As I am typing the word “Vauxhall Astra” into my computer, the spell checker’s ominous red line of death has appeared under the word “Vauxhall.” “Valhalla,” being the most recommended suggestion for my apparent blunder leads me to believe that my American computer, loaded with software for the American market of course, hasn’t the foggiest idea of what I’m talking about.

Have you?

Well to fill you in on what I’m getting at, the Vauxhall (Opel) Astra is one of Europe’s best selling cars. I’ll spare you the details, but in general it’s a small car like a Ford Focus, but it’s a huge sales success. In the years when it’s not taking the number one position in sales it’s usually trailing a close 2nd or 3rd. It sells many thousands of units a month, and by now I must imagine that the total number of Astras running in the world must be well into the millions. By any measurable standard it is just as recognized in Europe as the Ford F-150 is recognized in these United States.

So the question remains, why has no one in the United States ever heard of it?

Well think about the landscape on Mars and the landscape on Earth. If you grew up on Mars like my wife did, you grew up with a red landscape and an eerie atmosphere, and for all of your life that is all you have ever known. It doesn’t excite you and you don’t feel the need to talk about it. If there was, however, an unusual and rare flower that you should happen to come across growing out of the red soil, you may want to try to sell it to your friends on Earth.

But that is where all the hype and exclusively tend to destroy that rare Martian flower. Everyone would want one, everyone with the means will get one and as a result it ceases to be so exclusive and rare anymore. In this instance it would be more exclusive to have something you’d find everywhere on Mars, like Martian rocks, rather than something that is far less common.

For an example using Italian cars I’ll take the Alfa Romeo Brera and a Ferrari. Everyone in Italy can buy a Brera. It’s not too expensive and the looks are just phenomenal, yet a very small relative proportion of Italians have the means to buy a Ferrari. In my area of residence in the U.S. Ferrari’s are so common that they don’t really catch my attention anymore. If I should happen to see an Alfa Romeo Brera however, I don’t think you would be able to shut me up for days on end.

My current watch dilemma is very similar to the case of the Alfa and the Ferrari. You see countries tend to export only the higher end stuff to other places and not the stuff you can find everyday. That is why you can buy German chocolate here, but not German bread. Right now what I covet is this:

This is the Seiko SBQJ017 and this is a watch that any person in Japan can go out and buy at any time. It is a remarkable quartz watch with a perpetual calendar and 4th “GMT” hand. It has a battery that will last around 10 years, an excellent quartz, and at only around $500 it is not too expensive at all. Yet in these United States you cannot find these ANYWHERE!!! Even trying to import one from Japan is a huge challenge since these are not in huge demand for these watches over in the United States. Seeing how there are plenty of people with money in the United States, and the fact that you can buy Rolex watches almost anywhere, you have to think about what is more exclusive, the Rolex, or the Seiko?

Typically the things you take for granted are the things that work perfectly without a hitch. Whether it be the trusty frying pan that has never let you down, or the Toyota that has never ceased to get you from point A to B. It is easy to love these things that make our everyday lives so convenient, but then again, when everything works so well, it soon becomes your standard, your base, and after a while you will never really appreciate it until the day it’s no longer yours.

It’s funny how it works, but passion seems to work both ways. Whether you love it or hate it, as long as there is human involvement, human input, and more emotional involvement, there is more passion. Whether it be the frustrations you experience from working on a car engine to the joy you feel when it finally starts running, things that go wrong all the time seem to sprout up this funny thing called “passion.”

Watch enthusiasts are passionate people I would say. Any sane person would laugh at the idea of paying thousands more for a mechanical watch that is less accurate, more fussy, more demanding, and on the whole, hugely more impractical than their quartz counterparts. That’s why when it comes to watches like the Casio G-Shock, us watch enthusiasts, while we may love it for what it is, may not feel that kind of emotional attachment to it as we do with our mechanical pieces.

I’ll let you in on what the Casio G-Shock is. You probably already know it, but it’s a watch series that is renown to be able to withstand serious shocks, vibrations, go to great depths, be visible in the dark, and have any number of functions. In the watch community it is hugely respected as being the watch most enthusiasts would turn to if things got really hairy and they needed a watch they never ever had to think about it.

