Carpark Nonsense

Rewind the clock back to the month of March of 2009. It was just like any other normal college day. Come to college, attend lessons, go for lunch, then attend more lessons, and before I knew it, its time to leave already. So as usual, I walk up to the car park, insert the parking ticket to the ticketing machine. As usual, the machine would be yapping all the nonsense. “Please insert your ticket”, “please insert the amount of money shown on the display”. As usual, the screen displays “RM3.50”, and AS USUAL, the machine won’t accept paper currency, only coins! I’ve bloody encountered this a million times since I got to TCSH, and it has been a real spoiler to the otherwise very calm and serene atmosphere here.

I mean, collecting money is the very basics of doing business. If you can’t even collect money effectively, then YOU’VE FAILLED!! GO BACK TO KINDER!! What’s more, it's not like I'm not willing to pay, and this is sad. And don’t get me started with big headed guards who thinks (or pretends) to understand English, or the hopelessly-positioned exit ticketing machine. Its already absurd to charge such high rates on weekdays (2 bucks for first two hours, 50c for subsequent hour) and really obvious price discrimination (1 dollar per entry for weekends!!), and they still make us climb extra flight of stairs and drive further just to pay the fees, then make our exit a test of skills (or my patience, at least). This is rubbish.

GT-R: Best Car in the World? Definitely Much More Than That.

And so everyone (myself included) thinks the Nissan GT-R is the best car in the world right now. EVO® magazine makes it as the ‘Car of the Year’, having beaten the 911, and trashed the R8 on the hills; AUTOCAR voted it as the ‘Best Driver’s Car’; WhatCar has it as the ‘Best Value-For-Money Performance Buy’; Car And Driver pitted it against the American Legend (the Corvette), in the American Game (a drag race), on American soil, and the GT-R won. (Sadly, C&D had to make you read between the lines to understand that the GT-R won, but only by the smallest or margins, for very obvious reasons.)

Not to be forgotten are the world-beating figures that the GT-R churns out that would oust any other performance car without having to participate in a group comparison. 0-60 in 3.8 seconds, tops out at 193mph. And who can ignore the price: £56,795 for the basic model, which is mind-boggling price for mind-boggling.

Now, the question is whether is this all this Nissan could do? And my answer is a downright NO. Notice that I left out the horsepower figures above? 473bhp? Its not a world-beating figure, if you ask me. Even the EVO XI now leaves the factory in FQ-400 forms, producing in excess of 400bhp (with a 2-litre motor!), and a lightly tuned one (like running on free-flow air filters and exhaust, and higher boost) can easily match 473, if not top it. However, in a power comparison, the Audi R8 needs 3.9secs to reach the century, and it takes a 5.2 litre V10 with 518 horsepower on the tap. That got me thinking, how on Earth did the Nissan do it?

I’ve got a theory to this. It’s not Nissan lying about the horsepower figures, nor are the marketing people playing down the hype the car has created. I would think that the problem lies in the engineering of the car itself, where it does not (and will never) reveal the actual power it produces, thanks to some clever trickery by the engineers. To all car nuts out there, I think its time you realize that no magazine reviews have successfully publish the GT-R’s wheel dynamometer figures. They will always say that the ‘dyno test is confusing the AWD traction system, and the slip differential is busy shuffling power between the 4 wheels, occasionally producing less than 200bhp’. It would also add that ‘if we run the engine dyno, yeah, its close to matching the manufacturer’s horsepower and torque figures’. For your information, the engine dyno is rubbish, if you ask me, because it’s the same method that the mileage guys use to calculate the highest fuel economy possible. The engine dyno measures the air-fuel ratio at a particular RPM, then uses a software to work out the fuel used over a particular range. The thing is that, this can be done while the car is stationary, which makes little sense, when the real mileage figures involve a lot of other stuff i.e. aerodynamics, wheel resistance, power loss (at places such as the gearbox and torque converters), and driving style. The same happens when measuring power, the engine is revved to a certain RPM, and A/F mixture is used to estimate the power produced, and just like measuring mileage, the power loss is not taken into account.

Thus, this is where wheel dyno comes in, where you place a car on frictionless rollers, and accelerate the car over a range of gears and speed and use softwares to work out the power at particular RPM and speed, in WHP figures, or Wheel Horsepower. It works best for either front- or rear-wheel drive cars (with traction control turned off, and without a limited-slip), where power is only distributed between the 2 wheels, and takes into account all the power losses, like gearbox and differentials. However, the Nissan is 4WD, and has one of the best 4WD power distributing system in the world, making it trip and stumble on the frictionless rollers, when the software is programmed to send most power to the wheel with the most grip, and it cant tell which wheel has the most of it. So if you place one on a dyno, it might think its snowing (given that the rollers have low friction), traction control and differentials intervene, and all you get is a GT-R producing 200bhp. And if you have to know, a Mazda 3 has more power than that.

