Song requests

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,...Read more

The simple life

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 r...Read more

Alan. One song at a time.

I love to sing, but the last several years have been tough.

Quite some time ago, I had a manager who believed in me and worked very hard to find me singing gigs in Hong Kong and China. We found a few, but it didn't last long. There were two problems. First, the people of China were not yet ready to be entertained by a foreigner singing Chinese songs. Second, they preferred shows where the performer was a 'fun' person and the singing didn't matter so much. Unfortunately, I'm more like Frank Sinatra or Mich...Read more

An eye for an eye. An iPhone for a cup of tea.

Our car, like most cars, has a cup holder. It's just next to the gear stick. I don't use it all that often, but when I do bring something with me to drink in the car, it's a life saver. When I don't have a beverage with me, I usually place my iPhone in the cup holder instead.

The other night, like most nights, I drove to my wife's office to pick her up from work. I had a few minutes to spare, so I bought a cup of 'Chinese café' tea 茶餐廳奶茶. When my wife came out of the office, ...Read more

Hitchhiker

I recently took up weight lifting again. I have a job coming up where I'll be standing next to attractive thin women, and in my current condition, I would look very large in comparison, so it's the gym for me. I also began running again just over a month ago, barefoot of course ;-)

So yesterday, I packed my sports bag, including the usual things; clothes, shoes, headphones, gloves, etc; and left home. I spent a few hours in a local karaoke first doing song research, and then around 4pm headed off to the gym.

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Cantonese Opera anyone?

Just before we left for Macau for the International Series of Mahjong competition, I received a telephone call from ATV. They wanted me to perform in the National Day Cultural Night production 「香港同胞慶祝中華人民共和國成立五十九週年文藝晚會」, which was cool, but what was even cooler was that they wanted me to perform Cantonese Opera!

My part in the performance was only 30 seconds long but it was special. Ten days before the show, I had the music and lyric...Read more

Caffeine free, for now

I have been caffeine free for almost five days; no coffee, tea or caffeine-spiked softdrinks. The reason? I have a special performance tonight, a short one, but special nonetheless. It involves singing and Cantonese but it's definitely not what you would expect ;-)

If you want to catch my performance, watch tonight's China National Day show before the fireworks display.

Mahjong: Lots of fun

The Mahjong competition was fun. I didn't get far, but the event was well planned, the rules were great to play, and the people; competitors and crew; were great.

I didn't make the second round of the competition. I carelessly provided the winning tiles for a few games, even when I knew that those tiles might very well be the winning tiles. I won't do that next time. Yes,...Read more

Mahjong anyone?

Just a note to let everyone know that I've been invited to participate in the World Series of Mahjong competition! I leave home to catch the ferry to Macau in just a few minutes. Wish me luck ;-)

I haven't been over to Macau for a very long time. Casinos and casino gambling don't interest me. It will be interesting to see how it has changed, and if it has changed for the better. I suspect that a lot of culture and history has been lost which would be a s...Read more

Zagg. It could have been better.

When I discovered invisibleSHIELD on the 'net, I immediately knew it would be the best protection available for our soon-to-be-purchased iPhone 3G's, so I went on line and ordered two of the iPhone shields to be sent to our Hong Kong address. The shields were not going to ship until after the iPhone 3G's had begun shipping, and actual shipping of the shields to us here in Hong Kong would take 3 weeks to get here but that was acceptable.

That order was made...Read more