A couple of days ago, I had the chance to test drive the new Honda CR-Z.

The car belongs to Eric, a very good mate of mine and he’s had this hot hybrid hatch for just over a month. His other car is an R35.

In that time, he’s already added a Mugen bodykit, changed the whole exhaust system, switched the suspension and is now waiting on a Hondata ECU to arrive.

The interior of the car is pretty decent and very Star-Trekky … as is with all of Honda’s new cars.

I was super mesmerized but the center display. The speed display looks like is is “floating” and the red surround changes color depending on whether you are in Sport Mode (red) or Normal Mode (green)

The freaky thing about the car is that the engine turns off automatically when you come to a standstill. I know this is a feature on a lot of new cars now, but it’s still a little bit unsettling when you stop at a traffic light and everything goes quiet. One drawback of this is that the air-con compresser turns off aswell, so if you’re stuck at a light for a while, it might start to get a bit warm.

I drove the car all the way from downtown Georgetown up to the dam at Teluk Bahang so I could get a good impression of how it handled on all sorts of different roads.

Eric and I were laughing all the way up to the dam because no matter how hard I tried to make the tyres squeal, the CR-Z just stuck to the road and took everything I hurled at it. In fact, Eric kept screaming, “Faster! Faster!”

The CR-Z’s cornering limits are insane and far superior to that of most sportscars today and it handles even better than my Impreza!

Another thing that really surprised me was the braking ability of the car. When you brake hard, the front of the car does NOT dip at all and the brakes really bite. I mean REALLY bite. Weight balance is perfect and the car is just heaps of fun to drive. My only gripe is the 6500rpm redline. If is was 8000rpm … hmmmmmmmm

My conclusion:

You would be hard pressed to find a better handling car for RM115,000.

Buy one.

NOW.

Back in December, I had to buy some new hard disks to handle my work for Accenture.

I went straight to my favorite Mac reseller Epicenter at Pavilion to see what they had on offer.

The best bet seemed to be Western Digital’s range of external hard disks and I chose one that had Firewire 800.

I bought the My Passport Studio (below) first to see if it would be enough, but it turned out that I needed another one so then I bought the My Book Studio (above) as Epicenter was all out of the Passport when I went back a few days later.

I’m super superhappy with both hard disks. Not only are they ridiculously fast (FireWire 800 is about 30% faster than USB 2.0 - as tech journalists report), they are also beautiful to look at. Both have aluminium casings and the brushed metal finish looks the same as those on a MacBook. The build quality is amazing and both feel solid as a rock (though I’m not going to test them this way). The drives also come with WD’s SmartWare software, which has security functions and other nifty tools to help you get the most out of your hard disk.

Safe to say, I’m now a fan!

Seriously, once you’ve used a FireWire-equipped drive, you can’t use USB 2.0 (or less) again! Stuff that would take me an hour to transfer on USB now takes 10 minutes. It’s just ridiculous.

Here’s a short peek into the Shell Helix Invasion Tour party that was held at Sixty9ine in Penang on the 10th of December last year.

Organized by ZeroToHundred & What’s Good?

The awesome track I used in the video was made by none other than my good buddy Hideo Kobayashi.

Hope you enjoy it!

I’d like to wish all my family, friends, fans & loyal readers a healthy and happy Chinese New Year.

Maybe you be blessed with loads of dope swag in the coming Year of the Dragon!

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

MOST AWESOME DRIFT VIDEO EVER!

Can’t wait for Part 2!