生日正好十二點的那刻，手機沒電了。是神安排我不用去介意誰打電話給我、誰沒有。
這兩天見了幾位要好的中同，有你們的相伴，還有你們的心意，實在令我很開心。廿二歲最後一天，亦是我上班前最後一個 weekday，下午本想乖乖地留在家溫書，後來還是應邀看了《禮儀師之奏鳴曲》。我當然有哭，卻比預期中平靜。上班後再沒有餘暇去飲茶、看電影、寫歌，不過我還會爭取時間做自己喜歡做的事。我很渴望在這最後一天跟你在 msn 聊天，也許我們不會再在 msn 碰面。忽爾想起我寫給你的第一首歌，求快點 10am I can see you again。恐怕這已成為歷史；當然我的心意一直未曾改變，天暗天藍也要伴著你上班，只是你漸疏遠我。
在百老匯電影中心的咖啡店，看見《看更》的宣傳單張，直覺背面會是《火星人》，果然我的直覺沒有錯，結果我拿走了兩張。你到底是我的偶像，還是我愛的人？看完了《禮儀師之奏鳴曲》，我頓時更加珍惜眼前人，為什麼愛不可直接說出口？愛需要勇氣，我憑著勇氣就想好好的跟你一直生活下去。
四年前沒有想過有這樣的一天，就算是幾個月前也沒有想過會我們可以有過一段美好的回憶。將來如何，我不知道。我只知道我根本放不下，因為我認定了你是我愛的人，你是我很欣賞、很擔心、很掛念的人。所以無論結果如何，我只做好自己的本份去愛。說真的，我很怕走進戲院，因為我會想起你。也許我會漸漸在你的生命消失，但我很想你知道，你的守護天使一直都在。
朋友都知道，我太想念你。買了新的電話，第一時間就把我們唯一的合照放進手機，這是我可以見你的僅餘途徑。等了十二個多鐘頭，終於等到你的短訊。明知道你是簡單的一句，也總好過一直乾等，至少我滿足了。這是我近年過得最差的一個生日，孤零零，整天去補習，頭很暈眩。我是重視生日的人，可是我連生日蛋糕也沒有。我是該這麼可憐的人麼？今天，在荃灣轉巴士去沙田，在廣告箱看見你的海報，心裡感到欣慰。我總算在生日遇見了你。很傻嗎？用情太深，沒有錯，只是你不肯去接受。
也許你覺得我痴纏，其實我一直沒有改變過，變的只是你不再喜悅我對你的好意。無論如何，我愛一個人太投入吧。猶記得十二月初我們開始談話，無所不談，宗教上、學業上、事業上、娛樂、愛情，我們都會不絕地聊著。一切轉變得太突然，是報應吧。也許我一早說你高不可攀，根本是你心中所想。
今年生日，一點也不開心。不知道為什麼會頭頭碰著黑。失眠、搭錯巴士、去錯輕鐵站轉車、HR 明明說星期五晚通知我何時正式上班到星期日還未收到消息、被３說違約要賠千五元…可不可以不再欺壓我，我的樣子易受欺壓嗎？但每當我想到你，我就會感到安定，不再害怕。但我面對的壓力越來越大，生日一個人過，忽然感到人生越來越灰暗。我其實很想你在我身邊扶持你，正如我從來沒有離開你、一直支持你一樣。為什麼不可以？我願意一生一世陪伴你，正如神陪伴我們一樣。
請容許我在二十三歲生日說一句：我愛你。
2009年3月21日
He's just not that into you
（香港譯名《收錯愛情風》）
這部愛情喜劇，是我看過的最好一部。全場笑位不絕已不在話下，更精彩的是它令人產生共鳴，引人深思。因為電影中刻劃的幾段愛情關係，正好代表現實中愛情的好幾個階段。尋覓愛侶、婚外情、同居關係、網上交友等，都是司空見慣的關係。
Mary 說了很諷刺的一句說話："I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies." 當科技沒有這麼先進的時候，沒有來電顯示、沒有手機，你根本不能在知道是誰來電而選擇聽或不聽。愛一個人的時候，往往神經過敏，隔數分鐘就會望電話一次。以前等一個人的電話只會乖乖留在家中等待；在現今科技發達的世代，手機、短訊、電郵，多了幾多令人頭疼的科技？
愛情是多麼令人煩惱的東西，對方說的一句話、做的小事情，往往會受到主觀的感覺而曲解為其他的意思。明明對方想婉拒，卻被以為暗示有下文；明明對方不在乎你，你卻誤以為對方已愛上你。花了多少心機，用盡全力、愛得多深，到頭來才證實 He's just not that into you，多悲哀。
看完這齣電影，心裡其實得到一點慰藉，從 Gigi 身上知道愛情是不能強求的，亦不應有期望。到他發現你好的時候，自然就會醒悟過來找你。
最後 Gigi 的一段獨白，是很有意思的一個結尾："Girls are taught a lot of stuff growing up. If a guy punches you he likes you. Never try to trim your own bangs and someday you will meet a wonderful guy and get your very own happy ending. Every movie we see, Every story we're told implores us to wait for it, the third act twist, the unexpected declaration of love, the exception to the rule. But sometimes we're so focused on finding our happy ending we don't learn how to read the signs. How to tell from the ones who want us and the ones who don't, the ones who will stay and the ones who will leave. And maybe a happy ending doesn't include a guy, maybe... it's you, on your own, picking up the pieces and starting over, freeing yourself up for something better in the future. Maybe the happy ending is... just... moving on. Or maybe the happy ending is this, knowing after all the unreturned phone calls, broken-hearts, through the blunders and misread signals, through all the pain and embarrassment you never gave up hope."
