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Chicken Heart!

I’ve been invited by the College Of Fine Arts to help get their Online Teaching Forum off the ground. Whilst I’ve founded and continue to run a few online forums, all of these communities are close to my heart which has made working on them (ie: getting into obsessive compulsive mode!) relatively easy and highly rewarding. Getting an online teaching forum off the ground is a little left of field but I consider it an honour to be asked to help out and I also consider it a huge challenge.

Today is day 1. I’ve got the keys tot he back-end (I’ve been hanging out in the Matrix all morning) and I’m already changing a few structural things (and yeah that purple has to go too).

If you’re a teacher, or know some, please join up and spread the word too. I’d really appreciate it (really!).

Visit: http://online.cofa.unsw.edu.au/forums

My MKV Golf is going down a familiar path…

A year ago my sister and Richie bought Christina and I a cooking class for our engagement gift. We lost the voucher but recently found it so we checked out the site and decided to book ourselves in! We decided to pay a little bit more to do a more substantial course, the one we chose was Seafood BBQ.

There were quite a lot of people present, about 40 or so. The first room was a little auditorium and the lady up front took 2 hours to cook all 6 dishes we were about to make (I was freaking out at this point).

Through the doors on the left we entered this room and were split into groups. Christina and I worked with a lovely old couple who had never made seafood before. Our group was also 1 man down.

We then moved into a room next door to eat the food we cooked.

I learnt SO much about preparing and cooking squid, prawns and fish. My only complaints are that 6 dishes was way too much to make in an hour. Since we were working in groups, the only way to get everything done was to split up tasks and what’s crap about that is that you never quite get to put a whole dish together by yourself.

I would have MUCH preferred having to make only 3 dishes and to do them all from start to end with just Christina alone (and not another 2 people in a group).

We both still had heaps of fun though and the food we cooked was great! We’ve still not bought a BBQ but hey it’s the best time right now to buy one cheap :)

A few years ago I did a stint with the boys at JDMyard. For good luck I bought a tiny Happy Plant which sat on my desk. Here’s the same plant a few years later, still at JDMyard but now it’s bloody huge! JDMyard is going strong, maybe it’s all got to do with the plant? I like to think so :)

Photos by Daniel McKenna.

Huuuuuuuuge JDMST meet yesterday despite the crap weather. Heaps of familiar faces, great vibe too. You can view a billion more photos here: http://forum.jdmstyletuning.com/showthread.php?t=25252

Some time ago I was coming up my street and I saw a Fox on the side of the road staring back at me. I stopped the car and freaked out for a second thinking it was some kind of sign, or something (yup I was tripping out). I’ve since seen it again but failed to get my camera out but last night I got him!

He doesn’t move like a dog but he’s bigger than a cat so he’s pretty easy to spot. He jumped up onto the roof of that garage, seeing how agile he was was awesome!

4 Pines micro-brewery in Manly.

Great branding, great beers.

Check the size of that pie (it was awesome!).

Last goodbyes.

Suga and I said goodbye to Renato the other night. Christina met Renato through working at Saatchi’s. He’s from Brazil and him and I got along from the get go (mentioning Sepultura sealed the deal!). A year ago we were invited to his wedding at Manly Beach, perhaps one of the most chilled out weddings I’ve ever attended.

We hit 4 Pines at Manly the night before they were leaving. So sad but all the more reason to visit Brazil one day!

The winners.

Drinking and clubbing on Friday night, Superlap on the Saturday and the VW Nationals on the Sunday!

Our new VW Golf forum took out 9 trophies. Quite awesome considering we only rocked up to just meet each other and hang out!

Here are a few select pics from the event, you can view more images here.

A little bit of Japan in Sydney.

Good buddies Felix and Garth.

My mate Brendan who flew in from Perth.

This morning I woke up foggy headed from last night’s attempt to keep up with Christina’s young friends. It was pissing down rain outside which was bad news for Superlap! I logged on the JDMST and reports were that it wasn’t raining out at Eastern Creek so Suga and I made our way there.

In the car on the way I was feeling pretty crappy (I’ve got no-one to blame but myself for drinking too much last night!). Once we got in there I needed to go to the toilet but we ran into so many people that it took me an hour before I finally got to go lol.

The weather held out (was chilly though). I got to catch up with a lot of mates and the amount of top spec machinery there was insane. I can’t help but wish that this event happened a few years ago when I was building the GT-R. I always wanted to have huge carbon diffusers and wings on my car but I didn’t go there in fear that people would laugh at me. Having a time attack event like this means you can go all out on the aero, all of a sudden there’s justification.

I’m so happy for the guys who did manage to put a car together to compete in the event. Some of these “backyard” jobs have walked away with insane times (half of it’s the car, the other half of it is that the gun drivers have big balls!) and it’s only going to get harder to impress each year from now so good on them for getting in there early.

You can view a billion more images of the event here:
http://forum.jdmstyletuning.com/showthread.php?t=25025