Month: March 2015

HK Beach 5s @ Repulse Bay – 22 March, 2015

http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2015/Beach-5s-Repulse-Bay-22-March/48153937_pWcjNP#!i=3945172050&k=cXfmpkG

Bigger is not always better, last weekend’s Beach 5’s were devoid of people and atmosphere while swamped with corporate branding and data-mining promo girls demanding you sign-up for this or that.

Sadly the focus of profit over product meant that on Sunday afternoon beyond the teams and their friends cheering themselves on the event was empty apart from a bank of photographers taking pictures of the beach rugby.

You have to wonder who the Dodgeball people upset, they were stuck out-of-sight on the far-right of the beach behind one of the half empty stands at the end of the rugby field. A shame because they were one of the only sports where the teams dressed up and got into the feel of having fun – yet no-one could see costumes or their games.

The netball women were having lots of fiercely competitive matches, but with the ‘courts’ swung 90 degrees to run end to end instead of side to side as in previous years it was harder to watch multiple games at the same time and teams ended up only watching their game rather than being able to see other play at the same time.

Beach rugby was a fierce and competitive as ever, but the beach football was just boring – probably because the players lacked the skills to keep the ball in the air and tried to play ‘grass’ football style which just left the ball stuck in the sand and groans from the couple of people watching.

In past years teams had their own open-sided tents which worked as not only as places for the teams to relax and leave stuff but also as mini-social centers where friends would gather, talk, eat, drink… These helped set the friendly, social and fun feeling of the whole event. There were none this year, replaced with more sponsors booths, and the atmosphere was… well, sadly there wasn’t any.

The enthusiasm and sporting competitiveness remain, yet the fun and frivolity that made the Beach 5’s so enjoyable in previous years has been subsumed beneath the organisers greed to monetise and profit from the event.

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click on any photo to see more images 
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http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2015/Beach-5s-Repulse-Bay-22-March/48153937_pWcjNP#!i=3945178060&k=zJ5gvMD

http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2015/Beach-5s-Repulse-Bay-22-March/48153937_pWcjNP#!i=3947233534&k=dsQbZJ7

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Magnificent 7 @ The Sevens – Christian Cullen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti0rbUGDZPU

One of the most dangerous attacking fullbacks in modern rugby history, New Zealand’s Christian Cullen, has been named as the third player in the ‘The Hong Kong Magnificent Seven’ – Hong Kong Rugby Football Union’s (HKRFU) top seven international players to have taken the pitch at the hallowed Hong Kong Stadium in So Kon Po over the past four decades.

Widely acknowledged as one of the most dangerous fullbacks of the modern era, Cullen burst onto the international scene after his appearance in Hong Kong in 1995. After playing only one match in the previous year’s tournament, Cullen replaced the injured Adrian Cashmore in 1996.

He grasped the opportunity with both hands, scoring an astonishing 18 tries over the weekend and claiming the 1996 Leslie Williams Award for the Best & Fairest player.

“It’s a great honour to be included in the list of the greatest players to appear at the Hong Kong Sevens in the past 40 years – so many fantastic rugby players have played here, and for many like myself it was the start of an international career.

“The 1996 tournament will always hold special memories for me, an epic Cup Final against Fiji and of course winning the Leslie Williams Trophy. I always love coming back to Hong Kong, and I am looking forward to joining the celebrations at the end of March,” said Cullen from New Zealand.

Cullen’s Hong Kong exploits led to his All Blacks debut later in the same year – aged 20 – and reinforced his sevens sobriquet as the Paekakariki Express. He went on to score a hat-trick in his test debut against Samoa and collected four tries against Scotland in his second test. The first steps in a glittering career that would see him become New Zealand’s most capped fullback and scorer of a then record 46 test tries for his country.

Returning to the Sevens fold in 1998, Cullen played a pivotal role in helping New Zealand win the gold medal at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Cullen is the first player selected that predates the inception of World Rugby’s (formerly the IRB) Sevens World Series in 2000.

Christian Cullen

SXSW 2015 – 8.42gb of Free Music

sxsw-music-logo

11 years. 11,000 songs. 55GB – The ultimate SXSW Music archive.

The SXSW (South by Southwest) music festival is one of the largest and most popular around. For more than a decade, the festival has been sharing DRM-free songs of its performing artists, 55 GB worth so far. This year’s release is the largest thus far featuring 1,291 tracks totaling more than eight gigabytes.

