Friday, February 09, 2007  1:05 PM
Celebrity sighting: Yoyo
Slightly over two years ago during my mission trip to Hong Kong, I was known as the one who carried her camera everywhere because she was the deluded missiontripper who thought she was going to meet a celebrity on the street. That belief stayed quite firm. A camera was always present in my bag, no matter how big or small the bag was - it was more important than the wallet sometimes.
And it has paid off. Festival Walk, the shopping mall my university is connected to by an underpass, has been known for its celebrity sightings and secret events. Yesterday as I was heading straight for MNG at the shopping mall to wake myself up after a terribly boring lecture, I saw a bunch of people crowding over the railing, and there were exclaimations of "hai bin gor lei gar!?" (who is that?!) The instinctive part of me smelled celebrity, and I peered down. I couldn't recognise the person initially, so I quickly rushed down the escalator to the stage, and suddenly Yoyo Mung was about 2 metres away from me. She's not that big a celebrity, but I've watched her on Healing Hands and Forensic Heroes and a couple of other Hong Kong variety shows. But what took me away initially was how tall and how skinny and how much prettier she looked in reality. On television, I've always thought she was quite average, but at that point, I was slightly shellshocked. Of course, I fumbled for the trusty camera in my bag and started snapping away. Then I informed my dearest roomie about the celebrity sighting and being as excited as I was, she rushed down all the way from school and in less than five minutes she appeared, and her face said it all. I can't think of anyone better to share a celebrity sighting with.
Towards the end of the event, I was standing amongst the journalists and photographers who were there covering the event (it was some Chinese New Year promotional thing), and some of them were really rude, and they told me to move aside just because they were holding their big bulky professional cameras, and it was obvious that I was the only non-journalist with my small Olympus. And they kept shouting, "Yoyo, li dou, mm goi!" (Yoyo, look here, thank you!) But the best part was this, after being shunned by the photographers, and as the event drew to a close, Yoyo came down from the stage, and amidst all the photographers who were shouting for her to look at them, she stood right in front of me and smiled for MY camera. And the thing was, my camera was somehow taking really long to reload from the last shot so Yoyo literally posed for my camera for about seven seconds. That was the shot of the day, the first picture you see on this post.
She walked off with her manager and a bunch of people after that, and Qi and I just jumped around as the crowd dispersed. We were waiting for a friend at Festival Walk, so we decided to just stand around outside the hair salon that she had disappeared into - I have a feeling that's the one that all the celebrities go to - and five minutes later, she walked out with her manager and she was on the phone. Qi nudged me, and undoubtedly there were fears of being rejected, but this was probably going to happen once in my lifetime, so I went up and asked her in Cantonese whether we could take a picture with her (the line I've mastered in the last month). Immediately, she put down her phone, smiled and agreed. Even her manager was really nice about it, he smiled as well and offered to take the picture for us.
The parting scene came with us saying "mm goi sai", and with a smile and a "mm sai hak hei", she left.
Today marks my first month in Hong Kong, and how timely. So much has happened, and the things and events that have happened over the last month usually happen in the span of a year or two. Home awaits in six days, and despite the mixed feelings about returning, I'm missing so many of you so this will be a good break.
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