 Job 1 – engineer
Interviewing Mr. Joseph Wong
We interviewed Mr. Joseph Wong on the ninth of October 2003. His
profession is a civil engineer. He works for the Highways Department of
the HK government. He designed and supervised the road construction (for
example, the road works system at the Aldrich Bay Reclamation Area). His
salary is about 1 million HK dollar per annum. He obtained a Civil
Engineering Degree from the Hong Kong University in 1980. He is a
corporate member of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers. He planned
and supervised the construction for many many civil engineering projects,
including roads, bridges, port works, buildings etc.
He
told
us an
interesting project involving construction of a
new road in Kam Tin. At the construction site, there was a palm tree
planted by a citizen of Jewish origin forty years ago. The seed was
brought from Jerusalem by his father. The village people considered the
tree to be very precious. But the tree needed to be removed to give ways
for the new road. The village people objected the construction of the road
strongly. With the help of a biologist, Mr. Wong proposed a tree
transplant plan to the village people, which was finally accepted by them.
They now have a new road as well as their precious palm tree growing lively
in their village. Mr. Lam told us that he now knows a lot of knowledge of
palm trees.
His other interesting work experience was constructing a quay at the
southern Thailand. He had to supervise about fifty Thai workers and none
of them could speak English. He was forced to use body languages when
giving out instructions to the workers. At last, he completed the job in
nine months time. At the end, he learned the Thai language; yet, his
workers had not learned any of the English language.
Finally, he told us that he enjoyed his job very much.
 Job 2 – jazz
instructor
The second job we are going to introduce is jazz dance instructor. Let
us introduce what are jazz and the history of jazz first.
As a musical language of communication, jazz is the first indigenous
American style to affect music in the rest of the World. Originally, jazz
was mainly a male dance with few women achieving stardom
throughout its history. Jazz can emphasize bodyline and flexible torso:
fast, accurate footwork with the feet basically parallel; and can
exaggerate movements of individual body parts, such as the shoulders.
In general, it concentrates on floor-oriented steps as opposed to high
lifts or leaps.
There are many variations of jazz dance such as interpretive, Modern,
Hip-hop, Break Dance etc.. Historians will note that such movements
like the ‘Moon Walk’ and ‘Spinning on ones back into a pose’ dates
back to the 1930s and maybe even well before.
Since the 1920s, the term “jazz dance” has been used to describe a
constantly evolving form of popular and artistic dance movement. It is
a reflection of our popular culture, and as the culture changes so does
the face of jazz dance.
Jazz dance has improvisation and in
individuality at its cove.
Job
2–JAZZ
DANCE INSTRUCTOR
Interviewing Angela
We interviewed Angela on the twelfth of October 2003. She is a jazz
dance Instructor. She works in a private organization. Her work is to
teach jazz dance. She has been teaching jazz and jazz funk for nearly
ten years. She started to learn jazz in Academy of Performing Arts when
she was nineteen years old. She even learnt jazz dance in different
countries, such as Britain, United States and Japan. Her parents do
support her to dance. Her salary now is around three million dollars,
and she was quite satisfied on it. But her working hour is unstable.
Sometimes, she may work for a whole day, but sometimes she may
only need to work for three hours.
For Angela, she thinks that being a jazz instructor is not really a job. She
believes that it is an interest. Her dream is to be a dancer when she
was a child. And now her dream comes true! She loves this job very
much! She thinks that her passion is to make the children really love
dance but not forced to dance by their parents. Being a jazz instructor,
she whole-heartedly spends her time on jazz.
She told us that she has met some problems in teaching jazz. She
wishes that there could be more people love dancing and can make
dancing be an interest. She wants people to appreciate dance more
than just playing it. Besides, she wants to promote jazz to more schools
and colleges. Let more students know about jazz. And let them know
that dance can also get a degree, but not just music, or any other
subject.
One of her memorable experiences is that when she was teaching
dance in Beijing, she found that the students could handle the steps
very quickly. And they are so willing to dance. She was very proud of
herself that she could teach this group of students. The second
memorable experience is when she was teaching dance in the Hong
Kong Polytechnic University, she realized that most of the people in
Hong Kong couldn’t do difficult and hard things. They give up easily on
things which are difficult, or with a little pain. She was so disappointed
about that.
Angela thinks that being a jazz instructor, she/he should know the
history and characteristics of jazz. She should know how to make a
person know how to dance and should be teach in more details. The
teacher must also know many vocabularies of movements, too
Angela, Jazz Dance Instructor
Angela and we