河國榮, An Aussie in Hong Kong

Interesting times

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:08:38 +0800

Hello people.

It has been a long long time, but I'm still around. Just needed to let you know that.

Things are interesting, and getting more interesting.

Last week, I was in New York helping a group of people to develop and fine tune a Broadway play. It was extremely challenging and tiring but very satisfying. It's not possible to say whether I'll be invited to perform in the public release of this play, but there is a chance nonetheless. We'll see.

This week, I'm in L.A., visiting with my favourite singing coach Peisha McPhee. Last Christmas, I performed in China and a variety of circumstances colluded to cause serious damage to my vocal chords and muscles. For six months after, I had to speak and sing only when absolutely necessary. Fortunately, my vocals are almost 100% now, just in time for my lessons with Peisha.

I'll be arriving back in Hong Kong on June 22, but the interesting times don't end there. More to come. Much more to come. :-)

Stay well people.

Now 5 domains in 1

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:50:00 +0800

Our new friends from 北川中學 were here for a week. They left this morning. I printed special oversize name cards for them last night, and while doing so, realised that my domain names would not be memorable for our 普通话 friends on the other side of the border, so I registered another domain ;-)

My site is now accessible at all of the following domains: www.gregory.hk, www.hokwokwing.hk, www.heguorong.hk, www.河國榮.hk and www.河国荣.hk.

My email addresses all come to me so you can choose whichever is easier for you to remember: me@gregory.hk, me@hokwokwing.hk and wo@heguorong.hk.

還有啦。今年內，我的網站將有更多中文內容，包括翻譯的和原創的文章。

Take care all. I'll write more later.

Good intentions. Disastrous results.

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0800

Back in 2007, I was helping a friend with their computer in their home, which I had done on multiple occasions in return for their friendship and the occasional bowl of noodles. They trusted me and I valued that trust, so much so that I made an effort to not see anything on the computer that was private including messages, photos and passwords.

At the time while testing their printer, I came across a great sporting photo of their spouse. We have a semi-professional printer at home and I thought I'd surprise them by adjusting and printing the photo, so I emailed the photo to myself and deleted the email from the computer to keep it a surprise. Unfortunately, the photo completely slipped my mind and I never got around to printing it out for them.

Today, almost 18 months later having had practically no contact with this friend, I learn that they've been upset with me since that day on the computer. They had heard the 'whoosh' sound of the email going out and questioned me about it immediately. Apparently, I balked for 2 minutes before telling them about the photo and that made them suspect that I had stolen it from the computer ('stolen' would be technically true although in my mind, I was 'borrowing' the photo, to be deleted once it had been printed). When they couldn't find the email, it only confirmed their suspicions. That I never got around to actually printing the photo, well…

On occasion, good intentions can have disastrous consequences. My friend and their spouse believe I stole the photo for personal use, no longer trust me, and are no longer my friends. Ouch! My apologies have been heard but not believed.

Trust is a delicate thing. It takes a long time to build but can be lost in the blink of an eye, or in this case the time it takes to email a photo.

Leaving for 四川北川

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 07:00:00 +0800

I'm off today to earthquake-stricken 四川北川 for five days. I've been invited as a guest photographer to accompany a charity group which is raising funds to support the children there. Eleven people in all will be going including a professional photographer, a video crew and other charitable folks. I'll let you know about the trip after my return.

Then on Saturday, one of our kids Beethoven is scheduled to go under the knife with a serious spinal operation. Three of his discs are extending into his spinal canal pressing on the nerves within, one disc taking up as high as 90% of the spinal canal. He still have several years of life left, and he's a great dog so ignoring the problem or putting him down was not an option. It'll be a very nervous Saturday for both my wife and myself as we wait for the results.

Take care all. See you next week.

The mark of a great actor?

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:18:00 +0800

I was watching a television program and they mentioned micro-expressions. Since watching that program, I've come to realise that micro-expressions could very well be one of the significant distinguishing qualities of a great actor, especially a screen actor where everything is up close and personal. Micro-expressions are extremely small expressions, perhaps lasting one fifth of a second or even less. Consciously, we don't notice them. Unconsciously, we do and we're very much affected by them.

