Friday 9/9/2016 - I Need Sleep & This Week's Wristwatch

Woke up around nine-thirty Thursday morning.
Hopped on a flight to Abu Dhabi at approx. 11:30pm Thursday night.
Arrived at Abu Dhabi Airport at approx 3:30pm next day.
Waited for our connecting flight for another two hours.
And then that flight took just shy of seven hours to get us to where we are now.
Got to our accomodations for the next five nights, settled in, freshened up.
Stepped out to grab a quick bite and get a feel for the place.
We are in one of the world's most visited cities, rich in culture, color and history.
It's vibrant, the traffic is chaos, but they all seem to know what they're doing.
The architecture is slowly beginning to tell me that I'm not in Melbourne, Australia right now.

Been wearing the one watch for the past few days;

(Photo from my archive, 'cos Apple doesn't wanna play with Blogger and it won't let me just upload a photo that I took with the iPad.)

Nothing more to report. I'm writing this quick post on the iPad and, if it's gonna be this much of a rigmarole to add pictures, then I think I won't bother too much with posting while I'm away. 

It is a holiday, after all.

Thanks for reading, all, and au revoir for now.

Friday 2/9/16 - This Week's Wristwatches.

Work continues at a frenetic pace. There's much to be done on any given day (which is fine by me), but there's some of it which just doesn't get done within the time allotted. However, management has told me more than once that you can never clear your workload, so don't stress it. It will all get done in the end. Which is fine by me. 

In saying that, the first half of this coming week will be pretty darn busy, but I think I can get everything done if I spend the first five minutes planning how I'll tackle the rest of the day. 

Can only do what you can only do. 

Anyway, last weekend's wristwatch was the Omega Seamaster 300;

Bought a pair of sunglasses last Sunday. I don't normally look twice at fashion brand sunglasses, but this pair of G-Star Raw caught my eye. Probably because they looked to me like a modern take on a mid-Century design aesthetic;

The lenses aren't polarised, the tortoise-shell frame is made of a very light (and probably very cheap) plastic, but they're a nice shape and they sit nicely. And they didn't cost a bomb. 

The next day, I switched over to a dressier and more understated piece, the first generation Omega Seamaster AquaTerra Co-Axial;

Okay, I'm getting a little tired now, I've just spent the last half-hour writing to a cousin in Italy. 

Man, my Italian is rusty! And it was never anything to write home about to begin with.

I switched over the another Omega watch a couple of days ago, the Speedmaster Professional;

Okay, a few minutes to nine pm. I need a cup of tea and a comfy chair. Busy weekend coming up, followed by a busy week. Or two. Or maybe three. 

Anyway, thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!

Friday 26/8/2016 - Still Busy, Happy Birthday, Mr Connery & This Week's Wristwatches.

Sorry if you had to tilt your head to the side for that.
Can't recall doing anything extraordinary last weekend, but I wore the Rolex Submariner 5513;

Those specks of dust really bug me, because they're on the underside of the crystal. Man, I can't wait until I get this watch serviced one day. They'll put a proper crystal and bezel insert on it and service the movement. It'll look and run better than it does now. No mean feat.

Sits nicely on the wrist. Or rather, it sits nicely on my wrist. I've come to the conclusion that 40mm is a perfect size for me when it comes to sports watches. These days, though, most brands are still churning out case sizes beyond 42mm. I can carry off 42mm, but anything larger begins to look cartoony on me. 

Switched over to the Camy Club-Star midweek while I watched the first couple of episodes of "Aquarius" on DVD;

Set in 1967, this show follows L.A. police detective Sam Hodiak (David Duchovny) as he is drawn into an missing person investigation. Meanwhile, we also see the rise of the Charles Manson cult. Manson is played by Gethin Anthony (never heard of him before) and he seems to have been given more charisma than I would have thought Manson had. Artistic licence. 

It'll be interesting to see what happen when their two paths intersect at some point.

Duchovny is good as the world-weary cop and its good to see him on TV again after the long-running Californication came to an end a couple of years ago. I've only watched two episodes, but it's got me intrigued.

The Camy Club-Star, with its Speidel expanding bracelet, seemed like a nice choice this week. I'd been wearing a few of my larger watches of late, so it was good to switch back to something a little more understated. 

Yesterday (25th) was Sean Connery's 86th Birthday. His Bond belongs to another era, but will always be the blueprint for the cinematic OO7 to me. 

