Omega Watches

 

When it comes to watches and watch brands, I've always liked Omega. As I've mentioned before, I'm a bit of a sucker when it comes to watches and advertising. I was introduced to the brand via James Bond. Pierce Brosnan's Bond. Bond started wearing Omega watches in the 1995 film GoldenEye, and he has worn an Omega Seamaster in every film since. Of course, GoldenEye the game is when I really became a Bond fan and have watched every movie since playing the game. The game features the 300m diver watch on the pause menu that Bond wears in the film. 

When I decided to start a watch collection, I wanted to focus on certain watch categories with wearability. For instance, I wanted a daily dress watch to wear to work, a less dressy watch to wear on the weekends, etc. This was my focus over having a large number of watches or focusing on rare watches that interest collectors. With that approach, however, I've decided to place an emphasis on Omega watches for my collection. This doesn't mean that every watch I buy will be an Omega, as I like watches from other brands as well and Omega watches aren't exactly cheap. However, I plan on taking them into consideration when I'm thinking about getting a new watch for a certain category. This isn't just about James Bond. Bond was just my introduction to the brand. I like a number of their watches, and after buying a Seamaster Aqua Terra, I have a 300m Diver and Speedmaster Professional on my wish list. 

Beyond Bond, Omega has a rich and interesting history that appeals to me. The most appealing part of their history revolves around their Speedmaster Professional watch and its history with NASA and the moon. Since watching the 1995 film Apollo 13, I've been interested in NASA's space missions, specifically the ones that took place during the Space Race and Cold War. Omega's involvement with NASA during this time, being one of the first watches in space and the first watch worn on the moon, is super cool. 

The other part of their history that I find interesting is their involvement with the Olympics. Since 1932, Omega has been the official timekeeper of the Olympic games. With this has come a number of timing and scoring innovations, including the starting gun linked with timing and the touch pad in the swimming pool linked to timing. 

Finally, I have to mention my all-time favorite Omega ambassador. Above, I said that James Bond introduced me to Omega. That is only partially true. Around the same time that the GoldenEye game was released, one of my favorite athletes was an ambassador for Omega, cementing the brand on my radar. Of course I'm talking about Anna Kournikova.

Timepiece Blueprint - Year 2 - A Dress (& GADA?) Watch

As I've grown older, I find myself navigating away from chronographs and leaning more towards watches with simpler faces and less complications. Maybe I'm entering my "old man watch" phase, but honestly I just like their sleek look and find them easier to read. Additionally, I wear dress clothes most days of the week at work, and they pair more nicely with dress clothes than a chronograph. Don't get me wrong, every watch collection needs a nice chronograph (or two), but on a day-to-day basis I find myself wanting to wear a dressier watch.

A dress watch was always on my watch blueprint, though not necessarily in year two, and not necessarily this particular watch. I was searching for a GADA watch, a watch that is the pinnacle of any watch collection. GADA stands for "go anywhere, do anything", and is a watch that is versatile enough to wear with dress clothes during the week while at the same time can go on weekend adventures and not feel out of place. As soon as I discovered the Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra I liked it. There is popular opinion online that it is a GADA watch, so I added it to my blueprint for this category. After seeing it in person, however, the watch is much dressier than I expected. I've thus shifted my blueprint around and made this my dress watch, opening a slot for a potentially more sporty watch. 

This watch looks and feels nice. It has a shiplap background, representing the deck of a yacht, a nod to it being a "Seamaster" model. Its large face is very easy to read, as is the date complication. The bracelet shines, and it fits perfectly under the cuff of a sleeve. I suppose you could wear it with anything, but I think it feels at home with a nice dress shirt. It checks a couple of boxes in my watch collection list as well. It's the first mechanical watch I've owned. Without going off on a tangent about mechanical watches, I've always been fascinated with their second hand movement and the complexity of how they function, so I was very excited to own one. Having owned one now for a little over a month, I will say the power reserve is a stat to pay attention to. This watch has a 60 hour power reserve listed, but I'd say it's more like a 48-60 hour reserve, making keeping it running over the weekend a challenge. Regardless, every time I wind it up and get it going, I feel like I'm wearing somewhat of an engineering marvel. The movements are just so cool. The second major box this watch checks is that it is an Omega. For as long as I can remember I've liked Omega watches. I was planning on going into my fascination with them in this post, but I think I'll save it for a subsequent post so that this one doesn't get too long. I have enough to say about Omega watches for them to have their own post.

