Slightly over a decade ago, I bought my very first car, a used 1987 Honda Accord for US $1,700. That was equivalent to about 3 months worth of working part time for 20 hours per week on campus.
my faithful 1987 Honda Accord
I bought the car at Wichita, Kansas while visiting a friend and drove it all the way to St. Cloud, Minnesota. A journey of about 1,100 km that took about 12 hours.
With the same car, I drove alone from Minnesota to Washington DC to celebrate the Millenium New Year with a couple of friends. This time it was over 2000 km and 2 days driving (including sleep, eat, pee, etc), each way.
It was the type of stunt crazy college students do, but also a testament of the endurance the car.
Honda Civic Type-R FD2 for Merdeka Millenium Race
The picture above is the Honda Civic Type-R FD2, a bit of a far cry from my old 1987 Honda Accord but with the same engineering philosophy and a healthy dose of racing spirit behind it. This is the car Honda Malaysia Racing Team (HMRT) use to compete in the famed Merdeka Millenium Endurance Race (MME), one of the toughest racing event in Asia.
This year, the grueling 12-hour endurance race will be held on 5-8th August at Sepang International Circuit. This competition is about strategy, speed, stamina, team work, and of course, durability of the machine. Honda captures the experience from events like this to continuously improve on their offerings.
HMRT came up with 2nd place in class A (production car with engine exceeding 2000 cc) last year.
So, you might ask. Yah, and what’s this gotta do with me, especially since most of us aren’t exactly race car drivers. Well, there is a challenge Honda Malaysia cooked up.
Again, with all contests, the most important thing is the prizes, so lets get that out of the way:
- Grand Prize – 2 x Apple Macbook per team
- 2nd Prize – 2x iPhone 3GS per team
- 3rd Prize – 2x iPod Touch per team
- Consolation Prize – 28 Alpinestar Racing merchandise
The mechanics of the contest is also actually very fun, especially if you’re into racing and go-karting.
- To join, simply head to honda.com.my, register, answer 5 questions on the contest page and complete a slogan.
- Shortlisted participants get to choose a friend to form a team for Go-Kart Endurance Race on 7th August. 20 teams with most laps completed move to the final round
- Final race – 7th August 11pm to 8th August 12pm. The race will be revealed on MME Race Day, and winners announced on same day too.
It’s that simple, so are you up for the challenge? I think I’m gonna have to go do a few rounds of practice on the Go-Kart track.
KartQuest at MAEPS is now both my favorite and most tragic place for karting, more on this later.
I have been on go-kart less than a handful of occasions in my life. My very first experience was probably in Genting, which did not exactly leave me at all impressed. The karts were super slow and you could floor the accelerator all the way without spinning out or worried about hitting anything. That was some ten years ago.
hello my name is KY, I’m a karting hero
About 2-3 years ago, I went karting with Gareth and got to know Yee Hou at ELITE track. It was fun and competitive, but they were a little too strict and so we somehow did not do it again.
Then we discovered KartQuest, and already been there twice this month.
A total of 10 of us went the first time, with Jaclyn not driving cos it was “too hot” and she wasn’t prepared. I, however, brought my own helmet, wore long sleeve, proper shoes and all. We had a blast, and I also ended up with a huge blister on my right palm after 2 x 10 minute session of intense karting (RM 20 per session). We went all out speeding.
dree & gf, eric, damien, terence, horng, KY, galvin, amy
Last Sunday, Terence, Horng, Rachel, Kerol, Jaclyn, Eric, and I went there again. This time around I was a bit less prepared, no long sleeves, no proper shoes, and I was only wearing shorts. It turned out to be huge loads of fun, I think the guys gave us more than 10 mins per session.
Instead of going all out in speed, we were more towards nudging each other and trying to fish tail the person in front of us. There was quite a lot of almost unintentional accidents, and Horng even broke the tyre wall and created new route by himself.
Blackberry Bold the smartly escaped. meet the new N86 shattered edition
I ended up being the villain of the day by banging everyone else on the track, it was just so addictive and so fun!
But karma has a way of biting you back. I made the mistake of keeping the phones in my pocket while on the track.
They fell, and the Nokia N86 (where majority of the photos on this blog were taken with) probably got rolled over a couple times.
Amazingly, both phones still works 100%.
Who wants to go karting again maybe this weekend!?
XPAX Advert:
Some FAQ about the new XPAX plan
Why is it special?
The first prepaid plan to offer BEST RATES to 15pax across all networks. Voice at 12 sen/min and SMS at 1/2 sen (within celcom) and 6 sen to your 15 fav numbers
How about to other general numbers (those not in 15 chosen ones)?
Voice at 38 sen, SMS at 10 sen, and MMS at 35 sen to any network
To activate new Xpax plan if you’re already an Xpax user, just type MIG XPAX and send to 28882.
For more, go to Xpax FAQ page
