Twenty Fifteen

Holy shit! It's 2015 already.

No point getting all sentimental but let's do a quick review of 2014 and look ahead into 2015.

Uni - It's no more, I graduated with two degrees and now it's all over. I do miss it, all the free time and how chilled it was. I don't miss being poor though so let's move onto employment.

Employment - Had a job, went on holidays then lost the job. I was unemployed for a bit but now I'm working at Eastern Creek Karts (closest thing to a dream job). Love every moment of it and it's the first time I've ever woken up and I actually look forward to going to work. But there's no progression/future there so I'll be applying for a few graduate positions that'll be opening up in 2015 and we'll see how that goes. Unless I can convince management to give me a permanent role there.

Kendo - It's also no more (for now). Decided to take a sabbatical from it. It was just getting a bit too much so I've pulled the plug on it and only time will tell if I get back into it or not. I really want to push for the 2018 WKC but I just don't have enough time to commit to it fully.

Cars - Kim's CRX has been resprayed with the EF8 front end swap, still no engine swap yet but it'll be getting one soon. No B16A here though, it'll just get a fresh D16A8 dropped and keep it running sweet as a daily. It also won Best Paint at JDM Yard's Honda Showoff thanks to Mowads' Smash in West Ryde. My CRX didn't get boosted in 2014 since I put it all on hold for a massive trip to Japan in October. But rest assured, it WILL get boosted this year, my ETA is 3 months from now. We still have our spare CRX sitting in our garage but I'm hoping to get rid of that soon so I can make more space in the garage to work on other shit.

Personal Projects - I managed to get Karts & Kebabs off the ground and we're finishing off our final round in February. We managed to get 8 competitors for the first series and it's been going great. 2015 will mean bigger and better things with more races and hopefully more competitors joining. I also plan on taking more photos this year, I hardly touched my camera last year so to get into the swing of things I recently purchased a couple of new lenses and attend more events this year. 

Twenty-Fourteen

Another year has passed already and only 7 posts from me haha, you know this has been a priority for me.

/sarcasm

Well it's time again to look back at 2013 and see what it's been like for me, I have to admit 2012 was pretty good and a bit hard to top but I think 2013 was just that little bit better. So here's a quick review of 2013 for me.

Uni - I had my First Last-Day which actually turned out to be my last first-day. That's right, I've finished studying and will be graduating in May next year. Yea yea! I was close to not finishing though, I failed a core subject by 5 marks but I was fortunate enough to have a generous lecturer who allowed me to sit a supplementary exam in which I passed with flying colours and by flying colours I mean a pass, 50 on the dot. Hey! As they say 'Ps gets degrees'. It was a bit anti-climatic but I can't complain, not many people get a second chance and I managed to make mine work in my favour. Oh I did get a distinction this year too! My first and only distinction and it was for an elective, Photography 2. It says a lot doesn't it. Sometimes I wonder why I study science too. So this will probably be my last post about uni until graduation rolls around next year.

Kendo - What can I say? My highlights would be going to Hong Kong for the Asian Zone Kendo Championship, my first international competition and it is one of the best kendo experiences I've had. Great company! I made great friendships from that trip. Next would be getting my shodan, so I'm a little fish in a big pond now and starting from the bottom again. Finally it would be the greatest moment in my kendo career to date and I think it'll be hard to top for a very long time, the 2013 Australian Uni Games. My first competition as a dan grade and even though I lost in the individuals I did not drop a match at all in the teams event and was nicknamed the 'ippon machine' haha. The best kendo I've ever played thanks to the coaching team and Fukuda Sensei. No victory has tasted as sweet as 2013 Uni Games. It puts a smile on my face every time I think about it. I was also awarded UTS' sporting scholarship, the Elite Athlete Program for kendo in 2013 and was again a recipient of a Half-Blues award, so close to Full Blues!

What's next? I don't know, life is starting to get in the way so I don't have much time for training. I was started the National Squad training for the World Kendo Championships in 2015 but that didn't last long due to study commitments. So I'm hoping to maintain my present level and get my life under control and try for the 2018 WKC so that gives me a few years to get back into it seriously.

Cars - Kim and I own 3 CRXs between us now, my EF10VE is still going strong and believe it or not but I didn't attend one track day this year, how disappointing but my sacrifices paid off as I focused on studying as much as I could. Since I've finished uni and have started full time employment (more on that soon), I'm getting straight into it and will be boosting my CRX in 2014. The parts collection has started and a lot of time has been spent researching online. For Kim's CRX we'll be dropping in a freshly rebuilt B16A and hopefully I don't have to trade a JDM SiR front for it, I'm hoping to get this done sooner rather than later as her CRX is blowing a lot of smoke. I have already installed a set of coilovers but no paint job this year, maybe she'll get lucky in 2014. As for the 3rd CRX, it can't be registered but it has a lot of goodies, so I'm hoping to transfer all of the good bits over to Kim's CRX then scrap it, I did have the idea to keep it and build a track-only CRX but I think 2 CRXs will be enough for now. I've been getting the urge to buy an S13 lately so we'll see what happens.

