#CSR said it was their first hi-touch ever they were so excited about it it was adorable

[cle-levanter]

some more korean festival talk lol

i saw a folk group (which I forgot the name of sorry) and they were really good and made everyone dance. honestly I was shook at one point bc one of the guys just started spinning on stage and then it was like he was flying I was just baffled and in awe watching it

then we saw the gg CSR which I didn’t know but they were really (too) fucking adorable. i was vibing with their songs while they were performing but I wouldn’t listen to them voluntarily, hope they gained new fans here tho bc they were really adorable

and ofc Onlyoneof which I just posted about (honestly they were hot, there were abs everywhere and it started raining during their performance so everyone got wet anyway *ahem*)

and freaking Paul Kim like goejrizjdkzb he was so fucking adorable with the public I can’t. It was raining quite heavily when he had to start his performance but he checked on us so many times, asking if we were ok (even in the middle of his songs he asked us several times if we were ok) and if everything was fine like glzbdkzbdk he was so touched by the public cheering for him so loudly despite the rain ;-; i think he stayed like 10-15min more than his allotted time bc he just talked to us the public so much like he came down the stage several times to shake hands, high five, take group pictures with the whole public and made hearts with fans and shit, he really was a sweetheart i loved him

and the best part was that the whole festival/concert was for free like excuse me? i saw all of that for free???? it was so cool i had a really great time there I want to go back in time and be there again

[its-lifestyle]

It was Muhammad Faris Rayyan Noor Wahid’s first football tournament and the nine-year-old was both excited and a little nervous. Seated at the edge of his seat, Rayyan was engrossed in the game that was in play.

His eyes were fixed on pint-sized Arissa Azizulrahman, eight, the undisputed star footballer of the tournament, who was relentless in her pursuit of goals.

She scored two, earning her team the lead moving on to the next round of the tournament.

Rayyan’s team was up next and he looked to his parents, Noor Wahid Nuruddin and Wan Siti Marian Abu Bakar for reassurance.

“I’m afraid of Arissa. Everyone is afraid of Arissa,” says Rayyan, nine, hesitantly. Then, with a grin, he adds: “But my friend came up with a strategy – we just have to block Arissa.”

Rayyan and Arissa were among 15 children with Cerebral Palsy (CP) who took part in the frame football tournament at the 9th Pan Disability Football 2019 Championships held at Forum 10, a sports centre in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, last weekend.

Frame football is an adapted form of the popular sport, formulated specifically for players who use frames, walkers or crutches to move around daily. Frame footballers use frames with wheels to help them move around the court. Because they use frames, the game can’t be played on a typical football pitch.

It was Rayyan’s first tournament and he has his parents to cheer him on.

The sport started in Britain in 2014 and was introduced in Malaysia in 2016 by disability football coach, Shalesh “Sunny” Manickavasagam who founded the Pan-Disability Football Club in 2006 to give disabled children and adults a chance to play football.

Sunny got in touch with Rafidah Rafizah Abdullah, the president of Gabungan Anak-Anak Palsi Serebrum (Gaps) who rallied support from other parents of children with CP to form a frame football league.

The children train once a week under Sunny and although it took a couple of years to build a sizeable group, the results have been outstanding: the children relish the opportunity to play and be coached in a sport that they were previously excluded from.

Nailah Mohd Fadzli and her husband Tuan Azhar Tuan Zulkifli don’t mind taking a bus from their home in Gurun, Kedah, almost every weekend so that their son, Zuhayr can play with his friends and train under coach Sunny.

“Why do we do it? Zuhayr’s passion is football. Everything he loves has to do with football, so much so that if we want to teach him his multiplication tables, we use football,” says Nailah, 32, who works as a freelance translator in Gurun.

Although Zuhayr goes to a national school, he is not allowed to participate in sports because of his disability.

“Where we live, inclusion doesn’t exist. He doesn’t get to play any sport with the other children. Here, he’s so happy to be able to play football with the other children. That’s why we make the effort to come down to PJ at least two or three times a month,” explains Nailah.

