The price of perfection

I have 2 expensive watches – Tag Heuer & Omega. Let me clarify that never in my right mind would I pay so much for a watch – these are my dads. Sometime early this year the Omega started acting up. It started running quicker by about a minute a day. I ignored it at first but then every week it would be offset by 5 mins! That’s quite a bit. So I figured maybe its time to do some sort of service on its mechanism. Till then I shifted to the Tag. Now after a while I noticed the same problem with the Tag! Strange.

At first I began conjuring theories on why this is happening only to the watches I wear. I figured I may have an inherent magnetic field strong enough to alter the mechanisms of anything around me if exposed to me for a significant continuous time period. A little warped I agree – but I did consider it.

Sometime back, I was at HajiAli and noticed the Authorized service centre for all these swiss brands so I decided to quiz them on my issue. I told him about my problem. The conversation was such

Sales dude – Sir, yours is an automatic watch while regular watches are all quartz. Automatic is far superior technology
Me – Then how come its showing the wrong time
Sales dude –Sir, your watch is 99.9% accurate
Me – So whats quartz? 100% ?
Sales dude – No sir, you are probably comparing your watch with your home clock, car clock etc..those are all quartz and those watches are wrong. Your watches are accurate – its just that the world is dominated by quartz watches hence it seems like your watch is the wrong one.

Interesting explanation. For a brief moment I thought that was the price one has to pay for perfection. But on giving it some more thoought - What crap!. My watch just needs to be serviced – Its been with me for almost 5 years dammit. And I know I’ve not been running on the wrong time for the last 5 years!