Valentine surprise!

It's been a while since I've had an incoming post. With numerous expenses occurring in the last one year, it's been difficult for me to save up for a new watch...my wife however was! And when I reached back home from work on Valentine's day she presented me with a watch that was sitting on my wish list for a while now! It was truly a wonderful surprise :)
The watch I'm talking about is the Tag Heuer F1 WAH1011.BT0717 and my first impression was that it's built like a tank! The construction is solid and as expected, there is no play in any of the parts. It feels ready to take whatever you can throw at it and it's also rated at 200M water resistant(though I plan to treat mine with a lot of TLC). Here are a few quick pics:

Tag Heuer F1 (WAH1011.BT0717)

You just can't go wrong with a white dial!

The 'Tag Heuer' name embossed on the side, though a bit flashy, looks quite nice

Chunky, but easy to use crown, bearing the Tag Heuer emblem

The dial is extremely easy to read and I love the black sub dial which houses the seconds hand and the date window, though the date may not so legible at times. The time is easy to read in the dark as well, purely due to the reason that the entire dial is luminous! The hands and dial have different lume colors, with the dial being blue and the hands green (sorry for forgetting to take a pic of that!)
Though the case measures 44mm, it wears much smaller on my 7" wrist. I guess this could be due to the black bezel, as opposed to a steel one. The rubber strap is comfortable on the wrist, though I have to admit, there is a lot of friction between the strap and the loop, which can, at times, make putting the tail though the loop a bit of a pain. That being said, it's one of the most comfortable straps I've worn so far :)
I feel it's a great watch for the money, and even better when you get is as a gift! I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who's had their eye on one :)

Trip to Malaysia

Sorry for the long absence, but things took a while to settle down after I got married. To add to it, there was a lot of additional work that had come in, which kept me longer in the office. Thankfully CF was there to look over the blog, add posts and reply to the comments :)
Anyway, my wife and I had gone on a 8 day trip to Malaysia for out honeymoon, which was generously sponsored by my sister's husband, who had promised my wife (then girlfriend) a honeymoon whenever we decided to tie the knot!

Before I go further, I have to say the people we encountered in Malaysia were quite friendly, which is a big plus while one's on vacation. Even while bargaining (which is something I'm not comfortable with, but my wife, being a true Indian, loves doing!), it was always pleasant and fun. So I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who's thinking of making a trip there.
My watch for the trip was the Omega Seamaster 'Great White'. I had planned on spending a lot of time in the pool or on the beach and possibly diving (in Langkawi), so I needed something made for jumping into the pool and general swimming. The choice was between the Orange Monster and the Seamaster, but I chose the Omega over the Seiko since the OM had accompanied me on my trip to Thailand in Feb, this year (for my bachelor party) and it was only fair that I owed a trip to the Omega.
KL was next after Langkawi and fortunately, we were staying in a hotel (Prince Hotel) which was a 10 min walk from the famous Petronas Twin Towers. It was also very close to 'Bukit Bintang' which is a great place to bar hop since the street is lined with pubs on either side.
The first day in KL, we visited the Suria Kuala Lumpur City Center or KLCC, which is a large mall at the base of the Petronas and houses a lot of luxury brands like Loius Vuitton, Bulgari, Cartier, Rolex, Piaget, etc. Although most of the stuff is high end and expensive, it was a nice place to visit and plus the food court was quite decent. It also gave me a chance to take some photographs of the watch showrooms!: (Apologies for the crappy pics, but I had just an old point and shoot with me at the time and the quality isn't the best)

(Strangely, there wasn't an Omega showroom. I was hoping to check it out)

We had planned on visiting the twin towers the next day and found out that the tickets go on sale everyday at precisely 8:30am.
While in Langkawi, we had got chatting with a friendly British couple who, apart from buying us a free round of drinks, had just been to KL and advised us to get up really early if we ever planned on visiting the Petrona towers. Keeping that in mind I had decided to get to the ticketing window an hour in advance so that I could beat the rush. Little did I know what was in store. I reached the ticketing office at 7:40am, only to find a long beeline to the counter already. Apparently, the best time to reach the counter is between 6:30, which I found out only after I reached the counter, to be told that the passes to the observation deck (86th floor) were already sold out and only the sky bridge passes were available (41st floor). Although I wasn't very pleased, I decided to get the sky bridge passes (10 Ringgit each).

