What The Toot!

It’s been a while since I talk about something in Australia, let alone Melbourne. Today, I am proud to present a new section in WhatTheToot! - Melbourne Worse Food Guide.

You have to take into account this site, and this piece is written by some frugal students (read: poor) who stress a lot on value for money. You also have to take into account that I have been a waiter before, and has worked in the Athlete’s Village during the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

You also have to take the word “Food” in Melbourne Worse Food Guide in a non-literal approach. Food is but a function of the restaurant, and a restaurant can be judged on its cleanliness, quality of food, quality of service, and everything else. So, by “Worse Food Guide”, I mean places you shouldn’t even consider going to.

Without further adieu, let me present to you the first ever, and currently on my top list, the worse food in Melbourne - Supper Inn Chinese Restaurant.

The worst restaurant in Melbourne

A week ago, a friend was staying with us. He was hungry around midnight, and our sister recommended Supper Inn to us. Having lived in Melbourne for more than three years, I have never visited the place - since its located in a dirty alley, directly in front of a few hugh rubbish bins - your average Melbourne Chinese restaurant.

As soon as we enter the premise, no one greeted or seat us. The supposed (we assumed) manager nonchalantly act as if he didn’t care while he pick up the menus, before seating us. He should have done the opposite.

We then noticed the exorbitant price. Students aren’t exactly rich, and while the shop is open until 3 in the morning, the premium they charge is way too much. A few minutes later, a waiter walked close to our table with his notepad, ready to take our order.

His presentation was average - the average asshole that is. His hair was dyed golden, which made him looked like Homo Golden Monkey. We asked him to give us a minute (since the food was pricey and we are finding cheap alternatives), and he walked away without saying a thing. We contemplated walking out of the store, but then there aren’t many stores which are open in the wee hours of a Monday morning.

We decided to get the cheapest food - congee, and we signalled the waiter. We asked how big the a bowl of congee is, and he seemed to have a very hard time articulating and expressing himself, making him a closer relative of the chimpanzee than the average human. I asked if its bigger than the bowl sitting in front of us, he agreed, and we (my brother, his friend, and me) ordered three different congee.

We finished our congee 15 minutes later, and was chatting away there while sipping some Chinese tea. We placed the cover of the teapot in a way that signalled to them that we wanted the teapot refilled. The waiter came over, collected our empty bowls, place the bill in front of us, and walked away. We were a little pissed, and asked him back to refill our teapot.

He took away the teapot, and we were still chatting there. We placed a 20 dollar note on the tray with the receipt. A waitress came over to take the money away and said “Thank You” to us. At least there’s still a single hospitality staff in the store with some decent attitude.

Another waiter came over with the change in a tray and removed all the tea cups in a way that indicated he is not happy, and we are not welcome. We raised our voices to say we are still waiting for some tea, and he mumbled something that sounded like “If you paid the bill that means you do not want anything and wants to leave.” We said no, he placed the cups back on our table angrily and walked away without being apologetic. We further raised our voice and asked for the manager.

The idiot signalled to the Homo Golden Monkey and a few minutes went by before the Golden Monkey gave us our tea. However, no manager came to our table. We were pissed.

While we drank our tea, the waiters and supposed manager sat down. They started conversing in Cantonese, and thinking we do not understand anything, they said something that goes along the line of “they only ordered 3 bowls of congee”. The rest of the conversation, one can reasonably expect, would be badmouthing us. The worse part is the manager took of his shoes and played with it with his feet. Professionalism and creditability - none to negative.

Five minutes passed, we finished our tea, and still no manager. Of course, we left the store after that, and vowed never to come back.

Overall, the food was good, at least my congee was. The friend’s, and my brother’s were not for me to judge. However, the unwelcoming attitude, facade, atmosphere, and having two complete idiots as waiters, with a fuck-you-I-don’t-care manager would enough to make you think twice about even stepping up the stairs to the premise.

We do not expect excellent service, but we do expect to be treated politely with some decency. Sadly, those were missing from Supper Inn Chinese Restaurant. For that we rate it the worse food in Melbourne, with negative infinity stars. You should probably stay away.

Back in Malaysia, people jaywalk all the time partly because there aren’t any laws and regulations safeguarding the interests of pedestrians, but mostly because there are just too much (uncountable!) reckless, stupid and idiotic drivers in Malaysia, particularly Penang.

In Australia, particularly Melbourne (since I live here), people are known for their good manners in driving. They will always (most of the time) let the pedestrians cross the road before driving through, even at a junction without traffic lights, and even if that means waiting for one full minute for all the pedestrians to cross. They will rarely sound the honk. Malaysian wouldn’t think twice before doing so.

That kinda gives pedestrians in Melbourne king-like power. Indeed, they are, in my opinion, the true king of the road. Their powers are so great that eventually people got scared of them, and began warning other people of pedestrians:

Yes. All in capital letters, and CAUTION in bold. Pedestrians are too powerful and scary, other people have to be cautioned and warned of.

By the way the photo was taken in 9 October 2007 in front of the building site for the new Royal Melbourne Women’s Hospital, hence the huge ass portrait shots of women.

