zimmermanw
3T WIS
| Joined: | Mon Jan 7th, 2008 |
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| Posts: | 1 |
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(So, I can't start a message without an emoticon? Making me nervous already...)
I found this site while searching for information about unfamiliar watch brands like Sturhling and Romilly. As a new and bewildered fan of watches in general, I guess I'm still in that first flush of infatuation -- "Gee, they said this is a fantastic watch, keeps perfect time, and only costs $12.00! Wow!" I find, to my consternation, that I can sit and scroll through the Ebay listings of watches for hours on end, and I'm not really sure what I'm hoping to find.
Currently, and to my own surprise, I have a small collection, which only began when my very cheap red Android automatic started falling apart. I thought I'd look for a dressier replacement. Out of curiosity, I looked up brand names I hadn't heard of before, and fell under the spell of the Blancpain line, but the idea of spending much more than $200 on a watch still didn't seem to make much sense. (Unless it doubled as, say, a microwave oven and maybe a desalinization unit for brackish pond water... Just in case...)
Well, I'm over that now. My latest brash purchase was an Invicta automatic (I do have my standards), from the Anatomic series. I placed a bid on a watch with a cool translucent yellow plastic strap, and a big white-faced dial. Then I saw another model from the same series -- orange plastic with blue trim -- and tried to switch my order, but ended up with the yellow one anyway, which arrived all tarted up in a lurid plastic-coated box with a pearlescent swoopy design, reminiscent of really cheap bedroom furniture. My heart sank.
But still, two days later, after a frantic search for a magnifying glass and something like a tiny screw-driver, I spent way too long, hunched over the kitchen table in truly terrible (yet environmentally friendly) light, trying to figure out how to remove enough links from the yellow plastic strap so that I could actually wear my new time-treat. By dint of perseverence and a little mechanical intuition, I succeeded -- with six links left after the surgery, enough to make a little plastic doodad -- and now I really like the watch -- it's very comfortable, practically weightless for its size, and should be suitable for my regular work...
Which is teaching college students in Phildelphia how to blow glass. I'm currently a full-time professor in the Craft department of The University of the Arts (formerly Phildelphia College of Art and Design), right in the heart, I guess, of Phildelphia. I commute from my home in South Orange NJ, staying in the Phila. area four days a week during the school year. I've taught there for five years now, and also make and exhibit my own work -- more sculpture than decorative, sort of like props for a movie about an illegal, underfunded military medical experiment. I also do a lot of drawing, and try desperately to paint, without much success, in my opinion...
So. I did buy a really pretty Sturhling watch, for a paltry $125 or so, and I was dismayed to read "China" on the case back. I also have my eye on a very attractive Romilly model, but have reservations about purchasing supposedly quality goods from Chinese manufacturers. (I've had too many cheap Chinese-made screw drivers practically melt, under low-stress normal use, to be really comfy with the 'made in China' designation any more) Besides the important issue of quality, I also wonder about the moral implications of even indirectly supporting punitive labor practices.
Meanwhile, I continue to lust after watches, even though I can only reasonably expect to wear one at a time, at least in public. My latest feverish dream is to own a Navigator (or is it a Scout?) by Arnold & Son -- I'm a sucker for the exhibition back, the engraved case, the limited-edition numbering. A rubber strap is also helpful, as it's hot in the glass shop, and my skin reacts to metal bands, I find. And I'm drawn, it seems, either to the cool, understated gravity of, say, the Blancpain brand I've mentioned, or to things that are outlandish and brazen and comical, like my yellow watch from Invicta. Go figure.
Now I've got to take empty bottles to the town dump, pick up the newspapers, and then dig the ladder out from behind the garage, so I can (finally) clean my gutters. And which watch does one wear, when up to the elbows in rotting poplar foliage?
So, anyway. Watch pals. This should be interesting...
Tick, tick, tick...
Walter Zimmerman
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