Happy New Year and 1st World Problem

2014 Chinese New Year Firework at Chicago Navy Pier

Last night, I was watching TV at home. All of a sudden I heard something familiar. In the summer, every Wednesday and Saturday night, Navy Pier has fireworks. Since my place is close by, I can hear fireworks explode. Quick search on Google and found that Navy Pier is having fireworks for Chinese New Year! So, I grab my jacket, tread though all the snow and managed to catch a glimpse of it and shot the video with the phone. Didn't even have my gloves on and it was cold.

Growing up in Hong Kong, I got to celebrate 2 new years. The Gregorian Calendar new year usually is just an extra holiday to nurse the drinking at the New Year's Eve party. Chinese new year on the other hand was a big deal, with lots of family gatherings (i.e. Food) Living in U.S., celebration with family for me now is just a phone call to mom and text message to my brother wishing them a healthy and prosperous year ahead. I got the red packet lucky money (signifies good fortune) from mom back in Christmas when I was home. The only celebration I had this year was a dinner gathering with a couple of Chinese friends from Hong Kong and Singapore, and an American husband of one of the friends (he lived in Singapore for a while, and married a Singaporean, so he is practically Asian). My family had a tradition of having vegetarian meal on New Year's Day. Grandma's wisdom - she thought that with all the family, friend, business gathering, everyone would be eating to much meat and greasy food, so New Year's Day, no meat. We had this tradition as far as I can remember, even after she passed away. So, I also cooked a pot of vegetarian delight. My version is just whatever vegetable I can get from the supermarket and some tofu and bean threads.

So I wish every visitor of this blog a very prosperous, happy and healthy year ahead!

Now back to the 1st world problem. Modern technology, broadband internet connection in particular, allowed me to work from home. This is extremely nice when we are under the effect of the Polar Vortex. But in the past couple of days, the service provider had been having problem, I was forced to brave the cold and head to the office instead.

After 2 days of outage, it seems to be back now. Not a bad way to start a new year.

Good Old Days - My High School Years

I couldn't help but ordered these 1/12 scale classroom desks and chairs set from Hasegawa. Yes, it is the model airplane company and they do make things other than airplanes (or cars). They are intended for 1/12 scale figures.

Although I went to high school in Hong Kong, the classroom desks that I used to use were exactly like these. Since Hong Kong was following the British system, we have 6 years of primary school (elementary Grade 1 through 6). 5 years secondary school (combination of middle school and high school, grades 7 through 11). Then we have to take a public exam, kind of the equivalent of O-Level in UK. Upon passing that, you then can spend 2 years in University Preparation, equivalent to A-Level in UK, 12th and 13th grade.

After spending 6 years in the same school, you pretty much are not afraid of the teachers anymore. It was a different time. Looking back what we thought were crazy back then weren't outrageous at all. And what we considered as serious violations of the code of conduct are child's play in the eyes of kids nowadays.

Back then, in the name of learning English and learn about current affairs, the school kind of forced us to subscribe to an English newspaper. And the news paper gave each student subscriber a deck of vocabulary cards as a gift. We turned the vocabulary cards into a set of mahjong. When a teacher came in to the classroom and question why we were being noisy and what were we doing? We showed the teacher the vocabulary cards and told them that we were brushing up our English vocabulary.

Those were good times.

Escape

Enjoyed a couple of days of above freezing temperature in Tampa, Florida, even though it is for business, not for pleasure.

Now on my way back to the freezer a.k.a Chicago.

UPDATE:

Ugh~ Lots of white stuff on the ground welcoming me back.

"Heat Wave" hits Chicago

It was really really cold in Chicago in the past couple of days. Air temperature on Monday was -13°F (-25°C), and windchill was -40°F (-40°C). Chicago river, at least for the part that is connected to Lake Michigan, which normally don't freeze over was frozen.

Today it warmed back up to something closer to normal, 11°F (-12°C). It's amazing that how our bodies adjust. After a couple of sub zero (I am talking in °F, not °C), now single digit temperature actually feels warm. So, it is almost like a heat wave now that we are having temperature in the teens. 

I heard that this weekend we will be in the 30's (above freezing). I guess it is going to feel like it is summer!

The rest of the grid

People admire winners, they love champions. So, winning teams, cars, and drivers are popular and they have a lot of fans. For obvious reasons, model companies make kits of those cars. For the rest of the grid, not so much.
The rest of the grid is what make races interesting. And sometimes, fight among back marker are much more interesting than the front (it's boring to watch Vettle's Red Bull on pole and run away).
And I found some of the mid field or back marker cars quite good looking too.
I just stumbled upon this site called F1 Rejects, a celebration of the rest of the grid. Enjoy!