Indeed, they are stupid. In fact there has been a lot of interest on the internet on whether they are stupid. This is evident by the keywords that people use to find this site:

Do note that there are 3 similar search terms to stupid Australians, totalling 74 visits. The original “Australians are stupid” post is also one of the most commented post in this website (not that we get a lot of visitors.) If you look at the comments, there are local and foreigners alike who seem to think and come to the same conclusion - that Australians are indeed stupid.

We recently get a comment from Jack on that post:

Jack Says:
March 16th, 2008 at 12:15 pm Australians are indeed stupid, I’ve lived in 5 countries for work and have visited many more, ayayayay the stupidity of Australians is shocking, for instance their claim that they are a great sporting nation, Ha is that a joke, most famous sporting figures abuse alcohol or use drugs as if it is the most normal thing to do and the australian public worship those idiots, and lets talk about the alcohol abuse in this country, Aussies are obsessed with alcohol, they live their lives to get wasted in the shortest possible time so that they can pick a fight. teens and high performance cars is another thing, somehow they think that because they own a V8 they have to drive like an idiot and cause accidents, you hear it on the news every day that another car load of teens got killed in a high performance car and often they were drunk, wha is it in this country, don’t they learn from this??, the answer is NO, the response of the government to this is , ” lets put these kids trough a course that teaches them how to drive these cars”, this is throwing fuel on fire, these kids only get more confident and think they can drive these big cars faster, after all ” I’ve done a special course on how to handle these cars”.
The amount of assaults in this coutry are rediculous, aussies are aclohol obsessed and agressive people with NO common sense what so ever.
I am Australian and NOT proud of it and I am happy to say that I am leaving this country this year, I will tell no one in my new home country that I am australian because I am ambarresed.
Teachers here can’t spell for shit, and that is teaching our kids, my god, an idiot teaching an a idiot, that is the same with driving lessons, aussies can’t drive for shit.
I can go on and on like this but it’s only making me sad.
wake up australia

Bad grammar and spelling mistakes aside, one thing that caught my attention is how he spelled ridiculous. Jack said, and I quote:” The amount of assaults in this coutry are rediculous, aussies are aclohol obsessed and agressive people with NO common sense what so ever.”

I don’t know, Jack. Maybe you have read my previous post about spelling “rediculous”, and by using that particular spelling, you want to impress me by indicating to me that you have read it. What a good reader you have been!

Either that, or you are as stupid as some Australians. Please do check out How-To-Spell-Ridiculous.com. Seriously, it’s essential that you get it right, so that we have one less stupid Australian. Sorry Jack. Sorry I have to pick on you like that.

It looks like my plan to “generate electricity and sell it back to the grid” has gone horribly wrong.

This is the subsequent bill from my electricity provider:

Previously the bill showed a huge decrease. It’s so dramatic it drops below zero, which resulted in a electricity bill of -$30.35 for the -434kWhs we used. Yes, negative.

I guess my electricity provider must have found out what I was doing and charge us back. The energy for the subsequent months are 360kWhs and then shot up to 1084kWhs, resulting in a bill of $121.54. All my effort has gone in vain.

In truth, there never was any plan or effort. All those were dramatisation by me. I must stress that the scanned copy of the bills have not been modified in any way.

In Victoria, Australia, the electricity bill comes every three months, and thus there is a meter reading every three months as well. However, the energy provider I use, Victoria Energy probably decided that any amount of cash is more important than no cash for three months, which is why they send me a bill every month.

This means that for the two months that there are no readings, they send bill with estimate amount of energy usage. This estimate is calculated from your previous energy usage. Most of the time they get it pretty close, sometimes they just suck.

The April bill shows how much they suck. Energy usage from January to March are all estimates. When they read the meter at 27 Mar, they saw that the actual electricity usage was lower than estimated, which is why they they deducted money for the month of April.

The sudden spike in this bill is not a overestimation however. Due to the cold weather, and some other reasons, our energy usage was actually that high.

Sorry, Mother Earth, I let you down.

One day, as I was walking in QV mall, a dwarf walk pass me. No, not your World of Warcraft or [insert MMORPG name] type of Dwarf. A real life dwarf, a genetic disease.

Parallel to me, there were two kids looking at the dwarf as he walk pass them. They kept looking AND laughing at the same time, and then ran up to their father and had the following conversation:

Kids: Dad! Dad! Look at that guy! [Laughs and giggles]
Dad: What?
Kids: Dad, that guy over there!
Dad: What? He’s a dwarf.
Kids: [Laughs and giggles continues]

In Australia, where people are generally well informed about diseases around the world, I felt disgusted at the action of the father. He did not stop them from laughing. In fact, he said “What? He’s a dwarf” like it’s does not concern him, like it’s a matter of fact, like their kids can laugh at the dwarf. It is fortunate that no one is in the proximity of those children and the stupid father, and it’s even more fortunate that the dwarf didn’t hear any part of this conversation.

They laughed at a disease, at a sufferer. The father did not even take the initiative to educate his children about dwarfism, and it’s not right to laugh at people and that is why I think some Australians are stupid.

One a side note, this is a picture I found in the newspaper long ago about a storm in Melbourne. We are always taught not to stand under a tree in a storm, as the chance of being hit by lighting is significantly increased. However, Australian being Australian, here’s what you see:

More intriguingly, there’s a perfectly fine building at the back. I wonder why they do not stay inside the building instead.