Jason, have you ever thought on challenging her to create a blog of some kind where she could tell all about the experience for the time she’ll spent there? Focusing not only on the view of the daily life routine and its challenges for a westerner, but also (and specially) on cultural/arts general life and developement, the type of work of the orchestras there (as in rehearsals/schedules/concerts attendance and audience profile/programing/eastern take on western classical music/educational outreach prgrammes/venues/whatever more) and also musical academies, degrees, job opportunities for young graduates, etc.

It could provide endless information and not only be of great usefulness for everyone interested, as it could also bring closer together two apparentely different sides of the world and open the perspective of a whole new market for us to explore but timid in doing so out of sheer unawareness and knowledge. And also, lots of fun for us to read!

Maybe it could even feature interviews with the local major bass players there, kind of a Contrabass Conversations oriental outtake. You could branch out a franchise of the show!

There’s another north-american girl playing over ther (i think she still is, at least), although not in Honk Kong, but fairly near, in Hyogo, Japan. Her name is Meaghan Williams, she studied at Berlin with Michael Wolf. He can provede for her contact for sure. Maybe Kate can team up with her and create a much wider broad espectre of the Easten world of classical music and orchestra performance. Even if she doesnt’ accept the challenge of creating a blog, she can for sure appreciate any inputs Meaghan could provide.

But I’m sure you will be doing your very best to persuade her on embarking on this enterprise, and achieve that goal!

Best of luck! (for both! )