“What Jasmine, you are so middle class! You thought something
happened with the watch just because the seconds hand was jumping every five
seconds on my Victorinow watch.”
Victorinox is the most expensive watch I have with me. I am
not such a watch guy and more so I hate spending too much money. I have three
watches which I wear regularly. First one – Casio. Sports watch – analog plus
digital. It’s a light steel one which is water resistant. It’s got an alarm and
a stop watch and two time zones. I use this on Saturday and Sunday and
especially while travelling. It’s really a nice rugged watch. This one cost me
around three thousand bucks.
Here you see it -its really scratched and well worn. I have a special place for this one in my heart
The second one – it’s a Titan Xylus. This is a Chrono but I
don’t know how to use it. It looks big and expensive and ‘Swiss’. The titan
guys went out of their way to make it a Swiss watch. They even set up a plant
or something like that in Swiss so that it could be correctly called a Swiss
watch. There is a story to this watch. I normally take time with my expensive
purchases. Do my research. Look at it and then come back and then see it again
and think through. This has helped me well. Many times I have ended up not
buying thanks to my inactivity and normally I don’t seem to have lost much. Of course
when you have Jasmine on your side, this becomes a bit of a pain. She gets
after your brains. She keeps saying – buy it. It’s ok. Buy it. It’s ok. This
gets into me and I end up buying it. This time I was looking around, shopping
for a watch since some time. I kept seeing many watches. I remember I wanted a
sapphire glass crystal surface so that it is scratch free (that’s what I think it’s
called). And then I wanted it to look big and good. But the prices were mind
numbing. Any decent good looking watch would be in the 15 to 20 thousand range.
It was then that I chanced upon this watch. It was their cheapest chrono and it
was around 10 or 11 thousand bucks and with a scratch proof lens. And they were
giving away a stupid Nokia phone worth 4 thousand free with it. Great the next
day I decided to buy it. My mom heard of it and said she wanted to gift me something
and this was the perfect gift. It was something I wanted and I would wear so
please buy the watch as a gift from me. So Ankit and I went to buy this watch. We
bought it and got the stupid phone free. We then immediately set off trying to
search for a buyer for the cell phone. I didn’t bother on the street price or
anything. I flatly gave a discount on it. We went from shop to shop till we got
one shop with a guy who trusted us and wanted a cell phone. Deal done. The guys
at his shop were wondering what kind of watch would I have bought to get a cell
phone free. WTF!
And of course my favorite one – the Victorinox. There is something I like about it. The rugged simplicity and dark green dial.
One of my students was working at Victorinox and he was
generally in touch. He told me there was a sale internally and the watches were
at 30 to 50% off. It was the time when I was relatively richer. I hadn’t bought
the second house and so I was awash with cash and reasonably high bonuses. Sure.
Send me the pictures I told him. This one caught my eye as a simple one with a
military kind of air about it. Original price 26,000, sale price – 16,000. Wow.
That’s expensive, but my mind was set and I loved the look and blah blah…. I bought
it. I still wonder how I paid so much for this watch. But I guess it has paid
off in some way. Metal straps don’t wear off like leather and its water
resistant – so I can swim with it and ITS REALLY SWISS! Ha ha. Like I bloody
care. But you know – everybody seems to care what brand you wear.
The other day one of team member told me that me – as the
head of marketing cannot wear a ‘Casio’. Oh shut up. What the F? You wear what
is best for you. And what’s wrong with Casio? That shit also costs three grand.
It’s not like I am wearing some cheap plastic Chinese brand. And this head of
marketing drives a hatch back right? To which the retort always is – that’s ok because
you have a sedan which your wife drives. Ooooo
So coming back to the Victorinox. A few weeks back somebody
noticed that the watch was jumping every five seconds. It’s told the time just
fine – the seconds hand jumped every five seconds and made up for the time.
Dam. Iw as pretty stressed out. This expensive watch jumping every five
seconds. What was wrong with it? I hunted for the warranty card and sent the
peon to the showroom to get it fixed. He called back and put me on line with the
technician. He told me – “sir, we need to change the battery”. “Why is that” I asked.
“It’s jumping five seconds, not stopped.”. “yes sir. That’s the thing with Swiss
watches. They jump five seconds to indicate to you that the battery is losing
power.”. oh ok. “how much is the battery for? 300 bucks? Wow. Aren’t batteries available
for like 60 to 100 bucks?” by this time I was sure the other guy thought I wasn’t
fit enough to wear, let alone buy a Swiss watch. “sir. All Swiss watches have
this one brand of batteries that they authorize”. Oh ok. Not wanting to let
myself stoop further, I only inquired on how long they last and quickly agreed
to change batteries and hung up. They last for around 18 months and above.
Great.
So now Jasmine knows what Swiss watches do to indicate that the
battery power is wearing off. How cheap is that. Thinking that watch is wrong
when all it was, was a superior design that ensured you got an early warning
before you ended up in the middle of the day with a dead watch. Real cheap of
us.