Looking back 2013

Found this little guy when I was at home in California. This was my starting point. I believe this was the first 1/43 car that I built. A Nissan Skyline GTR Nismo, a plastic kit from Rosso. (The first white metal 1/43 kit would be the BBR Ferrari F399).

Time really flies. We're less than a week away from 2014. What happened to 2013?

Completed Projects

Although the amount of travel I did was a lot less than in 2012, model building productivity did not improve. This year, I managed to finish only 2 kits:

Ferrari F1-90 (641/2) French GP 1990

Audi Quattro Monte Carlo Rally 1981

The Racing43 Audi kit was the first of many things. It's the first non-F1 model, the first non-Tameo kit completed for a while. Most importantly, the first time I participated in Ws43-san's 皆で作ろう会. It was especially fun to read about other participants' build process and learn from it. 

Kits Purchased

Just like almost everyone's new year's resolution, my self imposed 5 kits purchasing quota failed. The kits I bought this year included the following:

Formula Models

1968 McLaren M7A Belgian GP

MFH

1978 Lotus 79

Racing43

1981 Audi Quattro Monte Carlo Rally

Renaissance

1997 Gulf Racing McLaren F1 GTR Le Mans 24H

SRC

1984 Toleman TG183B

Starter

1983 Rothmans Porsche 956 Le Mans 24H

Tameo

1988 March 881 San Marino GP

1989 March CG891 Monaco GP

2006 Renault R26 British GP

2013 Red Bull Racing RB9 German GP

Way more than 5. Sigh...

Planning ahead, I should finish the CG901 first and then figure out what to do next.

2014 Let's Build 43

WS43 san just announced that the topic for 2014 is Mazda. I had fun building the Racing43 and read about other participants' build. (Really impressed by WS43 san's Porsche 911 build in just 1 week!)

As much as I want to participate again in 2014, I have a big problem. I do not have any 1/43 kit of Mazda. (I can count the non F1 kits that I have with just 1 hand). And there aren't a lot of options out there. Once in a while, there will be a 787B available. Other than that, pretty much nothing. And I would like something less common, such as the 1991 Mazda RX7 IMSA GTO. However, I have yet to come across such a kit. (3D printing and scratch build? Not sure I am ready to go down that road)

I'll keep looking and see what I can get in the next couple of months.

That means 1 of the 2014 quota will be a mazda kit (if I can find one).

If anyone knows of any 1/43 Mazda kit for sale, please let me know.

Cantonese Style Roast Pork Belly

Nothing much going on with the McLaren M7A build. But I tried something different - making Cantonese style roast pork belly. Unlike western roast pork, Cantonese style has crispy skin, and is usually served with hoi-sin sauce.

I was talking to a bunch of friends and the subject somehow was on roast pork belly. Then the next day, I went to the local Korean supermarket and saw these beautiful chunks of pork belly, so I just have to try making roast pork belly.

Boiled the pork belly for 10 minutes

Drained and dried it.

Marinated the meat side with a mixture of spices, rice wine, sugar... etc.

Marinated for a couple of hours, and soak the skin side with vinegar for a couple of hours. Rinsed the skin and dried it for a day. Then poked holes on the skin with a fork. Wrapped it in aluminum foil and packed salt over the skin side.

Put it in the oven and start roasting!

Took it out of the oven, scrape off the salt, and start poking holes on the skin with a fork again.

The next part is to crisp the skin. I switch to broil so the top flame of the oven crisped up the skin.

Pretty much done.

Diced it up and put it on the plate, it's done.

When postal service can do a better job than premium shipping

I am a big fan of Model Art Magazine's Auto Modeling series. So, when a new issue is released, I'll purchase a copy. I usually have 2 ways to buy. One is from Hobbylink Japan, the other is Amazon Japan. Hobbylink Japan uses International EMS to ship, which is much cheaper. However, a lot of time things got sold out and need to reorder. The other is the Japan arm of the global retail giant Amazon. Good thing about Amazon is the availability of things. But the down side is that for international order, they only ship using DHL which means shipping cost is crazy expensive.

Last week, I all of a sudden remembered that the newest issue of Auto Modeling should be out. Went to Hobbylink's site... bummer sold out and need to wait for them to restock. So I hopped over to Amazon Japan and ordered it. It's very typical Amazon, they have things so integrated that I was able to track the package with almost real time status.

