October 2006 Archives

Apologies in advance for the changes that's happening around the site at the moment.

I'm slowly implementing the new look and feel of the site that I have been working on recently. Believe it or not, this is the 3rd look for HarbX.com... in 3 years! Woohoo!

As I do have a day job... it'll take some time before everything can be fully updated, so I really do apologise for the areas that do not reflect the new changes and styling as yet.

Note: At this stage, only blog areas will be changing.

I hope this new design will enhance your experience on HarbX.com in a positive way.

Here's a couple of things that this new design hopes to improve.
1. Friendlier for bigger screens, and supporting 1024x768 as the new standard.
2. Better accesibility - although it's still not perfect and work still needs to be done.
3. Better navigation, better colours, and hopefully easier engagement... from readers!

Do let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement.

Thanks guys + girls!

Pacific Seafood BBQ House is a popular chinese restaurant that has 2 branches - one at South Yarra and one at Richmond.

This one in South Yarra is located at 210, Toorak Road, just nearby the South Yarra train station.

We paid a visit here after going to the Shrine of Remembrance to give Marie a treat - as she had generously treated us to dinner the night before at Cafe Trevi.

Some say that the roast meats here are the best in Melbourne. Me - I can't really pass that sort of judgement as I have yet to eat roast meats at a place that has simply blown me away.

The Shrine of Remembrance is one of my favourite monuments in Melbourne.

It projects a peaceful calm - while at the same time gives you a feeling of awe as to remind you what it stands for.

Wikipedia:
It was built as a memorial to the men and women of Victoria who served in World War I, but soon came to be seen as Australia's major memorial to all the 60,000 Australians who died in the war. It now serves as a memorial for all Australians who served in war and it is the site of annual observances of ANZAC Day (25 April) and Remembrance Day (11 November).

We came here last Sunday to show this place to Marie. We arrived just past 5pm so the doors to the interior had already closed.

Marie, Ben and me on the steps.

Cafe Trevi (cafetrevi.com.au) is right in the Italian district of Lygon Street, Carlton.

Don't let the date of my entry fool you, we actually ate here on Saturday with Marie on her first day here.

While we were walking around Brunswick Street (Marie's second day in Melbourne on Sunday so she was shopping here), I found this bench!

Andy and Ratu Land... mmmmm..... if it's in Malay it means me(Andy) and the Land of the Queen. Duh!

This speed limit sign was even 'spiced' up by street art here.

As I am a closet street art lover, I went to scout out some of the stuff that were on the sides of some of the buildings.

Check out the pictures here.

Bimbo's Deluxe (bimbodeluxe.com.au) looks horrible from the outside in the day time.

The place is basically a pub/eating place combo with a theme of baby dolls. No kidding.

Located at 376 Brunswick St (Cnr Rose St), Fitzroy - Bimbo's is busy during the weekend evenings. During the day however, it is well known for its cheap meals - and that's what we're there for (although we went on a Sunday and ended up needing to pay full price).

They have all pizzas for $4 as lunch specials from Mondays to Fridays, and in the evenings as well, excluding Friday nights.

Situated within the GPO (General Post Office) in the heart of Melbourne City, Kenzan is definitely not easy to find for the first timer.

Most of the tables are within the alleyway running behind the GPO, and gives the place a little bit of a 'alley-cafe' feel. Central heating is provided from the pipes running above, and they work very well even in winter.

This Kenzan is actually the little sister of the Kenzan in the ANZ/Sofitel building on Collins Street. The specialty however are sushi rolls and freshly cooked ramens and bento boxes.

So what's so special about this place?

Marie is Su Yi's friend from Singapore, and this was her first visit to Melbourne - and Australia.

We took her to have a walk in the city today and started out with lunch at Kenzan in GPO.

We then showed her the area around Chinatown before making our way to the Melbourne Central area.

Here she is, second from right in front of the State Library of Victoria.