P.S. 我是捧 Jennifer Aniston 和 Drew Barrymore 來看這部電影的，可惜 Drew Barrymore 戲份不多。不過 Jennifer Aniston 的確演得很好，我心目中愛情喜劇之皇后！
2009年3月19日
Slumdog Millionaire
《Slumdog Millionaire》在今屆奧斯卡獲得最佳影片的獎項，的確是實至名歸。沒有叫座的演員陣容，沒有龐大的製作資金，沒有天花亂墜的劇情；它取勝在於一個關鍵 - 寫實。
《Slumdog Millionaire》將印度的社會及經濟背景切實地呈現在螢幕前。印度的經濟近年急速增長，加上全球化的帶動下，印度已大受先進國家的關注。然而國際對印度的認識仍不算深，這齣電影只需將印度的一般生活形態傳達給觀眾，已經讓人感到很新鮮。
故事其實很簡單，以百萬富翁的遊戲節目作軸心，交代兩個主要的故事線 - 印度這十多年間的社會發展，以及男女主角的愛情故事，兩個故事線卻又交織得很完美。男女主角的童年、少年、青年時代分別找了三個演員去演，戲份很平均，加上演同一個角色的三位演員整體感覺都很相近，塑造出來的人物性格就不會有所偏差。
比起那些看膩了的普通愛情片，這是一部更觸動人心的電影。
男主角 Jamal 對女主角 Latika 說的兩句對白，雖簡單，卻赤裸裸地表露對對方的深深愛意。
"It is written. This is our destiny."
我們是命中注定的一對。他一直堅持，相信命中注定，終於他都找到所愛。對任何的人生目標也應該如此，無論結果如何，都應本著 This is the destiny 的信念。
2009年3月14日
關於我的專訪
我曾經接受過不少的訪問，但著眼於我的音樂之路確實是第一次。感謝記者 Derek Yiu 為我寫了一篇這麼有意義的文章，讓我通過回顧自己的過去重新組織今天的我。
Finally, we’re on the road to airport terminal. The voice behind the song sounds soft and somewhat uncertain. For days we have been counting down. Today I count to zero.
Without accompaniment, the melody sounds green but refreshing. As the one-minute-and-eight-second song comes to an end, the ever-present screechy sound takes over.
No wonder. Aleck Kwong Man-kit recorded his first song, Leaving Toronto, just with amateur equipment. It was written in Canada two years ago when his half-year exchange programme at York University neared its end. That gave him the inspiration to express in melody and lyrics memories and moods that he had to leave behind, in chilly and desolate Ontario, where all-you-can-eat restaurants abounded.
“Music has always kept me going in life. I always listen to it no matter whether I am happy or sad,” Aleck says in Cantonese. “Even though I switched among musical instruments in the past, there was not a time when I ever stopped learning it.”
Hong Kong is easily one of the cities with the most children who play music. But funnily enough, a randomly chosen student on the street holding a large and heavy black musical instrument case is quite unlikely to truly love it, judging from the average turnouts at classical music concerts.
Parents tend to force their children to learn to play music. But what Aleck’s mom thought then was hard to fathom, because it was Aleck who asked for it – violin classes in primary one and piano lessons a year after – after his aunt saw him play the piano for the first time at age three.
With a father who played the keyboard occasionally, Aleck’s upbringing might have played a part in his fondness for music. At other times, it was just a matter of chance.
“When I first started secondary school, my music teacher forced me to choose between the choir and the Chinese orchestra,” Aleck says, then stops for a while and adds airily, “I didn’t want to join the choir, because there were so few boys!”
Boys often feel themselves the odd ones out in school choirs. Not in the Chinese orchestra. Aleck spent five years with the band, and learnt to play the erhu（二胡）, the gaohu（高胡） and the banhu（板胡） and soloed in public performances at times. While he retrospectively thinks the band took too much of his time, it also gave him some fond memories of cool times.
