2011 Australian International Motor Show

This week I went to the 2011 Australian Motor Show in the Melbourne Exhibition Centre. It had been two years since Melbourne hosted the event.

Electricity seemed to be the common thread among the exhibitions. Not only were there electric vehicles on display, most of the cars had iPads on stands showing videos and specs, instead of a paper price tag.

I had the opportunity to test drive two electric vehicles. The test drives were outside the exhibition centre, but you need to enter the show and get a pass first.

The first car, the Nissan Leaf, had to be driven by an instructor because I am under 25 years of age. We drove around the streets of Melbourne. I found the Leaf to be comfortable to sit in and smooth on the road. It also took off quickly at the lights.

The second car was the Mitsubishi i-MiEV which I was able to drive. This car was noticeably smaller inside and had a blind spot because of the a-frame. I sat higher up in this car and the seats were firmer then in the Leaf.

I found the i-MiEV easy to drive. Like the Leaf, the car took off quickly at the lights. The biggest difference I found was that taking my foot off the accelerator had the same effect as putting my foot on the break.

A couple walking in the car park had a surprise when I drove up behind them. Cars kept coming out of their spaces as I was passing.Both the Leaf and the i-MiEV are silent. I had to check twice to make sure I was in the right “gear” before I began to drive. People kept crossing the road without seeing the car.

Mitsubishi also had the PX-MiEV on display. This is a SUV version of the i-MiEV that also has a petrol engine.

Back inside I got to sit in many cars. To my surprise many of the small cars had better leg room then some of the larger cars. Kia and Hyundai have dramatically improved their vehicles.

The hatchback version of the Holden Cruze was on display. It is supposed to be the most fuel efficient locally built car.

Good to see a locally made Cruze but I think it would have been better if there was an AWD version. The car would then make a good competitor to the Subaru Impreza, which was also on display with a new look.

Land Rover also had a new look model called the

Range Rover Evoque. It is more rounded and compact compared to the existing range.

The brand that surprised me was Skoda. The show was my first chance to see the brand. There was the compact AWD Yeti. There was also the Fabia, a competitor to the BMW Mini.

It is good to see that the new rotation between Melbourne and Sydney has allowed the show to continue but this year the ticket queue was noticeably shorter.

There were also less people blocking my photo opportunities. Some of the regular exhibitors were absent this year, most notably Renault.

Hopefully the attendance will increase once nervousness about of the economy is over.

Retro Half Hour with Kevin Tuyau

This one date only! My own radio show!

Listen on your computer at this page: http://3ssr.wordpress.com/shows/stream/

(IPhone and Android instructions at this link)

• Date: 1^st June 2011
• Time: 12:30pm to 1:00pm

The Retro Half Hour will take the audience back to the 1980’s. Playing hits from the 80’s plus interviewing people who were there at the time.

Featured Guests:

• Sylvio Hennequin: A former DJ from the Casablanca night club
• Les Twentyman: A well-known youth worker who started the 20^th Man Foundation.

Follow me:

• Twitter: @kevintuyau
• Website: https://sites.google.com/site/myuniquestartpoint/home

One Year of My Unique Quad!

Last month celebrated a year of this blog. The old saying "Time Flies By" is true in this case as many things have happened over the year. Including a trip to the US for study which got me into some adventures. Hopefully some of my experiences can be used in this blog.

During the year I cancelled the blog UniqueNewsQuad because I felt it was not the right time for me to do it. Maybe it will come back in the future. Meanwhile my other blog MyUniqueEntreprenuer still exists if you are interested in some light entertainment.

Sex and Violence but no Corn Chips

My Advertisment gets banned for Sex and Violence

Click below to see the banned controversial Ad straight away. What do you think? See if you can figure out why it was banned. Keep reading the blog to find out the background story and see the elusive explanation from the company.

Doritos currently has a promotion that encourages people to develop a commercial for Doritos and the upload it to the Doritos website. The best ad wins $20000. Unfortunatly they can very picky when it comes to qualifying the video for entry into the competition. I found the this hardway.

