just the little things.

Finally got a funky keyring for my mazda keys. It's a mini led light in the shape of a fire extinguisher! *giggles*. First time i have ever actually went out specifically looking for a keyring for myself, quite odd and it's a lengthy process too.

Also new wristband/bracelet. I find that only the cheap string/cotton/beads work for me. Anything else is too heavy and will impair with anything i do or it will have a short lifespan. My bracelet that my sister got me from Greece finally tore so someone else made me this.

Yes, the little things can amuse me for a long time.

JDM car meet

Today i attended a jdm car meet for the first time. And gosh it was a big meet.

Turns out, this was one of their biggest meets ever because it was a combination of guys from jdm style tuning and the lowdown.com.
I brought the sp23, and to be honest i was a bit shy to bring it because it doesn't have any modifications and most importantly it ain't jdm, also I'm not an active member of the forums either. Despite that I'm glad i went. So many nice cars, the people seem friendly too.This car belongs to the guys at jdm yard and damn so minimal, i like!


Crazy stretched tires, i didn't think it was safe to do that.
Pictures are thanks to Matt.

Also, i missed on this mornings Appin ride. Quite sad that i missed it. Argh! I think my leggs are itching for a ride.

Segway

I saw something quite odd today. A segway on the back of a camry. I didn't think they made trailers for segways. Cool eh.? And super lazy perhaps?

Kate Perry - Teenage dream

I like this video!

Bwahaha this guy can look so ugly in some frames, but then in others he is actually not bad. lol!
All the music was done by vocals and i assume synthesised after. Quite cute.

Go mazda.

I can make a trip to Canberra and back plus more! Turns out i have i think a 50 liter tank. I used 45 liters so it works out to be 7.5 liters per 100. How good is that!

Stromlo revisited.

Since going down with a few guys a few weeks ago we were hooked and we had to go again soon! So while the girls went out to get their nails done i went out to ride the mountain.
3 degrees! It was that cold in the morning, crazy fog too!
Gah already made 2 blogs today, I'll let photos do the talking. Photos thanks to Matt
View from the top. ahhh....

Just having a small break before go go for epic downhill!
Jings Spitfire, nice looking bike apparently it doesn't ride as good as it looks. :(
Clifton had a bit of a mechanical mishap.
Getting shuttled to the top, also being asian. lol!

It was a great day, many falls, many spills. Clifton fell into a pile of thorns narrowly missing the big pile of mud. Trieu had a big fall into a pool of mud too, Matt legged it into a big puddle and Jing had a nice serve of karma after giving Clifton the finger. I hope his elbow is ok, lol.! I had a commando roll fall...going uphill ! lol


It was such a fun day, much laughs and much dirt too.

Canberra weekend!

So I slept fairly late the night before and considering the long drive i would be doing i decided instead of leaving at my preferred 7am, I woke up at 9 and left the house at about 11.
So two bikes packed up in my sp23 very neatly and square too! Quite proud of that too. It did take a little bit of effort and dismantling of the front wheels but it still left plenty of room for anything else. So one bike for Stromlo and one for Bel for her to get around ANU in.
Ok, about the bike. The bike was donated from Dave because he wanted to get rid of it and Bel wanted a bike to get around uni in. It was in great condition, all i did for her was change the tyres put a new rim strip in and lube the chain. Also since i was going down to Stromlo on Sunday what a perfect opportunity to deliver the bike to her a day early!
So picked up Joey and off we go to Canberra, with "Pudgy" which she brought to keep us company!
But before we left, i realised i had no spare tubes for Sunday so i stopped off at the local bike shop to pick one up. Realised this is the first time going there in about a year, they have changed management and the price of a tube is 10 bucks now. Not cool.
We had one stop at Goulburn maccas for a a coffee and then by the time we got down to ANU it was roughly 2 in the arvo. She was quite excited to see us and us to see her too. We just had a small lunch and chilled in her room, watching that disney animation "Up" and just drinking tea.

For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant called "La Scala". It was quite busy thankfully we made a booking. When we made our order though the waitress did say to us that they are super busy and wont be able to put our order in just yet and so the meals wont be ready for a long while. I was glad she told us in advance so i wouldn't get pissed off at the service but then again should this really happen?

I was also glad we got bread with balsamic vinegar and olive oil because that didn't need to go through the chefs, usually the balsamic vinegar and olive oil is served together in a small dipping bowl. Instead we got a small bottle of olive oil and a small bottle of balsamic vinegar and not even a dipping bowl to pour it in.
By not expecting our meals to come anytime soon, we just sat and chatted about random chit chat and by the time we did get our mains we had realised we had been sitting there for an whole hour. But it wasn't just us, i believe other people who got there earlier than us has been waiting for their meals a lot longer than us.
We got a chicken risotto which had some fancy name to it that i found hard pronouncing. And it was quite obvious that despite the delay in food they had rushed this dish, with the risotto being undercooked and not quite enjoyable. Although the creamy taste was quite nice, it was the only thing keeping me.Also a grilled chicken breast served with potato puree and salad. Chicken was cool, mash was nice but salad was poor. I got the fettuccine with napolitana and .... some funky word for deer meat. lol, anyway yes, carbs galore for me. It was nice to get cooked pasta and the sauce was quite light, contrast to the sauce that was in the risotto.

