Counting down

Only has a few pieces left: hood pins, windshield brackets, tail hatch latches and the big Quattro windshield decal. Very very close to getting it done.

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.

The team formerly known as Toleman/Benetton/Renault and the real deal

© LAT Photographic

Last weekend, we saw Kimi Raikkonen won the 2013 season opener in Australia with the team formerly known as Toleman/Benetton/Renault. I was sleep deprived. Malaysian GP will be on in a couple of days. Let's see if pretend to be Lotus can repeat!

Talking about Lotus, the MFH 1/43 Lotus 79 order came in today. So, I used up another unit of my 2013 quota. With the MFH kit, I actually have 2 full detail Lotus 79. On the left, the Tameo WCT version of Lotus 79, found that in auction last year or may be 2011. On the right, the brand new MFH Lotus 79.

Not sure when I will get to them, but I will definitely put these 2 together. May be I should build them into the 1978 Holland GP version where Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson finished 1-2.

Lazy

Got lazy again. All I did with this project was gluing 2 door handles. That's it. My progress is slower that glacial speed.

Australian GP will be held this weekend to kick off the 2013 season. In US, the broadcast right this season is switched to a cable channel that I have. So, I am getting ready to stay up late this weekend.

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.