Most actors can reproduce expressions, some better than others, but even the best expressions may not trigger an emotional response in the viewing audience. I remember one of our teachers at Lee Strasberg commenting how tears from actors in general didn't do anything for him. Without the underlying pain, crying was simply an indicator without compelling emotion.

Actors who can reproduce the emotions of their character's situation will unconsciously reproduce the micro-expressions that come with those emotions. Those micro-expressions will then be unconsciously broadcast to the audience, making their acting captivating to watch and enabling the audience to empathise with and feel for the character.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of emotional expression coming out of Hollywood's blockbusters today. Emotion seems to have taken a back seat to action (and the associated money-making franchises), and the English seem to be producing more emotionally sensitive movies and television programs than Hollywood. If Hollywood is not careful, a big chunk of the movie industry might just find a new home in England.

Anyway, today's point is that micro-expressions could very well be the mark of a great actor.

Finally; my first showreel

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:28:00 +0800

After nine months of research, selection, editing and education in Final Cut, my first showreel is finally ready. I hope you enjoy it.

Note. It's entirely in Cantonese except for two scenes in English, and one scene in Mandarin.

If you have difficulty loading and viewing the video, it's now also available on YouTube here.

Interview on RTHK 2 晨光第一線細味歷練 2009年1月

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:00:00 +0800

Last week, RTHK 2 broadcast a multi-part (Cantonese) interview in the 「細味歷練」 segment of their morning program 「晨光第一線」.

The original recording was around 40 minutes long. Alyson 侯嘉明 did an excellent job of editing and splicing to produce the five segments.

Here it is for those of you who missed it.

晨光第一線細味歷練 2009年01月05日
 晨光第一線細味歷練 2009年01月06日
 晨光第一線細味歷練 2009年01月07日
 晨光第一線細味歷練 2009年01月08日
 晨光第一線細味歷練 2009年01月09日

Persian hurts!

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:15:00 +0800

I have slowed down somewhat for various reasons, but I'm still progressing with the five languages I set out to learn in August last year. It's not easy. My brain does tire but that's to be expected when you're trying to absorb alien pronunciations, grammar and words. There are differences in difficulty between the languages.

Hebrew has a lot of 'sh' sounds, but the grammar is very similar to English so that makes it a little easier to learn.

Japanese is going ok because I studied it for a few months many many years ago here in Hong Kong. Much of that study still exists in my brain somewhere and that makes learning Japanese now easier.

I tried to learn Spanish while I was in Durango last year. Unfortunately, I didn't have Pimsleur Spanish course material with me at the time so progress was difficult but combined with actually being with Spanish-speaking people did lay down some groundwork for when I began to learn it again with Pimsleur many months later. I was learning from Living Language, which like so many other retail language course institutions simply includes a list of new vocabulary and a 'dead' conversation with each chapter, and puts everything on CD to give it more appeal. The Pimsleur courses are very different. Each lesson introduces new vocabulary but does it within the conversations that occur during the lesson. Sentences and conversations are not 'dead' because they will alter the grammar of the phrases and sentences when it's possible so that you become accustomed to the various possibilities. Word endings and other elements that change the meaning of the words are introduced and explained when necessary and at a slower pace so that you are not overloaded with information, something which normally results in scaring the student away. By design, without realising it, students learn to assemble full sentences from multiple phrase elements simply by following the lesson. The Pimsleur people really put a lot of effort into making their courses work. It's no wonder additional levels can take so long to be released.

Italian is a little difficult because I have absolutely no background in it except for a very few similarities with Spanish; feminine and masculine objects and verbs, etc.; and because Pimsleur doesn't explain everything at once, you sometimes have to accept what you're learning at the time and have faith that an explanation will eventually come. For example, the variations of the 'want' verb take a little while to get used to. As you progress through the lessons though, patterns in the way the language works become evident and you begin to fully understand the language without realising it.

They're all difficult in one way or another but the one that literally hurts my head is Persian. It is completely different to English. Both the pronunciation and the grammar are completely alien to me. Furthermore, they sometimes use phrases and words to say things that we would say completely differently in English. Persian will take a while to get used to. Unfortunately, Pimsleur has only released level 1 of Persian. When I finish this level, I'll go through it again and hopefully soon after, level 2 will be available.

