Clad in geek-chic clobber (checked cardigan, flared jeans and an over-sized floppy hat), the singer is playing the part of the pop star so perfectly that drinkers at SoHo watering hole, Barco, are starting to stare.
The 26-year-old Hong Konger looks Japanese, but sounds like he's from Los Angeles. Answering questions with theatrical laughs and camp mannerisms, there is a natural flair to Johannes Pong that screams fame. And he has the right accessory to back up the look: his manager, Cherence Yung, is perched on the arm of his couch.
During the interview, an indie film-maker from Santa Cruz, California, materialises. Yan Sham-Shackleton is making a documentary following the lives of three Hong Kong musicians. She sets up her camera to record the interview and now half the bar is watching. Not bad for an unsigned singer.
Since he took up a residency singing alongside DJ Kulu at Liquid's famed Sunday night Ultra Lounge parties earlier this year, Pong has become the It-boy of SoHo, with his angelic voice (he spent his youth singing in churches in Hong Kong) and entertaining personality.
His flamboyant exhibitionism is matched by lyrics that grapple with relationship angst, social awareness and 'me being bitchy'. The imminent release of his second album on a local label has proved Pong is marketable. He is fluent in five languages and can sing in 10. 'I like singing in different languages. It's like role-playing, you have to become the other culture,' he says.
Pong was born in 1976 in Minnesota, where his father, now a Lutheran minister, was completing a degree in theology. Three months later, the family returned to Hong Kong. At 15, the son of the preacher man began to get itchy feet. 'My parents kept telling me, 'You're American', so I went there to check it out for myself.'