For an example of this perfection, take this Casio G-Shock Atomic Solar:

Casio Atomic Watch G-Shock Gray Color Solar Mens Digital MTG900DA-8V – Free Shipping

This watch is atomic which means that it can tune into the radio frequency of a clock that keeps perfect time and adjust its date and time accordingly.  It is able to withstand earthquakes, sandstorms, extreme dark, extreme depth, and on top of that it is solar powered so you never need to worry about a battery.  Besides that it knows the time in various parts of the world, has several alarms, and it is really cheap.

In a perfect world where everything makes sense and people think sensibly everyone would have one of these and everyone would be driving a Toyota Camry.  The reason why everyone doesn’t have one these, however, is that humans are creatures of passion and don’t want things to be perfect.  We sacrifice perfection to stand out from the crowd, and because we don’t want to be perfect in a world that’s not so bad.

In your entire lifetime, have you gone out into public without any underpants on?

Have you ever worn a jacket or a coat without a shirt underneath?

Or have you ever tried to conceal the fact that you were drunk when out in public?

Well unbeknown to a good portion of the population, wristwatches also conceal a bit of a daring side to it as well. Think about this, have you ever looked at a watch and wondered about what it may look like in the back?

Well if you have not than I don’t really blame you. After all, most watches you buy today have just a solid plate of metal in the back that occasionally gets popped off with a screwdriver whenever you need a battery change. Timex and Casio don’t put a whole lot of attention to the back of the watch, or case back as we like to call it, and for good reason. What does it matter after all when no one will ever see it?

This is one of those categories where “luxury” watches differs from the pack. Similar to how the inner workings of fine automobile are finely done even if the end result is rarely seen, the inner workings of a fine watch are often put on display even if eyes rarely glance at it and few would appreciate.

Take for example my most recent and current favorite watch, the Hamilton Khaki King Automatic.

On the surface it looks just like this:

Hamilton H64455533 Men’s Khaki King Automatic Black Dial Strap, Free Shipping

But on the back it looks like this:

Hamilton H64455533 Men’s Khaki King Automatic Black Dial Strap, Free Shipping

Like many luxury watches, this features an exhibition back.  Sometimes called a display back, see-through back, or whatever you want to call it, the ultimate goal is obvious.  In in a practical sense it doesn’t offer the kind of bulletproofing you’d find in a tough divers’ watch, but you just get too astounded by the beauty to really care, and as a conversation piece, having one of these make you stand out as fillet mignon in a world of ground chuck.

Many people in this great planet are guilty of looking at one type of thing and then automatically assuming that a similar thing must operate in the exact same way, like the same things, or just be the same overall. This kind of stereotyping has obviously caused some problems in history, the schoolyard, and wherever this kind of stuff goes on, but we are not going to get into that…

The watch world has a similar type of stereotype, and it isn’t particularly harmful, but it is an element of ignorance that I wish to clarify today. That being that while watches serve the ultimate purpose of telling the time, the inner workings of the watch cannot be assumed to be the same. In other words, the way a Timex operates and the way Rolex function are very different and it’s important to know that difference if you wish to enjoy watches to their fullest.

You see the vast vast majority of watches you see on the wrists of ordinary people these days are quartz powered watches. They use a battery, they tick, they’re cheap, you can leave them in a drawer and it will still be running fine months later. Besides that they are very accurate, and they require minimal maintenance. To the layperson a quartz watch is the obvious choice, and rightfully so. They are cheap, reliable, and a breeze to maintain.