Yesterday, according to DHL, the package was delivered. I was all excited but when I went home from work, I stop by the mail room to pick up the book, the said there wasn't any DHL delivery! Since I just moved, I thought, may be I did not update my shipping address. I checked the order detail, it's all updated. Called DHL, they said the air way bill also has my new address. What happened? Where is my magazine?

Then I looked at the delivery confirmation online, it was signed for by Rivera. The mailroom lady is Korean and there's no one named Rivera there. The only Rivera that I can think of is the girl in the mailroom of my old building a block away. So I ran over and knocked on the door. DHL managed to deliver the package to the wrong building even though the shipping label clearly has a different address on it!

I only had a few DHL shipment every year. It is very unlikely that the DHL driver would remember my name and associated me with the old building. Also, shouldn't a professional delivery person deliver packages according to the address shown on the label?

Despite all the things people say about US Postal Service, they have been doing a darn good job and the price is much more reasonable than these expensive premium shipping that charges people through the nose but provides service not even up to USPS standard.

Relocation's effect on purchasing decision

Part of the reason why I have not been posting was that I had been busy finding a new place to move to after the second time my current place got flooded. The deal was finally done and my workshop will be moving to a new home in the coming weeks.

I will leave the furnitures to the mover, but for the important stuff, I have to handle them myself. In the past 2 days I moved all my kits over to the new place. If I had not done that, I wouldn't have realized the number of kits that I have. Over 80!

Good enough reason to stop buying kits. Now I don't need any quota.

Won a race, lost my respect

Malaysian GP 2013 is in the books. We saw Vettel ignore team order, did not hold position after the last pit stop, pass Webber (who turned down the engine and was following the "agreed" strategy) and won the race.

2013 Quota minus 1

©Reuters

I promised myself to limit my 1/43 kit purchasing to 5 this year. By dividing 365 by 5, the answer is 73. On the average, I can only make one purchase every 73 days. Today is March 5, which is day 64 of year 2013. And I broke down and bought my first kit in 2013 (considering shipping, I probably won't get it before March 14, i.e. day 73). Last year, I had this idea of gathering the all the cars that won the driver's championship since 2000. For a long time, the only missing piece was 2006's Renault R26 driven by Fernando Alonso. There is one on the bay for a long time, but the seller's selling price and shipping charge is just too high. Then another one show up with free shipping and is the British GP version with the very cool looking tiger livery. So, I simply do not have any excuse not to buy it.

Disruption

CPVC pipe strikes back! No, my apartment was not flooded. According to the building engineer, lab test result forced them to replace all the remaining plastic sprinkler pipes ASAP. So last week the crew came into my apartment, cut dry walls and started pulling pipes out. That put my building on pause and that's why there wasn't any update last week.

New Year, New Cars

Today is New Year's Day of the lunar calendar. What's better than visiting the Chicago Auto Show?

The new Porsche Cayman

Lexus LFA Nürburgring

Chevrolet Corvette Stingray

SRT Viper

Jaguar F Type

Nissan GT-R Track

Aston Martin DBRS

McLaren MP4-12C

A nice old Chevrolet Camaro

High School, Manga/Comic, Baseball

I started reading manga since maybe around 1st grade. There's a monthly kids magazine that has Doraemon in it. Of course it was translated to Chinese, I didn't start learning Japanese until after college.

I started reading Adachi Mitsuru's あだち充 manga maybe around my first year in secondary school (7th grade in US System). It was because of his work Miyuki みゆき being published in a weekly manga magazine in Hong Kong. Unlike Japan, nobody play baseball in Hong Kong. So, there was no market for baseball manga such as Touch! タッチ. So it was not published until a TV station in Hong Kong started broadcasting the anime version of Touch! I was about maybe 11th grade or 12th grade at that time. I was watching the story of Kazuya 上杉和也, Tatsuya 上杉達也 and Minami 浅倉南 unfold, and learning the game of baseball at the same time. (That really helped me when I moved to US and watch MLB)
Recently, I came across a picture like the one above. Saw the Meisei 明青 uniform, two guys and a girl, very familiar composition, but it is not Touch! It's actually a new series call Mix. Baseball, Meisei High School, "Twin Brothers", brother and a sister with no blood relation... Isn't it a hybrid of Touch! and Miyuki? No wonder it is called Mix. I guess it will probably have the same old story line and nothing new.

