During the Hari Raya holiday, I thought it was a good time to go and shoot some night sceneries around Putrajaya, since there wouldn¡¦t a lot people around. Check out some of the sceneries [here] in my photo album.

It was Round 10 and the final round of 2006 My-Kart Series yesterday, held at City Karting in Shah Alam. And this was by far the most exciting I ever had. (Not that I race very often...LOL!) Each participant got to run 3 sessions every round, i.e. Qualifying 1, Qualifying 2 and The Race.

Qualifying 1:
Since it rained the night before, there were still wet patches at some parts of the track. These wet patches would definitely cause us problem, especially at the turns, since our karts were using dry slick tyres. When the session started, I spun at the very first hair pin under braking¡Khaha¡Kalong with a few others¡K ;p Since it happened at a very low speed, none of us spun off the track, so we were able to continue. Came the next medium speed turn, and it was wet. I know it¡¦s gonna be very slippery, I slow down a lot before entering the turn¡K crap¡K the kart understeer into the turn like the tyres were made of plastic instead of rubber! It felt like you were walking on wet tiles with a pair of slippers with badly worn soles. Once the kart¡¦s speed was slow enough and the understeer stopped, I tried to put on the power, d*u, now the back try to over take the front, aka power oversteer. I had to do an opposite lock at the steering wheel in order to keep it from spinning. To put it into perspective, if you have 100% grip in dry condition, theses tyres only give 10-20% of it when the track is wet. So much different from our road car tyres. I wonder if it felt the same in a Formula One car with dry tyres in this same track condition¡KLOL!... A few for laps, a few more spins ;p , I finally made it to the finish line¡Khahaha¡K what an experience!! Love it!!

Qualifying 2:
Normally in Q2, we have to swap karts (..the first participant takes the last kart, the last participant takes the first kart..) and do another run in order to make this qualifying as fair as possible, since the rented karts normally have different performance from kart to kart. But due to the position in the middle, I got the same kart again¡K No much problem with this kart, power is good except I couldn¡¦t really feel the brake, it¡¦s like all or nothing kind of braking, causing me to spin on a few occasions at the last hair pin. Driver¡¦s error? LOL!!

The Race:
I qualified in the second group. The fast drivers are all up in the first group. Left with all the slower drivers like myself in this second group¡K ;p Normally I would finished the race in worst of the worst position, i.e. the bottom 3 in the second group! But this time it was different, I finished second! I am the better of the worst! Hahaha¡K May be this round got a lot of first time karters for me to beat?? ƒº hahaha¡K.

Let¡¦s recap the race with 3 or 4 more laps to go. I was running 4th at that time, with two more karters in sight, around 20-30m in front on the fastest straight. No trace of the leader of the race though. I was inching up of those 2 guys corner after corner. Soon they realized I was catching them up. Before long, the 3rd driver spun at the last hair pin in front of me. I tell you what, I was really happy to see that¡Kand passed him. I wonder Alonso was laughing inside his helmet when he saw Schumacher¡¦s engine blew up in Japan!

Next came the driver in second position. I was running third. This time I was very determined to pass him. With only 3 more turns before the finish line, the famous last hair pin that I had mentioned a few times! ;p This is actually the fastest back-straight followed by a slow hair pin. I was right behind the guy running in second place and he knew I was closely behind. He tried to cover the inside line heading towards the hair pin. I had no where to go except taking the wide line so that I could open the throttle earlier exiting the turn in case he ran wide. Voila!! He ran a bit wide, thank you very much, I dived inside and had half a kart length in front heading towards the second last slow speed turn. Being determined to take second place, I squeezed him a little and he yielded. The rest were history¡K I happily took second place. Hahahaha¡K.

There ends the 2006 My Kart Series. I must try to take part in all the rounds next year. Time to get serious¡K ;p

After doing some simple test shots, I discovered that my Sigma 17-70 lens has front/back focus problem. Look at the photos shown below. Both photos were shot using auto-focus with centre AF point aimed at the single line in the middle of the frame. As you can see, at 17mm the lens focused in front of the line. While at 70mm, it focused behind the line. There is no such problem at all with the Canon 18-55 and the Tamron 70-300.

I called Sigma distributor, APD in Damansara Perdana. They said this is very common among Canon DSLRs especially the entry level model with plastic body. Reason being Canon unable to manufacture the 'flange-to-sensor' length to exactly how much they are suppose to be, in this case 44.00mm. But since I have no problem with the other 2 lenses, the problem should be from the Sigma lens itself.

The Sigma distributor asked me to send my camera body along with the lens to them and they will send them to Singapore for rectification. The solution is to write a set of data in the lens to compensate the focusing error. This will take a whopping 2-3 weeks! How can I live without my camera for such a long time?

Not convinced, I emailed Sigma Singapore directly and they replied promptly, explaining the same story to me. But this time they promise to get my problem solved within a week. 2-3 weeks down to 1 week is a big difference. 1 week is still ok for me, so I decided to send in the equipments today. Hopefully they would keep their promise. Fingers crossed!