Neway Karaoke + Bornga Korean BBQ @ City Square

Met PG on bus 160 to cross the causeway - first time going Neway on a Sunday. Luckily bus 170 was fast, seeing the long queues of cars, can consider the bus has relatively no jam liao. Jin fast.

Though breakfast at home, the moment I stepped into City Square mall, I began to feel hungry. Ordered wanton mee to eat while waiting for the rest. *Shrugs, the shutter gate only opened when more and more people waiting at the entrance.*

Saw HH and ZX at Sharetea booth buying drinks. HH follow ZX's order and ordered exactly the same drink (Aigoo, something fishy going on wor!) coz HH always hiam the drink he chose not nice. *Not I want to say la, but you already so hiam in first place, the drink selection is quite narrow down by your preference liao, what to do?*

Left the couple hasn't arrive.

We 4 pax went check-in at 10.15 am first. Started singing and still the couple hasn't arrive!?

認真在唱歌

認真在拍照

我的午餐

聽說這個不怎麼好吃

一看就知道誰點了這盤西餐

PG的意大利麵

The package we had was K-lunch - 3 hour singing session with a drink and one serving of food. About the food, I had this sambal chilli prawn rice. The prawn not very fresh IMO, but consolation prize was the nicely done sunny side-up. Then the milk tea was too sweet IMO, not the usual teh I like from kopitiams.

Actually, 6 pax for 3 hours really not enough leh. I haven't had enough of karaoke lor! IMO, the best timing is one person is allocated 2-3 hours to sing. So if estimate one song typically last less than 5 mins, then 1 hour would have roughly about 15 song(?) Then 2-3 hours timing is considered enough, if not more, for most of us liao.

I really want to say this, having visited both SG's Kbox and MY's Neway karaoke outlets, I must really critique SG's Kbox is always on the losing side based on a lot of aspects. Why?

1. Currency. Fair and square, for Singaporeans spending in Malaysia, this is one obvious monetary benefit we could get.'

2. Price. Kbox gets really expensive these few years. No more $11 for 5 hours liao. The most ridiculous thing is the K.O.D., last time only 50 cents per pax. 9 years later, it had increased by 700% to $4! Plus plus somemore. I don't know WTH this is for because I only see Kbox got this weird pricing mechanism. At least Neway doesn't have this, probably if have also embedded in the price liao. And their way of doing business is not very nice IMO. For e.g., it was understood from past experience that the listed 2-7pm is for singing and also for room booking duration. However, now 2-7pm is still designated as the singing time zone, but the room is only booked for 3 hours. Sometimes, really felt a bit cheated and I really don't enjoy the member benefits anymore, not much discounts and such.

2. Sound system. Last week I visited Marina Square's branch and found that the sound was awful, especially if the song gets bassy. Neway one was okay. I'm not biased towards Neway though.

3. Infrastructure. Other than sound system, the infrastructures Neway has are much much better than Kbox one. Kbox still using 29 inch CRT TVs (still using these bulky CRTs?!) while Neway uses much bigger LCD TVs. Kbox has no mains socket, but Neway has one. Kbox still using wired mics, but Neway already use wireless mics and it's a challenge if you can manage to get a third mic from Kbox (niao in a sense). Neway, on the other hand, will adjust accordingly. There were 4 wireless mics for 6 of us. Service was really not bad! Oh ya, not to mention the readily available WiFi at Neway.

4. Song selection. Neway has a better list of songs coming from HK, regardless it's cantonese or mandarin. Otherwise, I feel they are on par.

Enough of comparison. We next moved around the mall and the mooncake carnival at ground level caught our attention. Went around to try out the mooncakes from Malaysia, which I always have been having since young. May not hold true for the rest though. We all agreed as one that the 冰皮月餅 from 東亞 were the nicest among all. So to conclude, not necessarily need to buy from BRANDED bakery, they may be overrated.

After ZX and HH left, towards dinner time, we went to this Korean restaurant called 본가. Heard from HL, it has outlets in SG, but some of the prices are almost double that of Malaysian counterparts.

燒烤之前的醃製豬肉

石鍋拌飯，有一點點欠水準

韓式海鮮煎餅，也是有一點欠水準

The taste is as authentic as it can get. BBQ marinated pork tasted like satay! But the 돌솥비빔밥 and the 해물파전 were a little bit of letdown though. There was no 鍋巴 when by right the 돌솥 version should have some 鍋巴 one. On the other hand, the pancake was a bit too 'soft' and 'mashed'. I had better ones at Ju Shin Jung and Kim's Family lo.

After dinner went back to buy all the things we wanted. I bought 冰皮 durian, mango and green tea. For the 4th one, I bought the 酥皮芋頭月餅, this one not too sweet which I thought my family would like it. The 冰皮 ones are for try out the flavours only.