He has been officially retired from acting since 2007, but he left behind a varied body of work aside from his Bond films. He received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1987 for his role in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, but I think he should have gotten one the year before for his excellent performance as Fransiscan monk Sir William of Baskerville in The Name of the Rose (Dir: Jean-Jacques Annaud), a murder mystery set in a remote abbey in 14th Century Italy. If you've never seen this film, I highly recommend it. Ron Perlman, as the deformed hunchback Salvatore, is worth the price of admission alone. 

After seeing my first Bond film at the age of nine, and then reading my first Bond book at the age of thirteen, I was fast becoming a fan of this super-spy. I soon began catching the Bond movies on TV whenever they were screened and Dr No was my first introduction to Connery's take on Bond. I was perhaps a little too young to appreciate the way he played the role, preferring the lighthearted interpretation given to me by Roger Moore. I was a kid, after all. As I got older and read through the rest of the Fleming titles, I soon realised that Connery played the role closer to the literary version of OO7, even though he too added some light touches to a character who is essentially a medium-grade secret agent who drinks too much, gambles too much, is heavily sexist towards women, racist towards foreigners, and who is prone to periods of boredom and melancholy when he's in between missions. 

It would be fair to say that, if Connery had never been Bond, I probably wouldn't have become the fan that I am.

And so, I raise a glass and wish you a Happy Birthday, sir. 

As you can see from the photo above, I switched over to the Omega Seamaster 300;

This watch has gotten a lot of wear in recent months. I think it'll be near the top of the list when I do my third annual Most Watches Worn For The Year post next January.

 

And who doesn't love a little bit of argyle?

Okay, gang, that's all for now. Quarter past nine on Friday night and fatigue is tightening its grip on me.  

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Friday 19/8/16 - This Week's Wristwatches

Started the week wearing the Seamaster 300 on bracelet;

This generic straight-edged end-link bracelet is quite rattly and it feels cheap. Which makes it absolutely perfect for this watch, giving it an even greater vintage vibe than it already had. And that's saying something. 

As I said a couple of weeks ago, I was this style of bracelet and this one came along, courtesy of eBay, so that I could try this watch on steel to see if I liked the look and feel of it. 

So far, I'm pretty happy with it. Yes, it does have the build quality and feel of a 1980s Seiko bracelet, but I have never seen one of those fall apart on somebody's wrist. And this was the argument that somebody presented me once when I stated that the Rolex Oyster bracelets of the early 1990s felt cheap to me, considering the brand;

Me: "I dunno, the bracelets are still being made with folded end-links, which can't be as sturdy as solid ends."

Customer: "When have you ever seen a Rolex bracelet come apart?"

He was right, of course. 

Wednesday, it was time to switch to something different while I finished off the last of the Bailey's Irish Cream. Man, if this is what Ireland uses as cream, then that would explain a lot!

I'm going to get around to reading this Van Lustbader book soon. Although I'm a fan of Ludlum's Bourne series, I'm curious to see what possible direction they could take Jason Bourne. I once tried reading Van Lustbader's book, The Ninja, but I found one of the love scenes in the book absolutely hilarious. That was not his intention, I'm sure. Maybe I'll see if I can find another copy in a thrift store one day and have another crack at reading it. 

Got home from work and had a cup of coffee. Made myself a pizza for dinner a couple of hours later and poured myself a glass of cab sav.
To be honest, I bought it more for the label rather than knowing whether or not the wine would be any good. I'm no connoisseur, I will freely admit, but I just find that a half-decent Cabernet Sauvignon tastes to me the way a red wine should. 

But what do I know? Went down smoothly enough, though.

 
Hope I can soak the label off this bottle when I'm done. Might make a nice bookmark. And I love the whole Steampunky/Snake-oil/Dr Emerson's  Magick Rejuvenatory Elixir medicine bottle vibe of it.

After dinner, I thought I'd switch watches. Time to bust out the Big Kahuna, the Rolex Submariner 5513;

I wear this one sparingly because it's in dire need of servicing. I'll get around to this sometime later this year. I hope.

And that's another week done and dusted. Still busy at work, still a few curve-balls. Still, nothing I can't tackle. It's all good. 

Oh, wow, without realising it, I've managed to wear my three Grail watches this week.

These three watches were the ones that I spent the longest time coveting. Both the Sinn 103 and the Omega Seamaster 300 were on my hit-list for over five years before I got them. And, as you may recall from previous posts, the Submariner was the watch that I had wanted ever since I was a kid in the mid 1970s. 

