Notes

Hermes-Uhrenwerkzeug
“I don’t want to wear this watch to work because it is too expensive and I may break it,” my friend said to me one day. “But my other watch is even more expensive, so I am definitely not wearing that watch. And we are not talking about the price of that watch. Let’s not talk about the price of that watch.”
Nobody asked about the price of your watch, I thought. In fact, nobody has asked any questions about your watches at all.
She later told me that the watch is USD 11,025 (HKD 92,600).
I am going to tell you everything about how utterly stupid this watch is.
My Relationship with Watches This is my watch.
It was a birthday gift from my aunt when I was 12, in primary school. I am now nearly 30. I am still wearing this watch. I don’t know how much it is, and I didn’t even bother to look up the current price while writing this blog post.
It has been doing its job well for 18 years by accurately telling me the time, the date, and what day it is. It can be used as a countup timer, so I have used it to time my runs. It has also got a world time mode; I always use it when I am visiting another country. It has an alarm function that I have never used and will never use.
I remember having to get the battery changed a few times, but I don’t remember when it happened. It was a long time ago.
There’s now a rip on the watch strap. I have no idea when and how the strap ripped. Because I don’t care.
I wonder what I would do when the strap fully breaks. Maybe I will change the strap. Maybe I will buy a smartwatch. Maybe I will just stop wearing a watch altogether.
I studied in a Buddhist high school (story for another time) and we were shown a clip about someone who stayed at a monastery. The person had a cool conversation with a monk, and it stuck with me all these years:
Monk (pointing at his watch): What is this?
Person: A watch.
Monk (shakes his head): No, try again.
Person: … Time.
Monk: Yes.
The person then talked about how the functions of a thing is more important than the appearance of the thing. While I still care about the way my watch looks (I don’t want it to be too eye-catching), the most important thing is that it tells me the time, the date, and the day of the week accurately and quickly.
And now:
All About My Friend’s Stupid WatchHow much is the watch? $11,025 (HKD $92,600)
Why did my friend buy it? Long answer (that I unfortunately knew; there were a few times where she couldn’t help talking about it out of sheer joy):
She was planning to buy a smaller version of the same thing, but only the “Large Model” was availableHer family used to work with jewels, so she likes it when there are crystals and cool metal on her watch and stuffShe likes good leather and handmade leather products. She had made her own leather bag beforeShe likes Hermès because of the previous two pointsShe was sad because of her heavy workload at work and she felt like she must do something with her hard-earned wages So buying the watch does sound like a decision she would make.
A dumb decision, nonetheless.
Short answer:Well, she bought it because she could. That reason is good enough… I guess?
Where is it made? Switzerland
What is it made of?SapphireDiamondMother-of-pearlAlligator leatherHow did I find out the above? By learning the secret language used by the fancy watch people to gatekeep the lowly peasants (i.e. people like me) away from the fancy watch world, so that I can decode the following pile of words on Hermès’s website while writing this post:
I have since learned the following, with 25 tabs open:
The “dial” is not a thing you turn, but the face of the watch / the big circle that shows the timeThe “crown” is tiny knob you turn to adjust the time, aka the thing that should be called the “dial” insteadRhodium is a metal, and I refuse to learn more about it“Crystal” is actually also the name of a watch part, instead of just a word that meant fancy rock. At this point, I have frantically googled for all of the information in this section for at least an hour, and was told by a website that “for the newest of newbies, the crystal is the round, glass window over the dial”. This piece of information has enraged me in unreasonable ways. I don’t understand why words can have special Willy Wonka meanings just like that.The glass aka the “crystal” of many watches are technically made with sapphire, but by “sapphire”, people don’t mean that someone hammered a piece of expensive blue rock into a piece of glass; they meant they have used a piece of “corundum” for the crystal. See, both rubies and sapphires were actually a thing called corundum, and if a piece of corundum has red impurities, it’s a chunk of ruby; if it has blue impurities, it’s a chunk of sapphire. Synthetic corundum / sapphire, a crystal (gem), is used to make watch crystals (NOT GEM) because they are very hard and won’t be easily scratched.To make everything sound fancy, Hermès calls the color of the blue wristband “Sapphire”, which turns the whole watch description into a bowl of word spaghetti beyond human comprehension. Fascinating information, but also completely meaningless. Never before have I embarked on a pursuit of knowledge only to feel so bored and unfulfilled at the end. It felt like nothing was added to my brain after diving into this pointless rabbit hole for a blog post.
Why the hell am I here? What have I become?
I Continued to Learn About Mechanical Watches Against My Will “You know what,” said my friend one day, out of the blue, “I’ve just realized that even if I don’t mind breaking my watch at work, I can’t wear it when I am out and about.”
“Why?”
“Because my watch is not moving anymore,” she laughed. “Before I wear it, I’ll have to wind it first.”
“… Please note that I have never heard of the word ‘wind’ used with the word ‘watch’ before.”
“Look, Shirley Lee,” she explained, “There are two kinds of watches. There are quartz watches, and then there are mechanical watches.”
“… I am pretty sure that all watches are mechanical because they have a mechanism.” I replied mindlessly.
“No no no no no shush and listen,” my friend said, “Mechanical watches have a self-winding mechanism. When a person is wearing one, the natural movements of the arms charge up a spring in the watch, and the spring keeps the gears moving precisely forever. You don’t need a battery. You don’t need anything else to power it.”