Alfred tries to get the ball from star player, Arissa

More than a game

Zuhayr started playing frame football about three years ago and he took to the game like a duck to water. Not only has his stamina and physical performance improved, so has his mental capacity, says Nailah.

He’s also able to control his emotions much better now. Three years ago, Zuhayr would throw a tantrum on court if he didn’t get the ball. Last year, he improved a little and would get upset on court only if he didn’t score. Now, he is able to control his emotions while the game is in play and if he is disappointed with his performance, he cries after the game, outside the court.

“Training with the others has also made him competitive – he wants to get better and improve and I think that’s good for him. He’s also sharper mentally. I really believe that sports has an impact on our emotional and mental well-being. His game has improved so much too because his legs and arms have become stronger,” says Nailah.

Alfred has only been playing frame football for a month but already, his stamina has improved tremendously.

“My favourite team is Kedah,” says the friendly eight-year-old with an infectious smile. “I love playing football. The more I play, the stronger my legs will be.”

The aim of frame football, says Rafidah, is to give children with CP an opportunity to excel in sport despite their limited mobility.

“This is also an option for their future. If they are not accepted in school, they can play sport and for children with CP, the types of sport they can be a part of are limited. Frame football gives them the opportunity to be a part of a sport and not just any sport … football. Everyone loves football,” she says.

Rafidah’s daughter, Izdihar Janna Adzly, 13, is also on the team.

Cerebral palsy is a neurological disorder caused by a brain injury or malformation that occurs while the child’s brain is under development. CP affects one’s muscle tone and posture and although the effect on function ranges greatly, many children with CP find it a challenge to walk unassisted. Some children with CP have tremors, issues with balance and some have intellectial disabilities too.

The game, says Rafidah, also serves as a form of physiotherapy: the more the children train, the stronger they become both mentally and physically.

“It’s a fun exercise. We have four or five children who can now walk independently without their assistive devices because their legs have gotten stronger. And this builds their confidence,” she says.

Frame football gives children with mobility issues a chance to play the sport.

Arissa is a good example of how the sport can benefit children with CP. When she started training with coach Sunny three years ago, she wasn’t very confident and certainly, not as fast. But now, she’s the quickest on the court and her mother has to remind her to give the other children a chance at scoring.

“She has become a lot more confident in her abilities and a lot less emotional. Sometimes, children with CP tend to be emotional when faced with challenges but Arissa has learnt to be in control of her emotions. Her legs are also a lot stronger and she’s able to control the ball and run better,” says her mother Norazhlina Mohamed.

Alfred Tan, 15, joined the frame football league just about a month ago. He’s a little older than most of the other CP children but Alfred doesn’t care. He looks forward to his weekly training sessions and has made fast friends with some of the other children.

His mother, Yvonne Chua, says that in just four weeks, she’s seen massive changes in her son.

“In the first session, he could barely last 10 minutes on the court. Now, he’s able to play a few games at a go,” she shares.

Although his parents and two younger sisters play games with him at home, Yvonne says that he isn’t ever as enthusiastic as he is with his fellow footballers.

“After the first session with these other children, I could see that he was really enjoying himself. His face lit up. Frame football has given him an opportunity to play a sport with children like him. I think he needed that,” says Yvonne.

For children with CP, frame football isn’t only an enjoyable game but also an opportunity to build friendships and be a part of a group of people who are like them. In mainstream schools, children with disabilities often don’t get opportunities to participate in sport or other activities with neurotypical children.

Deebak Raj,11, with his family.

Worth the effort For families of children with CP and other disabilities, the challenges are multi-fold: from finding therapy that works to financing the costs of treatments and mobility aids.

The frame football training sessions, which are conducted free of charge, offer some relief to parents.

“Frame football is a great option for my son and it doesn’t cost us anything. Any parent who has a child CP will know how expensive it is. Private physiotherapy can cost up to RM4,000 a month and his (walking) frames cost at least RM1,000 and they have to be changed because of wear and tear,” shares Ramanitharan Annamalay whose son Deebak Raj, 11, was also taking part in the tournament for the first time.

