This afternoon Tendy came over. Tendy’s a guy I met at Top One Automotive. He has a highly modified Golf GTI and I introduced myself as soon as I saw it. He’s now an active member on Christina’s Golf Forum and since then I’ve also designed a web site for Naroop, his olive oil company.

Today he handed me the keys to his GTI and boy was it fun. The excitement was building as soon as I sat in his R32 Recaro bucket seats. Not as grabby as real race buckets but a lot more grabby around the shoulders that the stock R32 seats in Suga’s car. I then noticed the aftermarket paddle shifters which are huge and have an interesting grippy texture to them. I started the car and a familiar Defi gauge intro sequence blinked to the right of my field of vision, awesome!

I was off and at the first corner I dabbed the brakes and realised they were as touchy as Suga’s R32 (these cars have way too much grab!). On my short but spirited drive I realised just how different the car was from Suga’s R32. The car was quiet but on shifts it made a damn loud and very pronounced “BRRAP” sound from the exhaust which sounded a lot like it was dumping a whole lot of fuel out the back on each shift! The shifts themselves were damn aggressive too, a lot like the MKVI GTI I test drove last week. I loved the way it shifted. Cornering felt very light like the MKVI GTI too. On parking the car the screen came on and showed me a video view out the back of the car with projected guide lines to help me park straight as well as nice and close to the gutter. A nice luxurious touch which I thought might have been more at home on the R32 than the GTI.

Overall I was just in awe and how different it felt to Suga’s R32 Golf. Surprising as they share the same chassis. Tendy’s GTI hits hard from 3000rpm. Got to love that turbo rush. Suga’s car is also peaky up the top but in a totally different way. Much smoother, much more linear, more refined and more luxury than sports.

I’m convinced a GTI is the way I want to go if I sell my Skyline. I’m also quite sure I’ll be getting a MKV GTI and not a MKVI as I was more than happy with the aggressive shifting on Tendy’s DSG GTI.

Naroop!

Brembos FTW.

RPRSNT!

Defi love.

The inside is a nice place to be.

So today was one of those days where Christina and I were stumped for something to do. Darling Harbour? We never go there, maybe there’s something on? Manly? Nah too much hassle. Bondi Beach Markets? Mmm, nah too cool for skool. Pub food? I feel like a Pie! Hmmm, which pub though?

It was a nice day so we ended up deciding to head to Centennial Park for lunch and some people watching. When we got there, there was a long queue to get into the park, we persisted though and parked at the top where we knew there was going to be parking. It turns out that there was an event on. “The Taste Of Sydney”. A Food Fair? Perfect!

A few minutes later we paid for the $30 entry fee (x2) and headed inside not knowing what to expect.

You had to buy “crowns” which was the currency you used to buy food and drinks.

The first thing we ate was a Seafood Paella which was yum yum.

Hey Matt! We then hit up Matt Moran’s Aria stand for his family lamb special.

Yeah it was juicy and yummy but it the bread and sauce weren’t great. Next!

Christina spotted someone with a pie and we hunted it down. Beef Cheek pie? Oh so so good.

We saved the best for last. Guillaume, the restaurant in the Opera House had a stall and were serving up Wagyu with Mash and they served it up with a plastic fork, no knife was needed as it was that damn soft. It was a lot like a perfect braised lamb shank. To braise meat of this quality is just so pimp. The people eating it around us were just blown away at how good it was. Killer!

A lot of stalls had food samples to give out, we tried a few things, here’s a dessert sample. At this stage we were full, and over it. We ran into Dave from Import Strings (Hi Dave!) who reminded me to watch the F1 tonight (awesome go Schumi!). Full and exhausted Christina and I headed home.

On Friday night Christina and I caught up with good friends Felix and Dianne who just got back from a trip to Malaysia. We had dinner at Toko in Surry Hills. I’ve had sushi at Toko’s sushi train in Paddington but didn’t know they also had a restaurant. Dianne suggested the place and since she runs Be The Foodie I was pretty sure the food was going to be great.

The restaurant is actually the same building as the old MG Garage Cafe (which was over the top but great) and after the MG Garage it was Neil Perry’s XO restaurant. The decor has totally changed and the night club style vibe, with Sydney’s beautiful people, cocktails, shared tables and pumping music was pretty much perfect for the location and food on offer.

HOT Ducati spotted on the street outside of the restaurant.

Toko don’t offer bookings so we got there early and had a drink outside before the restaurant opened.

Felix and Dianne. Being a food blogger means the camera’s always out!

Edamame, always a great starter. Warm this time too.

The presentation of the food was awesome.

Sushi.

Since we got to Toko early we also finished off dinner early so Di and Felix came around to check out the house renovations and since they’re getting married later this year we had lots of stuff to talk about. As nice as dinner catch-ups are I think there’s nothing quite as awesome as having good friends over to your own home.

Today we were lucky enough to have Photographer Kevin Yiu shoot Suga’s R32 Golf at a secret location (thanks to pro photographer Chris Brasher for sharing his secret location).

It was an early start and a long shoot but we’re sure the results will be worth it! I snapped these behind the scenes shots to share (processed shots from Kevin to come).

On the way home we dropped into VW Village in Kensington. I used to live in Kenso as a kid and these guys have been operating here for over 20 years. We hit George (the owner) up for sponsorship of Christina’s new VW Golf forum and after a bit of a chat he was more than happy to give it a go and give us a helping hand.

SUGA got a detail job today in preparation for a photoshoot this weekend. Dave from Reflect Effect spent 5hours straight on cleaning her car (I would have given up 30 minutes in!). The results are insane. More here.

Shallot Pancakes, always an awesome starter. They smell so good and get your taste buds going.

Instead of normal duck for peking duck we often order the deep friend duck which is fried so dry that you can eat all the bones.

His shredded beef is hands down the best shredded beef in Sydney. It’s super crispy! His “San Tung chicken” is what he’s famous for though and I couldn’t get a pic of that as it was devoured before I got the chance!

His handmade noodles are awesome too.

Still my fave Chinese Restaurant in Sydney (yes you must go there). My family has been following this guy around Sydney since I was a little kid. Peter, the owner still comes out to rub my beard for good luck every time I visit.

I founded INfront (an Australian design community) in 1999 and we ran a project called “Visual Response” (created by Domenico Bartolo) for many years. We basically gave people an inspirational word and they took that word and created an artwork from it. The main challenge was that they had to create it without the use of photographs or scans (ie: They had to just use Illustrator or Photoshop).

For many years VR stopped running until today and what’s more we’ve now decided to allow photography and scans!

I know many of you reading this are creative (who isn’t?!) and I hope you guys consider submitting an entry to the 1st VR on the new INfront site. It’s free to enter and there are some awesome prizes up for grabs too (more on this soon!).

The theme for this VR is “2010” and you can interpret that in any way you see fit. More details on INfront:

Visit: www.australianinfront.com.au/involved

Mark’s site is now live! Full screen, full impact, got to love that.

Visit:
http://www.markpakula.com

One of the younger VWGolf forum members Devin came around tonight to collect a sticker and he whacked his one straight on his VR6, here are a few pics I rattled off!

What the?! Attention Whore!

Christina cleaned the glass with some glass cleaner and paper towel and Devin just whacked it on true MK3 pimp stylez yo! :cool:

Ah sunset. I love this light :)

Lappy got done too!