The Bachelor

This week has been pretty busy with all sorts of things, but I will touch on them in another post. This is about getting married. My birthday just came and went. This year ended up being the most uneventful of all. Seems like I was so busy with other things, that I didn’t do anything at all. To the point that I forgot it was my friend Andy’s bachelor party.

Now if it was a couple of years ago, I would have been much more hyped about it. But ever since I quit drinking, partying and strip clubs are not as exciting as they used to be. None the less, since I missed my cousin’s party and my friend Binh’s party, I had to make it out to this one. Especially for the fact that Andy is now my personal doctor.

I rushed back down just in time to make dinner. Then we went to Paul’s place to chill out a bit and let the food settle. A bit of drinking, some cards. Pretty tame. We then proceeded to the gentleman’s club. Here is were its supposed to get crazy right? WRONG! The guy ended up drinking on the way up in the car. After a couple of dances he went running for the bathroom. He spent more time in the bathroom than in the club.

Technically speaking, this is supposed to happen on your bachelor’s party. But after a night of debauchery. Not halfway through. Bummers buddy. Still a good time with all the boys. Next week… the Wedding.

Next time Champ, next time.

Wax on, wax off

I spent the last couple of days in Vegas for the International Esthetics, Cosmetics and Spa Conference… Alright, you must be thinking WTF right now. Honestly, I like cars a lot, but I don’t see it buying me a house at this point. Could selling beauty products buy me a house? Yeah, actually it probably can.

I went out there with the boys to help them push their wax line. This was the first time I have been to Vegas since I cut alcohol out of my life. Damn it! Vegas used to be so much fucking fun. Now it is pretty tame. Other than losing money playing cards and eating, we didn’t do much else. On the plus side, we were pretty focused on pushing product. The day goes by much easier when you aren’t hung over. Too bad the beauty industry is feeling the economical slow down as well. But not nearly as bad as the automotive industry.

Shameless plug: If anybody who reads this knows someone interested in depilatory wax or parrafin wax, or anyone that owns a beauty supply shop, please let me know.

Drift douche bags

I stopped by to see Dominic today and return some stuff I borrowed for a shoot. While there we were talking about, amongst other things, our blogs. I just checked his blog a minute ago and he has a rant about “Honda Guys” But I think this level of douche bag transcends makes and models. Since he gave me the green light, I am going to put this one on blast.

What is it with idiots into drifting thinking that stretched tires are so fucking cool. You know what stretched tires mean, that you don’t have any power to turn a tire that fits your rim. Or that you are an idiot that has no clue when it comes to picking the proper offset/ width rim for your car. You can choose either one.

You douche bags think you are so original, the low rider guys have been doing that for years. Go join them in their cruise. Because you obviously don’t have enough power to hang with anyone at the track. Here is a perfect example from a blog close to both of us.

You can see that if this car had proper camber, this wheel would never fit. On top of that, you can tell that they stretched the shit out of the tire to make it clear his fender. Put a proper tire to fit this rim and you will see exactly my correlation to a low-rider. Actually just the way it sits is very low-rider esque.

I have always had a special place in my heart for the S15. But this is like a hot girl with some really whack teeth. You would bang her, but the gangly teeth are just really annoying.

Blast Racing

Naoto and I was working on our Project KA24DE motor when we ran into a bit of a problem. We ended up needing to machine a part for the motor. There was the option to go back to my house to use the lathe there, but I didn’t have any bar stock small enough for what we needed. He decided to call Wakita-san at Blast to see if we could some of his material and his lathe. Since Naoto used to work for him, he gave us the green light.

Wakita-san always has cool projects going on at his shop. Since we came so late, we were in a bit of a rush to finish as they were trying not to stay late on a Saturday night. We eventually got the piece machined and had a nice chat with him about how things are going in our industry. Thank you Wakita-san and Kenny. Check out whats going on in their world at their blog: Blast Racing.

Training 2

Last week I rode the Amtrak Surfliner back from Oceanside to Irvine. Compared to the Metrolink, Amtrak is super shitty. To check tickets, the conductor hole punches your ticket. This creates pieces of confetti all over the floor and makes it look like someone had a party before you got on the train. The seats are also quite dirty and look pretty worn out. Which is a wonder to me as the train look really packed. If they are rolling at capacity, they should have the revenue to properly maintain the cars. All in all its about 3 out of 5.