After dinner us three headed over to Bel's friend place to pick up a blow up mattress for me to sleep on and again we just sat and chatted about crap. I was secretly amused because his roommate left something hanging off his door handle and it was quite obvious he had a lady friend over.

After about midnight we went outside again and i got a chance to play with the poi again. It amused me to keep playing because i could see a lot of people were looking at me playing with fire. Even a lot of people in the uni lodge opened up their windows to look.

Hehe.

Rays 21st

Last Friday night was Ray's 21st/going away party. Rock up 2 hours and the party is in full swing, nice!The first thing i noticed when i walked in was a big giant pig getting spit roasted right in the middle of his back yard, mad!!!

First time seeing something like this but it was great! Honey coated ( I assume), slowly cooked, constantly spinning on the spit. Quite entertaining, tasty too!
Shame, i was going to Canberra the next day and had to drive early in the morning. So to have a safe trip i decided i shouldn't drink and go home early. I didn't drink, but i also didn't head home early. Despite the lack of alcohol i still had fun, I will miss Ray ( when he leaves that is), and it was nice to hear about his highschool shenanigans .

It was also gave me a chance to play with my poi! Hehe, oh so fun.

The wick, being a smaller one does not last as long as i would like but that is fine. I guess it means i can develop a routine that does not need length so it shouldn't be too much trouble. Also the length is perfect for me too!

Poor little trees

Poor Little Trees by Steven Burke

New poi!

This was such an impulse buy. But now i can finally say i have my own set of fire poi to play with. I hope i don't burn down someones house.

Car night!

Last night after work I went to Will's place so he can help me hoist up the car and show me how to change my oil and oil filter.I got there with maccas in hand and it turned out to be a car night with some boys. Clifton needed his regular corolla suspension changed over to its rightful sportivo springs/shocks. When i got there they had only just done front passenger side, apparently it took them close to 2 hours to get the first shox fitted. Damn car stuff must be confusing! But when i got there i helped out, everyone already knew what to do, so taking the old one out was pretty quick.
Clifton ripped out the interior of the car hoping that there would be time to do the rear shocks too, but he didn't think time would be on our side so that's for another night.

Then it was the sp23's turn! Oh gosh that put a lot of strain on my mentality. We thought that changing the oil would be best done on the ramps, but that's where the problems started. I couldn't get onto the ramps without scraping my bumper, I was petrified about driving onto the ramps fearing that i would go too far and over the ramps, destroying my underbody.
What had happened was my tyres were wet and so, rolling on (while burning my clutch!) the front driver side wheel rolled on fine but the passenger side slipped. This was where i was shitting myself thinking that the stand was going to slip and take out someones ankle. So we scrambled and quickly got a jack to lift it up to seat the front end of the car on these smalls hoists. Then i found there was a plastic guard protecting the underbelly of my car, how frustrating.
When the guard was taken off (which has slightly been chewed at from scraping it on driveways! ARGH!) and after much oo'ing and ahh'ing of my car, off goes the sump plug and out comes a very thick, black stream of oil.
This is my old oil filter.
And this is my new one. What a difference huh!?
After everything was drained and plugged up, in goes close to 5 liters of new oil! Crap, i never knew that an engine contained that much oil! But even pouring in new oil proved to have some difficulties, because the new oil was so clean it was so damn hard to see if i had put enough in or if i had put too much! We ended up thinking we put too much in, hoisted the car up again, drained a bit but in the end we put in about the same amount we took out. Doh!.

When that was all done it was about 2am. Gosh that took a long damn time just to change my oil. But good thing is now, i know what to do and hopefully it shouldn't be too hard next time.

Pictures.

I find this image somewhat captivating. It was taken on a SLR using film medium. And looking at this guys photo diary/album/photoblog "my little dead dick" I'm quite liking the the pictures alot more than what digital SLR's can produce.

Edit: Another photo

Cookie love.

Ryo's Noodles ,Crows Nest.