Ramanitharan hopes that frame football will help build his son’s strength. Deebak has been for physiotherapy sessions prior to this but he hasn’t shown much improvement in mobility.

“He can’t walk or even stand without a frame. We took him for various therapies but he didn’t seem to be improving so we stopped because it wasn’t cheap. We are now taking him to Universiti Malaya Medical Centre,” he says.

Building the strength of children with CP was precisely what Sunny had in mind when he started coaching frame football.

His ultimate goal is to get his young footballers to move without having to use frames.

Disability football coach Sunny hopes his footballers will be able to walk without their mobility aids soon.

“I want them to be independent so that they can have a better future. There are so many children with CP but not many avenues for them to participate in sports.”

“These children need to be active too and with frame football, they get to play a sport, build strength in their lower limbs, improve their endurance, balance and co-ordination too. You should see them play … they sweat so much and also have a lot of fun,” says Sunny.

A strong advocate for disability sports, Sunny set up the Pan-Disability Football Club in 2006. The club coaches players with various disabilities including the national 5-A-side blind football team (that won the gold medal for the Asean Para Games 2015), partially blind football and amputee football.

CIMB Foundation is the key Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) partner for this community project.

“I have a brother who is mentally challenged and has CP. He is 42 now and I couldn’t do anything for him but he has inspired me to give back to the disabled community,” said Sunny.

The frame football training sessions are held every Saturday and are open to any child with CP above the age of five.

“As long as the child is not bedridden and can hold their neck up, they can come for our assessment,” says Sunny.

For more information, contact Rafidah at 012-288 1456.

Nailah and her husband Tuan Azhar travel by bus from Kedah every Saturday so that with their son Zuhayr can train with the other frame footballers. Photos: SAM THAM/The Star

from Family – Star2.com https://ift.tt/2zvo7ib

[itsworn]

1975 Duster: A Real Deal 10-Second All-Motor Street Car!

We’ve all been there. You spot a nice looking car at a cruise night and decide to dive in for a deeper look. As you are looking at the car you strike up a conversation and ask the guy if he has ever raced the car and if he has, what it runs. Then the dreaded response comes back. “It’ll run 10s in the quarter!” The safest response in this situation is to nod you head and move along, otherwise it’s just going to get weirder. We’ll never understand why people take this line of thinking and the good news is that there are some people out there whose word you can trust and the owner of this 1975 Plymouth Duster, George Kavounis, is one of them. When he tells you that the big-block—powered A-Body runs 10s, you can believe him!

The Chrysler A-Body platform was one of the company’s most successful, and in some respects, longest lasting. The cars were also very diverse in terms of image and performance. From the high-winding, high-performance small-block cars of the early 1970s to the economy themed models of the later part of the decade, the A-Body entries were certainly an effort to appeal to the different interests and needs of customers at the time. For guys like George Kavounis, they are more than that because they represent a vessel to invest time, effort, and finances into personalizing and modifying.

Back in 1970, George had the Mopar bug bad and with the help of his dad, bought a 1970 Plum Crazy Duster with a 340. Being into horsepower and drag racing, George built the car into a Super Stock/I Automatic runner and had great fun with the car until 1975 when he sold it. “I had been into Mopars all through my childhood,” George said. “My dad was a Chrysler guy and while he never had muscle cars, I took to them. I would read every magazine I could find and when the 1968 Hemi Darts and Barracudas came out I was just head-over-heels for them. I bought the Duster and drove it on the street while racing it until I got out of high school and with a friend set the car up to go Super Stock racing. We did that for two years until the index we were racing on got bombed pretty hard by John Lingenfelter and then I sold the car.”