My interest in $20000 combined with my desire to have a go at making a film drove me to make my own add. As I don't have a video camera and acting is not my strong point, I decided to use my computing skill to create an animation. I worked on the animation over a couple of weeks. When I was done I uploaded the video to the Doritos website 5 days before the closing date, thinking that was enough time for people to vote.

When I uploaded my video I did not expect to win Film of the Year but I thought it would get some votes. Unfortunatly it not did not get the chance. After trying to upload my Ad for 2 hours, I checked the site to see if it loaded correctly but it was not there. I contacted the company to ask them where my film is. They told me that they had recived it but the film needed to be "watched" to check if it "qualified" before putting it on the website. This was to take 3 days. This meant that I would only have 2 days for people to vote.

After 3 days I recieved an email from the company saying that my ad has been rejected. I can not figure out why. As far as I can tell, the explanation given by Doritos totally contradicts the ad. It claims about my add includes "swearing, obscenity, nudity, pornography, violence, etc". Them saying the ad "wasn't in English" would almost be laughable if it was not for the fact that my ad was rejected. Click the picture below to see the email.

I have no idea why my add was rejected. By not telling me the exact reason, and telling me so close to the deadline, I have been rejected the fair chance for people to vote. If you can figure out the reason, please let me know by leaving a comment on this blog.

Update: A quick search on the internet has revealed that when the competition was on in the USA, the winning commercial was played during the superbowl and showed someone getting hit in the nuts with a crystal ball. Another Doritos ad featured a woman who gets her clothes ripped off in the street by a man eating Doritos. Both these were obviously OK to show on TV despite mine not even deemed suitible for the internet.

Thank Your Mother for the Goat

What would you like for Christmas? A car, DVD or holiday to Bail? How about a goat? Well, that is not what would be expected by most people as a gift but it is what my mum gave to someone last Christmas, and the Christmas before that. Why?

In the past developing countries have helped through aid. It was thought that giving money would solve the problem. That has now changed. It is now believed that developed countries should help giving the tools and knowledge required for the developing country to take care of themselves. This is where the goats come in.

Throughout the year charities would send letters to my mum with the progress of their work and mum would send them money. Then two years ago it became different. A charity sent a letter for donations at Christmas time. They did not ask for money, instead they asked for mum to by something for a person in need. They had a list of items for sale. My mum chose the Goat.

A goat would sound like a weired Christmas present but it is a long term solution. By providing a goat to a person in need, they will be able run a business selling goat's milk or even breed goats to sell meat. The goat's owner would then no longer require charity and will be running a honest business.

After choosing a goat we got a Christmas card that said we bought a goat. It stands proudly on the fireplace with the other cards. We now buy a goat every year. It has become a Christmas tradition.

Bushfire Danger Close to Home

I had scare yesterday. I have never been affected by bushfire, it was always something that happened to someone else. I am now affected by bushfire in three ways.

In the past week in Victoria (and many other states) the temperature has been over 40 degrees everyday. The land had become very dry and on Saturday 7th of February 2009 the grass caught fire quite easily. Fires burning from the day before got bigger really quickly and new fires started in most of the state, some were done by arsonists. The map on the news showed that there were hundreds of fires in every part of the state. Entire towns have been destroyed and an estimated 40 people have died in the north of the state, about half were children.

All day the smoke covered my house. Visibility was only a few meters. It was hot but I could not have the evaporate cooler on because the open windows would have brought the smoke in. Instead I tried to use the old air conditioner with the closed vent.

The evening is when the real scare came. So many things happened at around the same time. I was watching the news and got a big surprise. Houses in my town were on fire. I had such a shock that I jumped up and cut my hand in the ceiling fan. The news continued the report and showed that the fire was heading towards my Grandmother's house.

Less then an hour later my Grandmother called really worried. I thought that she might calling about the fire near her house, but she was not. She had a call from my Aunty who said her house was on fire. Then the phone was cut. I told my Mother who then called the police station closest to my Aunty's house. They said they would check on her.

