New songs selected for Eurovision contest

Kornelia Stark writes about preparations for Eurovision

house at the time of the earthquake. However, my cousin, her husband, and their infants remain under the debris. The first unit came 30 hours after the quake. Cold weather also affected us seriously.”

Lastly, I reached Rümeysa from Gaziantep, Islahiye. Rümeysa and her family were in Islahiye when the horrible earthquake happened. She sent me her house’s picture and disclosed her anguish and despair. When I talked to her, I grasped the dimension of the disaster.

“Fortunately, my family was not in the

The Turkish Society of the University of Exeter has launched a donation campaign for Turkey. They have opened a table in the Forum to give information about the quake to people. The president of the Turkish Society at the University of Exeter stated that they have received £5,000 so far. They will organise more events in the near future to inform university students about the effects of the catastrophe and encourage donations.

LAST weekend was eventful for Eurovision fans, as the contest is nearing its due date in three months. The annual Eurovision Song Contest requires each participating country to select a song to represent them in a competition. Each artist submitting a song has to go through a selection process which differs between countries. Some nations, such as France, Israel or the UK go through a process of internal selection, where just the final song is announced to the public. In other ones, such as Croatia, Denmark or Italy, national competitions are hosted, where the public has a chance to vote to determine the best song.

Weather conditions are another problem. Currently, the air temperature drops to below zero at night. People declare that there is no electricity, running water, or heat. Furkan and his family were in Hatay when the earthquake struck. He states: “Hatay turned into a wreck. Public buildings and hospitals collapsed. The roads are damaged massively. Therefore, it’s hard to deliver food and water. People try to drink from tree leaves, they are left to die here.”

Another victim, Onur, expressed: “We could not reach water and electricity since Monday. In addition, there is no heating and the whole infrastructure system crashed in Gaziantep. Throughout the nights, we freeze due to cold weather. I don’t

IN the summer of 2022, I worked abroad in Hong Kong for six weeks. It was incredible. I was in Asia for the first time in my life and also working so it was a completely new experience.

The place to begin is several months prior to the trip, when I realised I had to secure a holiday-working visa. This was, of course, much harder than I thought and after many, many attempts at the China Visa Application Centre in central London, I eventually gave up and asked my aunt (who lives out there) to head to the Immigration Tower in Wan Chai.

So, I finished up in Exeter the previous week and literally five days later I flew out from Heathrow. The flight out was fun, connecting through Istan - bul (the airport there is very cool) and then eventually arriving in Hong Kong.

To give some context, at that point Hong Kong was essentially in a semi-lockdown. This included wearing masks at all times (yes, including outside in the humidity), plenty of testing and more importantly, a seven-day quarantine period. Also, if you caught Covid and registered it, you would be shipped off to a government quarantine facility.

It was, simply put, crazy to me. Quarantine, while at times difficult, was an overall okay experience. On my first day out, I got straight to work — running social media and writing blogs. As much as I could talk endlessly about the work, what really sticks with me is learning about the culture and the geography of the whole place. I was staying in South Island and the daily commute on the MTR (Hong Kong’s equivalent of the Tube) was a lot of fun. The train was air conditioned, so it encouraged me to pick up the pace every day!

So far, 15 songs have been announced to appear in the contest, seven of them being winners of public national competitions, such as Sanremo (Italy), Supernova (Latvia) or Melodi Grand Prix (Denmark), which took place last Saturday. The chosen songs have shown a great musical diversity, ranging from entries such as the joyful and energetic song ‘Breaking My Heart’ by Riley from Denmark, the emotional ballad ‘Bridges’ by ALIKA from Estonia, and a unique and crazy performance of ‘Mama ŠČ’ by Let 3 from Croatia. A surprise this year has also been the return of Marco Mengoni from Italy who is returning to the competition after ten years with the song ‘Due vite’. Although the Eurovision Song Contest is set to happen in three months, new songs for the competition will continue being announced every week until the end of March. Next weekend, we can expect to hear the songs from Lithuania, as well as France. This year the contest is set to take place in Liverpool in the UK, which was the runner up last year with ‘Spaceman’ by Sam Ryder, since the winner, Ukraine — with ‘Stefania’, performed by Kalush Orchestra — is unable to host the contest. Judging by the current entries released we can expect to see a diversity of genres, styles and cultural influences which will make this year’s Eurovision a thrilling and unforgettable event.

While the work was engaging, the best times were either on the weekends or evenings. England were playing Australia in a three-match series (rugby), and it was exciting to meet up with old schoolmates and watch the games in random bars across the city. At one point I also went to watch the new Minions movie with my friends and somehow sat through the hour-anda-half-long film with Mandarin audio and Cantonese subtitles — I know neither of these languages. While the markets weren’t as busy as they normally were before the lockdowns, it was great being able to walk the streets and experience the day-today of the city. One of the highlights for me was definitely the cross-harbour ferry and also finding some of the filming locations from The Dark Knight . Working abroad was at times an ominous experience but looking back on it now, I remember my time in Hong Kong extremely fondly.