Hong Kong (Mon Amor)
A story about the most beautiful city on the planet and The Cyberfest. I'll mention the typhoon too...

Hong Kong has a typhoon rating system and this typhoon was an eight on a scale of ten. Eight means, "go home, close the storm shutters, and curl up with your lover." But I'm not with my lover, I'm with Cyberfest. When we arrived it was night.

So we land at Kai Tak (with very minor bumps) because the 747 is really an elegant machine when stressed or pressed. I hear pilots like them a lot too. So we get there and it is night and Hong Kong is closed because of the typhoon. It is steamy and raining.

We take the last K3 from the airport but get off a block before the hotel. We hire a truck for the luggage. We have hundreds of luggages because of the band. Hiring a truck consisted of hailing the first one we saw. This was the first thing I learned in Hong Kong: business stops for nothing not even typhoons.

So there is this typhoon, typhoon Kent, and typhoon Kent put us behind for the opening because all the stuff that was supposed to happen before the opening was delayed because of the weather. So we go to the gallery the following day, the day of the opening, and at 2PM we have some computers in boxes but no network, and more stuff in boxes, and many many cables. Soon, large, pale, computer guys with British and American accents arrive and begin to set up the network and get the machines talking to the outside world.

Everyone is smoking cigarettes furiously the entire time. I understate when I tell you that all hell broke loose between 4PM and 7PM. There were boxes, and packing materials, and crates, and miles of wire, and oversized white guys swearing and smoking, and us as Cyberfest, and all in a gallery space no bigger than your standard 'merican living room. All this, as typhoon Kent blew into mainland China and killed six people.

The internet race results are as follows: Jeff gets the MACS up and talking to the outside world first, followed by team UNIX and their Indigos. The Pre-Windows '95 DOS team made a showing but was unable to talk to the outside world until later the next day.
A crowd arrives. The press arrives.
I share digi-crayons (demo browsers to visitors) and show art. 15 of us flew to Hong Kong to make Cyberfest. We are an eclectic group of techo-artisans and musicians.