I’m too mathematically minded to gamble in Vegas, but I still find myself thinking that I’ve been unlucky when it comes to winning contests and prize draws. Rudyard Kipling would say that I won God’s lottery, but somehow that’s small consolation.
The feeling of unluckiness started in childhood. My cousin managed to win money on the Premium Bonds several times (as I recall), but I never did. I continued to enter pretty much any free contest I encountered, year after year, even if it meant actually reading the junk mail sent to me by Reader’s Digest. I don’t think I ever actually won anything, though.
Until last month.
One of my random interests is wristwatch design. Though my everyday watch was chosen for its rugged reliability, I’m always eyeing more impractical timepieces, like those covered on Wrist Dreams.
Said web site ran a contest last year. I entered, and in December I was rather startled to get e-mail saying I’d actually won. My prize was 1000100101, a retrofuturistic watch that looks like a miniature control panel from an old Sci Fi movie. It was supplied by Tokyoflash Japan, who seem to have cornered the market in amazingly interesting and odd watch designs.
The watch arrived in December. I deciphered the instructions and set the time and date, but quickly discovered a problem: the time simply didn’t advance, and after some random interval the watch would reset to 6:59. I contacted Tokyoflash and they sent me a replacement; I mailed back the broken one. The replacement arrived just after Christmas, as I missed the mailman on Christmas Eve.
The replacement watch works fine, and it’s great. It has a solid metal casing and a thick leather strap, and you can set it to randomly animate the time mit das blinkenlights every 15 minutes if it doesn’t seem to be getting enough attention. I’ve posted a picture. It’s the kind of thing I probably wouldn’t have bought for myself, but now that I’ve won it I like it a lot. So if you’re looking for an eye-catching watch for special occasions, I can recommend heading over to Tokyoflash’s web site and browsing around.
Now, off to enter more contests…
Tagged: 1000100101, Christmas, Christmas Eve, contest, luck, metal casing, Said web site, Tokyoflash, Tokyoflash Japan, watch, wristdreams
January 5th, 2007 at 04:22 -0700
I won £100.
Once.
Now this was 25 years ago so £100 was worth a bit more but it’s not like I’m still spending my days surrounded with champaigne, coke and prostitutes off my winnings. I bought a portable TV with it - like the one you had anyway but not quite as nice (yours was Sony, mine was NEC).
If something’s going to fester it should have been that James Bond car of yours I destroyed - that I feel guilty about…
January 5th, 2007 at 07:06 -0700
Yet ironically, that I don’t remember. Perhaps because James destroyed far more of my stuff than you ever did.
Anyhow, it’s not like I held you responsible for being lucky. It was more a sort of general vague sense that the universe had it in for me.