The list of musical instruments Aleck can play just doesn’t end with those cited above. Influenced by the singer-song writer Chet Lam Yat-fung（林一峰） and an intimate, he picked up the guitar at age 16 and fell instantly in love with it. So much so that in his third year at university Aleck went to Canberra and Toronto, on two back-to-back exchange programmes, with his bulky guitar.
During his time at the Australian National University he often carried it to gatherings with friends and they would then sing together. Once they, a group mostly of Chinese origin, wanted to give a party to two friends to celebrate their birthday.
“Many of us are from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia or Singapore and have all at some stage heard of the song Yu Jian （遇見）[Meeting by Chance],” Aleck recalls. “But we have a Thai and an Aussie, who cannot speak Putonghua. We then decided to sing Chet’s English demo version By My Side.”
Mark, Aleck’s Australian friend, also played music and he wrote new lyrics to a song for an impromptu performance for the party. They had everything recorded on a video camera so that everyone can enjoy the songs every now and then.
“You cannot feel stronger for lyrics that are specifically written. Every time you listen to it, the feeling just grows,” says Aleck. “This is part of the reasons why I write my own lyrics now. The other is that you can write a song on your friends’ experiences and give a song to them.”
Fluent in a few languages, Aleck believes that lyrics should not be there just to please the public. Japanese songs, for him, have a tendency to contain English words even though they do not necessarily match the melody.
“Unlike writing in English or Mandarin, it is most difficult to have Cantonese lyrics that go with a particular melody. People are just fastidious about the use of words and their intonations,” Aleck explains.
Contrary to Canto-pop songs in the 1970s, spoken Cantonese is no longer accepted in songs these days. Lyrics are now in Standard Chinese and mostly centre on the topic of lost love and broken relationships. A new generation of singer-song writers, including Aleck’s idol Chet Lam, have tried hard to broaden the scope of lyrics by telling stories about collective memories, adolescents’ problems and the like.
Aleck himself once wrote a song called Mong Tei Hang（旺地恆）– one of the two Hang Seng Bank branches at Mong Kok Station where youngsters like to meet – for an important friend. The lyrics depict for or with whom people are there just changes naturally as they age; yet the very branch itself looks timeless and appears as the backdrop of countless flashbacks.
Recently he sent the song to the Guangzhou-based cultural magazine Rice to try his luck and got a favourable reply from its editor Cha Ji. The email compared his lyrics to the stellar song “Wedding Card Street”（囍帖街） by Wyman Wong Wai-man, which tells the story of how a couple ended up like the Street. Mong Tei Hang is set to appear in the next issue of Rice, after Aleck stepped into a proper studio for the first time to record the song’s final version.
Although Aleck got his degree in Quantitative Finance, a leading finance programme, at CUHK, money is never his priority. Unlike most of his coursemates, he also minored in Japanese Studies, with its more cultural focus. No doubt he acknowledges the importance of having a full-time job for his living, but this young man, now 22, never rules out the possibility of having a job in the music field.
Working as a multiple part-timer these days, Aleck has spared much of his time for music -- and opportunities have been knocking at his door of late. Rice aside, Aleck received positive replies from two other organizations after sending his demos. One was from the managing producer of the radio-play-turned-stage-drama Martians（火星人） and the other was from Music@Youth, a music marathon to be held in March. To Aleck’s excitement, Martians may be using his song Ah Yau（阿優）; Aleck and friends have accepted the invitation and teamed up as a quartet to perform live under the name of CU later during the marathon.
When I meet the person who understands my music someday, I would never forget you are the one who praises me first. The honour will be shared between you and me.（他朝我遇上伯樂毋忘是你先欣賞我 這驕傲不止我一個）
Aleck sings those words strongly and firmly, to end his 25th and newest song The Avenue of Star（星光大道）.
Finally, we’re on the road to airport terminal. The voice behind the song sounds soft and somewhat uncertain. For days we have been counting down. Today I count to zero.
Without accompaniment, the melody sounds green but refreshing. As the one-minute-and-eight-second song comes to an end, the ever-present screechy sound takes over.
No wonder. Aleck Kwong Man-kit recorded his first song, Leaving Toronto, just with amateur equipment. It was written in Canada two years ago when his half-year exchange programme at York University neared its end. That gave him the inspiration to express in melody and lyrics memories and moods that he had to leave behind, in chilly and desolate Ontario, where all-you-can-eat restaurants abounded.
“Music has always kept me going in life. I always listen to it no matter whether I am happy or sad,” Aleck says in Cantonese. “Even though I switched among musical instruments in the past, there was not a time when I ever stopped learning it.”
Hong Kong is easily one of the cities with the most children who play music. But funnily enough, a randomly chosen student on the street holding a large and heavy black musical instrument case is quite unlikely to truly love it, judging from the average turnouts at classical music concerts.
