I thought, wow! That's great! It's been some time since I went for karaoke sessions with my friends and this was a good time as any to exercise my vocal chords again. I quickly called to book a session for 8.30pm last Tuesday after work.
Now the night karaoke session comes with a buffet dinner, so it's just perfect for some good relaxing fun after work. Actually, I prefer not to eat during karaoke, but this time, I wanted it to be more like a relaxing time rather than seriously singing my heart out. Furthermore, I've not been singing for some time and my voice would just sound terrible, if it was not already.
Anyway, I and two other friends reached Red Box which was located at the fourth floor opposite GSC Signature, right on the dot. We were greeted warmly at the counter, which was good because the last time I encountered really rude staff at another outlet at The Curve.
When I enquired how long we could sing, the female staff told us normally we were allowed to sing for 3 hours, but if there were not many people coming in after midnight, we could continue singing till 3 am! We were like, wow! Is that a good deal or what?
In case you think the 3 of us could not sing that long, let me assure you that I've once sang for 8 hours straight. Not that I am a very good singer, mind you. What the heck, if I were good, I would have already participated in Malaysian Idol or some other singing contests! What would I be doing singing in a karaoke room, right? Karaoke is meant for people like me who can't sing well, but who just like to sing for my own enjoyment.
Anyway, we were led to our room. It was rather small but I guess there were only three of us so that's OK. One reason why I was so eager to visit this outlet besides the discount offer, was because it was a spanking new outlet and that means everything would be clean and in good working condition.
However, I did not like the TV screen. It was too small for my liking. Why couldn't they fix a bigger screen? Look, the frame is so much bigger than the TV screen. What a waste of space!
And I have another complaint. I did not like the sound system! The bass sounded flat all the time. Seriously, I think my laptop speaker is better than this!
I have been to other karaoke outlets like Neway Karaoke and Songbird KTV, but I still find Red Box has the best sound system of them all. So it was a bit of a surprise to me that this outlet at The Gardens did not quite live up to my expectation.
Well, what to do? Just make the best of it! I have never really tried buffet dinner at Red Box before. This would be my first time. I have had buffet dinner at Neway before, and I would say they had quite good food and lots of varieties too.
So how did the Red Box buffet fare? These were what I ate.
Fish, lamb and some vegetables.
Prawns and mussels
Crabs and corn
My favourite - salad with some sushi and a prawn in a glass.
A plate of goreng pisang
No buffet is complete without ice cream, so here it is!
Actually, I almost did not get to eat the ice cream, as we were so busy eating and partly singing we forgot the time! The buffet's last call was at 10pm, and it was 5 minutes before 10pm that I realised we have not tried the desserts yet! So I rushed out of our room and got the ice creams! My two friends did not even bother!
I did not find the food all that nice and there were not many varieties available. Red Box buffet certainly could not measure up to the buffet I had in Neway. So I guess if you like to eat good food, head to Neway but if you are more for singing than eating, go to Red Box.
One thing I like about Red Box is that they have the latest songs. I searched for Jay Chou's Dao Xiang and Leona Lewis' Better In Time and found them! I doubt I would find such new songs in Neway or Songbird.
Some of you may know that I don't speak Mandarin, so you must be wondering how come I could sing Chinese songs. Well, that's easy. I have learnt hanyu pinyin before, that's why! Look, I have a collection of Chinese song lyrics in hanyu pinyin - all nicely placed in a file.
The lyrics from one of Tank's song.
Another hanyu pinyin lyrics from Ivana's song
Here's Jay Chou's duet with Lara from his November's Chopin album.
While everyone look at the screen and sing, I have to look at my file on my lap to sing! It's a bit cumbersome really, but that's the only way I could sing in Mandarin!
Carrying the file containing the hanyu pinyin lyrics, nobody would have thought I was going for karaoke! People would think that I am a direct selling agent or something, about to meet up with my prospects.
Now if you go to Red Box and see a person holding this file, you can be quite certain it's me!
So did we sing until 3am? We could but we didn't. Both my friends need to go to work early the next day. Only I alone did not need to wake up early, so I guess majority won. But we still ended up singing until 2am! Well, it's pretty addictive especially when there were so many songs we wanted to sing after having not singing for some time. I did not know how my friends were going to wake up the next day, so the best of luck to them. Haha!
The total bill came up to RM34 per person after the 30% discount.
When we left, I took a picture of the front entrance. Notice it was rather quiet as most people had left.
Well, at least it's still open. The GSC Signature opposite had already closed its doors!
By the way, anyone knows the differences between Red Box, Green Box, Red Box Ria and Red Box Plus?
No comments:
Post a Comment