I was aged six when I first knew I wanted to learn piano, so it's felt like music's always been part of my life. As a kid, I spent a lot of summers with my family in California and on my first stay there I watched a cousin playing the piano.
I was completely mesmerised and asked her to teach me to read the notes and keys. When I returned to Hong Kong I asked my parents if they'd buy me a piano. They told me they would but that I couldn't touch it until I took my first lesson.
I suppose it was their way of testing to see if I was serious about it, and I thank them for that because it made me even more serious. My piano teacher was a concert master with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and it was she who taught me music theory.
A year later, I started to compose using manuscript paper. I'd name the pieces serenade or nocturne because that's what I would play by Chopin or Schubert.
It was fun growing up in Hong Kong and I look back on my schooldays in the 1980s fondly. I went first to Pun U Association Wah Yan Primary School then Wah Yan College.
I found school life a breeze because I fit in very well. A lot of my closest friends are from that time and I'm still in touch with someone from Primary One.