Levels is the one limitation of the Pimsleur method. I tried studying Indonesian with Pimsleur (actually while I was on set in Durango) but the only course available is the 10-lesson "compact" course. You can do very little with just ten lessons. Standard Pimsleur levels contain 30 lessons. Only level one of Persian has been released (perhaps for the armed forces and U.S. corporations working in Iran?) which is fine if you want to learn enough to travel with, but not if you really want a conversation. Fortunately, two levels of Hebrew are available so I should have a decent foundation on which to build once I've completed that course. Italian, Spanish and Japanese are languages in high demand so three or four levels are available for each of these languages.

When contemplating learning additional languages from the Pimsleur library, I now check to see how many levels are available. My minimum requirement is two levels. Other languages that I'm considering include Korean, Russian and Arabic with emphasis on the word "considering".

For those people more dedicated then myself, most of the Pimsleur courses also contain reading exercises. I haven't used them yet. I'm too lazy. Maybe one day...

Oh, and one more thing. My biggest challenge in learning these languages? Rolling r's, used extensively in Spanish and Italian.

Where can you buy/sell LDs in Hong Kong?

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 10:28:00 +0800

I have quite a collection of LDs (LaserDiscs); over 600 of them. I'm considering letting them go although I'll keep them if I can think of a way to get my friend's 35kg professional LD player from Sydney to Hong Kong.

Does anyone know of a place that buys and sells LDs?

Update

Our neighbour (who at one stage had over 1000 LD discs) has informed me that there's a repair service in Shatin that repairs LD players. Our Pioneer player is beyond repair because the carriage is warped, but the Sony MD-1 might still be serviceable, just not by Sony. I'll take the Sony to the repair service and with any luck have a useable LD Player very soon.

An honourable kill?

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:00:00 +0800

From TwinCities:

The famous Field and Stream buck won't set a world record, but the antlers of the deer downed two months ago by Bob Decker, of Eau Claire, Wis., will bear another significant honor.

Wouldn't it have been more honorable to let the buck live and watch it thrive? Where's the honour in killing an innocent non-threatening creature? I'll never understand these people...

Update

Over at AliveNotDead, I have been informed about the deer population problems in certain states in the U.S.A. Without natural predators (bears, wolves, mountain lions), the deer population continues to increase at an inconvenient rate. Hunting is considered the only way to keep the population at a healthy level.

Even so, I would hope that a more humane method of population control could be found, or at least a painless one. Very few hunters are accurate enough to guarantee a painless kill with just one bullet or one arrow. Some people suggest that does (female deer) should be killed in preference to bucks (male deer). If we were talking about dogs or cats where one female usually gives birth to several offspring, then I'd agree, but deer rarely give birth to more than one fawn (baby deer) so killing does in preference to bucks will not make a significant difference to the deer population.

Like heavy snowfall (hello Vancouverites ;-), those of us not encumbered by the deer problem would love to see deer roaming free and cringe at the thought of killing them, while for the people living in deer territory, deer culling is a necessary part of life.

The saliva test

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:30:00 +0800

Last year when melamine-spiked wheat gluten killed thousands of pets in the U.S.A., a list of pet food manufacturers was released by the F.D.A. What was interesting about that list was the fact that one or two manufacturers were producing multiple brands of pet food. Producing two or even three brands could be explained by a manufacturer wanting to produce an expensive specialty brand for vets to sell, a brand which in all likelihood contains little of the unhealthy content found in their other retail brands. But there can only be one reason for a manufacturer to sell more than two or three brands, and that is to dilute the brand awareness of competing manufacturers. (download the list and count the number of brands that Menu Foods manufactures)

I noticed that the brands we were giving our kids to eat were made by one of these multi-brand manufacturers, and I immediately began looking for smaller and hopefully more trust-worthy pet food manufacturers. I found a few. Unfortunately, they were all located in the U.S.A. without suppliers in Hong Kong.