Just because he was out of the racecar game didn’t mean his love for cars or Mopars had gone away. The first time he laid eyes on the ’75 you see here, it brought him right back to the days of excitement and fun he had with his ’70, and it had the same tough look to boot. “I met Allen Hall at a cruise night and we just started talking and became friends,” George said. “I would see him at the track and I worked with him on the car. I liked the car because I have always been a Mopar guy and Allen’s car was really well kept. When Allen’s health started to get a bit rocky he moved to Florida and before he left I told him that if he ever wanted to sell, I had to be the first call.” Amazingly, after not hearing from Allen for two years, the phone rang. “He told me that this was my call and my shot to buy the car,” George said. “I asked for a couple of days to get the money together and he said OK. I bought the car and he delivered it to me.”

When George got the car, it was a dedicated race car and he wanted to put the thing back on the street. “I knew that there were some things I needed to do in order to get the car back to a point where I could drive it on the road,” George said. “When I got it the car ran on race gas only. I took off the steel heads, changed the intake and carb, and generally went through the engine to make it a really healthy but driveable piece.” A 446ci RB engine that makes torque like a tug boat and still has manners good enough that it does not need race gas to survive is the end result. Using a 1976 model year 440ci block as the foundation, C&C Motorsports took it from there. The build plan involved a stock crank and stock rods with a .030-overbore to make sure everything was round and true. TRW forged pistons were used to get the compression ratio to a healthy 11.0:1, and the camshaft was sourced from Ray Barton who followed up with a mild, street friendly .590-inch lift, 284/296 duration (at .050) bumpstick. The theme of simplicity continues to the upper end of the engine with a set of Hensley Racing ported and polished Edlebrock Performer cylinder heads. Those heads use a 2.14-inch intake valve and a 1.81-inch exhaust. An Edelbrock Victor intake manifold sits atop those heads and a 1,000cfm double-pumper Quick Fuel 4150 carb feeds the whole beast.

With an engine built to make loads of torque and lots of usable power, the rest of the drivetrain has to match it to make the car both happy on the street and a stormer on the strip. The transmission is an ATI Performance built 727 equipped with a manual valvebody and fronted by an 8-inch diameter torque converter with a stall speed of 3,500 rpm. The converter makes or breaks this combo on the street, and with a 3,500 stall speed, it is loose enough to keep the engine happy but not crazy for street operation. Rearend gears are 4.57 ratio Mosers and while you are probably thinking that those cannot be street driven for any time, remember that this car wears a rear tire that is 31 inches tall.

When George said he built the car to drive it (obviously not cross-country but on the street) he meant it. “I cannot stand to see the car sit. I love driving it. I will get it out all through the year. For instance, if there is a warm day in the winter and I can take the car around town, to the hardware store or whatever, I’ll do it. I will take the car on decent trips to cruise nights and events. I don’t like to buzz the motor too badly so if I am on the highway I stick to the right lane and let traffic by me. I really love driving the car.” We love this guy!

The stance of this car is pretty great. There are lots of times where cars using a ladder-bar style rear suspension sit higher than normal to clear larger rear tires, but in the case of George’s Duster, that’s not a problem. Tucking just a touch of front tire and a healthy chunk of the tall and fat rears, it maintains a level appearance until George hammers the gas on the starting line and those big tires bite the track. You can see how well the suspension works in the launch photos where the front of the car is heading up and the rear tires are wrapped up and working hard!

Perhaps the best part of this whole story is the fact that George has spent a load of time working on the car with his sons Nick and Drew. That’s the good stuff. This car that brought Allen so much pleasure when he owned it has landed into the hands of a man who loved it as much as the previous owner did, and has even been able to transfer that experience and passion to his kids. Like we said, this car and George Kavounis are the real deal!

While loads of other cars got big and fat during the 1970s, the Plymouth Duster did not suffer the same fate. Those A-Body lines kept nice and tight when the rest of Detroit was going to flab.

In today’s world it seems like everyone wants to overcomplicate things and that’s why this 446ci big-block is a breath of fresh air. With 11.0:1 compression, a Barton-spec’d camshaft that does not kill springs, and torque for days, it rockets the Duster to 10-second elapsed times with ease. Winning!