The sad thing is Touch! was published twenty something years ago. I was a young high school kid back then. Now, I am just a middle aged dude. I still read manga, I still watch anime, and I still build models. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Today is Superbowl Sunday, no building today. Only Food, drink and TV is allowed.

Excuse

With all these noisy machines running and the mess in my apartment, I just needed to get away from the house. So I went to Marty and Mary's store to kill time on Saturday.

As usual, by the time I arrived, the military model gang were already there. Military model is the main business of the shop, and they have a wide variety of military kits, detailing parts, reference materials from every manufacturer. Besides military stuff, they have some really special car stuff. At least in the US, you almost never find any 1/43 scale kits in any store, so it is really rare that they have some Tameo, Provence Moulage, Renaissance and Starter stuff in stock. Moreover, they have Make Up (from Japan), Feeling 43, Profil 24 and a couple of 1/20 BBR resin kits. Since I was the only customer in store who appreciate these things, Mary was digging into the shelves and was showing me all sorts of kits, decals, transkits. Then she pulled out something which the clear plastic packaging has already turned yellow:

This is a 1/87 1996 Porsche GT1 from Le Mans Miniatures. The car that placed 2nd overall and 1st in class during its debut year. Once I saw it, I knew I must have it. I'll need a microscope to put it together.

Although I said I am limiting myself to buy only 5 kits in 2013, this is not in 1/43 scale so it does not count. This is the excuse I gave myself.

Flood on the 25th floor (updated with pictures)

No, it was not like a biblical flood that Lake Michigan's water level went up and the entire Chicago was under water.

Yesterday morning started out just like any other morning when I don't need to travel. I woke up, showered and head downstairs to get my cup of coffee. When I was waiting for the elevator, I heard the sound of water gushing behind the door to the electrical closet in the hallway. I thought, "That's not good."

Later, I found out that it happened again, this is the second time in 2 years that a water pipe broke and flooded the building. This time is 33rd floor. This time around, at least my carpet was not soaked. They found moisture behind the dry wall of my kitchen and bathroom. So, they have to pull the kitchen cabinets, the stove and the refrigerator out, poke holes in the wall, brought in an industrial size dehumidifier and a whole bunch of fans to dry it out.

Now, I don't have a kitchen to cook. My bathroom sink is blocked. And I have big noisy pieces of machines running 24 hours. At least, I do not have to be evacuated to a shelter.

This is going to further slow down my already slow pace of building my model cars. 

New year's resolution

In a previous post, I mentioned that one of my new year's resolution is to keep my 1/43 kit purchases in 2013 to 5 at most. So, I went on a buying spree before the end of 2013. LOL.

Liking MFH on Facebook is a mistake. As soon as they announced the release of Honda RA300, I preordered it through my dealer.

Same thing with the Red Bull Racing RB8, I have both versions ordered when Tameo announced he is releasing the kits.

When Ws43さん announced that the theme of this year is Racing43, I started looking. When I came across this 1981 Audi Quarttro, I acted right the way. With my ultra slow progress on the Ferrari, I will have to start building this guy right the way to have it completed before November.

The last one was a surprised find. I had a Provence Moulage 1995 Nissan Nismo GT-R LM No.23 which got a DNF. But in 1995, Nissan entered 2 cars to compete. The other car was No. 22, which actually finished 10th overall (5th in GT1). I came across this kit on eBay and I just know I must have it.

Regarding the quota for this year, MFH just announced it'll release a Lotus 79, and I've already preordered it. With that, I guess I can sell my Tameo WCT one. In that case, should that count against my quota?

Merry Christmas

Haven't been posting any update for the past couple of month since there wasn't anything to update. The Ferrari was untouched since the last time I place those decals on the body.

Really need to get my motivation back.

New year is around the corner. I suppose it is appropriate to start talking about new year's resolution. Model building-wise, here are my goals:

1. Keep 2013 buying to less than 5 kits (baby steps)
2. Finish the Ferrari
3. Build and complete the Racing43 1981 Audi Quarttro before November
4. Build 1 more kit, to be determined later

In 2012, I only managed to finish 2. The Simtek and the BAR. So, 2.5 is probably a quite realistic goal.

Anyway, today is 12/25. I wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

An Austrian & a German

Earlier today, Vettel won the Korean GP and took the lead in the very exciting driver's championship from Alonso.

The more exciting event happened in New Mexico. Felix Baumgarter jumped from more the edge of space, 24 miles from the ground and safely landed on the ground.