Just as we were crossing the street, this dude caught my eye. Go Johnny boy!

I went into the toilet in the Paramount shopping centre and saw a sign on top of the toilet bowl.

Here's a closeup of the sign.

In case you didn't catch that for some reason... it reads "Do Not Stand on the Toilet Seat!!"

Now.... WHAT THE???

Which sick minded moron stands on the toilet seat? That's just so wrong.

OK ok, to be fair, maybe they meant, "Do Not Squat on the Toilet Seat!" Probably to the stupid jokers that love performing some sort of acrobatic circus move while taking a dump or a piss (for the women's toilet - I was later told that they had the same signs in the Women's).

Seriously... gets you thinking about wrong toilet habits.

If you have seen other such signs in toilets, I would love to hear from you!

Stonegrill is a chain of Japanese restaurants that I have seen popping up around Melbourne recently.

This Stonegrill was at Level 1, Shop 1 in the Paramount Shopping Centre accesible from both Little Bourke Street and Bourke Street.

Their specialty was actually the Stonegrill grilled meats, and I really wanted to try that - but because I had a sorethroat and I didn't want to worsen it, I thought I'd better try the Ramen, which was highly recommended by Matt.

The ramens had 4 kinds of soup bases you could choose from.

Matt and Horng Shii had this one which had chicken and prawns.

I had the Chashu ramen in kyushu soup - which is basically creamy soup boiled with Pork.

Baba House is located on Errol Street right in the heart of the North Melbourne town area.

When I was living in North Melbourne, I used to come here to get takeaway whenever I feel like having Malaysian food.

Here's what the place looks like from the outside.

Here's a shot of the interior. Not a very big place - if you have a bigger group, it might be a good idea to make a booking as bigger tables are limited.

Lazy Moe's is located on 90-94 Warrigal Road, Oakleigh.

The view from the outside is similar to a family style fast food/eat all you can restaurant.

Here's what the inside of the restaurant looks like.

For some reason, they do not like you moving their furniture around, and this is actually stated in the menu.

Anyways, they are apparently well known for big servings, so in between the 6 of us, we just ordered 4 mains.

Well almost - Andrew had his own. This is what he had. It's called the Italian job - which is basically like an Italian sausages thing with risotto. Looks pretty good.

Friend from the good ol' USA - AzoStealth has sent me something very very interesting.

Best part of it is - it is very clear! As you would have probably guessed by the title of my post, this might be Bumblebee's gun from the Transformers movie!

This appears to be another concept art, so here it is, I've enlarged it slightly for this wallpaper's purpose and applied a colour effect to the entire thing to mask the enlarging process.

Now that is one kick ass gun! Actually it reminds me of Robocop's add-on weapon in Robocop 3.

Well come to think of it, this could be fake then, but hey - it looks awesome, so here we go anyway!

This is available in 2 sizes.

1680x1050

1280x1024

Hope you guys enjoy this. Special thanks to AzoStealth.

Leave me some thoughts about what you think about his pea shooter as well!

Feel free to link away to this entry at:
http://www.harbx.com/archives/2006/10/bumblebees_gun.html

Independent Thought
You may airline info regarding cheap airline tickets from internet as well as their booking offices. The new efficient airline self-service system is making everyone go airlines. Flights on allegiant airlines have further promoted this feeling.

I've just done it.

Applied for Google AdSense - got it, and now HarbX has been infected by Google ads.

And nope, I don't think I'll make any money out of it - but heck, let's give it a go hey?

I'd be happy just to make enough money to cover my hosting.

So if you see any ads on the site, and they interest you, don't worry about clicking them!

Go for your life. These aren't those super non-stop popup ads. No p0rn, spyware, and misc dumb stuff all the lowlives who can't think of anything better to do people has done to ruin people like you and me's Internet experience.

If you think this is a stupid move and I should remove them - I wanna hear your thoughts as well. Give me some alternative ideas on making some money so I can at least pay for hosting.