What really made the ride unbearable were the idiots that sat directly if front of me.(the four people in the lower right corner.) Hey douche bag, riding the train is not an excuse to get drunk and act like you are at home or in your car. The idiots, the girl included, would laugh and yell at the top of their lungs. Look at the picture closer and you can see people trying to sleep all around them.  No wonder people in Europe hate Americans so much.

Week ends

Usually my weekends are filled with sleeping and eating… thats about it. But this weekend in particular was pretty fun filled. Friday after work, I headed out to Triumvir for Brandon’s bday party.  Again another interesting night with no alcohol.  Its been a couple weeks now and I honestly feel great with no drinking in my life.  Plus losing 15lbs helps my motivation as well.

I started my day on Saturday at this shop cleaning up and then met up with Jimmy and the boys. We made a trek into the wild 909 to watch Bao fight. It was a rematch against some dude he beat 2 years ago.

They both came out slugging and the guy caught Bao with a right cross on the button. We thought he was done for, but he clinched to the take down. Showing that he still had Jiu Jitsu game, he swept the guy into a kimura for the win. Good shit Bao!

On Sunday, I woke up late and just took it easy. Jimmy calls me up to ask me to go ride bikes at the beach. I honestly live like 5min from the ocean, but I can’t really remember the last time I was there. I was down for sure. We made our way from Goldenwest and PCH to Beach and PCH. It dawned upon me how I take for granted living in Orange County. Snow in the winter, beach in the summer, pretty girls everywhere. This place is awesome.

Its so JDM yo

Even though I recently moved into Kevin’s shop, I have still be making the trek down to my buddy Gabe’s shop in Oceanside, JDM Concepts. I have know this dude for 10 years. He used to be a customer at Dynamic Autosports when I used to work there(yes, I am proud to say that no matter what people think of North Koreans) and now a good friend. I have been giving him a hand on a couple cars he has down there. I like taking the trip down there because it gives me a chance to hang out with him and the infamous Filipino tickler, Aries Dizon. Yes the same five foot Filipino lover of Frelude infamy.

I was surprised to learn that there is a severe lack of tuning shops left in San Diego. But I guess those are the times we are living in: High gas prices, high car prices, high parts prices, cheap ass customers.
Hopefully I can get this FD3S out of his hair.

Man… these dudes are cool.

Needles

My buddy Thang kept bugging me about taking him to check out where Jasin works at. After a year, the guy was itching to get tattooed again. After a couple of weeks of bullshitting, I finally took him over to The Tattoo Gallery and got him an appointment. Being that Jasin has been booked out 3 weeks in advance, he actually made time to do Thang’s leg.

After talking it over, they decided on a koi. It starts from his knee and ends at his ankle on the outside of the leg. They only got through the line part of it but I am sure that guy will be back in soon to get the shading done.  Come to think of it, I need to get myself in there to finish up mine.

Training

When I was in Japan, my only mode of self transportation was either walking or the train. Even though I lived in the middle of no where, there was still a train about every hour throughout the day. It was definitely not like Tokyo where there is a train every 15min, but at least you can get where you wanted to in a decent amount of time.

Coming back home, I didn’t think I would ever have to ride a train again. But the other day, I had to go down to my buddy Gabe’s shop to help him out on a FD. Since I still don’t have a running car, I had my brother take me to the station in the morning so that I could catch the train down to Oceanside.

To my pleasant surprise, the train was really clean and new. I rode the Metrolink Orange County line from Tustin to Oceanside and it cost me 8.50 one direction. Honestly my initial image was that it would be old and smelly with bummy types everywhere.(SF BART esque) But it was mostly business people going to work. The only bad part about it is that there are so few trains. There are periods of 3-4 hours with no trains leaving at all. My returning train ended up being delayed in SD and by the time I returned to the station, it had already departed. Oh thanks to the retard working the counter telling me to come back too late. Bitch.

Overall, I would definitely ride the train again. I recommend all of you to try it, even if it is just for fun. You get a rad view of the South Orange County beach line and its air conditioned.

Glass Blast

The other day, we finished putting a newly built motor in a customer’s car. The battery ended up being dead from sitting too long so Kevin went to put another battery in. Just before he removed the battery, I rolled the window down half way so that I can hear him tell me to turn the engine over. I ended up getting out of the car to wait for the battery to be installed. We stand in front of the car as Kevin hooks the charger up to that next battery. He turns the charger on for a second and shuts it off. Just as the shuts it off, the driver side window EXPLODES. No hands on the car, out of no where just explodes. Here are the pictures. We figured it out after careful inspection. Can you?