Life Style

French fries are apparently crunchier, salmon juicier and roasted broccoli even crispier when cooked with a fast, fat-free air fryer. Amateur chefs love the versatile gadgets that do not cause smells in the kitchen.“A hot-air fryer is a kitchen appliance in which food can be deep-fried, grilled, baked and cooked using hot air,” says Steffi Sinzenich, who runs a food blog.“Food becomes particularly crispy and hardly any oil is needed. Things like French fries or breaded dishes are lower in fat and healthier.“The circulating hot air means that food is cooked evenly and usually faster than in an oven.”Air fryers have a closed oven, so there is no smell of fat in the kitchen. That is why many like making burgers and meatballs in an air fryer.Most appliances have fixed programmes with preset te...

You may have noticed people talking about the viral “12-3-30” workout on social media, or seen the workouts for yourself at the gym – just look for the people walking at a very high incline on the treadmills.The workout, created by social media influencer Lauren Giraldo, has received a lot of attention for its simplicity and results. It involves walking for 30 minutes on a treadmill at a 3mph (4.8km/h) pace at a 12 per cent incline.“I’m not a runner, and running on the treadmill was not working for me,” Giraldo told Today magazine.“I started playing around with the settings, and at the time, my gym’s treadmill had 12 incline as the max. The three miles per hour felt right, like walking, and my grandma had always told me that 30 minutes of exercise a day was all you needed. That’s how the c...

In March, around 4,000 music lovers from Hong Kong attended a one-night-only concert by Andrea Bocelli, a legendary tenor once dubbed the “Voice of God” by singer Celine Dion.That the concert on March 29 was in Macau was an inconvenience they were willing to overlook.According to the organiser and resort Galaxy Macau, Hong Kong visitors made up around 40 per cent of the audience at the sell-out show at the Galaxy Arena. Many of them, like music critic Edison Hung Sze-hang, were happy to make the two-hour round trip for it.“Local classical music lovers are travelling more for shows since so many big names are going to nearby cities like Macau, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, and not coming to Hong Kong,” Hung says.Andrea Bocelli performs at the Galaxy Arena in Macau on March 29, 2025. Photo: Luca R...

Growing up in the 1990s in Oakland, in the US state of California, director Ryan Coogler was fuelled by his city’s magnetic hip-hop scene and artists such as Digital Underground, 2Pac and E-40.But it was Bay Area heavy metal legends Metallica who helped provide a structure for his new movie Sinners, the director says over a Zoom call from Chicago.Starring Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as Smoke and Stack, twin brothers in Mississippi in the early 1930s, the movie takes on the history of blues music and mixes it with a supernatural story about a pack of bloodthirsty vampires.Coogler says he had Metallica on his mind when he was laying out the story’s rhythms and beats.“I wanted the movie to have the simplicity – and simultaneously, the profound nature – of a Delta blues song. But I wanted...

The erotic spy thriller Lust, Caution achieved notoriety when it was released in 2007 as it was rumoured that the sex scenes between Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Chinese actress Tang Wei were the real thing.Director Ang Lee, realising that the rumour was generating publicity, never explicitly denied or confirmed it, although interviews the director gave suggested that it was untrue.In fact, the three relatively short sex scenes took a full 11 days to shoot and were constructed in the editing room from many hours of footage.Lee’s assistant director described filming the sex scenes as “11 days in hell” and noted that “even Tony Leung, the seasoned actor who had been through it all, was close to collapse when he emerged from the small room 11 days later”.But Tang, who had never acted in a film bef...

Nestled among shops selling furniture and traditional Chinese medicine in Vancouver’s Chinatown is a curious-looking storefront on Main Street.The shop sign reads “Happy Valley Turf Club”, calling to mind the Hong Kong neighbourhood of the same name that is known for its racecourse.The shop, as it turns out, is not a shop at all, but a front for a hidden speakeasy, and its doors remain firmly shut during the day. In the evening, the place comes alive, with a queue of people waiting to be let in.Within the shop, there is an old-school betting counter, a blackboard listing racehorses and their odds, and even a television screen showing Hong Kong race highlights.Those in the know place a wager on King Louie, which unlocks a door to Bagheera, a sophisticated-looking bar named after the panther...

“Happy Easter!” is a wish that will be articulated by many this Sunday, certainly by those observing the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus – with both Western (Gregorian) and Orthodox Easter being celebrated on the same day this year.What is interesting is that among the European languages, the word “Easter” is only found in English and German, while in other Germanic languages and most European languages, the word for the festival is derived from the corresponding word for “Passover”.Passover is the Jewish festival commemorating the liberation of the Israelites in ancient Egypt after the Tenth Plague – when the Angel of Death killed all the firstborns in Egypt including the Pharoah’s, but passed over the homes of Israelites whose door posts had, on God’s command, been smeared with ...

Watching Hong Kong aerialist Jimmy Wong in action is a dizzying experience.His gravity-defying acts take him high off the stage, where he might do something like rapidly spin while clinging to a lone strap with just one arm.Earlier this month, 39-year-old Wong, who emigrated from Hong Kong to the UK two years ago, appeared on Britain’s Got Talent in a mesmerising performance that showed off his skills.Wong’s audition on the long-running talent show was a mix of acrobatics and water dancing that had some audience members on their feet. His act received a “yes” vote from all four judges, allowing him to proceed to the next round.“It is a high-stress environment for performers but the audience was really supportive,” Wong says of his audition that was taped in October.

The five friends who now make up sports and comedy group Dude Perfect had no intention of creating a brand, or even a business, 16 years ago when they started making a video of basketball trick shots while they were attending Texas A&M University, in the United States.“My dad would say we were procrastinating studying for finals at that time, which he is 100 per cent correct [about],” says Coby Cotton, whose twin brother Cory is also part of the group. “We were just having fun, and that’s one thing that I am grateful to say has continued.”When they posted that first video on YouTube in April 2009, the clip was just a way to share with family and friends what they were doing with an US$80 portable basketball hoop they bought for the backyard.Things have expanded far beyond that small ci...

Navigating bedtime with a teenager is, in many homes, a nightly battle with a constant refrain: “Get off your phone and go to bed!”Research shows that today’s teenagers are more sleep-deprived than ever before. Adolescents need between eight and 10 hours of sleep, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.But nearly 80 per cent of American teenagers are not getting that, and experts say it is affecting important areas like mental health and school attendance.Bedtime routines are not just for toddlers. Teenagers need them too, says Denise Pope, an expert on child development and a senior lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, in the US state of California.Experts in adolescent sleep say a few small changes to how parents and teens approach sleep...