All my life, I have had a number of
obsessions. Obsessions that I completely devoted myself to.
Obsessions that eventually die after a short period.
Some of them were:
Stamps - I had stamps from all over the
world, had a few stamp books. Could recognize stamps from a lot of
countries.
Fish (keeping them) - My brother and I
had two aquariums in our room. We bought books on the different kinds
of fishes, what they eat, like/dislike and even how to breed them.
We could recognize most of the fish that were available at pet stores
in my city at that time in a hearbeat.
Art/Painting - I was always pretty
decent at drawing and painting (or at least thats what people said),
and there was this phase where I had books on all the famous great
artists in the world. My favourite was Vincent van Gogh and I tried
recreating a lot of his works. If you come visit me, you will see
some of them still on the walls.
And then there were watches - but this
time it felt different, it felt special...
My brother (Bio) actually got into it a
bit before me. He wanted a new watch and did a bit of reading online
before buying it, a blue Vostok Europe Gaz-14 Limousine.
He had never heard of it, but was
intrigued and went ahead and ordered it. He read all about it and
told me about its history, which honestly, didn't sound too
interesting at that time. Then a few days later, I thought about
buying a watch for myself as well. I was looking to spend some
'serious cash' as I thought I would keep that watch forever. By
serious cash, I meant $400 USD. I did a bit of online searching and
ended up ordering a Movado Museum. I loved its simplicity -
yet elegant look. I still feel its one of the better looking watches
out there and regret selling it in absolutely mint condition, but
that watch changed the way I looked at watches forever.
No more did I believe the 'one watch
is good enough for me' ideology. I was truly intrigued. I wanted
to dive head first into this new world where a watch wasn't just a
tool to tell the time. I learned the difference between quartz and
mechanical. Why an 'automatic' was so named and why its a
thing of some engineering marvel. I wanted to know everything about
everything. I joined forums, not one, but three. I had some wonderful
conversations with some wonderful people from all around the world. I
was proud to be a WIS (Watch Idiot Savant). If that wasn't enough, my
twin brother was proud WIS too, and we had endless discussions
everyday. ETA and Miyota were terms used quite often in
our conversations. At work people called us 'The Watchmen'.
Anyone and everyone who wanted to even think about buying a watch,
came to us for our opinions first.
Our collection grew steadily, at first,
with a lot of quartz and affordables. We had a watch-box that
people wanted to see when they came over, and always had one
question - 'what do you do with so many watches?'
We started noticing and looking at
people's wrist, hoping that if we spot a good watch, we might bump
into another WIS, and actually did bump into a couple or so.
We had updates for each model for all
of our favourite brands. We even started a blog, which received way
more visitors than we ever expected. There was something interesting
to share every month. We even completed a intermediate watch making
course - all was good.
Now, there comes a time in every watch
aficionado's life, when he has some cash to spare and thinks about
'refining' his collection. Affordables are great, but for me
personally, I always wanted a high end watch. A company with a
history and something thats 'Swiss Made', something that in itself
was classic. My brother and I both decided to go for our 'grails'
while we still could afford to spend some cash, and we did. He bough
an Omega 'Great White' and I a Rolex Sub 14060M or No date, non COSC
version. We were on top of the world and couldn't believe what we had
managed to achieve.
Our collection grew even more!
Although I try my best to hide my Sub,
especially at work, I won't lie, I admit that its nice when someone
does appreciate the watch, as long as they don't ask me how much I
paid for it (which does come up more often than not). I started
flipping watched in order to refine my collection. My affordables
were sold and I started buying the ones on my wish-list. I still have
a couple of affordables, but the ones that I wear more now are:
Rolex Sub
Laco Pilot Type A 'Bremen' (ETA)
Orient Mako (Pepsi) - my beater
My wish-list was 'refined' too. It
contained some really nice watches, all with a nice price tag of
course, and thats when it all started to change...
As with any other human being, my wants
were endless, but my bank balance wasn't. In fact, in India, you'd
have to be at a pretty decent position to earn nearly enough to
satisfy this hobby. As a VFX artist, its not easy at all to. My hopes
started dropping. My brother and I decided to try out something with
a couple of friends to earn some extra dough. Unfortunately that
wasn't nearly as profitable as we had hoped and ended up taking a
lot of our free time too. My hopes dropped even further and so did my
interest eventually. Forum visit became less frequent, the gap
between posts on my blog increased and soon it seemed that those
things were a thing of past. Maybe this obsession wasn't different
from any other. It was just a phase and I seemed to have moved on. I
felt guilty about ignoring the blog I had cherished so much at one
time, but ignored now. One thing neither my brother, nor I stopped
doing was looking at people's wrists, but thats about it. I lost
track of whats new in the world of watches and what was announced at
Basel World.
We had moved on from the business with
friends and started working on something a bit more serious and which
seems much more feasible Its kept us pretty busy all last year and is
still in the works. Last weekend,I had a meeting I was supposed to
dress formally for. At my current job I am not required to dress
formally, in fact its totally the opposite. So when I do get to wear
a suit, I look forward to wearing a dress watch. Now my
options were, as stated earlier, a Sub, a Pilot (Laco), or a beater
(Mako). I would have normally gone for the Sub or the Laco, but this
time I had a presentation to give, so I though maybe I should wear
something a bit more 'dressy' (if thats a proper word). I
remembered that last year, my dad had come to visit and left his
vintage gold Omega with me. It has a brown strap, and I was already
wearing a brown belt and shoes, so I thought, it would be perfect. I
took it out of the box and put it on my wrist, when something
happened. I just started at it for a while. It amazed me by its
beauty, everything seemed to be rushing back, it made me smile.
That same night, I was out for a couple
of drinks with my girlfriend, and I was talking about the Omega with
her. I am not sure if I was boring her, but she always assures me she
finds watches interesting (after being with me for a couple of years)
and actually enjoys a conversation, even though she may not have a
lot of knowledge about them. She then told me about a friend who we
both know, and that he had recently purchased a Rolex Submariner with
a 'blue dial and gold center links'. I instantly said, "Oh! You
mean the...umm...that model...". I couldn't believe it! I just
couldn't remember the model number, and of a company I read so much
about. I had to look it up that instant online - it was the 16613.
I felt a bit ashamed of myself for forgetting something that a year
or two ago was like second nature to me. Today, I opened my blog and
looked at it, what it was and whats it's become. I then logged into a
forum to see whats up. I saw a lot of familiar sounding posts, saw
introductions from new watch aficionados and remembered how I used to
love going through all this every single day.
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| (image taken from online) |
Its going to be a while before I get
back to what I was, to what's the latest models and movements. I
still can't promise frequent blog updates, but sure hope I can from
time to time. I looked at my wish-list and do aim to get the next one
on it - maybe not anytime soon, but some day. The thing I am glad
about the most - this obsessions wasn't like the others, I knew it
was special and it certainly is.