Last week while we were in Vancouver (before the big snow hit), we had two days free to roam around. Between the snow and my wife's disinterest in heights and sports, there wasn't much to do except shop and drink coffee, which fortunately is what I had hoped to do anyway. The night before our second free day, I surfed the web and searched for coffee roasters in Vancouver. I found and was impressed by 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters on 4th Avenue.

The next day on our way to 49th Parallel, I spotted a Three Dog Bakery store. It must have been serendipity, because Three Dog Bakery is one of the manufacturers I was interested in last year. We went into the store and talked to the franchisee Corby who was extremely helpful and eager to help other Three Dog Bakery franchisees. Imagine our surprise when he told us that there was now a Three Dog Bakery in Hong Kong!!! We bought a small bag of Three Dog Bakery Chicken dog food, a packet of "oreo" biscuits and continued on to the 49th Parallel coffee shop (whose Epic Espresso coffee is great by the way).

Back home in Hong Kong, I found the Three Dog Bakery stores. I'm now feeding our kids both the normal Chicken pet food and the Reduced Calorie pet food (because three of our kids have unlimited appetites and need to lose weight).

With the brands we'd tried previously, one or two of the kids refused to eat except when they were starving. Another three of the kids waited a long time before beginning to eat. With the Three Dog Bakery pet food though, all of the kids like it. The biggest clue that this is good pet food though is the saliva left in the dishes; there's lots of it!

Dogs can smell so well that they can even detect flakes of skin hence their tracking abilities. It should come as no surprise that they can identify most of the ingredients that make up their food, and if that food is made up of slaughterhouse remains, sawdust, road-kill, and euthanised pets, then it should not surprise us if they balk at eating the food we give them. According to Corby and the Three Dog Bakery web site, the Three Dog Bakery pet food is completely healthy. Even the preservative is natural; it's rosemary.

There are currently two Three Dog Bakery stores in Hong Kong; one in EMAX in Kowloon Bay, and one in Happy Valley at the tram terminal stop. If your pets are not interested in their food, or if they're getting old and need food that doesn't tax their kidneys and livers, then give Three Dog Bakery a try.

Keanu's latest movie

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:30:00 +0800

We saw "The Day the Earth Stood Still" yesterday. My wife had been looking forward to this movie, probably because there hasn't been a good movie showing for quite some time. The summer releases were overall quite disappointing with Batman being the one exception.

We watched the movie at The Grand Cinema in The Elements Plaza. It's probably the best cinema in Hong Kong. The seats, the screens, and especially the audio are all top notch.

The movie was believable (to me) albeit a little slow in the beginning. I almost fell asleep, partly because I'm fighting an infection at the moment and therefore feeling tired generally. The only things that didn't agree with me were that the people of this earth would change their ways and begin to look after the planet they inhabit, and Keanu's Mandarin dialog. For an advanced alien being, his Mandarin was way too accented. He sounded like a beginner, one who had done his homework, but sounded like a beginner nonetheless. More than a few people in our cinema snickered at his Mandarin. The strangest thing was that he comes across to me as someone with Chinese blood in him. That's weird!

But it was a reasonable movie, much better than most of the Summer releases.

P.S. At least one aspect of the alien technology seems to have come from my favourite sci-fi television series Stargate SG-1. Does anyone remember the dreaded "replicators"?

Attention all Vancouverites

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:28:00 +0800

Unless you haven't heard yet, I'm going to be one of the MC's at this year's Miss Asia Vancouver Pageant. That means that I'll finally get to visit Vancouver (and Canada for that matter).

I'd like to meet any of you who have time but I'll be busy. The only practical time I can do this will be on Thursday night, December 18. What I'd like to do is meet everyone at a coffee shop with great coffee and fabulous cakes (because fabulous cakes are not so easy to come by in Hong Kong). Please suggest a place or two. We'll all decide on a place and time to meet.

Take care.

Song requests

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:08:00 +0800

Question of the day.

If you had the opportunity to see me perform, which songs would you hope to hear me sing? If you're reading this on my personal blog or on the AliveNotDead site, leave a comment. Otherwise, you can email your wish list to me at hokwokwing dot hk or me at gregory dot hk. Please include the song's name and the artist's name where applicable.

