Being chosen as one of the five judges for the Miss Asia Pageant finals tomorrow night must be one of the high points of my journalistic career to date.
What does one look for? What criteria do you employ? And most important, does one judge solely on the basis of physical beauty or do brains, personality and charisma come into the equation? According to H. Y. Kwong, the pageant's project director, who is also a senior vice-president of ATV, there are few directives given to judges.
'We want an independent view and thus we do not limit judging to a formula or set criteria,' he said.
The only instructions we judges have are on the method of scoring and the weightings and percentages given to different segments of the contest. The judges are selected from various professions and, apart from myself, they include an eye surgeon, Dr John Chang, banker and socialite Kathy Chiu, image consultant Ellen Liu, and former Miss Hong Kong contestant May Ng.
Apparently this year's response has been the most successful in the pageant's 14-year history, breaking all records with more than 5,000 applications.
These figures were later whittled down in three rounds of screening to 12 contestants in the semi-finals then nine for the finals.