Monday, February 05, 2007

The sniper in the brain, regurgitating drain

After many years of faithful service, my watch has gone wrong. It has decided to work to rule, and only show the correct time twice each day, which, speaking as the world’s most punctual person is a nuisance. Especially, as I shall now have to go to a shop to buy a replacement.
Yes, I know I could send it to be repaired but, because I really am the most punctual person in the world, what am I supposed to do while it’s away? Use the moon? For me, going around without a watch is worse than going around without my trousers.
So it is lucky that I am in Hong Kong, acknowledged as the leading market place for watches in asia, but this brings another problem; there’s a world of choice out there but everything is unbelievably expensive and fitted with a whole host of features that no one could possibly ever need. I mean FFS why do I need an altimeter, so I can tell everyone that the office is 62 metres above sea level, or that when the pilot says we are flying at 10,000 metres altitude, I can advise to climb another three hundred feet? More importantly, I want to know how much longer I have to suffer sitting in an aluminium tube, which could crash and scatter my bodily remains all over the countryside. At least with a proper watch, the crash site investigators would know what time I died. So its simple really; I don’t want my new watch to open bottles. I don’t want it to double up as a laser or a garrotte. I just want something that tells the time, not in Bangkok or Los Angeles, but here, now, clearly, robustly and with no fuss.
But, of course, it isn’t that simple, is it? You see, someone has decided that the wristwatch says something about the man. And that having the right timepiece is just as important as having the right hair, or the right names for your children, or the right car. I read somewhere recently, that a man should have seven watches, one for each day of the week, and that the owner should choose a watch appropriate to what he will do that day. I have even seen in Lane Crawford a display case where a gent can keep his watches, rather like a ladies jewelry box.
So, I don’t need seven watches, I need one. I could go out and by a watch that would have everyone cooing and nodding, there are watches out there that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I can’t see why. Timex can sell you a reliable watch that has a back light for the hard of seeing, a compass, a stopwatch and a tool for restarting stricken jumbo jets, all for two hundred Hong Kong Dollars. And that’s because the badge says Timex. Which is another way of saying that you have no style and no sense of cool.
To justify the enormous prices charged these days, watchmakers all have idiotic names, like Jaeger-LeCoultre, and they all claim to make timepieces for fighter pilots and space shuttle commanders and people who parachute from atomic bombs into power boats for a living. What’s more, all of them claim to have been doing this, in sheds in remote Swiss villages, for the last millenium. How many craftsmen are there in the mountains I wonder? Millions, by the sound of it. Breitling even bangs on about how it made the instruments for various historically important planes. So what? The Swiss also stored a lot of historically important gold teeth. It means nothing when I’m lying in bed trying to work out whether it’s the middle of the night or time to get up. Whatever, these watch companies give you all this active lifestyle guff and show you pictures of Swiss pensioners in brown store coats painstakingly assembling the inner workings with tweezers, and then they try to flog you something that is more complicated than a slide rule and is made from uranium. Or which is bigger and heavier than Fort Knox and would look stupid on even Puff Diddly.
Now, where can I buy that Timex?

1 Comments:

At 1:48 PM , Blogger Spike said...

Some things to consider:

The altimeters on watches do not work on airplanes because they work on air pressure and the cabins are pressurized. I tried it. At 30,000 feet, the watch "thinks" you're at 50 feet.

I find a watch with a built-in compass often useful when I go walking around new cities. Of course a pocket compass for 10 bucks would do the same job. Or GPS.

This being Asia, when you work with someone, you are often judged by your appearance and not your deeds. Asians will definitely check out your watch.

Don't go for a knock-off because sharper eyes than yours will examine your watch and know instantly if it's real or not.

All that being said, there are bargains to be found at City Chain. Seiko, Citizen, Casio have nice watches that will look good on your wrist and won't cost a month's rent.

 

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