Ahh, if only I had saved my money when I first started working and bought one back in the late 1980s. I'd be a vastly different animal where wristwatches are concerned, I'm sure. 

Oh well...thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!

Friday 12/8/16 - This Week's Wristwatch

Geez, I wish I'd taken a closer look at the bracelet before I took that shot. Looks like the links removed some hair from my wrist. And I didn't feel a thing.

Long time since I wore the same watch two weeks in a row. Must be getting lazy.

Moser Roth chocolate is pretty smooth, gang.

My wife took the cat to the vet for her yearly check-up and worming tablet last week and they told us she'd need to have her teeth cleaned because of an excessive build-up of plaque. 

I'm talking about the cat here, folks. My wife's teeth are perfect.

So, we booked her in for this procedure.  She would need to go under general anesthetic and we'd have to sign a waiver. That's reassuring.

Madame came home shivering, dazed and groggy, with her eyes glazed over. Like Keith Richards in a brown fur coat around 1972. Yep, she was in a fragile state.
The tooth cleaning cost $450 bucks.
For that kind of money, I was expecting her to come home with braces, dammit!

Short and sweet this week, y'all. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Friday 5/8/16 - Rush, Rush, Rush & This Week's Wristwatches.

This 1951 SM2 is a very nice machine to use. And I'm a sucker for 3 x 5 cards.

So anyway, I think I wore the Submariner weekend before last;

See that nice Lyra pencil with the tiny bite marks on the end? There's a photo of the culprit. Who could not care less about a pencil.

I had to cut down a mirror to put up in the bathroom. Took me a few goes with the glass cutter, and the finished piece ended up being smaller than I had originally wanted, but I could not be bothered spending too much time on this task. I wore the '93 Seiko;

Couple of days later, I put on the Omega Railmaster;

I think I wore the Omega Speedmaster Professional the day after that...

...before speding longer than necessary decoding on which NATO strap to put on the Omega Seamaster 300. In the end, I opted for the TrueBond colour scheme;

Lately though, I'd been thinking about getting a metal bracelet for this watch. There are a handful of Omega bracelets that will fit this watch. In fact, some modern Omega bracelets are designed in such a way that they will fir this watch very, very nicely. Given that the case dimensions of this 300 are virtually 100% identical to those of the Speedmaster, the bracelet of the Speedmaster will fit the Seamaster perfectly. 

However, I didn't want to put the Speedmaster bracelet on the Seamaster, so I began hunting around eBay for an aftermarket bracelet that would fit. There are plenty of them out there, but it would be a slight gamble. I have heard tell from other watch nerds that the fit of these generic bracelets is not exact. This gave me reason to pause. 

And then I remembered this watch;

The one on the left is the original 1950s Tudor Submariner, which was released a year after the classic Rolex version.

The one on the right was released last year. It was the Tudor Heritage Black Bay One model. 

Only ONE of these was made, and it was auctioned off at the Only Watch 2015 charity;

A Blog To Watch: One-Of-A-Kind Tudor Heritage Black Bay To Be Part Of Only Watch 2015 Auction

The more I looked at the way the bracelet joined the case lugs, the more this particular look began to grow on me. 

So, I recalibrated my search for something similar to this design and it wasn't long before I found a bracelet that wasn't pricey and would do the job nicely. Also, this kind of design would also offer a point of difference to the other bracelets on my other watches. And that's gotta be good.

For the record, the Tudor Black Bay Heritage One model sold for 375,000 Swiss Francs at that auction last year.

I ended up finding a Hadley-Roma bracelet on eBay for 27 bucks. The postage cost was an obscene $25.oo. 

While I waited for it to arrive, I kept the Seamaster 300 on the TrueBond NATO. I do still love the look of it on this watch;

The Hadley-Roma bracelet arrived earlier this week. I got out my meagre set of watch tools and got to work. Attached the bracelet to the watch, then removed almost every removable link in order to get a proper fit for my wrist. Always the way;

It has an old-style look and feel to it. Definitely rattles more than modern bracelets do. I don't actually mind this at all. Makes it all the more an old-fashioned style of bracelet, like Omega and Rolex used to make. 

By the time I was done with the tools, it was fitting quite nicely;

And the gaps at the lug ends looked the business;

Some folks really hate that gap between the bracelet and the case edge. This is one reason why some collectors don't like straps, because of this gap. I will readily admit that it took me about a day to get used to seeing this gap on a metal bracelet. 

Now I think it suits the watch wonderfully. 