Timepiece Blueprint - Year 1 - A (Themed) Chronograph

Historically I've gravitated towards chronographic watches. I've always found them visually appealing to look at, and I think they're just cool to be honest. In more recent times I've found watches with simpler dials more appealing. Watches with less complications are sleeker and pair better with dress clothes, and honestly are easier to read. With that being said, however, I think every watch collection needs a chronographic watch, and this watch checks off two boxes in my revised collection: (1) a chronograph, and (2) a themed watch.

There are numerous themed watches available. Breitling has NFL watches, there are lots of Snoopy collaborations, and possibly the most famous is Omega with their James Bond watches. I'm a huge Indycar fan, and a huge fan of the Indy 500, so the Tag Heuer F1 Chronograph Indy 500 Special Edition is the perfect themed watch for me. It's an homage on my wrist to my favorite and one of the most famous sporting events in the world, made by a watch company in Tag Heuer with a rich and deep history in racing.

The watch features the Indianapolis Motor Speedway "wing & wheels" logo on the bottom complication at 6 o'clock. The second hand is in the complication between 2 and 3 o'clock. It features quartz movement, which on the one hand is considered less "fancy" as mechanical movement, but on the other hand is more reliable, especially in a watch that you may not wear daily. The red hand that looks like a second hand and the complication to the right of the watch are chronographic time keeping portions of the watch. The face is black and is surrounded by a red band, giving it a sporty and racy appearance. The 11 is also highlighted in red, paying attention to the year 1911 which was when the first Indy 500 was ran, which is a nice touch. 

Your Friends & Neighbors (Season 1)

 

Season 2 of Your Friends & Neighbors (YF&N) just released, and subsequently there has been a lot of chatter about the show on Apple social media as well as other news feeds I follow. The chatter has been mostly positive. I like Jon Hamm, and really like Olivia Munn, so I decided to give it a shot. Overall I enjoyed the first season, though I thought a couple of the episodes right in the middle of the season dragged a bit in plot progression. Below is the summary of the premise of the show from ChatGTP:

Season 1 of the Apple TV+ series Your Friends & Neighbors follows Andrew “Coop” Cooper, a wealthy hedge fund manager whose life falls apart after he loses his job and goes through a painful divorce. Desperate to maintain the luxurious lifestyle he and his family are used to, Coop begins secretly robbing the homes of the rich people in his upscale suburban community.

What starts as a way to stay financially afloat gradually becomes addictive, and Coop discovers that the seemingly perfect lives of his friends and neighbors are filled with affairs, lies, blackmail, and dangerous secrets. As he digs deeper into their lives through his burglaries, he gets pulled into a larger criminal mystery involving a suspicious death.

This show is different than most shows I watch (it's non sci-fi) and was a nice change of pace. The drama was uncomfortable at times, but overall it was enjoyable and even funny at times. Seeing how the 1% live (Patek Philippe watches for example) is both interesting and amazing, honestly. I know the show was fictitious, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of what was shown is true in certain communities. It's interesting how Coop's perspective of his rich neighbors changes once he falls on "hard" times and learns about some of their questionable actions. Like I said above, the show overall was enjoyable with some lull in plot progression and uncomfortable drama, but I liked it enough that I plan on watching season 2. I like a lot of the actors in the show, and I think this is the first thing I've seen Olivia Munn in since her Attack of the Show days (except for the one X-Men appearance). I enjoyed the watch references in the show as well! 

Timepiece Blueprint - Year 0 - My Current Collection of Exercise & Quartz Watches

 

My idea of putting together a watch ("timepiece") blueprint came from a Teddy Baldassarre video. As I discussed in my initial post on my blueprint, there are too many watches that are appealing to own them all. Doing so is both impractical from a logistics standpoint (you can only wear one at a time and what's the point of having so many watches that you wear them infrequently, plus where do you store all of them?) as well as being irresponsible financially. Instead of owning a bunch of watches that you never have time to wear, he argues that you should have one good watch in a small number of watch categories to wear. I agree with this approach, and thus that is the approach I decided to take with my own watch collection. 

