Heard around Hong Kong this month

WITH EACH NEWLY APPOINTED CEO, West Kowloon is looking increasingly like Westeros, the fictional kingdom in TV series Game of Thrones. The search is on again after Duncan Warren Pescod resigned from the position amid acrimonious circumstances in late November, nine months before his contract was due to end. Is the job cursed? Former Disney executive Angus Cheng Siu-chuen, the first CEO, left after 10 days in 2009. Graham Sheffield, formerly artistic director of London’s Barbican Centre, started in August 2010, only to depart five months later, claiming that he wasn’t physically fit enough for the role (having tried to get to the site from Kowloon MTR station ourselves, we sympathise). Then came Michael Lynch in 2011: the former director of Sydney Opera House vowed there was nothing that would make him quit. “Worst case scenario? I guess I could die,” he said. Lynch quit in 2015, a year earlier than agreed in his contract, to support his wife through an illness. As the city waits for the next boss to be named, acting CEO Betty Fung Ching Sukyee, a lifelong civil servant, could be the steady hand the beleaguered cultural hub needs. We wish her luck.