English, Mandarin and Cantonese songs are obviously fine. If you have a favourite Italian, Spanish or Japanese song, you could send those to me as well. No promises though ;-)

The simple life

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:30:00 +0800

My life for the moment is very simple.

I get up in the morning and take our kids for their morning walks; two walks, five kids at a time.

I have breakfast and feed the kids.

I then do my vocalising (singing) exercises. I visited Peisha again in L.A. in June July this year for two-and-a-half weeks. During that time, I studied twelve lessons with her and performed one cabaret. The lessons were all recorded on my MacBook Pro, and I now repeat them almost every day. When I visited her this time, Peisha taught me a new (and tough) vocalising technique, one that I wasn't ready for back in 2006 when I first studied with her. This new technique seems to be producing a very significant difference in my singing voice and I'm enthusiastic about where it'll take me. The vocalising part of these lessons takes anywhere from half an hour to forty-five minutes. Believe me. That's enough. Any more would be very difficult to handle.

After vocalising, I vacuum the flat. With eleven kids, there is a plentiful and continual supply of hair, so daily vacuuming is necessary. Vacuuming typically takes about an hour to complete. While I vacuum, I study a new language via my iPhone. Around two years ago, I purchased Mandarin and Indonesian language courses from Pimsleur. I studied Mandarin at the Chinese University several years ago, but without using it, I've forgotten most of it. I purchased the Pimsleur Mandarin course to help me get back up to speed. I purchased the Indonesian course because I wanted to learn the language of our helpers. I was so impressed by the Pimsleur courses that in December of last year, I purchased four more courses; Japanese, Hebrew, Persian (Farsi) and Italian; but it wasn't until August of this year that I actually began using them.

I chose to study five languages simultaneously. People, even close friends, question my decision to do this, believing that studying multiple languages together will be confusing. I chose to study them all together because I believe that becoming familiar with a language requires time. The more time you spend with a language, the more familiar and natural it will become. Your mind requires time to analyse and adapt to the new language. That doesn't happen overnight. I also believe that one will not be confused when learning multiple languages even if as in the Pimsleur case, the subject matter is almost identical. The brain is a lot smarter than that. Admittedly, there are times when my immediate response to a Pimsleur narrator request is not in the language I'm learning, but a reminder from the narrator and I'm back on track again. Time is the key.

I rotate the languages, keeping a record of which language and which lesson I've completed in my iPhone (courtesy of OmniFocus), trying to complete a new lesson for each language at least once every two days. That's only possible if I complete three lessons a day, so vacuuming is not the only time I listen to a Pimsleur course. I also listen when I'm driving (which requires extra concentration because the act of driving itself requires its fair share of attention), and when I'm exercising. I'm hoping to be conversant (obviously not fluent) in these languages within three years.

In the afternoons, I go to the local karaoke to practise my singing and research songs. A typical karaoke session for me runs for one-and-a-half to two hours of almost nonstop singing. Believe it or not, that's actually physically exhausting.

Then it's off to the gym for a workout before picking my wife up at work.

Home again, and it's time to take the kids out for their evening walks; two walks of course.

If my legs aren't injured (my left calf muscle is currently recovering from a serious injury), I'll finish my day with a short run (listening to another Pimsleur course all the while).

My life is simple, but it sure is tiring; both physically and mentally. I've never been so tired. It'll be worth it though. Fit, healthy, singing well, and conversant in five, six or seven languages. That'll do.

But, as Albert (one of my good friends) so aptly noted back in my uni days, I am very much a 大隻講 (big talker) so don't assume that I'll actually complete any of these lofty goals until I've actually completed them.

By the way, did I mention that I'll be one of the MC's at this year's Vancouver Miss Asia Pageant in December? ;-)

河國榮, An Aussie in Hong Kong

Interesting times

Now 5 domains in 1

Good intentions. Disastrous results.

Leaving for 四川北川

The mark of a great actor?

Finally; my first showreel

Interview on RTHK 2 晨光第一線 細味歷練 2009年1月

Persian hurts!

Where can you buy/sell LDs in Hong Kong?

Update

An honourable kill?

Update

The saliva test

Keanu's latest movie

Attention all Vancouverites

Song requests

The simple life

Interview on RTHK 2 晨光第一線細味歷練 2009年1月