I turned to stare at her.
A train of thought sounded its emergency horns as it immediately took off. It traveled at full speed as my brain put the following two and two together (the whole process took about 0.5 seconds):
My previous worldview on how watches work had completely shattered;The weird glass boxes of rotating Rolexes in my other friend’s dad’s room were not just set up there to be fancy — the rotation was needed to keep the watches running (!!!!!);Despite the absurd price, the famous luxury brand name that is Hermès and the craftsmanship that’s most probably needed to make one of these watches, I still couldn’t care less about what my friend was saying. I didn’t want to know how the watch works. I was not interested in how the watch looks like. Zero curiosity sparked. The only thing tethering my attention to this meaningless exchange of information was the power of friendship. My mind’s eye zoomed in on my memory of the spinning watches in the glass boxes like the ending of a movie as the train of thought slammed right back into reality and I came back to her, wide-eyed.
“I just remembered,” my friend continued, “that there are two pieces of tools in the box that the watch came in. One of them is probably for winding the watch.”
There are two separate pieces of custom tools for one watch. Watch tools.
“I’ve always wanted a mechanical watch, and now honestly, I am seeing how stupid the whole ordeal is. If I don’t wear it, I have to take the time to wind it after. And I have to learn to wind it. Can you imagine rich people owning multiple of these? They must have servants to help them maintain their watches. Rich people are crazy, man. I am so dumb.”
You don’t say.
I later found out that quartz watches run more accurately than a mechanical watch.
Just When I Thought The Watch Couldn’t Possibly Be More Stupid, It Got More Ridiculous, To The Extent That I Realized A Blog Post Needed to Be Written “I have just wound the watch and set the time,” said my friend over the phone. “And you know the special thing I like about this watch? The moon phase.”
I had to ask. “What is the moon phase?”
“There is a tiny window on the watch, and it shows the moon phase of the day.”
That… didn’t tell me what “moon phase” means. So I googled it — moon phases are the different ways the Moon looks from the Earth over about a month.
What my friend was talking about was the “moon-phase indicator” on the watch.
“I have to teach students about the phases of the moon in class, and I always think that this function is going to be practical.”
That’s when I said,
“Shut the front door.
That moon phase thing is a panel that turns underneath the watch, with a literal Medieval-style human face on a circle representing the full moon. It can’t possibly be accurately telling you the actual moon phase of the day.You can… look up at the sky at night, and see… the Moon…? The Moon would be right there, and you would know its shape.I don’t see, in any ways, how any student will learn anything about moon phases by looking at your watch.I am not a science teacher, but still, I would bet you a whole 5 dollars — that the topic of moon phases — takes up only one page of the science book at most.You will no longer be a teacher three months later. I was the one who typed out your three-month notice. Your point is not valid. There is a poison in your mind, and the fact that you’re not seeing it makes me so sad.”
“Oh Shirley,” I could feel my friend smirking on her end of the phone, “but I’ve made you care. You now care about my watch.”
“Ah fuck,” I explained.
“I still think that the moon phase indicator is a fun practical feature though,” she said, “You can’t change my mind.”
The next day, she called again.
“I have changed my mind.”
She showed me an article by Marie Claire (Taiwan) about moonphase watches.
Right there, says in the article lead:
Moonphase watch: With a small window on the dial, adorned with a moon and stars on the back, a panel rotates and gradually displays the phases of the moon, creating a dreamy starry sky. They may not be practical, but nonetheless incredibly romantic and collectible.
Consider the following:
My friend thought that the moon phase indicator is practicalI disagreedShe proceeded to start a web search about moon phase indicators on watchesShe then found an article from a popular magazine saying that moon phase indicators on watches are only romantic and probably not practical “Anyways,” my friend said, “because I had no idea how to set the moon phase indicator after it stopped moving; I only managed to set the time and decided to use it as is. I probably won’t deal with the moon phase indicator anymore.”
One hour later, another message from my friend:
“I have just read the manual,” said my friend, who had just dealt with the moon phase indicator, “and it turns out there’s actually no scientific way to know how to set the moon phase thing. You have to match the month, day and time of each full moon to a full-on table in the watch manual. By the way, did I tell you that one of the two tools was for setting the date and the moon phase, and the other tool was for changing the straps? Anyways — ”
“Do you mean that they have to list out all of the dates and times of a full moon, one by one?”
“Yes. The manual is thick.”
“I would like you to consider how silly you sound right now. Also, please take pictures of the manual pages immediately. I need to show the world how ridiculous it is.”
She also sent me a video showing one of the tools.
Finishing Remarks from My Friend“Say what you want, I still like mechanical watches because they don’t make a ticking sound.” My digital watch also doesn’t make a ticking sound.“I prefer analog watch faces over the digital ones, but this Hermès watch is particularly hard to read because there are no numbers on the dial. What the hell.”“I have come to like the process of winding the watch.” Well, if you’ve spent $11,000 on a thing, you had better find a way to love it.“It doesn’t matter if you had noticed my watches at all; the pretty things I wear are only for my eyes to see.” Cheers to that, I guess.Bonus Ending NotesI don’t know why my brain doesn’t register the copy on Hermes’s website as English:While writing this blog post, I may have found the worst video about watches on Earth: Apparently, the watch you wear should announce your wealth and status.
Well, I am going to stick to my old watch because it announces the time, and that I don’t care about what nobody thinks.
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