Personal shit - well my personal project for 2013 fell through, but another one started up without the intention of it doing so. There's a lot of things happening behind the scenes lately and we're still growing but keep an eye out for Honda Historics in the near future. Two members took home trophies from JDM Yard's Honda Showoff meet earlier this month so we're doing okay for now. Also I've decided to start something else up, let's hope this project gets off the ground and 2014 will be the year for me.

Employment - This is a new one! After finishing my last exam (before the supplementary) I got all excited and applied for a few graduate positions, around 5-6 in total. Didn't hear anything for about a month, during which I started working full-time at another call centre to make some money, then I received a call for an interview. It was interesting, my first real interview to become a NATA Certified Quality Control Agent working for a road paint company based in Ingleburn, which would have been perfect for me. It was close to home, good pay and I would be using my degree that took 7 years to get. The interview went well but unfortunately it wasn't me, got told I was no.2 from about 60-70 applicants and the only reason the other guy got the job was because he had experience by doing work placement during his degree. Well that's 0 for 1, but at least it felt good to know I was second best on my first interview. I'll be starting to look for a proper job again soon, just going with the flow right now as my current job is quite flexible and pays quite well and the work is relatively straight forward.

Fuck You

It's a love-hate kind of relationship but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Birthday Trackday

Another year has passed and I'm now 24 years old. Sounds gross, I know... Haha. It was the first year since I turned 18 that I didn't get piss drunk on my birthday. It was such a strange feeling, I didn't like it at all which means big plans for my birthday next year.


What I did get though was an awesome track day from Kim. As usual it meant long nights in the garage leading up to the trackday. But it was all worth it.


Early Thursday morning I skipped uni and made my way to Wakefield Park with some friends for the day. The weather was perfect and we escaped the heat in Sydney for the day. There were a few cars there that made things a bit dangerous at times with their driving. But I guess you always get the one or two who seem to ruin it for everyone else.


That didn't stop me from going all out though. I started off with a 1:18 in the first session then down to 1:16s half way through the day. With the help of Jimi Hendrix I got geed up for the final session and pumped out a 1:15.68. It was such a great feeling and an awesome birthday present for myself.


Thanks to Mowad, I even got it on video! 9:34 is the start of my PB lap.

Throwback Thursday - Mugen MR5 Caps

Back when I was living in Japan in 2010, these have got to be the best buy ever. All of the lug nut caps and centre caps for the Mugen MR5 wheels with the Mugen allen key and all in the original box too! Only Honda fanboys would understand.

Personal Best

Just over a month ago some close friends and I headed out to Wakefield Park for 2 fun days of circuit racing. It was a great 2 days, I met some new people and it was just good fun being able to hang with my close friends and girlfriend and just do what we love and that is to go fast.

It's the little things like this that I missed the most when I was in Japan, and it felt so good to be able to get 2 full days of just taking my car to its limits on the track. We didn't have timing as it was an open day but we had our trusty iPhones which took a bit of mucking around with to get right, it said I managed a mid 1:15 on day one which I knew was wrong. But on day 2 we managed to get all the settings right and the times were getting more accurate, with the help of video clarifying the lap we had just done too.

My new personal best is a 1:16.07 (previous PB was 1:17.9) and I could not have been happier with that time, not bad for a D series on street tyres at all. Now I'm itching to go back and go even faster with some adjustments to my car. I've been thinking about it a lot and I'm aiming to get into the 1:14s with a set of semi slicks and less petrol in the car. I've promised myself that I won't touch the engine until I get into the 1:14s, that and I don't have enough money to do so anyway.

EVO Nationals + JDMST EOMM

Last weekend was JDMST's meet held in conjunction with the EVO Nationals meet at Eastern Creek and it was a great day with a bit of everything for everyone. There were EVOs out all day on the track putting down some very fast lap times, then there were more EVOs on the skid pan providing some very good entertainment, then there was the Show 'n Shine with some very great cars on show.

Procrastination Post #150

What better time to write a blog post than when I'm supposed to get started on my report.

Well it's been a while hasn't it? (it feels like I've written that line quite a few times on this blog). But it has been a while, the last time I blogged it didn't really work for me, it felt awkward and unnatural at times but this time around I think I'm starting to find the groove again and I think I know why. It's thanks to the two week mid semester break that just finished, during which I got to relax from uni work and also get away from it all and it was a well deserved break considering I got thrown straight back into things after coming back from Japan.

