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6 Reasons To Teach English In Hong Kong

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6 Sep 2018 | Veronica 1. East Meets West If you’re considering Asia for the first time, or if you’re a bit intimidated about culture shock, Hong Kong is the perfect place to live. Walk around neighbourhoods like Sheung Wan to see exactly how East meets West here as you pass a western coffee shop followed by a traditional Chinese medicine store side by side, hearing French, English, Mandarin, and Cantonese as you go. 2. Holidays, holidays, holidays! Speaking of East meets West… Thanks to recognizing both Eastern and Western festivals, there are 19 public holidays in Hong Kong. Teaching in a local school you can expect even more! Approximately 1.5 weeks off for Christmas, 2 weeks for Chinese New Year, and another 1.5 weeks for Easter. With this generous holiday time, you benefit from being able to take holidays longer than the average businessperson (making friends jealous and meaning you can book flights outside the worst of the peak travel times!). 3. Easy and afford
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Dance Review on "The Barber of Seville"

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28 Dec 2018 | Ashley There are rare cases when shows are free, but this is an exception. "The Barber of Seville" , not the opera, but rather, a dance interpretation by an Italian Dance Company, Artemis Danza , was presented by the Consulate General of Italy in Hong Kong . I was genuinely impressed by the performance. After having watched quite a few performances from the New Vision Arts Festival , I was desperate for something less multi-media and more raw in terms of presentation. This did it for me. There were no strange, stylistic lightings, no set, just powerful dancers, choreography, simple costumes and funny props. This is the kind of performance where without the talent and the potential of literal "performance", there could be no show. I was totally into it. Curtain Call First off, I could feel that this is a genderless performance. With 3 young female and 3 young male dancers, they made a great team. All of them were in simple costumes which cou
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Dance Review on "Negotiation" at New Vision Arts Festival

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28 Dec 2018 | As hley In the rare instances where I would confuse Hong Kong City Hall with Hong Kong Cultural Centre, this happened on the day of the performance in early November. The show "Negotiation" was supposed to be at Hong Kong City Hall, but I was at Cultural Centre instead. Luckily, I could still catch the show, except the very first bits, maybe the first 15 minutes of it. Anyways, I am saying this just to be fair. I am writing about the parts which I have seen. Handout for the show "Negotiation" is majorly a dance performance, choreographed and performed by Olé Khamachania from Laos, and Picket Klunchun from Thailand. They incorporated traditional and hip-hop elements in their dance. From the name of the performance, we could understand that it is a piece negotiated between the traditional and the new. There were some parts of their movements where they did something that resembled martial arts, or qi gong. I am not sure if they have that sort
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Performance Review on "Aquasonic" at New Vision Arts Festival

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28 Dec 2018 | Ashley In late October, the New Vision Arts Festival was still on. I saw a show called "Aquasonic" at the Sha Tin Town Hall Auditorium. Usually, in this auditorium or any musical concerts played at town halls, the audience would be people who know classical music and are formally dressed. However, this time around, the type of audience going in was different. There were a lot of children, people were dressed very casually. Some people came in groups, like a group of friends or family members. Basically, it felt like the show had a lot of expectations for fun. Unfortunately, it was something else. Performance set, photo taken after the show What attracted me to this show at first, I think the same for other people in the audience, was that an orchestra was going to play underwater. This sole idea was extremely intriguing and tempting. It screams innovation and excitement. However, despite the group, Between Music (Denmark) 's new way of playing mus
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Step-By-Step Guide: How to Complete an Employment Visa Extension

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14 Dec 2018 | Veronica This guide explains the procedures for a working (employment) visa extension with the same sponsor. Please refer to the Immigration Department website for detailed information or other applications. Guide last updated September 2018. At a Glance Office Hours: 8:45-4:30pm (Mon-Fri), 9:00-11:30 (Sat) Cost: $190 HKD (payable by cash or Octopus) Book an appointment: 2598 0888 Walk ins: arrive by 8:15am Expected wait time with appointment: 1-3 hours. Expected wait time without appointment: 4-7 hours Website: https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/contactus/hq.html#3 Bring: Passport, HKID, work contract, form completed by your employer, $190 cash VISA EXTENSION - For working visa extension with the same sponsor 1. You will need to make a trip to the 5th floor of the Immigration Department. There are two ways to do this: making an appointment, or getting a walk in spot that morning. Making an Appointment Call 2598 0888 at any time (it’s an automa
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Iranian Road Trip With Jafar Panahi (Film review on "3 Faces" (2018) in HKAFF)

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30 Nov 2018 | Ashley What do we know about Iranian films? Does the name Abbas Kiarostami ring a bell? After his recent death in 2016, his last film 24 Frames (2017) was shown at my favourite cinema in Hong Kong, Broadway Cinematheque. In this experimental film, he paid homage to filming, which was all his passion, and composed 24 frames, symbolic to the number of frames we see in one second of a film, and filled them with picturesque sentiments. In the recent Hong Kong Asian Film Festival 2018 (HKAFF), I am happy to know that films by another Iranian film director, Jafar Panahi, also known as Kiarostami's former assistant director, were shown. Film poster at BC Having worked alongside one of the greatest masters in Iranian films, Panahi has inherited a lot of features from Kiarostami's road trip style and the blurriness between fiction and realism. I went to see 3 Faces (2018) directed by Panahi at a local cinema. It is a relatively new film and I was delighted to s
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Mural Paintings in Sheung Wan (ARTLANE)

