Thanks BlueAngelz,
fortunately my mother lives in HK and holds an ID card, so there is a possibility of me being able to get an HKID card as she was a Chinese national when I was born.
The advice regarding flying hours and seniority is great, didn't totally understand that before hand, I assumed that there would be more routes from LHR.
Well, I have a trip to HK in the summer to sort out all of the paper work, then fingers crossed, onto the cadet application.
Thanks again!