Monday, August 18, 2008

Why I love Ebay!

I hope people saw the media today about a woman who has posted her cheating husband's ' size small' condom wrapper on Ebay with 'the Tart's knickers'.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24198119-13762,00.html
This is gold - way to go sister!
Here's the auction:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/EMPTY-CONDOM-PACKET-A-PHOTO-OF-THE-TARTS-KNICKERS_W0QQitemZ250280309940QQihZ015QQcategoryZ1469QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

This has made my Monday.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Restaurant Review - Cream

Cream, cnr Royal and Plain St, East Perth
view the menu here http://www.bestrestaurants.com.au/restaurants/WA-Perth-cream.aspx

I should start out by saying I love Cream. We've been there a few times, and each time it impresses me. Here's why:

1. This is a professional restaurant. When you book, you get a choice of sittings - the early or the late. No fannying about. Maria (manager) will call you the day before to confirm your booking. The staff are superb - friendly, attentive and knowledgable. By far the best service I've ever had in Perth. No uniforms, but it's obvious who the staff are. Our waitress was great and very good at adding a personal touch without imposing.

2. Wine list. I'm not sure if Natasha C is still doing the wine list, but it's an impressive mix of Australian and international wines, chosen because they are good. None of this " please Fosters, write me a wine list with all your generic products" crap. Good stuff available by the glass too. And it's somewhere you can find a reasonably priced bottle of good wine that will match your meal and not get 'tude if you don't buy the Pol/Grange/whatever. Anywhere that has an Ata Rangi Pinot on the list gets snaps from me!

3. Food. I'll go into what we ordered in a bit, but basically all the food is good because the person who makes it loves what they do. It's my understanding that chef and owner John Mead makes almost everything himself from scratch, and it shows. Attention to detail and love of food = great small, focused menu. We had the New Norcia bread with pate and onion chutney to start - a perfect match of textures and flavours. The onion chutney was slightly sweet and the pate was mooth and creamy. We also shared an entree - a perfect puffy souffle and lightly grilled scallops. I had a special for main - duck pie. Very sexy buttery pastry with duck and fruit (possibly fig) filling on top of mash and greens. Not huge, but perfectly filling. I was sorry when it was gone, because it was so good.

No room for dessert, unfortunately, but they all looked really attractive.

4. Decor and atmosphere - Cream is quite small, but it feels intimate rather than crowded. There's a small bar at the front ( small small - seats about 6 people) so we went for a cocktail before dinner. The cocktails were well made - you can see, it's an open bar- and simply presented. The lighting is low without feeling dim and it's not loud, possibly because of the furry walls. The walls are really cool, and match the colour scheme (red, maroon, brown wood) and lighting. It's welcoming and stylish without being over-designed or pretentious.

5. The total bill - I liked this part too. Not so much paying it, obviously, but the prices are reflective of what you get. The money is well spent because I always leave so happy and full and think about how good the food is for days afterward. I think any of the Meads 'restaurants' and certainly the Raffles would be more expensive for two mains, shared entree and bread plus a bottle of wine and two cocktails, and the quality of their food is below par. I won't even talk about their staff.

The only things I didn't like:
The toilets. Out the side door, down the apartment block corridor (ugly tiles and all-over beige), around the corner and into the shared loos. Not so atmospheric. Plus a bit of a lengthy stretch if you've had a few in heels.
Taxi! The staff were super-efficient in calling our taxi and it arrived straight away, so I wasn't quite past my "I'm so full if I move I might slosh" place. Then there was a bit of a mix up where we got charged for another table and this then had to get reversed. This is the only reason Cream gets 9/10 rather than 10.

Get thee to Cream. However it may ruin you for sub-standard food, service and wine lists forever... and then you'd have to keep going back.

Just plain weird...



Two more offenders from this week, posted because I had a real "wtf?" moment when I read them.


I'm not a beautician, so correct me, but I've never heard of a reiki facial; and

Step 8 - Walla!
I almost died of embarrassment because this one is in my workplace, but then recoved as it's from Lavazza, home of crap coffee. (That's me who'd corrected it, in case you're wondering.) I think the word that the individual who made the flyer was searching for was ' voila'. Note to all dullards: don't try to use impressive words (or words at all, really, that one's pretty easy) because you'll only upset people and look stupid.

A.L.F Special Mention and Inaugural Trophy



Special mention to Miss Field, going above and beyond with the naming and shaming apostrophe-abusing signs:

50's & 60's (!!!) wrong.


Thanks for that one; it's nice to know someone else feels my pain.


I'd also like to give an inaugural idiot trophy to the person who produced the above offending item - it's not clear from the photo, but what this is is a street sign which is printed with the correct business name (Retro Betty's, all fine) with a handwritten overlay of blue plastic that sits over the printed sign. You can see through the overlay, and the shop has a big sign out front as well, both with the apostrophe, and the Friday F**Kwit who wrote it still left out the apostrophe. I mean, seriously. Especially given that the offender was most likely an employee, who should therefore know the business name, albeit an employee who gets lost on the way to work because they can't even remember the name of their employer!

A.L.F strikes again





I've begun developing a theory that there's only a certain number of apostrophes around to be used; this explains why some people have too many and some too few- they're just trying to get through their quota or don't have enough, and some people got more than their fair share and others got ripped off.


This is quite half-baked but I'm grasping at straws here; people are just unbelievably dumb, but I can only say that so many times.


And this winners this week are:

Kim Long, with no shop or specials, particularly not today;

A day with no specials (no owner mentioned);

Spa's; and

my favourite, because it's so random - DVD's and MIC's. Why wouldn't that also be ink's, toner's and scanner's?

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Apostrophe Liberation Front #3

Random apostrophes adrift on the internet - being used and abused!

http://www.elmars.com.au/
a place where you can get reasonably good food (upcoming review) and also take "photo's"
http://www.alwayswin.optus.com.au/flash/index.cfm?4
Should you feel the need, review the "T's and C's" (presumably terms and conditions)
http://www.bloch.com.au/shop/p-358-draped-pointes.aspx
"Pointe's" !!!!! Uncalled for abuse of pointe shoes as well as an apostrophe, but strangely enough correct in the web address.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Calling you people - spell check misses you! #2



1. I think this was meant to be ' sleeves'. 3 'e's. Maybe someone was rationing their vowels?
2. I checked, this business isn't called " Tennants", like the surname of the actor who plays the current Doctor. And obviously bad spelling is nowhere near as cool as somone with a Tardis.