Christmas Came Early

So I've been scouring Yahoo Auctions Japan every now and then recently something special came up and I snapped them up straight away as an early Christmas Present for myself.

When I was home

This is a quick run down of some of the things I got up to while I was home for nearly a month, they're not in any particular order. Also all the photos were taken with my iPhone 4 as well and I'm impressed.


Spent time at home playing with this Polaroid app on my iPhone. Generally just spending time at home felt so good.

CRX Australia's August Feature

Recently CRX Australia has gone through a complete overhaul of their forum and site and that included a new Feature CRX for their site and I was chosen for the feature. I was actually notified a while back but the forum took a while for all the changes to be made so it was only a few days ago now that the new site was up and running so it was great to see my car on their home page.

These photos were taken by my friend Oscar and I completed it by doing the post processing work, Oscar and I have shot a few cars together now and we work well together. A previous shoot we did was for our friend Henry and his Mitsubishi Mirage for the groundupgarage.com.

This just makes me miss my car that much more and I am also very proud to have a CRX that is worthy to be featured on CRX Australia. It just goes to show that you don't need a lot of money poured into your car but instead some good sense and direction of where you want your car to go and it's all the little things that sets it apart from all the other cars.

Anyways I think that's all from me, I don't want to bore you so to check out the rest of the feature's photos and Q&A at CRX Australia just click here.

Another CRX

Last weekend I decided to head to Nagoya to check out the World Cosplay Summit (WCS) which I'll have all the details for in the next post, but for now I would like to present to you the Tomica Limited Vintage Neo '85 CRX.


I scored this while waiting for some friends at Oasis 21 which is a large bus depot in Nagoya which also has quite a few shops around and it is also where the WCS was held. I was doing the usual rounds to all the stores which included the Tomica store and I've been holding out on buying something from there since nothing has really interested me.


Then to my surprise looking at the Limited Edition cabinet I saw that they had the CRX available. I was hoping they would have the '88 model so the same as my CRX but they only had the '85 model. It also had only been released a few days before I got to the store as well. They had two options available; white or grey and I chose the grey one and I'll be back to pick up the white one soon.

I think I'll be returning with a lot of CRX toys and a lot of toys for my CRX, although I have yet to do the latter. Hopefully that will change when I hit up Autobacs in Tokyo or find some wrecking yards to find some rare CRX parts. If anyone can help with this please let me know, I need to find locations of good wrecking yards and/or get in with the local car scene which seems pretty hard living in Gifu.

Good old CRX

Just going through some old photos of mine and saw this photo of my CRX with it's original bumper on before I changed it over to the face lift version. I was out with my friend Ivan and we were testing out the location for a future shoot but due to my noobness I forgot to charge the battery on my camera, so it died not long after this shot was taken. Never again would I leave my house without a full battery before a shoot.

My Farewell Cruise

This is a bit delayed but here are photos from my farewell cruise with members of CRXAustralia, JTYPE, JDMST, and HensPerformance.



The whole set can be viewed here.

Tomodachi Japanese Restaurant

Inspired by my friend's blog; Be The Foodie I decided to do a bit of food blogging myself. About a month ago now I was at Rhodes shopping centre with my girlfriend and we decided to grab some dinner after visiting a friend at concord hospital. We walked around the food court and saw a new restaurant opened, it was Japanese cuisine which we love although the people running the place were Korean, but we thought we'd give it a try anyway. It was called Tomodachi, the Japanese word for 'friend' and upon approaching the restaurant we noticed we had the choice of either Sushi Train or proper dining and we chose the latter since the Sushi Train seemed a bit expensive and we were getting hungry.

The menu lacked a lot of variety, maybe because we were used to eating at proper Japanese restaurants with a large variety of dishes. In the end we managed to find a few dishes that we liked, starting off with gyoza which is a type of fried dumpling and it was pretty good, although it was a bit more oily than other places we've had it.


Now every time that we've eaten at a Japanese restaurant we always have to order a dish that contained unagi (eel). There wasn't a proper main dish on the menu so we opted for the Unagi Bento Box, it was only unagi dish they had on the menu if I remembered correctly and the unagi wasn't too bad either although we only had a small portion of it.


For drinks I had none other than Sapporo Beer a great tasting beverage, I prefer this over Asahi which is another Japanese beer.


Japanese cuisine is known for its raw fish, so for our mains we of course ordered some Sashimi and also got a Sashimi Salad as well. Both these dishes were presented very well and also tasted very nice, the Sashimi offered us with a selection of salmon, tuna, kingfish and a couple of oysters. I was very please with this dish although they used a large slice of salmon that wrapped around the leaf decoration of the plate which I thought was edible, but after unwrapping it it did not seem like such a good idea to eat it which was a disappointment.