Of course, for twenty-seven bucks, you're not exactly going to get the same level of quality that you'd get with a six hundred dollar watch bracelet. That's cool. The links are solid enough, the spring bars are quality-made, and the finish on the steel is nice, too.

This band will do just fine for now, and it'll give me time to decide if I really want to go for an original Omega bracelet for this watch. 

Maybe I will, maybe I won't.

And that's this week done, gang. This post was titled 'Rush, rush, rush'. It's been a busy couple of weeks at work. We have been slightly short-staffed this week and I've been coming home tired and still staying up later than I should, avoiding absolute garbage on TV, as evidenced by the TV guide above. 

So many channels. So much crap. 

Yep, time to get back into reading. 

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Friday 22/7/16 - Quick Shout-Out for The BAMF, Where's My Damn Cerificate!, & This Week's Wristwatches.

Let's see how long I last this week. This one is coming to you live from my desk in the study. I finally managed to clear the top of it and got a lamp and the laptop on it. Sure, the electrical cord runs right across the room- until we get another power point fitted closer to the desks- but it seems to be working okay for now. 

I thought I'd tip my hat to a blog that I've been reading for the last few years called BAMF Style. Basically, it's a style/clothing blog where its author, Lucky Strike, takes a character out of a movie and then gives a breakdown of that character's wardrobe. The research is thorough, the pictures are great, the clothing detail is nicely explained. Here's a recent example, which is pretty much a 101 class on Indiana Jones;

BAMF Style | Indiana Jones

His James Bond post was phenomenal. It was Lucky's birthday recently, so I'm raising my glass to him. Cheers, pal.

I started the week with the circa 1969 Omega Seamaster Chronometer;

I started this Henry Porter book nearly two months ago. Then I got side-tracked reading that book on the making of Casablanca.

Needless to say, I haven't finished either book!

Time to knuckle down and get back into reading. I kept falling down that stupid rabbit hole of uber-crappy TV shows (Pawn Stars, World's Most Dangerous Drivers, etc, etc) and spending too much time on the internet looking at the same old sites. Neither of these pursuits enriches one's life too much. 

Hey, remember how I finished my Library Studies course last August? Well, I still haven't received my Certificate. And that pissed me off no end. 

I called the institute back in November and was told that I would receive it in the mail in the second week of December. Then I forgot all about it in the lead-up to Christmas. 

Then, I tried calling them again a month ago and spoke to somebody who had just started in the job and wasn't sure of who I could speak to. 

So, I waited two more weeks (it was semester break) and then tried calling again. The very helpful lady sent me a form to fill in and also suggested I call the Course Administrator to organise getting my Certificate. 

This Course Administrator was a tricky guy to get hold of. Took me another week to catch him on the phone. Of course, I could have left a a message for him, but I hate leaving messages. 

He said he'd send me yet another form to fill in and e-mail back to him. I've yet to do this, but I'll tackle it over the weekend.

Gotta say I could probably get my hands on the Gettysburg Address easier than I can on this Certificate. As regular readers may know, I'll never actually use this Certificate, since I have no intention of applying for work in the library industry, but I want my piece of paper that states that I actually completed this course. Successfully, I might add!

Midweek, I switched watches;

Yeah, I wore my hat in to work because it was raining when I left the house that morning. Course, the sun came out by 11:00am and I felt just a tad over-dressed when I caught the train home in the afternoon. 

I even wore a tie. My co-workers are sometimes surprised by this, since we work in an office setting and don't deal with outside customers face-to-face. I explained to them that I have quite a few ties and they don't get worn as much as they used to. 

You know that tired old line; Dress for the job you want, not the job you have?

Well, that's a stupid idea. If you're a waiter, you can't turn up to work in a suit.

I dress for myself. Simple as that. 

So yeah, I switched watches. I wore the Omega Railmaster. I friggin' love this watch. Simple, clear layout, right size for my wrist (for this type of watch), and near-perfect timekeeping. This one's a keeper, gang.

And I think that's about it, y'all. Got a few jobs to tackle over the weekend. I would have done them last weekend, but when I got the cordless drill out and spent an hour charging up the battery, I found that it was still dead. I headed out to the nearby hardware store and basically, it works out a helluva lot cheaper to buy a new corded drill than it does to buy a new battery for the cordless one. 

So I snagged a new Bosch impact/hammer drill for eighty bucks. Looks like a cross between my Dad's old power drill from the '70s and some futuristic sci-fi side-arm. Cool. 

Let's see how much damage I can do with it over the weekend. 

Anyway, have yourselves a great weekend and thanks for reading!