After that we had a very nice discussion about watches. The guy was wearing an Adidas Quartz watch with a crystal that had been beaten to a semi-transparent milky gloom. Also the case seem to have gotten a fair share of daily beating. But the watch seem to have been working for years.

After that he wanted to see my watch: I was wearing the JLC Master Geographique and explained to him all those different hands. That took a while, well my Thai is OK, but I really do not know all the watch terms (yet).

The most interesting part however was when I asked him about his ranking of watch brands, or better which watch brands had a meaning for him. The following list was assembled

1. Seiko
2. Omega
3. Rolex
4. EDOX (that is interesting because remember, EDOX is similarly pronounced as "bitch" - sorry, but that is the word - in Thai and thus not a really good brand name in Thailand)
5. Oris
6. Longines (difficult to pronounce for Thais, also not the best name for Thailand that is)
7. Rado
8. Casio
9. Citizen
10. Orient (that is interesting too)

Well, the poor guy is now infected with my strain of the watch bug and I really hope he will have enough money to travel back home instead of going watch hunting in Hong Kong.

And after what really seemed a short conversation, the plane was already on its descent to HK airport...

The main "trick" of the Co-Axial escapement is the 3-stone lever, there is a middle stone (pallet), that grips into a wheel that sits on top of the standard escape wheel (hence co-axial), thus the so called entries and exits of the pallets into the escape wheel are "softer" and more defined. Resulting in less wear and greater accuracy. This escapement was patented by George Daniel from London. Not an easy patent application, it took him about 20 years and many revisions to finally get that patent. After Patek Philip had declined to go ahead with the construction, Omega was finally a company willing to to do it. 1990 Omega and George Daniel presented the first watch with his co-axial escapment. I remember having seen the pink gold model with a very low series number at the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich. Just as a comparison, I drew a so called Swiss Lever Escapement next to it, as good as I could do it on that foldable little table...