Masters of Time

For my 23rd birthday, I decided to use the money that I had saved up to buy myself a watch. This would be the first watch that I would ever buy for myself using my own money. Thus, as the lady in Hourglass (a popular watch store in SM Megamall) had told me while I was window shopping for which one to buy, “looking for the perfect watch is important, especially for your first one.” This began my fascination with these great horological masterpieces by some of the world’s best engineers, designers, and masters of time. Before my birthday arrived, I ended up buying this gorgeous Orient Sun & Moon:

It is magnificent. And a few months after I first put it on, I’m so impressed by how well it tells time.

But my fascination with watches did not end there. I had thoroughly enjoyed the hunt for this beauty. So now, from time to time, when I have nothing better to do, I would just go online and randomly look at watches, study what are complications, read up on watch companies, and dream about the watches that I will never likely afford. And it is true what they say in the different watch forums. Some watches just call out to you. Even as I was looking for my first watch on a meager budget  of P10,000-P15,000, I had always been drawn to Tag Heuer’s Link Calibre 5 Day Date which today costs somewhere around P150,000. Way out of my budget. But maybe one day, I’ll get it for myself.

Still, it’s fun looking at watches, and their sometimes impossible prices. It kind of makes me wonder how much time and how many achievements I should make before jumping from one tier to the next. That’s why I decided to make this post. First, I really just want to share all of the gorgeous horological wonders I’ve found in the hours I’ve spent looking at them. And I also wanted to make a reference of the watches that call out to me today, and how I imagine moving from one tier to the next.

So I compiled this list of the 10 most gorgeous watches to have called out to me thus far. They’re arranged in the order of the price it would take to acquire them, so as to chart a path of moving up from tier to tier. Of course some of the last watches on the list, I will likely be never be able to afford, but that doesn’t mean I should stop admiring and aspiring for them. This list covers watches that cost anywhere between the affordable P17,775 to the impossible P14,602,500.

10. Orient Sun & Moon ($395)

9. Tissot T-One Automatic Gent ($675)

8.  Hamilton Jazzmaster Open Heart Auto ($975)

7. Nomos Orion 38 ($1,700)

6. Oris Artix Complication ($2,485)

5. Longines Master Collection Retrograde Moonphase ($2,600)

 4. Tag Heuer Calibre 5 Daydate Link ($3,400)

3. Rolex Oyster Perpetual Datejust ($7,120)

2. A. Lange & Soehne Datograph Perpetual ($140,500)

Jaeger-LeCoultre Duometre Spherotourbillon Moon ($324,500)

On Dreams

I was fresh out of high school, bored, and in terms of academic pursuits, practically directionless when I chanced upon the wisdom Randy Pausch.

It was in a book on his "Last Lecture" that I learned a valuable life lesson at a time when he was still struggling against cancer. I don't recall it exactly, and I'm not even sure if he said it, exactly, but he said something to the tune of "always keep dreaming".

He had these interesting stories about dreaming of going to disneyland, where he eventually ended up as the imagineer who designed a virtual-reality Aladdin ride. He also dreamt about writing an entry for the Encyclopedia which his expertise on virtual-reality eventually allowed him to do. He even dreamt of becoming Captain Kirk, which later in life he modified to "meeting Captain Kirk" when he eventually went face to face with William Shatner, his childhood idol.

His stories are insightful as they urge us, blessed with the promise of life and tomorrow, to keep trudging on to greater things--those that we thought we could only ever dream, with the humble acceptance that our temporality itself limits us as things may not turn out the way we expect. Ultimately, though, we transcend these limitations by our gratitude in crossing something off the long list of dreams we'd sought to make real, by coasting through life into the horizon, ever dreaming, still.

One of the things I appreciated most from my philosophy classes in University was the concept of destiny. On it not being an ultimate end that is set in stone--a terminus where our tracks trail until we ultimately crash, rather, it is the ability to destine ourselves through an ever uncertain future, towards a terminus of our choice, one of endless possibility.

I find this interesting as I recall a young boy from a quiet mountain city, who dreamed of becoming a lawyer. Promdi as I was, I recall that desire to spar with the best students and debaters in the country, and to study in one of the most gorgeous campuses in the big city. To study in the Ateneo, and to join the Ateneo Debate Society were once dreams, now It's been several years from when they were made real.

I recall passing by the streets of the UP Campus, and staring at Malcolm hall, telling my friends "one day." Now I'm an incoming third year student from the University of the Philippines College of Law.

My dreams may not be as fancy and exciting as disneyland or star trek, but these dreams give me the same sense of wonder, and the same sense of having something to hope for, something to keep me reaching farther.

Last week, a senior brod, and friend of mine graduated with his LLM from the Yale law school. He posted this photo from his graduation. Something about the photo gave me chills.

Dreams are born. Through our pursuit, they are cultivated with all of our humanity. And whatever the outcome of our pursuit, we are always that much better for having pursued them.

On sorry.

“Stop apologizing. Wala namang nagagawa ang sorry eh.”

