Monthly Archives: April 2009

We had last night’s JDMST EOMM at Fox Studios again, dinner at the Fox and Lion too.

The drift boys rocked up last night, their cars are so hardcore. I loved every single one of them. Stripped interiors, roll cages, zip ties to hold bumpers on and drift decals galore. I’m in awe that they get away with driving them on the streets.

I got so sick of the feeling of being pulled over and defected every time I saw a cop car when I used to drive my GT-R. So much so I got over driving it on the streets, but seeing the boys last night got me so excited about getting the GT-R back out and running. I’m inspired!

More pics from last night’s meet here.

Every now and then someone comes along and just changes everything because they’re so good at what they do. He’s a modern genius. Yes it’s all over the net. I saw it a week ago, but I just felt like watching it again today. It’s how I feel right now :)

My new top cap on the Fuji fixie.

Asaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhi.

And this nifty tool which mounts to the bottle cage mounts on the downtube. It also doubles as a bottle opener (see a theme here?!).

I’d been planning this for so long, and me having such a big mouth made it so hard to keep this under wraps but I’m glad to say I pulled it off!

For the past few months I’ve been screwing with Chrstina’s brain into thinking that there might be some doubt in our relationship, mean, I know, but I just wanted this to be a big surprise!

I first told Mum that I’d like to propose to Christina, she went ape. I then worked up the courage to ask Christinas parents. I think Christina’s Mum wears the pants in the family so I called her Mum about a month ago and told her I was in her area and would like to drop in for a chat in regards to Christina moving in to my place. Christina’s parents are traditional, and weren’t happy with the idea of her moving out so soon. I’m sure Rosemary was ready to let me know how she felt about it, but I admitted that I wasn’t really in the area at all. I lied (white lie! I’m sorry!) and that I wanted to ask her for her daughters hand in marriage. I was super nervous, she was teary and so happy :). The week after I had lunch with Rosemary and Tony and I got Tony’s blessing too. The only thing he had to say was that I should try to be more Chinese (!) which cracked me up.

They were both so happy that I was proposing, and more than happy for Christina to move in with me. That kinda fired me up a little. I made it really clear to them both that I was doing this for Christina and I, and not for them. Asking for Christina’s hand in marriage had nothing at all to make them happy about her moving in. They were cool with that though and it all works out great :)

That blue box.

Mum and Jamie helped me pick out a ring. Tiffany’s. I knew that already, but choosing a stone wasn’t as easy as I thought. Best thing was that Jamie was there to help me by being a ring model. In the end “internally flawless” sounded perfect to me. The smaller diamond looked great, proportionally to the ring but I had to get the bigger one. I just bit the bullet and went with it. :)

I wanted to propose on Christina’s B’day (27th April) and getting everyone to keep it quiet for the past month was always going to be the hardest part. My Mum was already telling relos overseas. Jamie and Richie were super cool, Rosemary and Tony had to keep it a secret from Christina’s younger sister Jess, that’s what I was most worried about!

We booked in to Altitude at the Shangri-La hotel for dinner. What I didn’t tell Christina was that I also booked in a hotel room with crazy harbour views (that was her pressie!). Yesterday I had butterflies in my stomach. I hardly slept the night before too. I think I took a one hour shower, then headed in to check-in and plan everything.

The view from the hotel room.

I put the ring in the hotel room safe. Spent some time looking out over the harbour and getting my nerves together then headed in to pick Christina up from work.

We had a cocktail, then dinner, which wasn’t as great as the view or service. I was trying my best to confuse Christina into thinking strange things about where we were going to go next, or what her B’day pressie was going to be. She was guessing a Ghost Tour, or absailing off the building (?!). I had her totally confused. After dinner I got her to close her eyes in the lift and when the doors opened we weren’t on the ground floor, but on the 15th :) I’d set up the room earlier that day with mood nighting (hehe) and wished her a Happy B’day.

Soon after I got down on one knee, presented the box and proposed. Chrstina’s eyes were popping out of her head and her jaw was on the floor (a funny face actually). Lots of laughter and she spent the next 20 minutes calling everyone, telling them off for not remembering her B’day, then telling them to sit down then dropping the news. I counted at least 50 “Oh My God’s”!

The ring.

The sun’s up!

So I was up late the other night and thought I’d screw around on Pedal ID. This is what I got to, a mock-up for the Fuji (see a few posts below). I love it! All I’d need is the green saddle and green grips as I already have a lot of riser bars to choose from. The green grips aren’t a problem as MC Cyclery stock them, but tracking down a green saddle of the same shape is going to be near impossible. I can settle for a green velo saddle in the meantime though.

