Exhibitions

This isn't the first I've done and it won't be the last. I enjoy them. But it's a bit of work.
Getting the information on the puzzles. Finding the puzzles. (in my house that's hard.) Setting up the cases. Leaving work early. Ouch! That's a hard one.

I sit here waiting for the people to arrive so we can set up. A nice young lad came over and introduced himself to me. Poor guy. He now has to put up with my security issues. See the puzzles they want me to put out are:
a) expensive
b) irreplaceable and
c) favorites and/or special in some way

No locks on the cabinets?!? HELLO!!! I've demanded that since day one. The boxes are plexiglass for heavens sake. Did they think I would just leave more than double my annual salary there for the taking? I guess when all you do is play with a 3x3x3 you don't care. Me? I care.

Let's see what happens. In the mean time I sit here and stew. It's a shame because unless something is fixed. I'll walk away. They didn't ask for your everyday puzzles. They want my grandfathers whiskey bottle, they want Gundam, they want the heads, they want Jumbo and my think like a man, they want Uwe's balls for crying out loud. In other words they want the best. Dilemma. What to do? Mark some papers and calm down. Then think.

Well that worked, and Michael did to. He's very calming. Maybe his voice is soothing, or maybe he just knows how to reassure me all will be ok. Or maybe it just goes to a long standing friendship and having resisted him on more than one occasion. Whatever the reason his heart or his shoes...(insert melodramatic cartoon screech) wrong movie! By eight o'clock we set about setting up. (I'll jump to the end here.). By midnight we finished. And you thought I was joking when I said it took a long time.

There was the usual in solved puzzle that needed to be fixed. There was the usual panic when we thought a piece was missing. The standard changing of the cabinets. In the end it all looks pretty and fits together nicely but to begin with it sure doesn't.

Michael finished his cabinets early. He had two and I'm guessing because they were his own design he was able to sort the order in his head nice and early. Me? I've had other (work!) things on my mind and thought I was doing good to find all but three of the puzzles they wanted to display. That only took Miss N and I an afternoon. Another four hours to be exact. Luckily for me the organizers had an idea. Not a great one, but all I needed was a start and I was off and running. It all worked for me after that.

In the end I put together five cabinets. Michael had two. And AJ and judochen had one. When I left there were 190 puzzles on display.

If you have nothing better to spend your time on and you happen to be in Hong Kong from 28 September through 7 October, come over to Plaza Hollywood in Diamond Hill and take a look at what  we put on display. Who knows, you might see something you've never seen before.

You can see a video of the puzzles on display on my YouTube channel.
More photos are available on Facebook.