Job Hunting, Dentists & This Week's Wristwatches

- Friday 4:54pm ADST - 

Okay, all, I think this week's installment may be my last Friday wristwatch post for a while. I've spent a little less time on the web this week as I've stepped up my efforts to find some work. 

Since commencing my studies a couple of years ago, I've kept an eye out for work in libraries (since that's what I've been studying) and I've noticed that positions don't come up very often and competition is fierce.

And so, rather than being hell-bent on getting a library technician's position in a library, I've decided in recent weeks to cast my net out wider and just get anything. Unemployment levels in Australia are currently the highest they have been for some time, so this has made things tricky, to say the least.

So, the way things stand, here's a tally;

-Sent out three applications, sent a cold-letter enquiry to an employment agency, haven't heard back from them. 

-Went to a nearby cafe to ask about work, the owner hired somebody a month ago, but he said to stay in touch in case this new staff member doesn't work out. 

-Checked at a nearby library. They last hired back in June. 

-Went to six other local businesses. Four of them had nothing on offer, the other two are a slight possibility, but they won't know for certain for a few more weeks because their staff are going though a reshuffle of their rosters and everything's up in the air at the moment.

-Went to a nearby shopping centre, three places are looking for staff, and I'll have to e-mail their Head Offices for further details. 

So that's how it all stands. And, as Forrest Gump was wont to say; That's all I have to say about that.

I had the Rolex Submariner 5513 clamped to my wrist on Monday and Tuesday. Because I meant business. I had a pleasant surprise on the weekend as I went through some boxes of books that I had packed away. I forgot that I had this hardback of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Granted, it's not a first edition. I think it's an Eighties reprint, but that's just fine by me.

 

Wednesday

                  I had a dental appointment in the morning. It's been five years since my last appointment. Yes, I know, I know. I had a check-up, scale and clean, two tubes of whitening gel, and a few x-rays done. When I got to the reception desk afterwards, the nurse said; "That's comes to $355.oo." 

She didn't say it with a smile either, just in case I mistook it for a joke. 

And I suddenly remembered why it's taken me five years to go back to the dentist. In all honesty, though, my dentist is very, very good at what he does, and he has a lovely manner. 

I made another appointment for the week after next. I think there'll be a filling and possibly an extraction.

I wore the Omega AquaTerra;

Today

          My wife and I had an appointment with the real estate agent this morning. Then we hit a couple of Op Shops. I snagged a Book Club of America hardcover first edition of The Human Factor by Graham Greene and Groundhog Day on DVD. Total cost? Six dollars and twenty-five cents. 

The kids finished school for the term today. They've got two weeks off, but we aim to give them a little bit of homework just so they don't get too comfortable, heh, heh. Don't tell 'em.

I switched over to the Sinn 103 St (steel) Sa (Sapphire) Chronograph;

And that's it, thrillseekers. As I said at the beginning, I have to devote time and energy to other matters for a while. And spending a little less time on the web is definitely not a bad thing. 

So, I'm going dark. I'm going off the reservation, off the grid, maintaining radio silence, running silent, running deep.

For a while. 

In the meantime, take care of yourselves, don't overdo it with the Easter eggs, and stay safe. I'll leave you with a quick Bond-style picture that I took earlier today. 

Relax, the lemon peel is real, the Martini is water. 

Oh, and the teaser trailer for SPECTRE is released tomorrow sometime. We've used up our 50Gb internet allowance, so our 'net is now running at dial-up speed till April 1st. I'll have to wait until then to watch it.

Oh well...

Thanks for reading, have a good weekend, and I'll resurface soon!

Friday 20/3/15 - Homework Sucks, Nice Turtleneck, Mr Bond, & This Week's Wristwatches.

- Friday 12:49pm ADST - 

Last weekend
                      I got under the house and got rid of some junk that had been there since the previous owners lived here back in the Nineties. You know, one of those chores that you just put off for years and years. Finally done, now that the house has sold. My hands required some hard-core cleaning by the time I was done. I've always loved the packaging of Solvol soap. It's so 1950s industrial. Added a few more scratches to the Seiko 7002. Which is fine. That's what this watch is for, after all.

Monday, Tuesday

                             This week's trudged along with no major highs or lows. The cat has had an annoying habit of leaping up at the front door at around five or six o'clock in the morning. She's been doing this on and off now for a few years. It got old a long time ago. Usually, when she's patient, she'll sit at the base of the door and stare up at the handle. This is the cue for one of us suckers to go and open the door to let her out.

However, from time to time, she makes a half-hearted leap for the door handle, resulting in her four paws making a soft thud when she lands. It beats me that she hasn't figured out that she can't actually open the door latch with her paws. 

