Life Style

At the end of a corridor in a nondescript industrial building in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong, stands a unit with a big illuminated sign beside the door.Inside, hundreds of trading cards, mostly from the Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering game series, are displayed neatly on shelves on one side of the room. The cards are sealed in transparent cases, with price tags ranging from around HK$90 (US$11.50) to more than HK$6,000.Near the display, two Pokemon card game enthusiasts battle it out.Sunny Ma, chief executive of Premier Hobby Collective, says his business is about building a community among trading card lovers and creating a space where they can gather and share the joy of their hobby.Sunny Ma, chief executive of Premier Hobby Collective, a trading card store in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Bay neighbo...

For those of us outside the United States, just reading about President Donald Trump’s careless disregard for facts is frustrating enough. I cannot imagine how surreal – and frightening – it must be for many who live in a country where the people in power do not even pretend that truth matters.Whereas the US was once the “city upon a hill” that many countries looked up to, its global reputation is now in tatters, stained by the countless lies that the US president has fed Americans and the rest of the world. The Washington Post counted 30,573 falsehoods, and that was only during Trump’s first presidential term from 2017 to 2021.How does Trump get away with it? How is it possible that tens of millions of the Maga faithful continue to buy into his bellicose and cruel vision for the country a...

Cristeta Comerford, a long-time White House executive chef who recently retired after nearly three decades of preparing meals for five presidents and their guests, says first families are “just regular people” when they are at home in the private living areas of the Executive Mansion.“It’s not what you see on the news,” she says.Preparing the first families’ meals was among Comerford’s many culinary responsibilities. Meals would mostly be prepared in the main kitchen, then finished off in the residence kitchen on the second floor.“At the end of the day, when you do the family meals upstairs, they’re just regular people at home. They just want a good meal. They want to sit down with their family,” she said.“If they have children, they eat together. And just to see that on a daily basis, it’...

Pizzas, hamburgers and sushi – these are just some of the foods that have come to define certain cultures. But a cuisine is about more than an iconic dish, and every dish contains much more than its ingredients. It can reflect not only a historic time and place, but also modernity and a chef’s creative flair.So if Hong Kong was a dish, what would it be? That is the question put to Luke Armstrong, head chef of L’Envol restaurant at The St Regis Hong Kong, and Alicia Castillo, pastry and bakery chef at The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong.“It would be something vibrant,” Armstrong says, acknowledging the city’s multicultural dining scene and availability of the finest ingredients. “But what defines me is saffron and white asparagus.”He continued: “If Hong Kong was a dish, it would be charcoal-grilled...

For decades, Chinese video games and American gamers did not mix. US audiences were receptive to all manner of weird and wonderful experiences, from Finnish game Angry Birds to Japanese Pokémon, but sidestepped anything coming out of China.That was until Genshin Impact arrived five years ago, with two dozen plucky anime characters who fought monsters and took on quests.The HoYoverse production was an instant hit and went on to earn about US$6.2 billion from smartphone players’ in-app purchases, according to data from Sensor Tower.HoYoverse, the international brand of Shanghai-based miHoYo, has had much success with its anime-inspired fantasy games. It followed Genshin Impact with Honkai: Star Rail and, in 2024, Zenless Zone Zero, three games that have collectively generated more than US$8....

The spirit of Indiana Jones is baked into new movie Fountain of Youth.The lighthearted, globe-trotting heist film from Guy Ritchie, debuting on Apple TV+ on May 23, stars Natalie Portman and John Krasinski as estranged siblings attempting to piece together historical facts in hopes of finding the mythical spring.The quest takes them to far-flung places, from Vienna, Austria, to the pyramids in Egypt, as they try to evade capture by the authorities and a shadowy operation intent on stopping the search.“I’ve been looking to watch this movie for years,” Krasinski said. “This is the movie I pretended to be in when I was a kid. This is what got me into the business.”The film also stars Domhnall Gleeson as the wealthy businessman funding the operation and Eiza Gonzalez as one of the protectors o...

The launch of a new mass treasure hunt for a golden owl, an iconic game that previously ended after more than three decades of searching, has been delayed but not cancelled, its French organiser says.Launched in France in 1993, the last edition ended in October 2024 when the elusive golden owl was finally found after decades of searching by thousands of sleuths from around the world.“The hunt has not been cancelled at all,” Michel Becker said this week, denying claims that had been circulating about “Golden Owl 2”, which was scheduled to begin in early May.“Launching a game like this, in such a negative context, is not something that we can do. We want to work in a calmer climate, so we’re giving ourselves some time to see what happens,” said Becker, the game’s co-inventor.Hidden in 1993, ...

Lead cast: Kim Da-mi, Son Suk-kuA mysterious serial killer taunts a pair of mismatched detectives with a cryptic string of murders dating back years in Nine Puzzles, a new series starring Kim Da-mi (Itaewon Class) and Son Suk-ku (Heavenly Ever After) as the most unlikely of collaborators.Directed by Yoon Jong-bin (Narco Saints) and written by Lee Eun-mi (Tunnel), the compelling K-drama interweaves elements of humour and workplace drama in a high-stakes psychological thriller that is buoyed by the playful dynamic between its central pairing.Nine Puzzles opens in 2013, as high-schooler Yoon E-na (Kim) arrives home one rainy night to discover her uncle and guardian Yoon Dong-hoon (Ji Jin-hee) murdered, stabbed through the back of the neck with an awl.Beside his body, she discovers a single pi...

I am not sure why mace is not as well known as its twin, nutmeg. The two spices come from the fruit of the Myristica fragrans tree – mace is the seed coating and nutmeg the seed.But while nutmeg is quite common – which cook, after all, does not have a nutmeg in the spice cupboard for grating onto eggnog or adding to a béchamel sauce? – mace is not.The two spices are prised together out of the fruit, and the mace, which tightly surrounds the nutmeg, is removed.When processed, nutmeg is a hard kernel that is easy to grate. The thin, delicate piece of mace remains flexible and leathery, which makes it hard to grate – I have tried without success to use a rasp grater, a hand-cranked spice grinder and an electric grinder.Store pre-ground Mace in an airtight container in the freezer, so the spic...

3/5 starsEight years on from his critically acclaimed Long Day’s Journey Into Night, a commercial flop, Chinese auteur filmmaker Bi Gan, 35, is back at the Cannes Film Festival with an even more audacious and potentially divisive film.Dedicated to the French film historian and critic Pierre Rissient, Resurrection is a film made by, and for, hardcore cinephiles.For those who appreciate early 20th century silent movies and German expressionist cinema, and are into the sport of counting the minutes during long takes, the 35-year-old Bi’s visually dazzling, remarkably ambitious and reference-laden feature will be something to behold.With its sprawling, near-indecipherable narrative and a lack of clearly defined cultural signposts, Resurrection will prove to be pretty difficult viewing for the ...