'It's easy to get lazy here,' is Amy Leung's charitable response to my broken Cantonese. Having founded her own language-services company one year ago, she is about to release her No Sweat Cantonese guide to speaking correctly. Like many Westerners in Hong Kong, I'm going to need it.
'Maybe people like you think that you don't need to learn because everyone talks to you in English,' she scolds. 'Whatever situation you find yourself in, you'll rarely be without someone who can understand you. Learning Cantonese is not essential in Hong Kong, and that's the problem. Imagine how much fun you'd have if you understood Cantonese - you'd understand what was happening around you all the time.'
Indeed, 33-year-old Leung's sense of what's happening around her has paid dividends. Her day job of teaching is only part of a hectic schedule that also incorporates modelling, acting and writing. 'That's one of the good things about teaching - you meet so many people,' she says. 'One of my students is a part-time actor and model. He asked me to give him a few pictures to pass on, and one thing led to another.'
Looking at her CV, you'd think it was a well-planned career move. Having started from scratch two years ago, she has now starred in or provided voice-overs to six training videos, five magazine shoots, three TV adverts and one movie - a bit part in Dante Lam Chiu-yin's Tiramisu last year, appearing next to Nicholas Tse Ting-fung. Not many teachers end up on the front cover of Time magazine dressed as a Geisha, either. Add these achievements to the fact that she has her own language company and a book ready for an early August release, and you have a thinly disguised appetite for world domination. 'Teaching helped me with my confidence - I used to be shy,' Leung says. She's certainly making up for lost time.
Having studied at Sha Tin Government School, she moved to Camberwell Girls Grammar in Melbourne, Australia, to complete her A-Levels. She spent the next few years studying for a degree in marketing at the University of Auckland, where she also taught Putonghua to children, and returned to Hong Kong in 1995.
'My life has definitely taken on a massive change in the last two years,' Leung admits. 'I started off working for a big Japanese bank, organising loans to big companies here and helping executives with their languages. I left and wondered what I'd do next. I went to Florida and came back the day before 9/11, and realised that I should stay put.'