Malaysian Vacation: Day 4

I’m grievously behind on these posts, but I had good reason to be.

You see, I’m a crap photographer.

And I knew that Anthony Tan and his crew from Image Foundation were taking photo and video of the event, and that eventually it would get posted on Bad Boy Ben’s blog and/or Conemaster’s Facebook page.

Anthony Tan. Rhymes with Man. ‘Cos he is The Man.

The photos and the video were posted.

I strongly encourage you to look at all of them.

Then I got bronchitis and spent a week trying not to breathe.

But now I have the time, energy and opportunity to blog about the highlight of the weekend. And luckily for all of us, I have some amazing photos and video to share.

I freely admit that I borrowed a lot of the photos here, but they’re all tagged, and they’re good enough that no one would ever think I took them anyway.

By Sunday (SUNDAY SUNDAY!!!), I was sunburnt inside and out.

Selamat datang ke Malaysia. Sila sentuh monyet saya.

The big day of Conemasters, I spent the vast majority of my time huddled under the announcer’s tent. Because I was red as a lobster and didn’t want to get worse, and I’m not young enough any more to get by on 3 hours sleep a night for several nights in a row.

I wore my SECURITY t-shirt and spent the driver’s orientation waiting for some sh*t to pop off.

“I wish a motherf@#$er would.”

But staying under the tent was a smart move, because I had a really good view of the proceedings.

And what proceedings they were.

As I have previously described, the course was laid out with two things in mind; challenging the drivers and entertaining the spectators. He succeeded on both counts.

I can’t really describe what it’s like to watch a gymkhana. I was lucky, because I at least had been a passenger on Friday night, so I knew what it was like to do this kind of thing from inside the car.

But watching it is something else entirely. I think part of it is seeing cars do something they’re essentially not intended to do. It’s also knowing that the driver has (almost) total control of the car even as it appears he has lost it.

There’s also an aesthetic component. There is something really beautiful and exciting about watching a car drift gracefully, and the longer it does it, the more amazing/awesome it is.

Here’s what I hope is a good example/primer. The fact that this car completes a truly perfect drift is self-evident not only visually, but in the response of the judges. Their honest, intense, and highly understandable reaction captures what is so great about watching a gymkhana:Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_CK94zCXsKI

The driver manages to hold the drift perfectly, seeming at one point to almost go off the road. But he doesn’t; he just gets cooler for not doing it. He holds that drift as solidly as most of us drive a car normally.

The longer someone does something that is not only beautiful but impossible, the more exciting it is. And I got to see a lot of that sort of thing at Conemasters.

Don’t believe me? Here’s video proof:Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8yz9u8aQFqk**At 6:26 the girl pooted.**

That video was shot by Image Foundation and edited by Ben Lo. It does a really good job of showing you what it was like there.

But being there was still better.

There were a lot of great drivers on hand, and watching them compete was a lot of fun. One of the challenges of gymkhana is that the more exciting you drive, the worse your time is. So there’s a balance to be struck between temporal efficiency and crowd pleasing.

Just like in porn.

So here’s a few photos of some of the participants.

I didn’t know this driver personally. But he always drove like a maniac and was really, really entertaining to watch. Note the negative camber on the front wheels.

Victor Liew drifted so smoothly it was like he was driving on Teflon. Note ‘sticker bomb’ detail on the lower front grille.

****

Jackson Foo’s Toyota got put through its paces, and we were all grateful. So were the people who sell replacement Toyota transmissions!

Remus Chang showed up on Sunday and  proceeded to tear the course a new @sshole.

Which I found kind of insulting since I thought I was the old @sshole.

Ben Lo made his Subaru do things it shouldn’t.

He’s good at that.

Seriously (?), his car is actually engineered to not lose traction. So making it lose traction requires extra effort and skill.

Someone asked me if this was my sponsor. I ate him.

David Chan deserves special mention. His green Toyota was a crowd favorite, if not for normal reasons.

On Saturday, he managed to knock over one of the trees that was used as marker.

“Kami akan kering ini dan asap.”

Naturally, that meant he became the Treemaster.

It was odd; I spent a couple hours Saturday walking around one of the biggest car shows in Malaysia but I could not for the life of me find one of these:

I figured it would make a good gag award. Sadly, I couldn’t find one. But it was just as well. As it turns out, defoliation was the least of David’s charms.

