About Watches

The way my watches break is very peculiar.

I am a loyal user of SEIKO, which stands by those of us who take good care of our belongings.
When I have trouble, I often rush to Wako in Ginza, and they always tune it up properly.
Long live Made in Japan.

So, how do these super-efficient watches break? Well...They "clearly develop a will of their own.".

The Awakening Alarm Clock

Even the people who repaired it couldn't figure out why this happened, but when I was overworked and sleep-deprived, the alarm clock's sound would become subdued.

Moreover, perhaps anticipating my habit of lingering in bed for 30 minutes after turning off the alarm, it started ringing exactly 30 minutes late every time.

When I went to Wako and told them this story, the person at the repair counter gave me a momentary look of (Huh?), but they carefully checked it and fixed it many times.
Thanks to them, it rings properly now, but I use it in conjunction with my smartphone's snooze.

My life has improved significantly since then, but there are still nights when I get home late, and I'm worried that if I keep doing that, it might start being considerate again...

It seems I can't deny the feeling that it has awakened as a "house-elf in the form of an alarm clock" that tries to gently let its owner sleep..

I decided to call it Dobby in my heart.
Dobby, I'll sleep properly, so don't worry.

The Watch That Ticks the Future

On Monday, I wrote about burnout.

I also get a bit mentally drained when the work I want to do and the work I need to do are frequently and complicatedly overlapped with special administrative procedures that I am very bad at.

At such times, despite the clearly small volume, I sometimes don't touch it until the very last minute and output it just before the deadline.
I'm clearly unable to focus as well as usual and am misreading the time required. Even though hyper-focus is one of my strengths.

Thinking this was bad, I started trying to act 10 minutes ahead of schedule, and that's when I noticed.

Huh? This watch, the date is tomorrow.

It broke in a way that seemed to tell me to work on it a day ahead of the deadline.
I reset it several times and adjusted the date and time difference, but it didn't work.
Since it's a radio-controlled watch, I tried a forced reception, but it doesn't work at my house.

So I gave up and rushed to Wako in Ginza.
To the repair staff, I must just be "the person who always has weird breakages."

In the end, the cause was unknown this time as well.
The radio reception was restored, and the date returned to normal.

But, since I now have a house-elf No. 2 in my house, I want to call it Dobby 2.

For now, I will work ahead of schedule so that Dobby 2 doesn't remind me of future deadlines again.