A total of 36 cars, with many more members from all over the UK arrived in their vehicles, and packed out the Ace Cafe car parking area.

In my opinion, this has got to be one of the largest turn-outs for the first official meet held at Ace Cafe, for a club that only began building its membership foundation less than a year ago.

Details for the next meet can be found in the Ace Cafe Calendar or here, so if you didn’t get a chance to make it to this one, there’s always next time.
Sign up to the club and send in your registration number, to guarantee yourself a spot at the front of the Ace Cafe.
You can also find the Outlaw Jap Club at their website http://www.outlawjapclub.co.uk/ or on Facebook.

Here are some of the images from the day, along with a snapshot of most of the vehicles that attended the meet.

Here’s the members, friends and family who gathered for the meet. Click here for high-res image.

A compilation of the members vehicles who attended the meet.

And afterwards some fun with a RC drifter car.

Don’t blink, each image isn’t on the screen for very long!!

(Please note: This video contains flashing images and fast motion which may not be suitable for individuals suffering from epilepsy)
Watch this video in Full HD 1080p on my Vimeo Channel

I took these back in 2007, as part of the entry to a photo competition, held on the Lexus Owners Club UK forum.
The rules were simple. All you had to do was to follow the theme title ‘Lexus at night’.

I popped down to Wembley Arena, which is overlooked by the Wembley Stadium Arch.

I was very happy to find that my photo won 2nd place in the competition.

Winning Photo (2nd place)

Here are the other images that I took while I was being creative.

…and finally some images I wanted to share.

Initially, the venue had been booked to seat 200 people, but as the tickets were sold out in under 48 hours the organisers had to quickly respond to the massive interest and stretch the venue capability to it’s bursting limit of 350. All tickets were all sold out in less than 10 days, for what was to be one of the best fund raising parties of the year.

- The catering and decoration were all taken care of by the venue staff at Masti and organisers (the Shah family)
- The videography was provided by the guys at Zee TV, for their regular Sunday morning slot show ‘Out & About‘ – the local community show.
- Secondary videography and entertainment was provided by the guys at the BBC, for their hit series ‘The Real Hustle‘.
- and last but not least, the photography was provided by yours truly, Niraj Popat.

Who are they?? Well…

The Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity is a registered UK charity, that raises funds through all types of events, to continually recycle, renew and implement new and inventive ways to take care of sick children. The charity needs at least £50m every year, for these works to reliably and effectively continue supporting children and parents each and every day. You can read more about what they do, and how they do acheive their goals by visiting their website.

Masti Banqueting, is a newly refurbished venue in Wembley, Middlesex (North West London), created by the driving force of their hugely successful bar and restaurant entrepreneurs. The venue has been designed with the state-of-the-art lighting, sound, and visual technology, to provide a stunning backdrop to all types of events where people are invited to enjoy themselves. They have a large kitchen that caters for the guests to the venue.

Zee TV, as most will be aware, is a Satellite broadcast TV channel, for the Asian population. They cover all sorts, from fiction, game shows, reality tv, good living, through to non-fiction. The elder Asian generation appear to be (from my experience) addicted to these channels, and captures a large volume of viewers each and every week. The ‘Out & About’ show, is filmed  throughout the UK, to allow the couch potatoes, to keep up with what’s going on in and around the local Asian communities. The Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity – Dinner and Dance, was broadcast on Zee TV on the 19th of April 2009.

The BBC is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world. Its mission is to enrich people’s lives with programmes that inform, educate and entertain. It is a public service broadcaster, established by a Royal Charter and funded by the licence fee that is paid by UK households.

The Real Hustle is a factual entertainment series produced by Objective Productions for BBC Three. It features a team of hustlers – Alexis Conran, Paul Wilson and Jessica-Jane Clement – as they try out some notorious scams on members of the public, filmed with hidden cameras. The aim is to reveal how scams work so that the viewer can avoid being ripped off by the same con. The participants featured in The Real Hustle have either been set up by their family and friends or believe that they are participating in another television programme. After they have been hustled for real any monies or property taken during the hustle are returned to them and their consent for the item to be broadcast is obtained. (as stated on their webpage)

The Real Hustle, were invited to the Dinner and Dance, to provide entertainment for the guests in such a way that they were secretly able to raise a phenomenal amount of money for the charity.
I’m not going to give away how this was acheived, because it will all be on their show which is due to be aired on BBC Three this month August 2009.
There’s a few images on here, that will relate to the show, and all will make alot more sense when you watch it!!

Oh and the photographer… that was me

I thought It would be nice to share some of the photo’s from the evening, so here they are.

For those who are awaiting their printed images, they will be in the post in the next week or so.
(I hope you can accept my sincerest apologies for the extreme delay it’s taken me to get these organised, rest assured, they have not been forgotten).