Since 2005 the SXSW music festival has published thousands of DRM-free tracks from participating artists – the first torrents were created by the festival organizers for the artist showcases themselves, but since 2008 this task has been in the hands of the public.

In 2014 SXSW replaced the MP3 files with Soundcloud links, which complicated the download process. Thankfully in 2015 all the regular SXSW showcase MP3s are again freely available on the festival site for you to sample the music of the bands that played at this year’s festival.

“These torrents include tracks that can be previewed on the SXSW website for SXSW 2015. This year’s includes 1,291 files totaling 8.42GB, making it the largest to date,”  notes Ben Stolt the man who, as in previous years, has taken the time and effort to upload all of the MP3s onto BitTorrent with proper ID3 tags. “The torrents are provided as an alternate means to sample the songs available on the official SXSW site” continues Stolt. The 2015 release is out now and comes in two torrents containing a massive 1,291 tracks. That’s 8.42 gigabytes of free music in total.

All the tracks released for the previous eleven festivals dating back to 2005 are also still available for those people who want to fill up their MP3 players without having to invest thousands of dollars. The 2005 – 2015 archives now total more than 55 gigabytes.

Every year SXSW torrents are a great success, with many thousands of music aficionados downloading gigabytes of free music across virtually every genre from both established acts and upcoming bands.

This year’s SXSW music festival has finished but the music will live on for as long as there are people sharing.

www.sxswtorrent.com/2015
http://www.sxswtorrent.com/

Magnificent 7 @ The Sevens – Ben Gollings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvGG1Y0ZiXw

England sevens star Ben Gollings is the second member of the the HKRFU’s Magnificent 7.

The all-time leading points scorer in the HSBC Sevens World Series, Gollings’ record stands alone. An astonishing 276 of those points came from just eight appearances at the Hong Kong Sevens, earning Gollings the record as the leading points scorer in Hong Kong since the inception of the World Series in 2000.

Gollings’ Hong Kong haul came from 20 tries (tied-fifth all time in Hong Kong since the series began) and 88 conversions. He leads his next closest rival on the Hong Kong scoring table, Portugal’s Pedro Leal (224), by 52 points and outpaces third-placed Zhang (211) by 65 on Hong Kong’s leaderboard.

Gollings played on three of England’s four cup winning sides in 2002, 2004 and 2006 (England also won in 2003), and featured at the Rugby World Cup Sevens in 2005. He returned to his favourite stomping ground from 2008 to 2011 and is still a regular and popular visitor to the Sevens each year.

Ben Gollings

Support Your Local Shops

https://youtu.be/EC1gFKJYQYc

It’s too late to support your local shops and restaurants when they are about to close. To survive they need your long term support or before you realise it your neighbourhood will be full of 24-7 convenience stores, pharmacies and jewellery outlets. Light-hearted video about a old store that is about to close – made by 一字馬

Hong Kong Women’s Sevens Squad Announced

Women's-Squad-2015-HK-Sevens

The Hong Kong Women’s Sevens squad was announced today. Hong Kong will face a stiff – albeit familiar, challenge after being drawn into an all-Asian pool for the Hong Kong Women’s Sevens in 2015. Hong Kong will face Asian number one China, Kazakhstan (ranked fourth behind third-placed Hong Kong) and Singapore in their opening round matches.

Although missing a few key players due to injury, head coach Anna Richards has still been able to name an experienced squad under the captaincy of Royce Chan Leong Sze, who makes her tenth appearance at the Hong Kong Women’s Sevens.

Try-scoring threats Aggie Poon Pak Yan and Natasha Olson-Thorne have both been named in the final twelve, which features two change to the squad that won the Asia-Pacific Cross-Regional Sevens in Borneo last month. The experienced Candy Cheng Tsz Ting earns her eighth Hong Kong Sevens appearance while Nam Ka Man makes her debut. In total, ten of the squad have played previously in the Women’s Sevens, with Adrienne Garvey and Nam the only debutants.

