Taipei, Taiwan 2009

by Eric Hsu

What to do, where to go, what I did, and as usual, my opinions during my Christmas trip to Taipei, Taiwan. Plenty about Taiwanese food, night life, friends, and tourist spots inside.

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R.I.P. Shaun Carlson

by Eric Hsu

The owner of the Mopar Drift Team passes away this past weekend.  Shaun will be missed.

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Mario's Wall of Wisdom

Sometime late last year, I cruised by Toespeed Fabrication to meet up with Tod. Mario is the local 510 guru and master fabricator. If you can think of it, Mario can design it. Or if you can’t think of it and just want it done, give Mario a call if you have a budget (good fabrication isn’t cheap). If you’ve seen buff 510s around southern California like Tod’s, chances are Mario built it. In his shop was a wall with writing all over it. I dubbed it the “...

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Weekend

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Danny & Marilyn in Arizona

A couple weeks ago, Nick, Yaya, Saya and I headed out to Arizona because our friends Danny & Marilyn got married. Other than being really, really, really hot in Arizona (hell on Earth), it was a great time. I got a chance to hang out and celebrate with a bunch of friends I haven't seen in a while, relax, binge eat and binge drink. I met Marilyn about 8 years ago through a friend who I used to work with at Apex. Danny is Jensen's brother. Jensen used to work with me when I was at Apex, but when Danny moved to the mainland from Hawaii, he worked for me at XS fabricating and installing stuff. After XS, Danny went to work with the infamous Stephan Papidakis at AEM on the drift team, but got ...

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Thirty Fucking Five

11 days ago I turned 35 years old. I think the physical decline started around 26 which I'm sure was expedited by the uh...partying, alcohol, girls, working long and late hours, carbon monoxide from the dyno rooms, etc. Exercise was non existent and still really isn't present in my life. I think I should start soon or else my health will take a shit. These days, if I strain myself physically it takes days for me to recover. If I party too hard it takes days to recover. If I work on a car too late into the night and stretch muscles I no longer stretch regularly it takes days to recover. Damn, I used to bounce back overnight. Talking to the older guys at Cosworth, they all say "You ain't...

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EDMATIC

My buddy Yasu wrote a feature in this month's Carboy Magazine on Edwin Konishi - otherwise known as EDMATIC. Back in 1997 (if I remember correctly) Jerry from Pacific Rim asked me, "Hey, do you need anybody to help out at XS? I know a guy who went to high school with you, but he's like 3 or 4 years younger." This was only a year after Troy and I started XS and for our first year it was only Troy, Peter, and myself working nearly 7 days a week and somewhere between 12-16 hours a day. XS was growing and we did indeed need more help. Edmatic came on board in late 1997 or early 1998 (I don't remember exactly) and worked at XS for ab...

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Boiling Tarzan

Last night I went to the Boiling Crab in Wetminta again with the Ark Design posse to get down and dirty with Viet/Louisiana style shrimp, lobster, crawfish, crab legs, chicken wings, fries, corn, etc. The original plan was meet at 7:30pm and probably wait 45 minutes or so to get a table. We were still waiting outside at 8:30 when we got a call from Tarzan on his way back from the Long Beach Grand Prix (chauffeured by Daiji from C-West USA). So we added 2 people to the reservation and they said it wo...

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DaTruth is DaBomb

Once again, Damessenjah writes about some funny shit. DaTruth is Damessenjah's blog about everything that is undeniably true with the automotive tuning industry. He blasts ugly import models, wack ass Chinaman parts and companies, Meximas, magazine editors, etc. His ability to express the truth in well written prose is exceptionally perfect. Check out his current post on wack import models, but be sure to read all of his other entries for a good dose of laughter.

DaTruth Blog - Make sure to read the subtitles under the pictures for a good time.

BTW, while Damessenjah and I share many common beliefs, I

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Shibuya 109

Rewinding back to January 2, 2008, Yaya and I went to 109 in Shibuya, Tokyo. For those of you not familiar with 109, it is 9 stories of female fashion boutiques. 109 primarily caters to various types of Shibuya "gyarus". I think primarily ko-gyarus and b-gyarus. That's Japlish for "girls" if you didn't figure that one out. The term "b-gyaru" is derived from "b-boy" if you know your hip hop terminology. There is an entire subculture of hip hop influenced Japanese chicks and dude...

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