Later that evening my other Aunty called to say that my Aunty's farm had been totally destroyed. The house, car, cats and farm animals had perished. My Aunty still could not be contacted. We did not know what happened to her.

On Sunday morning we found out that my Aunty was hospital. My Mother contacted the hospital to talk to my Aunty briefly. Fortunately the animals were saved but the house and car was not.

Our focus was now on my Grandma. She was still surrounded by bushfire and wanted me and my Mother to come to her house. We started driving to her house but there was a road block. We had to go back home. I checked the Internet for information on the road blocks. There are so many road blocks that the state is split in half. People in the east of the state can not go to the west.

It is now Sunday afternoon and it has been raining. Hopefully the fires will stop burning soon and the roads will open once again.

Power Plant

Since my last post I had organised a trip for some international students to a mine and power plant. You can see a leadership perspective on the trip on my other blog site:
http://myuniqueentrepreneur.blogspot.com/2008/12/organising-trips.html

The power plant and mine is in Loy Yang. This is about 2 hours east of Melbourne, Australia. At first this does not sound like a place to go on a trip but when you see it you will be impressed. When driving to the plant you are surrounded by farmland that is scattered with trees but then you go over a hill and see the power plant's two yellow cooling towers and chimneys going high into the sky. On the tour I got to be in the mine that is about 200 meters deep and is 4km wide. I also got see the huge flame burning inside one of the chimneys. I was amazed by the technical achievement that comes from building the power plant Looking at this modern wonder it can be easy forget that the power plant is part of an important issue.

The power plant is brown coal powered, this is the most polluting type. The plant also supplies most of the electricity to the state. This causes a problem for the government. As part of the Kyoto protocol, the government will have add extra tax to polluting companies. The manufacturing industry in the state of Victoria has grown large. It provides many jobs and keeps the economy going. The growth has been caused by the state having cheap electricity. The concern is that the extra tax will make electricity too expensive and that many factories will close and production will be moved to China, where factories are allowed to pollute more.

The Real Indiana Jones

Not many people may know this but Indiana Jones is based on a real person called Mitchel-Hedges. There was an article about it in the Hearld Sun around the time the "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" was released.

What really suprised me though was that he really found the real Crystal Skull as well. I read an article today about it in the Gippsland Horizon (October 2008). According to the article, the skull was found during a dig in the British Honduras (which I think is South America). The skull is made entirely from one piece crystal and can not be replicated with modern technology. Some people claim to have seen visions while appearing into the skull's eyes.

At the end of the article an advertisement said there would be an exibition of the skull on October 30th. Pity I read the article in November.

Dodgy Car Salesmen

The other day I was looking for a car with my mother. I thought it would be a simple event. I had not realise what experience I was going to have talking to a dodgy salesman. He was full of lies and smooth talk. Below I list some of the things he said and did.

1. "Kia is owned by general motors. Holdens are just rebadged Kias" he said. GM bought Daewoo. Some of the cars are Daewoos, not all of them.
2. "Come and take a look at this Echo" he said while pointing at a Yaris.
3. "I read newspapers and magazines" he said. I read magazines and news papers too and they are not saying what you are.
4. "[insert celebrebrity here] could afford to buy a Lamborgini but he bought this car instead" he said. Have you heard that about a $20000 car before?
5. "You can ring up my wife's aunty's sister in law's cousin and he will tell you that what I am saying is right" he said. Who is actullay going to ring up this third party?
6. "I build and race cars so I know what I am talking about" he said. If he is such a fantastic racer, why does he need to have a day job selling cars?

He said many more things as well because we were there for half an hour. My advice is to just to do research on the internet before you go and bring someone who save you if you get sucked in.

The Two Cows

I recently discovered this joke:

http://entrepreneurshipinmalaysia.blogspot.com/2008/03/different-types-of-economics-in-cows.html

The joke begins with the difference between communism and capitalism using two cows. Then the cows are used to show the difference between different countries.