I have begun hanging an empty plastic bag from the door handle in an effort to prevent her from making these leaps in the early hours. Seems to be working. Of course, she reaches into her bag of annoying tricks and begins meowing as she paces throughout the house while my wife and I try to get our last hour or two of sleep. 

Pain in the neck, sometimes, that cat.

I had the Omega Railmaster on. Still plowing through The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell. This copy has a smaller print than I'm used to and I find I'm only getting through seven or eight pages a night. Pretty good so far. Rindell has a nice turn of phrase.

Wednesday

                  Continuing with an assignment which involves a lot of hunting around for the required info. Which is really irritating. I've been feeling a little crappy about my studies lately. Two subjects left, so close to the end of it all, and there doesn't appear to be any work available in the field. I emailed my local council a couple of weeks ago to ask if library jobs tend to become available, since I haven't seen any come up in the last two years or so since I began my course. 

I got a blanket reply telling me to check the council website for any jobs. Well, I knew that! 

Anyway, onwards and upwards. I'll continue with this assignment this week and then spend the majority of next week looking for work. Still had the Railmaster on;

And, earlier today, a new 'teaser' poster was unveiled for SPECTRE;

And Twitter was awash with a mixture of positive comments as well as complaints along the lines of "Bond should be wearing a suit", "Where's his tuxedo?" (do people still say 'tuxedo'?), "That's not Bond, where's his suit?", etc, etc. 

Pack of dummies.

Cinematic Bond has a history of wearing this type of get-up before going out to kick some ass. Connery wore a similar outfit in the failed infiltration of Goldfinger's factory, just prior to the laser and No-Mister-Bond,-I-expect-you-to-die! scene in 1964;

Steve McQueen dressed similarly in Bullitt (Dir: Peter Yates) in 1968;

Roger Moore did the turtleneck thang in his Bond debut,  Live And Let Die;

                                                                picture courtesy of www.moviestillsdb.com

And, in recent years, animated TV spy Sterling Archer has made a big deal of wearing a tactical turtleneck sweater. It's pretty funny when he goes on and on about how he single-handedly brought this garment into spy fashion as a tactical item, referring to it as a 'tactleneck'. Politically incorrect, and full of some low-brow moments, it's one of the funniest shows on TV;

And Lana Kane is awesome!

Anyway, back to Bond and the turtleneck. I grew up on the Roger Moore Bond movies and, when I got older and watched other action films throughout the '80s and '90s, I noticed that the heroes seemed more appropriately dressed for their missions, as opposed to Bond wearing a suit (mostly) at a time when a tactical outfit would have been more suitable.

It was refreshing to see Pierce Brosnan wearing a more mission-appropriate outfit in the Third Act of Goldeneye in '95. Lightweight khaki cargo-type pants and an olive-green shirt. This made sense in the context of the story, since he was flying in to sunny Cuba, but the addition of the tactical vest, with its numerous pockets, perfectly suited Bond in this stage of the story. He'd have looked out of place in this setting wearing one of his Brioni suits.

So, for me, regardless of the fact that I've always viewed Bond as a superhero in a suit, there are times when he needs to dress correctly for an occasion and a dark outfit made up of a close-fitting pullover/sweater, along with dark trousers are as 007-ish to me as his dinner jacket and bow tie. Capped off with a shoulder holster for his Walther PPK and Mr. Bond is ready to rumble.

It's for this reason that I quite like this new poster for SPECTRE. For a Bond fan, this is the (modern) film where 007 goes up against his greatest foe and he needs to look the part.  So I say pooh-pooh to those of you who think the poster should have shown Daniel Craig wearing a suit. I'm sure there'll be plenty of instances where Bond wears suit and tie in this film, as evidenced already by photos taken during production. He is James Bond, after all.

Friday

       I think today will be a quiet one around here. I might just take a few pictures of the next few items to sell on eBay. Although, the light’s not great for taking vibrant photos today, but no matter.

I have multiple copies of wristwatch catalogues from various brands that I accumulated during my time in the industry. I was thinking that maybe I’ll give the Australian Horological Society a call and see if they’d like to have a copy of each for their archives/library. This is assuming, of course, that they actually have an archive or library. Last time I looked them up, there was just an e-mail address, so this leads me to think that it’s an organisation run by volunteers or enthusiasts. There may not be a physical address where I could take these catalogues. For all I know, the Horological Society meets three or four times a year in a rented council hall or board-room.

I think this will require some further investigation.  Something to tackle later. 

Anyway, that's it this week. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!

Can't Really Be Bothered, But Here's This Week's Wristwatch!

- Friday 6:30pm ADST- 

And here's someone else who can't be bothered. Of course, she can never be bothered. 

 I didn't find a knitted tie, by the way. Not the end of the world.

Happy Birthday Daniel Craig!, The Homework Continues, & This Week's Wristwatches.

