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.

The importance of spell-checking and double-checking one’s work cannot be stressed any further. Most bloggers (including me) do not normally spell-check their post, but in fact, they should. An article, and the mistakes in the article says a lot about the author. I swear I shall spell check and double check my work, including this blog, in the future.

It’s one thing for bloggers and amateurs to make mistake, it’s another thing when formal news source do the same. I was reading news online, when I came across the following:

Australian Prime Minister is Ruud!

In one heading, there are two mistakes: “Ruud” and “Bilaterial”. While “bilaterial” has been corrected, as of today, no one has bothered to correct “Ruud” yet. The post still can be found here. That’s extremely “Ruud” of TheMalaysianInsider.com to misspell the last name of a Prime Minister from another country. That’s all fine, until I scroll down to the bottom of the news and read the news source - BERNAMA.

Non-Malaysian might not know this, but BERNAMA, short for Berita Nasional Malaysia, literally Malaysian National News, is the Malaysian National News Agency. Immediately, I search for “Ruud” on the website, and I swear I could not have made this up, this is what I see:

Ruud's visit again

As of today, the news complete with the mistake can still be read. Since the news from The Malaysian Insider is sourced from Bernama, it’s mildly acceptable for them to make the mistake, but it doesn’t exempt them from spell checking their articles, especially with a huge ass heading of “Ruud”.

BERNAMA’s mistake, is another thing. It’s the Malaysian National News Agency, man! If they can make such simple mistake, what about the average Malaysian?

Now I know why our national English level suck ass. Maybe Australia should consider terminating the “bilaterial” ties with Malaysia.

I was wondering if there’s any online broker in Malaysia, and after a quick search on Google, I arrived on this page.

For those who are curious, you can visit the homepage, and I think you’ll agree that the whole website is just nearly as stupid as Bank Rakyat’s website, as mentioned previously by Khensthoth.

WARNING: Web design may cause seizure. Viewer must be cautious. For safety purposes, an image of the website is included below:

As I was saying, I reached this page, and scrolling down a little, there’s “Wise Investor Game, click here to play” gif image which aroused my curiousity. So, I was clicking through the “game” and came across this:

Money is a great friend once you send it off to work. For example, if you deposit RM500 in a savings account that pays five percent interest, a year later you have an extra RM25 and you didn’t have to do anything to earn it. Your money earned it!

Twenty five dollars might not seem like much but if you deposited RM 25 for ten years while the interest is compounding and building up, at the end of the tenth year you would have RM 6,603.39, comprising RM5000 you put in, plus RM1,603.39 that was earned from the money you invested.

Alright, aside from having an amazing 5% interest rate, it says that the RM 25 is earned without doing anything. Sure, RM 25 extra, but there is no information whatsoever about the inflation rate at that time. If the inflation rate is higher than 5%, which is probably the case, I do wonder how wise the “investor” is. I am not saying that one should not put money in the bank. What I am saying is that nobody will get any wiser playing this bullshit.

Alright, it then says that in total, you have put in RM 5000, by saving RM 25 over a period of 10 years. Assuming the the saving is periodical, a quick calculation shows that one will need to save RM 25 approximately every 18 days….. Right, sure. 18 days is easy to remember. I deposited RM 25 on Monday. Alright, I’ll come back to the bank on Friday 2 weeks later. That’s easy to remember…. Right. So, on the assumption that the interest rate is 5%, and that RM 25 is deposited every 18 days, a not-so-fun calculation shows that one will get approximately RM 7121 by the end of the 10 year period, NOT RM 6603.39

Let’s see what other wise advice is given there, shall we?

If you invest RM500 a year in stocks your money gets a chance to do you a really big favour. On average you will double your money every seven or eight years. A lot of smart investors have learned to take advantage of this; they realise that money is as important as their job.

Double your money every 7 or 8 years? That is between 9% to 10.4% of annual return, and as stated, from investment in STOCKS! On average! Can you believe that?

Go to any advice page from website designer and the following two will be listed, in one way or another:

• Do not have any “Home” page that requires people to click to enter your website. The content is the most important part of a website, and having people click to enter your website is particularly unwelcoming, and serve no functional benefit.
• Do not have any flash content on your website, particularly not on your “Home” page (See above). Some unobtrusive and non-distracting flash content on the banner is mildly acceptable. A whole website made with Flash is not. Unless your company has anything to do with Flash, do not use it.

Sadly, it was once a norm to design website that incorporate the two aforementioned “features”. This is slowly changing, fortunately. However, since most of Malaysia’s governmental or organisation’s websites are designed before George Bush was president, they retain the same basic flaw.

After reading the news I mentioned, I went to Bank Rakyat website to have a look to see if they have anything to say about it. Sadly, I was greeted with this when I arrive at their website:

Yes, a page to select the language, not a page of content. First mistake. However, when I click on English, I was greeted with this:

A “Enter” page with Flash content that took an infinite amount of time to load on my 1.5Mbps broadband connection. Another non-content page. At this point, I decided that this is one of the worst website I have seen. After I click enter, this is presented:

That’s my browser at a resolution of 1024×768. I have no idea what the grey box is. At a “non-standard” resolution, like 1440×900 however, it looks like this:

Yea. Farking ugly - Fugly. I have previously wrote about stupid, ugly website, but Bank Rakyat Website takes the phrase “stupid website” to a whole new level.

StatCounter is one of those free web statistical system that records user visits. I use it, along with Google Analytics (too complicated) and Wordpress.com Stat (non-functional). Currently StatCounter is the only one that provide free, easy, real-time analysis. While it is great at that, it’s totally useless in IP-Geolocation - determining the location using IP. Let’s look at some example:

Perth is an island off the coast of Australia according to StatCounter.

Kuala Terengganu is closer to Penang than to Terengganu.

Kota Kinabalu is now some obscure island in the South China Sea.

Pay special attention to this one. The “ISP” indicated that it is Melaka Manipal Medical College in Melaka. Oh hey, Melaka is actually in Kuala Lumpur according to StatCounter, and it is located in Indonesia!

Another instance Kuala Lumpur is actually somewhere in Indonesia.

What the TOOT?! This has got to be the worse website in terms of portraying their IP-Geolocation data. Seriously Toot!