Just north of Sydney, right after the bridge lies this little ramen shop situated in almost the middle of nowhere. Despite it being a Tuesday night me and Nat got there at about 7pm, we still had to line up for about 5minutes wasn't too bad but i was surprised by how small this place was. It was barely big enough to fit about 25 people and it's quite impossible to avoid sharing a table, I personally don't mind but if your someone who does, be warned.
Then menu was quite small which i like by the way. It gives me less to choose from and less umming and ahhing about what I want to eat.
Nat got the Salt flavored pork soup with roast pork, shallots and sesame. Soup was quite thin but i found it a little bit too salty for me but Nat did prefer this over my bolonaise.
Gyoza, which is Nat's fav. This was nothing spectacular something average in taste but great in value!
And i got the Miso Bolognaise and a last minute decision on the Pork rice ball (pictured at the top). The pork rice ball was surprisingly great! So simple and plentiful on the seaweed which i just drool over and the rice had just the right amount of mush to hold itself together, but it was a little bit too big to take a bite in one go.
The Bolognaise was very filling, probably because of the rice ball before hand but nonetheless i struggled. Despite being called 'bolognaise' there was no sense of tomato bolognaise sauce in here. They're Japanese so i didn't expect it. By the time i got to the noodles, they had partly absorbed alot of water and almost clumped up, I quickly tossed it up mixing all the mince and shallots together evenly and it was great! Near the end of it i noticed a tiny bit of spice in it but it was bearable so it was ok.

Nice simple foods for a great prices. Not the best in the world but it has got me wondering when my next visit will be.

Picked up!

Bye bye Camry, I'll try not to forget about you!
Hello sp23!
I finally got to pick up my car today and just a little bit early too! I'm so glad i called up just before lunch, it gave me ample amounts of time to go to Neutral bay pick up the car and come back. Had a quiz at 10, finished at 11, called up realised all the rego and slips were done and me and will headed off to pick up my new car.
Again driving it at first was fine, no dramas! Except i stalled at the first set of lights because i was playing with the radio, hehe silly me.

Loving my new dash display. Notice how my datum for zero is not on the horizontal axis but instead at the bottom of the vertical. Well because of that I'm not quite use to it yet, i may think I'm doing 60 because I see the relative position of the needle but in actual fact I'm probably doing 80 ish, quite dangerous but I'm warming to it.
Oh and i specifically really wanted to get this car early because of the rego (that and I was eager to drive it). Today is the 9th i get 6 months rego, thus it expires on 9th of February. I really wanted to avoid the 14th because 14th Feb is my sister Susanne's birthday and I just didn't want anything to clash with that. I don't think she will ever know I planned that.

Axis of awesome - 4 cord song.

In the comment box. "pop music just got raped" lol !

Off to find each and everyone of those songs to listen to now.

My first car!

My first car! It's a 2007 Mazda 3 sp23. I have been on carsales.com.au for quite some time now and today was the day i finally made a decision. For these past two weeks i have been to numerous car dealerships to inspect any sp23 in a hatch that came along. I have been to dealerships that went from Kogarah, Penrith, Parramata road and my final destination was Neutral Bay.

I came across sp23's that came in a limited edition yellow, ones that struggled to start and others that have obviously been in an accident before. Also there were ones that were perfectly fine too! What appealed me to this one in Neutral Bay was its km's It has only done 19000kms! That's almost a brand new car!

The story goes, a lady bought the car new off the dealer requesting a 5 speed but someone fucked up and she got a 6 speed. She apparently thought she would be able to deal with it but in the end she really disliked the gear ratios and the constant gear changing. So she went to that dealer at the end of 2008 to trade in that car for the same exact car but in automatic. It's legit, i checked the log books and it had it's 20,000km service past mid 2008 and It's been sitting at that dealership for more than i year i assume.

I test drove it today, not to see if i like the feel of the car but it was more a check up on how the condition of the car was and it was perfect! I found it so odd that the dealer took me around the block once, got out and said i can test drive it myself. lol! Not too sure if that guy was a bit silly or super busy.

Now i haven't driven many manual cars in my life but i have and I'm not too confident. But when i sat inside, foot on the clutch, shift gear, accelerator and easy off the clutch. The car was surprisingly easy to drive! I didn't panic, i just took my time. Then when i got lost in the busy streets of Mosman/Neutral bay i just started to play around with the gear ratios because i too feared that i wouldn't like the 6 speed. But it was fine, something i can defiantly enjoy.

Pulled back into the dealership, got out and then observed the colour because that was one thing i was a bit taken back on. It was advertised as blue, but it's not it's more like a turquoise green/blue colour. More blue in the sun, dark green in the shade and probably poo green at night. lol But i really did like the idea of getting an almost brand new car! So we started talking.

The car was advertised at 25k and I was asking for 10k for the Camry trade in. John (the dealer) said I was asking for too much on the camry. Then we spoke about the number on the camry and the last i heard of it was the 8k-9k mark, then out of nowhere he shoots me an offer! I gave him a figure below that and he turned to me and asked "Did you say that so we can meet each other halfway?" ..... me "Yep", he cracked up instantly! Then done, the car is mine.

How easy was that! I was actually prepared to walk away from that car if it hadn't worked in my favor because i had about 3 other sp23's lined up. But for my first car buying experience it was fun! I was a bit nervous at first but now i don't know why i was in the first place.

So the camry is still at home and the sp23 is just waiting for rego and greenslips. So I should have it by next week!

Lion dance? no Tiger~!

So very strange..

Sex party vs Family first.

I think if that, if the lady representing Family First could let loose, she would of started a big punch on with the other lady. lol