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30 Nov 2018 | Ashley Do you like street art? Do you like taking artsy pictures for your social media? Here is a good place to be! Henderson Land, one of the leaders in urban renewal in Hong Kong, has launched Artlane , an art project in Hong Kong Island Western SOHO District. Once you get out of Sheung Wan MTR station, you will be amazed to see all the colours in this neighbourhood. Blessy Man & Henry Lau, Rainbow Staircase , 2018 You will see mural paintings that bring alive neglected back alleys, small paths between old buildings, old buildings and newly renovated staircases. Their themes revolve around music, jazz, classical Hollywood icons, animals, European streets, impressionist references etc. I would argue that each of them has their own quirk. But all of them create a Utopian world for the viewers, which subsequently attracts more people to this area than ever before. Everyone loves a little fantasy in the midst of reality! Some of them curious, some came wi
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Nail Necklace & Hair Blanket = Art? (Exhibition review on "Remains of the Day" - Mona Hatoum @ White Cube)

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4 Dec 2018 | Ashley What could be more uncanny than seeing a hair that was once part of your body become rubbish for your bin? The answer is no doubt: seeing that hair become an artwork exhibited in a gallery. Yes, that's right. It is an extremely bizarre thing to think about, but Mona Hatoum explores exactly that in some of her artworks. Mona Hatoum, Remains of the Day , 2016-2018 In a recent exhibition named Remains of the Day at White Cube Hong Kong, works by Mona Hatoum were shown. What impressed me the most was not the installation which I imagine to be the most important and has given its name to the exhibition itself, Remains of the Day (2016-18). Rather,  Nail Necklace (2018) and Hair Grids with Knots (6) (2014) held most of my attention. Mona Hatoum, Nail Necklace , 2018 By its very name, Nail Necklace (2018) is indeed a necklace made of nails. Moon-shaped nails were cut off and linked together on a black model in the shape of a necklace. On
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What DSE Does To Us (Film review on "Distinction" 《非同凡響》2018)

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22 Nov 2018 | Ashley Nothing is more exciting than a local Hong Kong film. "Distinction" (《非同凡響》) (2018), a recent local film directed by Au Man Kit Jevons (歐文傑), explores issues such as education, class, disability and prejudice in our current society. As a local Hong Konger, I see myself identifying with a lot of the phenomenon presented in the film. Yet, I find it difficult to establish a relationship with the characters. Similar to "Tomorrow is Another Day" (黃金花）(2017), it is a film that touches on mental issues. But their major difference is their focus. For "Tomorrow is Another Day", its plot evolves around a working class family, more specifically, the mother who takes care of her autistic son. Since they have only a few characters, the audience's attention could concentrate on the story of a few people. In this case, I find it easy to achieve a profound understanding of the protagonists, the mother, the son, and the cheating husband, why they r
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A Sculptural Book Coming Alive (Performance review of "Tree of Codes" @ New Vision Arts Festival)

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13 Nov 2018 | Ashley There we go, the New Vision Arts Festival is back! One of its opening shows this year is Tree of Codes , a ballet performance performed by Company Wayne McGregor and guests. It was a multi-media performance, which incorporated not only dance, but visual arts, music and lights. Display @ Hong Kong Cultural Centre In fact, the name of the show,  Tree of Codes, is borrowed from a sculptural book by Jonathan Safran Foer, where he cut off words from the original book Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz and constructed another story. The show did a good job creating the illusion of layering, just as how Foer's book looks like. With colourful filters which separated the stage into a front section and a back section, and dancers moving behind and in front, mirroring one another a uniform choreography, it gave me the illusion that the dancers at the back were reflections of the ones in front. The bright colors chosen for the filters also gave this piece of ba
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When Labels Don't Define You (Performance review on "MOTUS MDLSX" @ HKIBBF)

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13 Nov 2018 | Ashley This is another impressive production presented by the Hong Kong International Black Box Festival ,  a festival of collaboration between Hong Kong Repertory Theatre and West Kowloon Cultural District . This time around, they brought to us MDLSX , a one-person show directed and produced by the acclaimed Italian Company Motus . Performed by Silvia Calderoni, a multi-award-winning actress and artist from Italy, the audience had the opportunity to sneak a peek into her autobiographical tale as a gender-bendy person in a pre-dominantly binary society. At the beginning, the screen at the back of the stage showed a video of a little girl singing karaoke in the shape of a circle. This was shown for quite some time, and I was questioning where the show was going with this. Little did I know that this little girl was actually the actress herself when she was a child, and that soon, she would elevate this moment to a mix of emotional personal tales and rock n' roll
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