Monday, 12 December 2005

 

Monday morning we got up looking forward to meet up with our ”new” friends from MS, having nothing to do but to wait till 9am in Denmark, when the insurance company would open and we could receive the fax saying that the global insurance did also cover Hong Kong.

The rest of the day we just had to write a press release, concerning the long expected erection of the sculptures Tuesday morning, and after that we would take a look around the town to find out what it was all about and maybe find a nice place to drink a cup of coffee.

But no way! Even though the breakfast went on as planed, at 2 pm Mable of the HK Peoples Alliance called. She had just been on the phone with the Hong Kong police. For security reasons it would not be possible to get the trucks in to Victoria Park Tuesday, because of the starting of the WTO summit. So we would have to put it up the same evening at 9 o clock. After once again having changed all the necessary appointments, we once again found our selves in the park waiting for the container.

This time the crane truck and the truck with container were allowed to enter the park. By the way, bringing skilled and nice workers, to help us do the hard work of moving the big elements around. And now the fun really began. Slowly the press started to appear at the park, even a reporter form the royal Danish television (DK). Meanwhile the park manager and his superiors from the Department of Cultural Services Department followed the process very carefully.

While working on the erection “Survival of the Fattest”, they wanted to have a meeting with Jens in their office. But as he was the only one knowing the details of the constructions, they agreed to talk to talk to our secretary, Colette instead. The time was at this point 10.30 and we were getting to the most difficult part of the work. The Hungerboys, The Cow and the weight scale were being gathered lying on the ground, soon to be lifted on to their fundament. Suddenly Colette comes running from the office, very upset calling for a crisis meeting. It appeared that the park management, after some 30 minutes of discussion, had come up with their most unreasonable and grotesque demand so far. The Danish insurance covering 10,000,000 Danish Crowns was no longer good enough. They now wanted Jens to sign a contract, basically saying that whatever problems the Hong Kong government meant the sculptures might cause, he would personally be held responsible for it. While trying to figure out the consequences of the signing of such a contract, the Park light was turned off and the Park Manager and his superior arrived.

Even though this was clearly an unfair deal they could see no reason for us to think that they had some sort of hidden (political) agenda of not allowing us to erect the sculptures. The only comment was “sign the contract and we will turn on the light”. At this moment it was a miracle that no physical confrontation happened. Instead Jens chose to use their own weapons against them proclaiming that he would sue the Hong Kong government for (unnecessary trade complications). The comment on this was a somewhat forced laughter from the park manager and his superior while leaving the place. Accepting the realities we laid 9 meter construction on the ground as it would have been for people to make their own opinion on the things. But just as the trucks were leaving the exit gate we got the news that they had changed their minds and we could erect the sculptures without any further delays.

So in the end about half an hour after midnight, we could finish what we had been working for, for 3 days. We finally erected the sculptures where they should have been on Saturday and got to bed at 4.30 am looking forward to enjoining the warm weather of Hong Kong, the food and especially a nice cup of coffee.