You can watch the 2020 AIBs live TOMORROW (Fri 13 – ha!) and next Monday (Nov 16) in a 2-part virtual awards show webcast at 11pm HKT/ 3pm GMT! My cheeky little Mental Ideas Podcast for RTHK Radio 3 is a nominee in the Factual Podcast category. As rank outsiders go, we are the rankest. (The program booklet below certainly provides evidence of that!!!) But I am giddy with bewildered awe just to be a nominee!
You may have caught me looking slightly guilty a few weeks ago in the SCMP‘s Post Magazine chatting to the hilarious Kylie Knott about my tasty little Home Kong Kitchen initiative: Baking A Difference (geddit?) for Hong Kong’s homeless! Thanks so much to the SCMP for this nice little plug of HKK and Mental Ideas, which is currently broadcasting on RTHK.
BLOWN AWAY by the response to this article, solidarity and generosity of Hongkongers mobilizing support to help the most vulnerable! This project has never failed to rejuvenate my spirits and restore my faith in humanity, bringing me together with so many inspiring individuals and organizations that epitomize the spirit of Hong Kong!
HUGE thanks to bighearted artist Juliana Kungfor designing Home Kong Kitchen‘s emblem! It has everything I love: character, beauty and flying bagels! (Actually, I think they’re meant to be orbs, but I saw bagels. I see bagels everywhere now. They’re plastered on every billboard, graffitied on every work of art. Mona Lisa’s smile? Bagels. Munch’s Scream? Bagels. Birth of Venus? Bagels. Map of the MTR? Bagels. The New Fragrance by Christian Dior? Bagels. Leonardo’s Last Supper? What else?? Bagels.)
I’ve discovered every homemade bagel weighs the same as a brick and that lugging vast quantities of bricks bagels around has really paid off in terms of honing my hump! (Sadly not the lovely lady lumps kind; more the Quasimodo kind…) If you’re interested in volunteering for Home Kong Kitchen, please fill in the form below!
Episode 2ofSharp Painsaired on RTHK Radio 3 Oct 27, 2020. It continues the last Tuesday of every month @ 2.50pm HKT as the final item on Noreen Mir’s 123 Show! This one’s an illiterate one and called Home Skool…
Episode 1 of my new monthly humour column, Sharp Pains, broadcasted live on RTHK Radio 3‘s 123 Show Sept 29, 2020 at its new regular time of 2.50pm HKT! For those who missed it, you can listen to the live broadcast below or download it as a podcast! The first episode was a spooky one and called Ghost.
The Association for International Broadcastinghave just published their shortlistfor the 2020 AIB Awards– and I am blown away my quirky Mental Ideas Podcast is among the nominees in the Factual Podcast category! 🙏 The winners will be announced at a virtual event, streamed live by Al Jazeera Nov 13 & Nov 16. Oh 2020: what a rollercoaster of highs and lows (mainly lows) you have been! If I hadn’t started the year with bipolar disorder, I’d almost certainly have developed it by now… 🤣🤣🤣
This summer I’ve been on a roll and making a lot of dough! Thanks to the amazing team effort of Ying, Moira, Chriz, Raquel, Mercy, Michelle, Emma and Amy, we were able to donate ALL THIS to Hong Kong charity Breadline! (And this was just Week 1…)
The food waste charity, founded by Daisy Tam Diers, does a cracking job of feeding the homeless, elderly, migrants and refugees living well below the breadline on the streets or in shelters. The charity usually relies on food waste donations from cafes and restaurants, but with most operating restricted hours at low capacity, Breadline and other food waste charities have been unable to keep up with demand at a time it has never been higher. So after reading an article in the HKFP, I rallied a few of the neighbors together to see if we could feasibly bake our own to help the charity continue its work during the pandemic.
For the past couple of months we have made this a weekly initiative and we’d love to have your support! If you’re based in Sai Kung/ Clearwater Bay/ Tseung Kwan O and would like to join our Baker’s Dirty Half Dozen, fill in the form below! We’re all novices so don’t let a trivial thing like experience put you off. My first loaf came out of the oven not just burnt, but on fire! It still tasted pretty good though, once I’d given it a good hose down with the fire extinguisher.
We were also able to donate at least 12 shop bought loaves to Feeding Hong Kong, who had received an anonymous tip off about my baking and decided their insurance policy didn’t cover it.
We are now exploring the possibility of setting up an online bakery, Home Kong Kitchen, where you can order home made breads, pastries, muffins and other yummy treats online and we deliver it to your home. We can’t promise it’ll be the best you’ve ever tasted but we can promise every cent we make will be donated to homeless charities. We are also collaborating with local artists to create sustainable bread boxes out of recycled waste with doodled designs and messages of solidarity to our homeless friends.
Crazy is a cheeky little fiesta of madness and the last episode of the first series of Mental Ideas so DON’T MISS IT!!! You can download all the episodes from this series here!
A HUGE thanks to all my mental guests: Mat Ricardo, Christina Yung, Larry Feign, Florence Wong, Ruben M, Josh Walters, Dan Davies, Kiki Wong, Jackie Chan, Philippe Joly, Eugenia Kim, Raffaello Degruttola, Ifat Hyndes, as well as to Nick Samuel for composing the mental music, Angie and Noz for all the support!
Mental Ideas will be back! Until then, you can catch me presenting my new humour column on RTHK Radio 3 from September 29!
I talk dirty. Great big wads of dirty cash! You can’t use banknotes anywhere in Hong Kong since the first wave peaked. Too dirty! Toilet paper is our cleanest currency now…
Join me on RTHK Radio 3‘s fantabulous 123 Show this Thursday (June 18) in about… ooooh… ONE HOUR!!!
There’s no show next week as it’s a public holiday in HK but the Mental Ideas Podcast will be back the following Thursday (July 2nd) @2.30pm HKT! Don’t miss Crazy!!!
On today’s episode – I coin a new catchphrase from an interview with inspirational wellness entrepreneur Ifat Hyndes and try it out on a taxi driver. Showman Mat Ricardo talks about the power of acceptance. I say something that is unacceptable in a lunchtime slot on the radio. (Whoops!)
Join me LIVE on RTHK Radio 3 in about… oooh… NOW!!!