Women’s Squad:
Royce CHAN, Leong Sze (captain) #
Christy CHENG, Ka Chi (vice captain)
Candy CHENG, Tsz Ting
Adrienne GARVEY*
KWONG Sau Yan
LAI Pou Fan
NAM Ka Man*
Natasha OLSON-THORNE
Aggie POON, Pak Yan
Amelie SEURE
SHAM Wai Sum
Lindsay VARTY

Anna RICHARDS (Head Coach)
Mark KOMAR (Coach)
Dannii CHEUNG (Manager)

* Hong Kong Women’s Rugby Sevens
# 10th Hong Kong Women’s Rugby Sevens appearance in 2015

Hong Kong Match Schedule (Pool Rounds)

Thursday 27th March, King’s Park

Match Time Game
4 11.00 Hong Kong     v Singapore
10 13.00 Hong Kong     v Kazakhstan
17 15.50 Hong Kong     v China

 

Hong Kong Men’s Squad Announced

hk-mens-squad

The Jamie Hood-led Hong Kong men’s team will have home ground advantage as they make their fourth attempt at becoming a core team on the international series next season. The team is one of the leading contenders for the single available spot on the Sevens World Series in 2015/16 awarded to the winners of the 12-team international qualifier tournament held in Hong Kong. The men’s qualifier features two teams from each of World Rugby’s six regions. Hong Kong’s pool has a distinctly Latin flair with Mexico, Brazil and Uruguay in the same pool.

HKRFU head sevens coach Gareth Baber has kept faith in the core squad that finished as ARFU Asian Sevens Series champions in 2014 and took home the silver medal at the Asian Games in South Korea in October. The team won the ARFU-FORU Cross-Regional Sevens earlier last month beating fellow qualifier teams Papua New Guinea and Tonga en route to the Cup.

Earlier this week, the team was recognised for the successes of the past season winning the Samsung Hong Kong Sports Stars Team Award. It was the side’s fifth consecutive win in the Team category and their sixth in the past seven years, but the squad is aware that those successes are in the past and that their performance next weekend in the heaving Hong Kong Stadium will beget bigger opportunities than ever.

The squad features significant experience with Rowan Varty marking his tenth Hong Kong Sevens appearance alongside familiar names like Salom Yiu Kam Shing, Nick Hewson, Lee Jones, Cado Lee Ka To, and Tom and Alex McQueen. Only one change has been made to the squad that won in Borneo with forward Jack Capon dropping out due to injury. Mark Wright, Hong Kong’s only player in the professional Japanese league, replaces Capon, marking his first appearance for Hong Kong since the Asian Games.

Chris Maize who has regained top form after a long layoff with injury was rewarded for being a mainstay of the side after playing in all three of Hong Kong’s build-up tournaments this season in Margaret River, Darwin and Borneo. Maize is the only men’s player making his debut appearance in the Hong Kong Stadium next weekend.

Men’s Squad
Michael COVERDALE
Jamie HOOD (captain)
Nick HEWSON
Lee JONES
LEE Ka To, Cado
Christopher MAIZE *
Alex McQUEEN
Tom McQUEEN
Rowan VARTY #
Max WOODWARD
Mark WRIGHT
YIU Kam Shing, Salom

Gareth BABER (Head Coach)
Kane JURY (Coach)
Martin KIBBLE (Manager)

* Debut Hong Kong Sevens
# 10th Hong Kong Sevens

Hong Kong Match Schedule (Pool Rounds)
Friday 28th March:
14.50 Hong Kong v Brazil
17.02 Hong Kong v Mexico

Saturday 29th March
10.50 Hong Kong v Uruguay

Cavalia

Cavalia

The Big White Tent on the Central Harbourfront is hard to miss, it’s home to Cavalia a touring ‘homage to the century-old bond between human and horse’ as Cavalia founder Normand Latourelle describes the show.

At it’s most basic Cavalia is acrobats and horses – a Cirque du Soleil with four legged extras if you will. There’s some good trick riding, but as with the acrobatics nothing ground breaking, it’s all stuff that’s highly visual and can be repeated night after night.

Where Cavalia shines is it’s equine stars. We just don’t see horses in Hong Kong, and certainly not up-close and personal. Watching them on TV, even in HD, the raw beauty and power can be seen but not experienced or felt. In ‘casting’ a range of different breeds, we the audience can compare and enjoy the attributes and personalities of the horse, their personalities and traits. From the stately to the wild majestic Arabians and all points in-between.

As Latourelle explained afterwards “The Arabians are a herd, they’re not ridden, I want to keep them a bit wild.”

CavaliaThe hour long media preview was a selection of ‘scenes’ from the full show. There’s nothing new or unique about the individual pieces of the show (television has made the difficult seem common place) combined it was fun and enjoyable. The horses are the stars, the Arabians the headliners. A reminder of natures beauty and worth the price of admission alone.

Cavalia
When: 31 March – 10 May, 2015
Where: Central Harbourfront
How much: $1,995, $1,495, $1,195, $895, $695, $545, $395