All these makes measuring the GT-R’s power accurately impossible. I strongly believe that that beast is producing well in excess of 500bhp, and its Nissan’s intention to make the GT-R a played-down supercar slayer, capable doing it with minimum effort. They’d probably gave the lowest possible estimate to the horsepower figures.

I’m a big fan of the GT-R, knowing that there’s much potential lies in the car, and I’m eager to see what can Nissan do more to the car, hopefully in the form of a V-Spec (like the great job Nissan has done to the R34 V-spec). What do you think?

Clarity: A Need or Want?

As a person who has been wearing glasses for eternity, its safe to say that seeing the world through a pair of lenses gave me a clearer picture of how the world looks like. Like how magnificent the Petronas Twin Towers are when seen from far, or how majestic the Great Wall of China stand as I view it from the foot of the wall, and how weird and scary the SsangYong Stavic really is. Of course, there were also practical, reasons to put on those UV and infrared-cutting lenses, as it allows me to carry out my day-to-day activities (drive to college, copy notes from the white board, read my Word documents on-screen without blinding myself).

However, it is when I put my glasses away that I see the real world that I’ve always thought of: the grainy, blur, unclear world, full of uncertainties and certainly requiring a lot of patience and imagination to process. I have to admit that I’m quite particular when it comes to my glasses, I always want the clearest possible view though them. But, growing up(finally!), I began to question myself; What’s the point of seeing the world so clearly, when you don’t know what are you seeing? Thus, whenever I feel tensed or confused, be it with studies or life, I choose to sit down and remove the lenses, only to stare blindly at something. For instance, at home, I could be staring at the ceiling fan, its rotation blurs out as my retina can’t focus onto it well enough. But, from a different point of view, I could also see it as a fan moving very, very slowly, for my focus only catches glimpses of a stationary blade, and that’s a totally different perspective if the fan that I’ve been living with for years (if my memory didn’t fail me). The same goes with the car poster in my room. In perfect clarity, the Volvo C70 exudes all the characteristics their designers aimed to create: macho-ness, the muscular shoulders emphasizing on the waist and width of the convertible. But off goes the lenses, and all of a sudden, it’s a Volvo displaying fluidity and organic shapes, with almost a monotonous silver colour, something you’ll never find on a Volvo. The wheels seem to integrate into the vehicle, and at times, it can look better than the real car. Whenever I’m outside, my lens tend to exaggerate people passing by, the brightness of the lights, the hustle and bustle of everything, which can be stressful when your mind is as messed up as mine. But once the lenses are removed, I felt the sound, the glare and all the unnecessary stimuli removed as well, living behind a blur, quiet and lonely world. I could look at anyone, anything and suddenly everything slows down. My mind goes blank and relaxes, and as I began to focus on my breathing, I could literally feel my body loosen, the muscles not as tense as before. I stare at my work, and all I see are blur lines after more blur lines. I look out of the window, and it’s a mixture of green, blue and black light, save for the occasional speckle white light coming from what I would deem a passing car. At this point, I would close my eyes and rub my temples, which amplify the pain in my head, but it also feels rather comfortable, surprisingly. It felt like I had let go a really heavy baggage for a short while, to take a short breath, loosen my shoulders a bit before carrying it again, when I open my eyes. Reluctance (to carry the bag) is hard to fight, but the blur, spectacle-less world is always only an ideal, theoretical world. It is powered my thoughts and imagination, and is indeed unreal.

Whether I like it or not, the REAL world is always, relentlessly waiting for my return. So, on goes the glasses, accompanied by my work, the noise, the glare and the headache, but thinking back about the feeling of not lugging the baggage for a while merely encourages me to keep it on my back till the end, and would always be a reminder to the real world I belong to.

My Very First Post!!

So this is my very first post, and without doubt my first dive into the deep, tranquil waters of blogging. I thought that while Facebook has that “What’s On Your Mind” column, I didn’t see it as being suitable for long articles, and as for Twitter, oh well, 140 characters are a little too few for my liking, thus my move to start blogging.

So, I thought I’ll fill up my first post by describing what will this blog probably be about. To begin with, I probably WON’T be writing anything football (the charming Mr. Shebby will do that for me on ESPN every week, thank you), as well as politics (there are other bloggers out there who can do better than me, I’m sure). And all the things that we Malaysians normally abstain from mentioning (religion and sex, although I’m pretty flexible about the latter).

What I’ll be writing about are probably issues that affect our life, be it directly or indirectly, as well as stuffs that guys normally talk about, like cars and music. And occasionally, I might do some revisit of the old times, be it a holiday or my time in school and college. However, I am keen to spice it up a bit, by having user generated content, where you guys tell me what you want to read on, and I’ll try to come up with something. But that will only happen when traffic on my page is higher, but until then, do leave any comments, be it constructive or not.

I highly value feedback and comments, as I have to admit that I do occasionally go overboard where technicalities are concerned. So, once again, feel free to enquire and leave an opinion.

Finally, a toast to the birth of Under Where?, and the dawn of modern user generated blogging!!