Near one of the other trees there was a fire hydrant. It was taller and skinnier than the ones we probably recognize, but it was still made out of a few hundred pounds of cast iron.  Everyone had been advised that they should (literally) steer clear of it. We even put up some barricades next to it to help remind people.

Do you really think David Chan was going to be dissuaded by such frivolity? Hell no!

Mengelak hydrants kebakaran adalah untuk pussies!

He drifted into the hydrant with a resounding BANG! It was awesome.

The barrier was completely destroyed, sandwiched as it was between cast iron and a f@#$ing car.

Here Anthony gives us some perspective:

The trunk wouldn’t open. Well, not without a crowbar.

Like a lot of drivers, David shredded tires:

Sunday was actually the day I had my only weird/scary experience in Malaysia.

I was taking a brief walk around the pit area, looking at the cars and watching the drivers and mechanics working on the cars.

I found it to be really interesting, and I really appreciated the chance to get right up next to these cars.

Suddenly, someone came up behind me and grabbed my left arm. They twisted it viciously, telling me that unless I did exactly as I was told, they would try to twist my arm clean off.

So I posed for this photo.

Mine are the biggest.

But only after having my arm twisted, I assureyou.

They were part of the promotional team for Sumo brand oil.

I didn’t know about Sumo oil before this trip. Let’s face it, if someone had asked me “You wanna take a photo with Sumo girls?” I’d have said “F@#$ no!”, assuming them to be female Sumo wrestlers.

Imagine Rosie O’Donnell in a diaper.

Yeah. Woof.

Luckily for me I was wrong.

I’d wrestle them. All at once. In oil. Bring it.

Late in the day, it started to rain.

Heavily.

Real Equatorial/Tropical/Malaysian rain. Where you need an umbrella and a snorkel.

Yeah, like that.

The competition had already finished, and we were just watching drivers run the course for fun. So the rain didn’t ruin anything.

In fact, it made it better.

Because these savages just kept on driving!

If you look closely, you can see a blur. That’s a car.

When they asked for volunteers to be passengers, I actually shouldered three people out of the way to get to the front of the line.

I was there from Hong Kong, so it’s to be expected.

I got to ride with Victor Liew and Remus Chang, whose car was so powerful that he drove the whole course in first gear. And still took second in his class. That car is a beast.

As much fun as drifting is, doing it in the midst of a downpour is even more fun. It was raining so hard that the windshield wipers were practically useless. Perfect conditions for driving really powerful cars in such a way that they lose traction.

Nothing says ‘living’ like potentially fatal activity.

Why is doing something wrong so much fun? I mean, I’m an educated man. I know wrong from right. I just wish I knew why things that should reasonably terrify (normal healthy) people pose an irresistible temptation for me.

Short of knowing, I’m content to stick with doing. It’s more fun.

It’s ridiculoushow much fun it is.

While we were splashing around the course, the judges were tabulating the results. The times were close, as Ben had wanted them to be, but there were clear winners.

We headed over to the main event tent for the awarding of the prizes. Thanks to the sponsor’s, and to Ben’s planning and generally high standards and procedures, each winner got a trophy as well as a pair of DC Shoes.

Ben hooks it up like that. I should know:

Yuvin had done an amazing job all weekend with the commentating, speaking English and Malay, all while breathing in a constant barrage of smoke and rubber particles.

So he deserves extra credit for managing to do such a good job at the end of the event. He was assisted by car model Amy Fay, the woman who tweaked my nipple two minutes after we met:

“Lihatlah payudara palsu yang tidak masuk akal!”

I was very glad to see Justin Cheah win his division. He had bought his car just for this event.

Holy high beams, Batman.

He had worked hard and studied hard, asking questions and, more importantly (and rarely) taking the advice people gave him. Some of those people ended up placing behind him, but they weren’t mad at all.

All in all, it was a fitting and totally apropos end to a fantastic weekend event. Conemasters kicked a lot of ass and established unchallenged dominance.

“Siapakah yang akan menguasai kon ini?”

But the night was not yet over. Ben brought a bunch of us to dinner at a hot pot restaurant. Like a lot of (most?) Malaysian eateries in Penang, it was open air. And the air was magnificent. I can’t get over (missing) how amazing the weather was. The cool breezes at night were almost enough to make me cry. The weather was thatnice.

After dinner, we returned to the Ixora and slept. We earned it.