Parents tend to force their children to learn to play music. But what Aleck’s mom thought then was hard to fathom, because it was Aleck who asked for it – violin classes in primary one and piano lessons a year after – after his aunt saw him play the piano for the first time at age three.
With a father who played the keyboard occasionally, Aleck’s upbringing might have played a part in his fondness for music. At other times, it was just a matter of chance.
“When I first started secondary school, my music teacher forced me to choose between the choir and the Chinese orchestra,” Aleck says, then stops for a while and adds airily, “I didn’t want to join the choir, because there were so few boys!”
Boys often feel themselves the odd ones out in school choirs. Not in the Chinese orchestra. Aleck spent five years with the band, and learnt to play the erhu（二胡）, the gaohu（高胡） and the banhu（板胡） and soloed in public performances at times. While he retrospectively thinks the band took too much of his time, it also gave him some fond memories of cool times.
The list of musical instruments Aleck can play just doesn’t end with those cited above. Influenced by the singer-song writer Chet Lam Yat-fung（林一峰） and an intimate, he picked up the guitar at age 16 and fell instantly in love with it. So much so that in his third year at university Aleck went to Canberra and Toronto, on two back-to-back exchange programmes, with his bulky guitar.
During his time at the Australian National University he often carried it to gatherings with friends and they would then sing together. Once they, a group mostly of Chinese origin, wanted to give a party to two friends to celebrate their birthday.
“Many of us are from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia or Singapore and have all at some stage heard of the song Yu Jian （遇見）[Meeting by Chance],” Aleck recalls. “But we have a Thai and an Aussie, who cannot speak Putonghua. We then decided to sing Chet’s English demo version By My Side.”
Mark, Aleck’s Australian friend, also played music and he wrote new lyrics to a song for an impromptu performance for the party. They had everything recorded on a video camera so that everyone can enjoy the songs every now and then.
“You cannot feel stronger for lyrics that are specifically written. Every time you listen to it, the feeling just grows,” says Aleck. “This is part of the reasons why I write my own lyrics now. The other is that you can write a song on your friends’ experiences and give a song to them.”
Fluent in a few languages, Aleck believes that lyrics should not be there just to please the public. Japanese songs, for him, have a tendency to contain English words even though they do not necessarily match the melody.
“Unlike writing in English or Mandarin, it is most difficult to have Cantonese lyrics that go with a particular melody. People are just fastidious about the use of words and their intonations,” Aleck explains.
Contrary to Canto-pop songs in the 1970s, spoken Cantonese is no longer accepted in songs these days. Lyrics are now in Standard Chinese and mostly centre on the topic of lost love and broken relationships. A new generation of singer-song writers, including Aleck’s idol Chet Lam, have tried hard to broaden the scope of lyrics by telling stories about collective memories, adolescents’ problems and the like.
Aleck himself once wrote a song called Mong Tei Hang（旺地恆）– one of the two Hang Seng Bank branches at Mong Kok Station where youngsters like to meet – for an important friend. The lyrics depict for or with whom people are there just changes naturally as they age; yet the very branch itself looks timeless and appears as the backdrop of countless flashbacks.
Recently he sent the song to the Guangzhou-based cultural magazine Rice to try his luck and got a favourable reply from its editor Cha Ji. The email compared his lyrics to the stellar song “Wedding Card Street”（囍帖街） by Wyman Wong Wai-man, which tells the story of how a couple ended up like the Street. Mong Tei Hang is set to appear in the next issue of Rice, after Aleck stepped into a proper studio for the first time to record the song’s final version.
Although Aleck got his degree in Quantitative Finance, a leading finance programme, at CUHK, money is never his priority. Unlike most of his coursemates, he also minored in Japanese Studies, with its more cultural focus. No doubt he acknowledges the importance of having a full-time job for his living, but this young man, now 22, never rules out the possibility of having a job in the music field.
Working as a multiple part-timer these days, Aleck has spared much of his time for music -- and opportunities have been knocking at his door of late. Rice aside, Aleck received positive replies from two other organizations after sending his demos. One was from the managing producer of the radio-play-turned-stage-drama Martians（火星人） and the other was from Music@Youth, a music marathon to be held in March. To Aleck’s excitement, Martians may be using his song Ah Yau（阿優）; Aleck and friends have accepted the invitation and teamed up as a quartet to perform live under the name of CU later during the marathon.
When I meet the person who understands my music someday, I would never forget you are the one who praises me first. The honour will be shared between you and me.（他朝我遇上伯樂毋忘是你先欣賞我 這驕傲不止我一個）
Aleck sings those words strongly and firmly, to end his 25th and newest song The Avenue of Star（星光大道）.
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