Next up is the Sashimi Salad, my eyes lit up as dish this came out. I'm a big fan of Tobkio (flying fish roe) and smack bang in the middle of the dish was a large scoop of it so I was dying to dig into this the moment it came out. It also had some thinly sliced salmon and kingfish sashimi in the dish and it tasted great, this hands down was my favourite dish of the night.


By the end of our meals we were pretty full and it was a pleasant experience, Pauly from Fat Pizza also sat next to us while he was having dinner with his son. No photos here since we wanted to let him have his privacy and eat in peace. All in all it was a nice place to eat although it was a bit expensive so I think it'll be a while before we come back.


Tomodachi @ Rhodes

Rhodes Shopping Centre
Level 1, Shop 74, Rider Boulevard
Rhodes NSW 2138

Phone (02) 9736 1764

EG What?!

Yes my thoughts exactly when I found out my friend was doing this conversion. This here is a very unique car and one of a kind in Australia, its been done before in the USA but hey we're in Australia so it doesn't matter what the yanks get up to. My friend has had this car for a while now and has kept it under wraps for quite a while by not attending meets and not telling anyone (not even me!) what was going on with his car. But when he had it all finished this is the end result. An EG civic front end on an EG2 CRX Del-Sol, and its either a love/hate relationship with this car. Some gather around this car in awe as they've never seen the conversion been done before whereas others just look at it in disgust. But I myself applaud my friend for being an individual and not caring what other thinks and going ahead with the conversion and not worry about what other people say or think about his car.

Now for this shot, I used flash photography for the first time by myself and boy did I found out how hard it was to get the settings and position of the flash right. I usually have my friend Andrew (ntranced) to help me out because it's his gear and he's done it a lot more times than I have but this time it was just me. My friend and I found a spot around Ingleburn's industrial area and then I got started, first off I went for a dead front on shot. I was having a bit of difficulty at first with getting both flashes to go off since only the right one was firing but not the other, after about 20min of playing around I figured that I had to turn the flash around so that it would be able to pick up the transmitter from the camera. I ended up with this as my final result for the first shot of the car, it's been cropped and as for processing wise I decided to clone out all the reflections. DO NOT ask me why, I just did, maybe a side effect of editing them in the early hours maybe, I don't know.



Next I moved the car so that I could get a side on shot, while the car was in the same position I moved around a bit and managed 2 shots;


the side on and


another angle

After a while I noticed that I didn't get any shots of the rear of the car so I tried and failed. I found that with flash photography that you need a background to shoot the car against otherwise it will just turn out dark like this following picture.



To end off the night I tried a few more angles and this one seemed to have worked well for me and I really liked this shot.



Now that I've gotten all that out of the way, I would like to thank Andrew 'ntranced' Nguyen for lending me his Nikon D80 and his SB600 Flash as well as Gabriel Ly who also lent me another SB600 and to my friend Tej for letting me be the first to take photos of his very unique car. Hopefully I get the chance to practice a bit more flash photography in the future and hopefully I'll get better at it.

Thanks again for reading my blog and be sure to leave your comments below.

Until next time, I wish you all a safe and happy festive season.

-Steven Le

My CRX shoot

Hey guys, as mentioned in my previous post I've done 2 shoots in the past week or so, so here's the 2nd of the 2. This time it a day shoot, and it was more of a last minute thing since I had just cleaned my car and I had some time to kill before I went out to meet some friends.

The location for this shoot was at a local ALDI carpark, the newest car park in my area which stood quite high above the ground and it had great lighting from what I've seen as I've scoped out the place a few times as I've driven past it and I have parked in it a few times also.

I was planning on using the advantages of the sunset as I find the colours are really warm at that particular time and I have seen some many great shots of cars done at that certain time by awesome photographers such as Chris Brasher's photos of the bikes and they came out awesome so I thought I'd give it a try also. But for me, I managed to get about 3 shots in when the sun was still out then suddenly it disappeared behind some dark clouds so it didn't go exactly as I planned, so maybe next time.

All in all I found that some of the pictures came out very nice, whereas others could have been better. Especially after posting the photos on www.jdmstyletuning.com and getting some very good feedback, I learnt that the background plays a very important part in eliminating distractions from the photo's and have the focus more on the car and sometimes it doesn't hurt to clone out some items in post production since my post production usually involved correcting the levels, contrast and brightness. I still have a long way to go but we all have to start somewhere, please leave both good and bad comments as I would like to learn from my mistakes and would always like to try new things. I think I might give painting with light a go next after reading Chris Brasher's blog on how he did Pak's S15.

OK enough for me now, I did have quite a bit to say this time so here is my favourite shot from the shoot.






As usual, the rest of the photo's can be found here

Thanks to my trusty assistant, Kim for moving my car around and getting some manual lessons at the same time and also help with my camera gear while I did the shoot.

Also thanks to those that view my blog and be sure to leave comments.

-Steven