To Goooooggllleeeeee...................

Chinatown Dumpling Restaurant is located in between Lonsdale and Little Bourke Street, on Swanston Street.

We visitted this restaurant over the last weekend. It's fairly new - business seems to be good so far with customers seen most of the time inside.

This restaurant is in a lot that has seen previous tenants fail and shut down not long after, so can they break this lot's ugly record?

Let's look at their food then.

Here's their Shanghai seafood noodles. A little oily, but they're not skimping on ingredients like some other similar restaurants.

Imagine this, a couple is sitting in the park.

The guy tells the girl, "Sayang, I boleh love you selama I can."

The girl replies, "Oh romantik-le hubby I".

Out springs enforcement officers shouting, "EH ini tak boleh - Bahasa Malaysia tak boleh campur English! Kalau buat lagi kena saman!"

Think it's stupid? Read this article then.

Ok maybe my example is a bit far stretched.

"Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Rais Yatim said fines of up to 1,000 ringgit ($271) can be imposed on displays with any wrong or mutated form of Malay, the Star newspaper reported."

Where in the world did this moron come from?

We have a lack - or maybe we don't even have - a dedicated linguistic departments on the academic level advancing the language. Manglish has been used for a few generations now among Malaysians of all walks of life.

Looks like good ol' Ramli Burger is going to be gone as Burger is an English word. Excellent.

Bring on Roti ban dengan daging Ramli.

So how is this going to work? How are they going to enforce this??

Talk about a waste of time and effort.

Let me know what you guys think - will this type of law actually work?

Huai Wern and Jonathan Cheong are 2 of my ex-classmates back in my high school, St. Xavier's Institution - back in Penang.

Huai Wern currently lives in Singapore and Jon's living here in Melbourne as well.

I think I haven't met Huai Wern for something like 8-9 years, whereas the last time Jon met him was 5 years back too. So I was happy about meeting up with the guys as it has been such a long time since we had a good chance to catch up.

Here's the lovely couple on their honeymoon - Buffy(yup this is what we used to call him) and his lovely wife Lynn.

Here's the 3 of us ex Saints of 97 boys all from 5 Science 2 - the most troublemaking class that year (I'm serious!).

Today is advertisement day for me.

Here are 2 ads that have caught my eye - one's a video and one a poster.

First let's have a look at this video ad from Mentos Ice.

Let's launch a new window with the ad here (trust me you want it in a new window as it keeps resizing the window).

How good is that? My only complaint with it is that it stopped at the best part...

Next, we have this rather controversial upcoming posters from Lee Jeans - dubbed the "Lolita" ad poster for spring-summer 2006.

It has just been found acceptable by the Australian Advertising Standards Board - so hey, it should be legal I guess?

I want to bring it to attention - as it is just exactly the kind of ad you won't ever see in Malaysia. EVER.

Nik Aziz from PAS will be all over this ad so quick - and I can just imagine the stupidest things he is going to say. "Ini tak boleh ni, nanti semua lelaki tak boleh tahan nafsu, bukan salah mereka".

Gotta love the guy.

We went to Laksa King for dinner after the Royal Melbourne Show. This is probably one of the most popular Malaysian hawker food places I know around Melbourne.

It's one place that has extremely good business, and today was no different. We went there at 6 pm to be told there would probably no space till 8 pm, so we had to come back.

Here's a shot of the inside. Almost all the waitresses seem to be wearing Malaysian Airlines lookalike dresses.

Here's Sashi's nasi lemak which came first. He just loves his nasi lemak.

The last time I went to the Royal Melbourne Show was probably 3 years ago. Back over the years, there were tonnes of complaints regarding the condition of the grounds, which was apparently falling apart.

When we got there, we had to walk about 300m from the car park (which was very very organised I must say) - and after purchasing our tickets we walked to the entrance.

Each ticket covers one free Herald Sun newspaper.