This Month's Story

…I discovered the watch’s date indicator. It and the weekday window showed the date and weekday in Korea. I decided that rather than running the risk of activating the bells again — I wasn’t sure how I had deactivated them — I would just subtract a day when I used the window or referenced the date. This seemed the easiest approach.

I bought a new watch while I was in Korea.

We were back in Pusan after an extremely cold and stormy winter cruise in the northern Sea of Japan. We would be there four days unloading our instruments before heading back to Mississippi. Since it was both Sunday and Chinese New Year I had taken the day off to take one last time shopping. I decided to try my luck with the street vendors that lined the sea front area of the city.

I saw a watch that I liked.

“15,000 wan,” said the vendor.

“14,000,” I countered.

“No, No, 15,000”

It was obvious that he wasn’t going to budge. I needed a watch. My old watch’s crystal was scratched and I had been having difficulty reading the time. 15,000 wan was about $13. The watch looked good and at that price seemed a good buy.

The watch the vendor was showing me was battery operated, waterproof, and had five large buttons to work the various programs and a stainless steel, very macho case.

I was especially impressed when I pressed the button for the night-light. It was extremely bright. Its dial was also impressive showing a large digital display with three mysterious windows in the upper half of the dial.

“What are the three windows for?” I asked.

The vendor consulted with his companion and after a great bit of discussion, he wrote something down on a piece of paper and handed it to me.

He had written, ‘15,000 wan.’

I nodded and bought the watch, making sure he put the instructions in the plastic watchcase.

In our room in the hotel the next morning, my roommate, Bob, looked over at me from his breakfast sweet roll.

“I see you have a new watch.”

I smiled and showed him my new buy.

“Looks good,” he said after examining it. “What are the three windows for?”

I dug the instructions out from my wallet and looked at them. The print was very small and appeared to be written in English, French and Korean. I couldn’t find my glasses, for the moment and had a hard time reading the tiny print. I handed the instructions to him.

“Paul,” he said after looking at the paper, “doesn’t your watch have five buttons?”

“Yes,”

“Then they gave you instructions for the wrong watch. This diagram shows only four buttons and I don’t see anything about the three windows.”

I took the instructions back and looked at the diagram. He was right; it showed only four buttons!

“Well, anyway. “It was a good buy.”

“Not if you can use it for only three days,” he said getting up and began getting ready to leave for the ship. “Remember, we’re going back home tomorrow. How are you going to change it to Mississippi time without instructions?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

He nodded and, as we both began to leave the hotel, he said, “By the way, don’t keep looking at your watch when you’re in bed tonight.”

“Why not?”

“That night-light lights up the whole room,” he replied. “Every time you checked the time last night, you woke me up.”

***

When I got back to Mississippi, I sat down with Stella and asked her to read the instructions aloud to me while I adjusted the time. I figure these kinds of watches were probably generic and one instruction probably fitted all.

She puzzled over the instructions and then started reading them aloud, “To adjust time, depress 1 and hold 2 to fix time without changing day rate. Alternating 1 and 2. This will speed the adjustments for the multiple uses…”

“What?”

“That’s what it says,” she said looking up from the paper. “I think you wasted $15.”

“It was 15,000 wan, not $15. Let me see that.” It was as she had read it to me. I glanced at the French. My French is poor, but even I could see it made no better sense than the English instructions. I turned it over and looked at the Korean hieroglyphics.

“That’s Korean,” Stella said. She had been watching me silently mouth the French instructions. I glared at her and she picked up her book and ignored me.

When I was alone the next morning, I started to experiment with the buttons. Since the time I had bought the watch, I had noticed movement in two of the three windows.

The first appeared to indicate the day of the week by a dot on a circle. This now indicated that in Korea, it was a day later. The second showed a small moon at the quarter stage. When I had been in Korea, it had been a new moon and the window, correctly, had been blank. The third window was still empty.

Finally, after much experimenting, I did get it changed to local Mississippi time. I should have been happy, only now I noticed that a large bell had appeared in the third window.

Sure enough at three that afternoon, the alarm went off. I managed to stop it, but noticed I had put the watch in the twenty four-hour mode. It now read 1500 hrs. I worked on both problems and managed to get back to a twelve-hour mode. The bell in the third window was now smaller. What did that mean?

On the half hour, I found out when the watch gave an annoying chirp. It was now programmed to go off every half hour day and night.

I wrestled with the buttons some more and managed to get the bell to disappear and the time to stay in the twelve-hour mode. In doing all this, I discovered the watch’s date indicator. It and the weekday window showed Korean date and weekday. I decided that rather than running the risk of activating the bells again — I wasn’t sure how I had deactivated them — I would just subtract a day when I used the window or referenced the date. This seemed the easiest approach.

That night I told Stella what I had done, but not saying anything about the date problem. She nodded noncommittally. Later when I took Jennie outside, I stood on the porch and looked up at the moon. I called Stella outside and pointed to the moon.

“See what stage it’s in?” I said proudly. “Now, look at my watch.” With that I pushed the night-light and she looked at the tiny quarter moon in the middle window. Then she looked up again at the bright moon over us.

“But the moon is almost at the half.” She said. “Maybe it’s just a quarter moon now in Korea.”

“It’s not quite half. It probably changes when it is exactly at the half moon phase.”

She gave me the same nod that Bob had given me. I was glad I had not told her about the dates. She turned and called Jennie who was watching us from the lawn.

“Let’s go back in, it’s cold,” she said. “And, please, stop pressing that night-light. It’s so bright, it’s scaring Jennie.”

I’m keeping the watch. It’s a good watch. I don’t care if it’s not Thursday in Korea.