A couple of buckets, a nicely padded dash, and a killer Winters shifter make this the office that Geoge Kavonis attacks the drag strip from. Functional and tasteful, we’re fans of its business-like environment.

Here’s a great look at the Duster going to work off the starting line. Note the weight transfer onto the sticky Mickey Thompson rear tires and the fact that this thing is a hair away from yanking those front tires. The car works.

What really spins our crank about this particular 1975 Plymouth Duster is the stance. Ladder-bar cars can have that old-school, high-riding stance but this one doesn’t, and it works great off the line. The wheel tubs allow the car to sit down and take the 4×4 look out of the equation.

While 1983 was not the greatest year for Mopar performance, this Duster’s color was from that year’s palette. Called Aqua Pearl, we dig its classy look in the sun. Oh, and how nice are the lines on this car from this angle?!

Non-car people have no idea what this is but we consider it the Mona Lisa of high performance. A mighty Dana 60, ladder bars, a Moser spool, and 4.57 gearset along with those AFCO coilovers and steam roller Hoosiers mean business and quick 60-foot times.

While we all like to talk about horsepower, it is really torque that gets a 3,700-lb car moving off the starting line. With an Old Testament thick stack of 10-second time slips powered by 446 cubes, a stock crank, and stock rods, George knows all about it. Is there anything better than a car you know you can take to the strip and have fun with without worry?

FAST FACTS

1975 Plymouth Duster George Kavounis; Centreville, Virginia

ENGINE Type: Chrysler RB-series big-block wedge V8 Bore x stroke: 4.35 (bore) x 3.75 (stroke), 446ci Block: 1976 Chrysler iron factory Rotating assembly: stock factory forged crank, TRW forged pistons, stock connecting rods Compression ratio: 11.0:1 Cylinder heads: Edelbrock Performer cylinder heads ported and polished by Hensley Camshaft: .590-inch lift, 284/286 degrees duration at 0.050 Valvetrain: 2.14-/1.81-inch valves, Cloyed double-roller timing chain, Crane 1.6-ratio roller rockers, Crane pushrods, Crane valve springs good to .750-inch lift. Induction: Edelbrock Victor intake manifold, Quick Fuel 4150 series 1,000cfm carb Fuel system: trunk-mounted fuel cell, Holley electric fuel pump Exhaust: CPPA Headers with 3.5-inch exhaust to the rear axle

Ignition: MSD crank trigger, MSD 7AL ignition box, timing locked at 30 degrees Oiling system: Milodon 7-quart oil pan with Milodon wet-sump oil pump Cooling: BeCool aluminum radiator with twin Spal electric fans, CSR electric water pump Fuel: Holley black electric fuel pump Engine built by: C&C in Manassas, Virginia Best e.t.: 10.73 at 124 mph Weight: 3,750 lbs

DRIVETRAIN Transmission: 1971 vintage RB-spec 727 manual valve body built by ATI Performance, 8-inch torque converter with 3,500-rpm stall speed Driveshaft: fabricated by National Drivetrain Rearend: Dana 60 with Moser spool and 4.57 gears

CHASSIS Front suspension: aftermarket upper and lower control arms, torsions bars, 90/10 drag shocks, sway bar delete Rear suspension: ladder bars with AFCO coilover shocks Steering: rebuilt stock Brakes: stock disc/drum combo Chassis: frame connectors and NHRA-legal roll cage installed by owner

PAINT & INTERIOR Color: 1983 Chrysler Aqua Pearl paint with silver peal bottom strip Painter: Papo’s body shop; Annedale, Virginia Interior: JAZ bucket seats, dash pad done by Ernie’s Upholstery, Manassas, VA, AutoMeter gauges, Grant steering wheel, custom carpet

WHEELS & TIRES Wheels: Bogart 15×4 (front), 15×14 (rear) Tires: Mickey Thompson 26×7.5×15 (front), Hoosier 31×16.5×15 (rear)

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