Speaking of the awesome Pedal ID, these guys have basically ripped off the idea, though instead of bettering it, they’ve made it worse (less parts, less flexible, what’s the point?).

I had a few things planned today but once I started looking for bathroom fittings the whole day went out the window. Driving around from shop to shop wears me out pretty damn fast, staring at walls of toilet paper roll holders and trying your best to imagine them in your new bathroom/s (I have 2 to do), which is nothing more than an empty raw concrete room… it’s nearly impossible!

The bath tub above was the only thing that jumped out at me today. I liked it straight away. Especially the corner joints. I had a look at the price and almost fell over when I saw the $15,000 tag. Sigh, why do I have to like such nice things?

Just a couple of pics I rattled off this morning.

My budget banger Fuji Track whore bike (what better a way to get people into Fixed gear than to let them borrow one?!) is finished.

Lovely.

Vero crankset, MKS GR-9 pedals and Brooks toe clips. The oedals and clips are a bit rich for a ghetto build so I might take them off and replace them with something nastier.

Nitto bars came with the frame (so yummy). I had to use these Tektro cyclocross levers as the bars were too fat for normal BMX style levers.

Plastic chrome bar end caps finish her off nicely.

More details here

The guys on BMU started up a Tattoo thread which spurred me to reply:

I got my Tatt’s done in 1995 on April the 7th which was the day in between my fathers death (1 year after) and Kurt Cobains death.

I booked in to 2 Tattoo parlours that night. One was Mischief Moon and the other was The Illustrated Man. I started at Mishief Moon on Oxford Street. Happy was the Tattoo artist. His studio was super clean and cozy, not the type of studio where you pick something off the walls, more like the studios you see now on TV shows. He shut the shop for me, which was awesome. He also let me choose what music I wanted to have playing in the background (I chose the Stone Temple Pilots). Great conversation, great guy, amazing experience (he even counted me in!).

The feeling was a lot like putting a blade in your arm, then dragging it along. Looking at it hurt more than not looking at it and the cold antiseptic spray he used to wipe off the blod felt so good.

Happy gave me a care sheet and nice bandaging and I was off for a walk down to Central to get more tattoos at the Illustrated man, now this shop was a lot different. We’re talking the walk in and choose something off the wall type of shop. The guys were bikies and they had the footy on TV, they didn’t give a shit who I was, didn’t bother talking to me and they did a shocking job to boot. The only good part of the experience at The Illustrated Man was that my best friend Edwina, who I was totally in love with (sigh), sropped in for some support.

I wrote a visual diary in those days. I was super emo. This is my diary entry on April the 7th 1995 with the image I created to go with it:

epilogue number two

DIVINE

It’s the word I have tattooed into my left arm. It’s the seventh of April, the day in between the death of my father and the death of Kurt Cobain. It has been a year now, it feels like it has been a lot longer. I booked in to two tattoo parlours, one on Oxford street at six and one on Elizabeth street at nine. I got three tattoos done tonight. I feel numb now but the pain was nice. I think I love my tattoos more than anything in the world right now, just knowing their there is so satisfying, almost God damn exciting.

OK. It’s hard taking pics of your own Tatt’s but I’ve tried to:

My 1st tattoo. Yes it’s a symbol of biological waste. Kinda where my head was at, what I thought I was. It looked like a flower to me, and also represented a yin yang.

My 2nd tattoo. It’s been done so bad and gets worse and worse without even seeing much sun. It’s an MC Escher piece. 4 lizards (I love lizards). Again, also a yin yang to me.

My 3rd tattoo. I found strength and this was the word which defined where I was at a year after my father passed away. Henry Rollins had a song ” Divine Object Of Hatred”. Some of the lyrics go:

They’d kill to have me
They’d have to kill me
Their hatred’s pure, I am divine

When you kick me / When you rape me
When you burn me / When you break me
When you cut me / I am divine

This was my 4th tattoo, which was a fair bit after the 1st three. It was more because I felt an addiction for getting more ink done and it was an image which was up on Edwina’s wall throughout all the years I hung out with her. Again, it’s the yin yang to me. Happy did this one too. I was meant to go back in for a touch up but I never did go back in.

I finally got around to getting some rechargable AAA batteries for the GoPro wide camera yesterday. Took me a while as I had to specifically find some Sanyo eneloop ones which are apparently superior to other brands (cheers Jing!).

Low light this morning but I had to rattle off a few test shots:

Amazing how wide the lens is, it’s more like a fish eye.

It’s so wide that it even got my finger in the shot, my finger was nowhere near the lens!!!

I took these Kitchen shots for memories as I’m about to demolish the whole thing!