The watches I am talking about in this post fulfill two categories of watches on my timepiece blueprint. I'm grouping them together and naming them Year 0 because these are watches that I owned well before the concept of developing a watch collection was born. The first category of watch falls into a "rugged" or "wear and tear" style. Basically, a watch you aren't afraid to get dirty and possibly scratched. Most of the time, you would think of a Casio G-Shock or maybe a Timex for this category. However, I try to exercise five days per week, and really enjoy using a fitness tracker to monitor my vitals and distance. Since I'm heavily involved with the Apple ecosystem, it makes the most sense for me to use an Apple Watch as my fitness tracker. Since I wear this watch to exercise and thus get sweaty while wearing it, I placed this watch in my "wear and tear" category, a category that I've renamed exercise watch. I don't find myself in situations where my hands and forearms are going to get excessively dirty. If I did, I probably would get a Timex for this category. But since that isn't the case, and my Apple Watch already gets a little dirty from exercise, I use this watch for times when I may be getting a little dirty.

The second group of watches for my blueprint is a quartz watch. Quartz watches are highly accurate and reliable. As long as the battery is charged, they are easy to put on and will have an accurate time without having to wind the watch or reset it. With the exception of the Apple Watch, every watch I have ever owned is a quartz watch. Prior to starting my timepiece blueprint, I owned two quartz watches and have subsequently added two more. At this point in time, I have this category covered. However, the oldest two quartz watches I own are Citizen watches that are powered by Eco-Drive, and they do require some babysitting to keep them running as they run on solar power. If they do not receive sunlight, they will die and can take a bit of time to get them fully charged. I actually have a light source specifically designed to power these types of watches, that I have to periodically use to charge them if I haven't worn them much in the recent past. Luckily, I did pick up a Bulova quartz watch as a gift for my work anniversary, which I like quite a bit and it fits nicely into the traditional battery powered quartz category. Additionally, the watch I bought for Year 1 of my timepiece blueprint (more to come on this watch in a subsequent post) is also a quartz watch that is battery powered, so at this point I have this category covered.

Timepiece Blueprint - An Overview

Owning a watch at any price point is a luxury. This is especially true in the current day and age where clocks are already on our phones and computer desktops, etc. Essentially clocks are already everywhere, making the concept of a watch almost obsolete. Despite this modern reality, I really like watches, and I know I'm not alone. I first remember liking watches in my teenage years, when I had a Timex and then a Fossil chronograph. In my later teenage years I transitioned to Citizen, which was my first watch that I bought at a jewelry store. After that, however, watches took a back seat to school and the business of life. Low finances contributed to this as well. It wasn't until the Apple Watch debut in 2015 that I became interested in watches again, and even then it was only smart watches that I was interested in. The Apple Watch became an integrated tool for improving workflow while at the office, so much that I wasn't interested in switching to a non-smart watch and sacrificing office efficiency. However, technology has changed and I no longer rely so heavily on my watch for office efficiency (my phone has taken this over). This switch from my Apple Watch to my phone has sparked my interest in traditional watches again, and man is it a complicated landscape. 

As I have become interested in traditional watches again, of course I've become interested in owning them as well. The challenge with this is that there are a lot of cool watches and watch brands in existence, and they can be quite expensive. At times I find myself becoming a bit overwhelmed with the choices. There are a lot of watches that I like and could see myself wearing, and deciding which one(s) to purchase to wear can be overwhelming. I've decided that I want to start a small watch collection, a decision that will require me to purchase new watches to add to the existing watches that I already own and have started wearing again. I don't want to own a large number of watches where I could never wear them consistently, nor do I want to focus on rare or collector's only watches. Instead, I want to focus on watches that I like and that I plan on wearing on a weekly or at least every other week basis. I'm somewhat lucky in this regard in that I wear dress clothes most days of the work week, so it is easy for me to wear a nice watch and not worry about it getting damaged or feel out of place. 

With this approach to my new watch collection, I've come up with a 4 year "blueprint" for my new watch collection. I'm hoping to have this collection complete within 4 years, with a new watch per year. I'm going with a smaller collection where each watch has certain attributes. Because of this, I'm OK with spending a bit more per watch since I anticipate the quantity of watches to be fairly low. There are a few types of watches I hope to get in my new collection, such as a dress watch and the always important go anywhere, do anything watch (GADA). The nice thing about this 4 year blueprint is that I'm already in year 2, despite coming up with this blueprint idea just a couple of months ago. In subsequent posts, I'll discuss each watch in my collection and the reasons why I selected it for my collection.