- Friday 6:25pm ADST -

Last weekend

                       I've been taking stock of my watch collection in recent months. After almost twenty years of collecting, I suppose my tastes have changed to the point where there are some pieces that I just never wear these days. There have been occasions where I've put on a watch in the morning only to return to the watch box to put on something else. 

For me, when this happens, it means I have a few too many watches. So a cull was in order. First cab off the rank was the Lanco hand-wound;

I have rarely worn this watch, even though I like the look of it. So, I figured this one would go. The case was looking a little tired, so I got out some stainless steel polish and gave it the once-over. Suddenly, the watch looked even better. However, I had made my mind up. It would have to go. I wound the watch and set the time. And nothing happened. It wasn't ticking. Ahh, what the hell!?, I though to myself as I grabbed a knife and popped the case-back off it. Then I remembered; That's right, Teeritz, you're not a friggin' watchmaker!

I didn't know what to look for. Then I wound the watch about fifteen times. Then another ten. Then another twenty. The watch should have reached the end of its winding cycle after about twenty winds. Okay, that was one problem, and it could be the reason why the watch wasn't running. 

I put the case-back back on and took another look at the watch. On a new strap, it would actually look quite nice. And it was a nice 38mm in diameter, with a great dial featuring a sub-seconds dial. Looks like I'd be keeping this one after all. 

Next up, a Seiko dive watch that I think I've worn four times in the six years that I've had it. Okay, this one would go.

Then, there was the Omega Seamaster bumper Automatic from 1951;

This watch doesn't look this good anymore. The crystal has some crazing on it. That's cracks to the non-watch collectors reading this. A piece of the gold capping has come off the lower right-hand lug and been lost, and the re-done dial has a few markers that aren't as perfect as they could have been. This one would have to go. I will list all of these faults when I sell it. Honesty is the best policy, as they say. I don't want anybody buying this watch without knowing everything that's wrong with it. 

I don't think this one will sell for much, and I'm prepared to take a bath on this one. I think I'll get back a fraction of what I paid for it five years ago. Still, the Calibre 351 movement inside it is in very good condition and running well. Perhaps somebody will buy it and make it their own repair project. It will look pretty good once it's done.

There are perhaps one or two other watches that I can get rid of, but I think I'll spend a little more time deciding before I do anything. 

I wore the Submariner while I was doing all of this;

I suppose this watch is one reason for the cull. I've worn it quite a bit since I got it and it doesn't make sense to hold on to other watches if they don't get worn. While I do appreciate the ornamental value of certain objects, such as typewriters, I tend to take a different view as far as my wristwatches are concerned. If they don't get worn, then they should go. 

My 1928 Royal Portable types like an old farm tractor, but it looks nice if put out on display, and I can always use a different typewriter when I want to use one. With my watches, if I put one on and start thinking I should have worn something else, then that begins to tell me that I could probably do without that watch and I wouldn't miss it much if it went. 

Also, over the past year or so, I've thought that I'd rather have a smaller collection of watches that actually get worn (since, like a greyhound, a watch is meant to run), rather than watches that collectors refer to as 'safe queens'. The Lanco, I suppose, is safe for now, since it doesn't work. I'll get it serviced at some point, put a different strap on it, and see how I feel about it then. 

                         

Monday

          It was March 2nd, Daniel Craig's 47th Birthday. Happy Birthday, Mr. Bond. Filming of SPECTRE continued in Rome this week.

Tuesday

             So much to read before starting my next assignment. Spent most of the day dreading it until I called my lecturer who told me to disregard most of the notes and just read a selected few before moving on to the assignment. Once I did that, I opened up the assignment and read through it, and it didn't look as scary as it did in the morning. So I got started on it. 

Wednesday

                  Found a copy of an old Len Deighton espionage thriller for two bucks. Had the Omega Railmaster on my wrist;

Thursday
                While I've been in this get-rid-of-stuff-I-don't-use frame of mind, I thought about my typewriters and decided to shift the Remington Remette and the Smith-Corona Galaxie II. I really like the design of the Galaxie, but I find that I don't use it very often. Maybe I'll take another hit at the keys before I make a final decision.

             

The Remette looks nice enough, but it's a rough machine to write with. And I already have one or two typewriters with that problem.

The Galaxie has a snappy feel, but I tend to favour my Olympias, Royal QDL, and other Smith-Corona models whenever I get the urge to sit down at a typewriter. This one was in beautiful condition when I first got it and as I write this, I'm not so sure as to whether I'll sell it or not. Definitely have to use it a little more before I make up my mind one way or the other.


Today
          Man, I'm tired today. Had a few crappy nights of sleep this week and I think it's all caught up with me. Hit the gym later in the afternoon and I'm now feeling the effects.  
You never regret a workout, my wife is oft to remark.
I'm regretting this one, baby.

However, the benefits always outweigh the effort. If I can just stick at it long enough.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!