Here are a few images from the day:

This is what Mehndi looks like 10 minutes after it has been applied to the hands.

Overnight, the designs are marked onto the skin as the fresh mehndi dries off. The depth and darkness of the dye depends on the skin, but often her results have been extremely good.

I wish her the very best of luck in her new venture, and I hope she is as successful as she deserves.

If you would like more information, please feel free to contact me : niraj@nirajpopat.com

Rob is a 43 year old ex-Civil Engineer, from Portsmouth.
For the past 4 years, Rob has been trading in construction as a sub-contractor, engineering his own Roofing and Cladding projects for larger organisations.

Three years ago, in an unfortunate accident, Rob was struck down as a pedestrian by a car. He was off from work for 6 months. Having all this time to himself, the opportunity arose to pursue and develop his skills in design. From a young age (as early as 8 years old) he recalls he was always drawing, designing and scribbling his idea’s onto paper. He followed his passion onto O-levels (GCSE equivalent) in Art, where he was bluntly told by his teacher that his idea’s were not suitable for the curriculum being of “too wild and inappropriate” conceptions.
Rob’s idea’s revolve around Surrealist and Tattoo Art. He is influenced by his interest in Biker clubs (Harley Davidson etc…) and a passion for far-eastern design and culture. Combining these (at first glance) opposite realms into a seamless fine-art that can be stretched onto canvas, or tattooed onto your body.

The idea’s work very well, as his very close friends, Scott and Anna, also from Portsmouth own a jewellery and tattoo parlour, called ‘The Gold Shop’.
Anna has tattooed several of Rob’s design onto his body for him, making Rob a walking, talking biogallery of his own work.

This is where Rob finds his inner peace, in his world, within ours.
Often up till the early hours of the morning, losing track of time, when engrossed so deep onto the paper that he engraves.
It is his complete inner expression, letting his pen dance around the paper, never knowing what the finished design will look like, until it is finished.

Here is some of the work he had with him today, that he was able to show me.

The Dragon

We can clearly see a relationship with the Dragons from Chinese or Oriental history. The dragon is a mythical creature portrayed to have a very dark and evil presence and is a potent symbol in Chinese art and folklore.

The Gazelle

Gazelle’s are known as quiet but quick animals. They originate from Africa, but can also be found in southwest and central asia, and on the Indian subcontinent. The animal is able to reach high speeds of up to 50mph, in the blink of an eye. Often the prey of larger animals such as lions and cheetahs.

The Chrysanthemum

Not something you would possibily expect to see from Rob White’s collection, but beautiful nevertheless.

The Heartagram

The heartagram, is best described as a combination of a heart and an inverted pentagram (love & hate). The idea of any symbol representing an inverted pentagram is said to be of evil nature, but here in this combination, Rob has merged the symbol of love. Completely opposing the evil (hate characteristic). You could say the heartagram is a “Modern Yin Yang”.
Inscribed within is the line “Suffer the brilliance of the beautiful white light of pain” which will have a unique meaning to all, but to Rob is a relationship between the pain and pleasure of a tattoo.

I hope to bump into Rob again in the future, where hopefully he will share with us more of his designs.

If you would like to contact Rob for the commissioning of any special designs or perhaps idea’s you would like to discuss with him, please drop me a message, and I will forward you his details, with his permission.

He had a very large collection of paintings, ready for either stretching or frame mounting.
A majority were textured, along with a few non-textured simple oil paintings.

After a quick show of all the paintings we narrowed it down to 4 favourites.
Not having a great deal of experience in artwork, I was not sure what to look for when buying these sorts of pieces. Are there even rules to consider when buying? Things that crossed my mind were, “where would I display this?; will I stretch it? or frame it?; does it suit the location environment?”. All difficult questions to answer as a first time buyer, so I just went with my gut feeling with what made me most happy when viewing. Eventually, narrowing further from 4 down to 1.

ENDLESS FOREST

I’ll post some more images, once the painting has found a place on the wall.

I ordered these from VistaPrint. They are an international company, but have a UK website, with UK telephone support (if you need it).
They’ve got some great prices, and they frequently have fantastic offers, if you order at the right time.
Amongst business cards, they also do other marketing materials such as calendars, t-shirts, pens and stationery.

Ordering was pretty simple. I designed the layout on a template that you can download from their website, and then re-upload as a PDF.

Here’s what my JPG designs looked like before I converted to PDF.

FRONT

BACK

The whole process took approximately 7 days from placing the order, to having them delivered to my door.
I ordered 1000, and they were delivered well packaged in 4 boxes of 250.

Here’s what they look like.

I decided to go with the +extra option of a glossy finish and foil accent across the centre part of the card. I think it gives it that extra edge.

Total Cost : £50.66 delivered. (approx 5p per card)