I think I was in high school when I first started being comfortable with apologizing. As a child, I was the kid who would rather make up some silly excuses to get away with something rather than to man up, own up to it and apologize. There was something to making an apology. Back then, I don’t know why, but I always coupled the feeling with some form of embarrassment, and I hated that so I just avoided it.

It got awful, sometimes. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that one day in kindergarten when my mom came to pick me up. My playmates told me that my mom was nearby, so i went towards the corridor where she’d usually wait, and she wasn’t there. Someone else had been there though so I was standing beside her when my playmates saw me. Then, there was my mom approaching. “Ayan na yung nanay mo.” They said. “Hindi ko nanay yan.” I replied, facing them. I didn’t notice that my mom was standing right behind me, by then. We just lingered there a bit, but I never figured to apologize. I hurt her, I’m sure, but I said nothing.

Neither did life at home change this aversion to apologizing. Though my sister and I are incredibly close now, growing up as young kids we fought about everything. And there, things got horrible too. Sometimes, I’d catch myself throwing things at her, screaming at her. Things were so hostile that I didn’t think to apologize either.

Grade school wasn’t any better. In a public school where arrogance was part of our currency, being responsible enough to apologize for something we did wrong didn’t keep us as cool as we wanted to project ourselves.

Don’t get me wrong though, I wasn’t a “bad” child growing up. I was one of the nice kids. I was just really averse to apologizing. Things changed a bit when I was in high school though. I was thrown out of the gritty psyche of my grade school to a place where responsibility and respect were held in higher regard. By then my relationship with my sister had improved to the level of closeness we enjoy today too. But saying sorry still took a while to get used to. It still lingered, the feeling of falling apart in embarrassment in having to say it. And i guess I have these musings now on why this is so.

To apologize is to bear oneself before the face of the Other, saying that “I know that I have done you wrong, and I know I cannot take it back, but here is me, broken and imperfect. Scarred by the world but striving, always to be better, hoping to be forgiven.” When we say “I’m sorry.” We know, and are pained by the fact that these are mere words, helpless in the misery of the wilderness of the world, but seek always to bear ourselves sincerely to the Other potent with the hope of the possibility of forgiveness.

I’m sorry.

On Playlists and things: Januar

New Year, new playlist. This one’s a modern love story.

Januar

Act I.

1. Bloc Party (This Modern Love)

2. Phoenix (Rally)

3. Owl City (Saltwater Room)

4. Someone still loves you Boris Yeltsin (Harrison Ford)

Act II.

5. CHVRCHES (Night Sky)

6. Disclosure feat. Sam Smith (Latch)

7. Never the Strangers (Davenport)

8. the National (Mr. November)

9. Bombay Bicycle Club (Your Eyes)

10. Alt-J (MS)

Act III

11. Stars (What I’m Trying to Say)

12. Two Door Cinema Club (Beacon)

13. Passion pit (Sleepyhead)

14. We were promised Jetpacks (Moving Clocks Run Slow)

linger

an evening in bed a palm on my chest an arm on the small of your back. A sleep, elusive for souls who fear a fall into the evening's end

or further, still.

a kiss. a push, deeper into the night of joys and pains

like evening walks all the same

a push, (half meant?) away each day asleep, awake. a memory, ours alone. and it lingers, the feel of it.

My feed, a love story.

eyes.

Single lit stick and a tin ale can.
Staring at the evening sky.
Two stars perfectly aligned,
like eyes, staring back.

After Dark.

As far as term breaks go, I swear, you made this pretty amazing. Drinks until 3. Strolling the silent streets, the Uni, it sleeps. Sneaking into buildings politely, to take a leak. Stealing letters from the cinematheque: an R, an E, and watching the sky turn night to light. Walking home, breakfast morn'. Lola Rennt, Closer, L'arnacoeur. The girl in the Cafe, 5 Centimeters Per Second, Memento. Keep Walking. Forgive me as I write this down, something to remember you by. Until, of course, the next time you say "Hi."

September

FInals season, no time for a write up, but I really like the Jazz transition in the third act. structure is simmilar to Juni and Juli. Also had Murakami’s 1Q84 in mind for some reason, so I made a Q playlist for September which tacks on to this one via Toe’s Two Moons. Yes, I think that’s witty. haha

 

September

Act I. The City.

1. Temper Trap (Sweet Disposition)

2. Two Door Cinema Club (Settle)

3. Foals (My Number)

4. Bastille (Flaws)

 

Act II. A Girl and a Boy.

5. Haim (The Wire)

6. Ra Ra Riot (Boy)

7. Born Ruffians (Ocean’s Deep)

 

Act III. Strange Cats and Two Moons.

Part I.

8. Passion Pit (Seaweed Song)

9. Broken Social Scene (Sentimental X’s)

Part II.

10. Daft Punk (Fragments of Time)

11. Hall & Oates (Sara Smile)

12. Ben Webster (Midnight Blue)

Part III.

13. Toe (Two Moons)

14. A Banda Mais Bonita de Cidade (Oracao)

 

Hope you like it.

PS: Alexandra is so fucking gorgeous in this performance

Moonlit

clear moon sky
same as ever, staring
walk city streets
never caring, to sleep