Melbourne 2015 - #yezmelb15

Earlier last month we all jumped on one of the first flights Saturday morning to head to Melbourne for the Labour Day long weekend. As with any trip, the days leading up to the departure date were spent planning what we would get up too and day dream of how much mischief we would get up to. We had it all planned out: go karts, ramen, film a porno in our hotel room, darts, ramen and visit the casino to enjoy throwing away money.


Obviously the plan I was most excited about was unsurprisingly, filming a porno in our hotel room. We stayed at Somerset on Elizabeth and we've stayed there before so we knew it would make the perfect backdrop for our first step into the porn adult film industry. First order of business (or first business of order as Kim would say): the title. We all know the title would make or break the whole film and we decided on "Exploring Melbourne's Alleys". The story of a Sydneysider's trip to Melbourne, meeting a girl named Alley in one of Melbourne's famous/hipster alley ways. Then it was back to the hotel room for the 2nd and 3rd act of the film, where I would fulfil my dream of being a director. Kim would be my assistant, leaving either Hieuy or Mowad (or both) to fill the role of the protagonist then we would have to find someone to fill the female (pun may or may not be intended) role for it to all come together.


Instead when we landed things didn't go to plan as we had hope. Fortunately no issues with airport security even though Kim has a history of getting pulled up every time. The troubles started at Europcar when we went to pick up our rental car for the weekend. Mowad's licence was due to expire on the final day of rental and Dean, the shiny forehead assistant, made shit difficult and refused to allow Mowad to rent the car. Instead I had to put it under my name and I was the designated driver for the trip, fucking great. We then met up with our honorary Yez member, Ying, for lunch at one of many hipster cafes in Melbourne. Within seconds of looking over the menu, the majority of us were just confused with the fancy names given to each dish but Mowad, the chosen one, was not impressed when he miserably said:

"This annoys me"

We all had a quick look at the menu and couldn't figure out what could be annoying Mowad so much he had to explicitly state it. After everyone else exchanged confused looks at each other, Mowad looks up and explains that the orientation of the double-sided menu was 'incorrect' according to conventional printing standards of Australia. We then all paused, after a moment of silence as we processed the revelation that Mowad has just dropped on us, we all just bursted out laughing. Less than an hour of arriving in Melbourne, Mowad was all ready to rage quit and claim his 72 virgins. It wasn't a good start to the trip for Mowad but hopefully things could only get better from here.




Although Mowad wasn't having too much luck I didn't lose hope and was still trying to tick everything off our 'To-Do List' for the trip. I stayed positive and later that day we hit up 2 kart tracks and ate ramen for dinner. Just like that 2 things got ticked off the list and we even dropped by Sandown Raceway for Skyline Nationals. The next day we hit up more karting tracks, ate even more ramen, played darts and threw money away at the casino. We were on a roll, this trip was turning around and I'm pretty sure Mowad was enjoying himself finally.


And before you know it, it was Monday morning, we were all sitting at yum cha and slowly getting ready to leave the wonderful city of Melbourne where the people are friendlier, the highways were more efficient, that kart places were better and the vibe was just so chilled. Definitely a place I'd love to move to one day if I get the chance. Oh by the way, we never got around to filming 'Exploring Melbourne's Alleys' as we got too caught up go karting, eating ramen and arguing over who would have to drive. I guess that'll be something we'll have to work on for our next trip.

#yezjapan14 - Buta-man, Egg Tarts and Karts

I was going to sit down and write a nice post about my most recent (1 year ago) trip to Japan and get all nostalgic and shit but I thought that might be a bit boring. Instead you'll just get me mainly posting up photos that I pulled off my iPhone after the trip.

Just like everything I do, I do it with good intentions and initially I had intended to have a mad blog post up, filled with photos and videos right when I got back so I could share it with everyone. But just like everything else I do, I leave it up to 'Future-Steven' to worry about and shit never gets done. Future-Steven is a bit shit like that but I'm sure he has good intentions. So now, me, Present-Steven, has to do it all.

If I were to sum up the trip in a few words it would be "A-fucking-mazing". It was my third (or fourth?) time back to Japan. I forget now but it's something along those lines and it was so much fun. Usually if you want to test friendships, the best thing to do is travel together and luckily for everyone, we didn't end up killing each other. We did come close though, at one point in the trip, Dave dropped a bomb at the Izakaya and we all nearly passed out then Hieuy tried breaking the land speed record with a Nissan Cube on the wangan on the way to Twin Ring Motegi or the other time when Hieu nearly stabbed us all after we tickled him in the elevator at the station. Now that I think about it, I think Hieu was trying to kill all of us during this trip. Does that mean we failed the friendship test or did he?

Anyway, I could sit here and tell you endless stories of the trip but I'll leave that for Future-Steven to do. In the mean time just chill to some of my favourite photos from the trip.














































Full album here.

Melbourne 2015

On an early Saturday morning our alarms went off and all we wanted to do was stay in bed but we couldn't. We had a flight to catch so we could spend the next few days in Melbourne for our seven year anniversary.

We arrived at the airport and went through the standard checkpoints for our flights without a hitch. An hour or so later and a pretty rough landing we were in Mexico! I mean Melbourne. It's been 4 years since we last visited and it was such a refreshing getaway.

I instantly fell in love with the place; the people, the shops, the atmosphere. It was just all so chilled and laid back, the complete opposite to Sydney. Honestly, I think Melbourne is the Osaka of Australia. I now am thinking of moving to Melbourne, we'll just have to wait and see if I can score a job down there and I think that's all it will take for me to make the move. But that's something Future-Steven can worry about.

For now just enjoy some of the photos I took when I was down there courtesy of my iPhone 4S.

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. 

Honda Collection Hall - Twin Ring Motegi

A few months ago we embarked on a journey to the land of the rising sun and one of the highlights from the trip was visiting the Honda Collection Hall at Twin Ring Motegi. I was being the ultimate fan boy marvelling over everything Honda from a super clean Honda City (accompanied with a Motocomp of course) with less than 100km on the odometer to Tsuchiya's JTGC NSX. It got even better when it transitioned to the Formula 1 section of the museum. I present to you my photos from the Honda Collection Hall.