Here are a quick wrist shot while I was up there:


Genting Highlands was the last destination in Malaysia. We were there for 2 nights and were at the Casino floor both nights. The Casinos are quite large and have separate section for non-smokers, which was a huge relief since the smoke in the other areas was really starting to hurt my eyes. We were lucky overall, with a combined winning of 2000 Ringgits or Rs30,800 ($666) which enabled us to shop for my family at the airport dutyfree! I was also able to buy a nice wallet for my dad (Mont Blanc) which I knew he'd really like, but couldn't ever bring himself to spending so much on a wallet. Every time I see him enjoying his new wallet, makes it more than worthwhile :)
Overall the trip was fantastic and we had a great time together! I'm just waiting for the next occasion I get some time off from work (probably close to October) so that I can take another vacation and post another trip report ;)

Posers beware! A WIS might be around...

First off, I'd like to wish everyone here a Very Happy New Year! Thank you for you comments and feedback. Both CF and I look really look forward them and please continue to send them in :) Now, lets get back to the post:
So, after a lot of years of failed planning, a bunch of us finally ended up in Goa for New Years and although it's not the best time to be there with all the traffic, crowds and hiked up prices; it was still a lot more fun then doing nothing in Mumbai. I had heard about the Casinos in Goa, but had never been to one, so a few of us decided to try a couple of them out.
(Note:Since, the Government of India prohibits live gambling on Indian Land, the Casinos are built on ships which are docked just a few feet from the banks of the river Mandovi, which flows through the capital city Panjim.)
So, there I was playing Black Jack with about 7 other players when I catch a nice looking watch, in the corner of my eye. It was a what seemed to be a Tag Heuer Grand Carrera. I asked the guy wearing it from across the table, whether it indeed was one. He confirmed it and then after a few seconds, proudly takes it off his wrist and hands it over to me.
Guy: "Here, have a closer look at it. It cost me Rs 2.8 Lakhs! ($6,085)"
Me: "Umm...where did you pick this up from?"
Guy: "The Tag showroom"
Me: "You should return it and get your money back, cause it's a fake."
The guy, who was slightly drunk, suddenly sobered up. He asks me how can I be so sure. I explain to him that apart from the poor construction of the watch, the dial had the words "chronometer" on it and since the seconds hand was 'ticking' rather than 'sweeping', it was a quartz watch, where as the real one would've been an automatic.
The guy had turned a dark shade of scarlet by that time and his friends around him started snickering at his embarrassment.
Not wanting to cause a further scene, i just handed the watch back over to him and continued with the game :p

Its been a while

Apologies to all the followers/visitors of this blog as its been a while since we last posted here, but its really been hectic for us with our work and all, but we'll try not to let that get in the way. The title however refers to my situation in the sense thats its been a long time since I bought a new watch for myself :(
When I bought my grail - the Sub, last year, I thought that with some determination, I could get my next grail ( the first watch that I truly fell in love with) - the TAG Heuer Carrera chrono.

I've always dreamed of owning this watch and promised myself that this will be the watch I buy next. Its been a while now and I don't see myself coming close to owning one in the near future. I'm really thinking of buying a couple of affordables to keep me going till then. I constantly find myself browsing the sales pages on different forums and almost pulling the trigger on few of them.

Currently I'm thinking of buying a couple of Vostok Komandirskie.

(image taken from vostok-watches.com)

Maybe I can also get a few NATO straps and swap them every now and then.