But unbeknown to the public at large there is another type of watch that, before the introduction of the quartz watch in the 1970’s, adorned the wrists of the people long before. This is the mechanical watch. As a machine it is similar to a music box. You keep it wound = it works, you don’t = it stops. The drawbacks of a mechanical watch compared to a quartz are plenty. To start a mechanical watch is much less accurate, they cost a whole lot more, they are expensive to maintain, and you need to constantly keep them wound. You can “tune” a mechanical watch to be as accurate as a quartz, but generally speaking a mechanical watch almost never has the out-of-box accuracy of a quartz watch. Whereas an average quartz watch can keep an accuracy within +-15 seconds a month, for a mechanical watch to keep an accuracy within +- 2 minutes is considered to be quite good. On top of that, while a mechanical watch doesn’t use any batteries, or any electricity for that matter, you need to constantly worry about keeping them wound and keeping all those moving parts maintained costs a whole heck of a lot more.

The introduction of the quartz by Seiko delivered a knockout punch to the Swiss watch industry. And why not? They offered a more accurate and less fussy alternative for a whole lot less.

So did the mechanical watch go the way of the dodo? Hardly…

It seems that mechanical watches enjoy a sense of prestige in that all the major high-end watches almost exclusively offer mechanical watches. Whether it be Rolex, Patek Philippe, Panerai, they largely do away with the quartz. So all of you who wish to breathe the rarefied air in the watch world can invest in one of these watches. On top of that watch enthusiasts like me find a deep sense of passion having those small machines adorn our wrists everyday. They are short on sense, but high in passion!

It may not be the most expensive or the most dressy watch you can get, but because of the significance under which I got it, my Hamilton Khaki King Automatic earned the honor of being the watch that adorned my wrist for my wedding:

Hamilton H64455533 Men’s Khaki King Automatic Black Dial Strap, Free Shipping

It was a great one! Thanks for All the Support!

Watch One: Rolex Explorer II (My Favorite Rolex)

Rolex Oyster Perpetual Explorer II Mens Watch 16570-WSO

Watch Two: Rolex GMT-II (The New Version)

Rolex Oyster Perpetual Date GMT-Master II 116710BKSO

If you look past the shiny or brushed exteriors, differing colors, different fonts, and overall differences in perceived demeanor, you will notice that these two watches are essentially the same. They both have a 24 hour bezel, they both have an independent 4th-hour hand, the dials are essentially the same, the date bubble is in the same place, and if you just look at the core of the watch you would be hard-pressed to find any difference.

So then, you might be asking, why make two different watch models in the first place?

You see while the fundamental core of both watches appear to be the same there is actually only ONE difference between the two watches that makes ALL the difference, and that is in the bezel. In the GMT-II the bezel (the ring around the watch that has the 2-22 numerals on it) can be turned either counterclockwise or clockwise, whereas on the Explorer II the bezel cannot.

Why have they done that?

Well the answer to that is separated by the very extremes of vertical airspace.

If the two watches share anything, it is the fact that they are both purpose-built watches, and while they are very similar, the purposes and intentions as to the use of these watches are very different. It doesn’t make too much of a difference these days since most Rolex models spend their days on some golf course rather than the extremities for which they were originally built, but back in the day Rolex sport watches were built with purposes for purpose-minded individuals. And just like the diving watch pioneer the Sea-Dweller, the GMT-II and the Explorer II were both built with a purpose in mind.

You see the original Rolex GMT was originally designed with pilots in mind. The idea was that the time would be set to Greenwich Mean Time (hence the name GMT) while the bi-directional bezel is turned either clockwise or counterclockwise depending on whether you are traveling westward or eastward through the time zones. The original GMT did not have an independent 4th hour hand. In other words if the time was 10:10 p.m. your 4th hour hand would be pointing toward 22 and that could not be changed. The GMT-II, however, allowed that hand to be independent, so that, in tandem with the bi-directional bezel meant that you could track a total of 3 time zones.

The Explorer II, however, was very different.  Whereas the GMT-II is for pilots, the Explorer II is for adventurers.  The reason why the 24 hour bezel doesn’t turn was because traversing time zones was not the priority in mind for the Rolex Explorer.  The fourth hour hand, furthermore, was never really designed to track another time zone but rather to act as an a.m./p.m. indicator for those in the most polar extremes or darkest of caves where day and night cannot be distinguished simply by looking at the sky.

Whether or not you choose to get the watch for pilots or the watch for adventurers is your call, but either way you can’t go wrong.  They are both solid watches with iconic status.