After a lot of soul-searching, I decided early this year to finally go for the grail watch: – the IWC Porsche Design Ocean 2000. The usual ensued – false hopes, unrealistic prices and a measure of scam attempts thrown in. Anyway, patience bore fruit and the very watch I was locked onto arrived on March 11.
Four months later I am faced with the grim reality that its perfection could be the undoing of a hobby I’ve been enjoying for the past 15 years or so that also accounted for a number of new friends across the world. Beginning with the summer of 2012 I was half-forced into a career change that left me with little disposable income but the watch bug was still there, so I had to do a fair bit of financial juggling to satisfy my craving. Now that said career change seems to have worked out even better than expected, I’m back on an even keel and could conceivably even look beyond my usual price range. But the Ocean 2000 is every watch I ever wanted rolled into one and the rest of my collection is just sitting in the box doing nothing much. Every few days I fish out one and strap it on, but the gravitational pull of the Ocean is just too strong. Sure, since then I even bought another watch, but I was mostly going through the motions with an intellectual desire for it, without the usual fire, craving or satisfaction upon delivery.
In a sense, this could be good thing as it leaves me with more time and money for other worthwhile pursuits. I am still interested enough to follow the release of new models, but my online activity has also ebbed, as no one would be interested in yet another post extolling the virtues of the same watch over and over.
Have I miraculously been cured? Who knows. There may be a future model that would rekindle the fire, but for now I don’t find that very likely. On a more troubling note, I now find myself thinking about getting a second Ocean 2000 (perhaps the oh-so-rare PVD version?), should the current one suffer a terminal accident, be stolen or whatever dark scenario you can imagine.
Oh, the madness never ends.
(Image source: HEBE)
