Selfie with summer hat

Of late I’ve taken selfies mostly while wearing a hat. So here’s another one — this time with my summer flat cap.

Sunny Friday in Melbourne, and casual day at work.

I took this photo using portrait mode on my Google Pixel 3XL phone. The background blurring worked quite well, I think.

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's Chinese New Year concert

One of the highlights of this week was watching the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s (MSO) annual Chinese New Year concert.

This year’s East Meets West show was all about “symphony meets rock ‘n roll” and it featured the MSO and Beijing-based Mongolian rock band Hanggai.

If you haven’t heard Hanggai before, here’s one of their songs they performed (accompanied by the MSO).

My mother would have turned 72 today

I remember the afternoon of 12 February 1983 very clearly.

I’m six years old and I spend what feels like several hours swinging back and forth on the front gate of our house in Lahore, Pakistan.

Why? Because my father is there, with my seven month old sister in his arms, pacing up and down the driveway and across the front of our house, looking increasingly concerned.

My mother, Shahla Zia, whose 36th birthday it is that day, isn’t home. I don’t know where she is, really. I just know that she was full of energy when she left with her friends and work colleagues.

Me and my father in, I think, 1980. I would have been four years old at the time.

§

Many years and several women’s day marches later I connect the dots: this is the day the women’s movement in Pakistan celebrates as National Women's Day (or Pakistan Women’s Day, as it was called back then).

On this day, some three decades ago, 200 women activists took a stand for all the women of Pakistan. The year was 1983. Images of these women being beaten up by the police are now part of the country’s searing conscience.

These women defied the military dictatorship of the day by taking out a public demonstration in Lahore, despite martial law regulations that outlawed political activities, processions and public protests. These iconic women of the Women’s Action Forum (WAF) in collaboration with Pakistan Women Lawyers’ Association (PWLA) carried out a rally from Hall Road Lahore to the Lahore High Court to file a petition against the law of evidence which would reduce the testimony of women to half that of men. The accumulative trigger was the dictatorship’s unrelenting push to rescind women’s rights.

History has it that when these women reached the high court, the revolutionary poet Habib Jalib came to show solidarity with these women for their struggle for an egalitarian, democratic and progressive society and world order. He was beaten up by the police along with the women who were put behind bars for several hours.

‘National Women’s Day: Memoirs of trailblazing activists’ – Hassan Naqvi, The Express Tribune, 12 February 2014

Baton charge on protesters at Hall Road, Lahore. 12 February 1983. Photographer: Azhar Jaffery. (Source)

§

Today, on 12 February 2019, I’m in Melbourne, Australia.

I’m on the committee that’s organising this year’s International Women’s Day events at the company I work for. I’m working on a communications plan to showcase on social media how we're an employer of choice for women in Australia (as we have been since 2015).

One of the reasons I took this particular job (I got two job offers when I was looking for work last year) was because of how well Transurban scored on workplace gender equity. Now I get to tell people about it.

Compared to 1983 in Pakistan, I’m in a vastly different time and place – a vastly different world. A lot has changed. But, sadly, a lot hasn’t.

View from my office building on a rainy day.

§

Every year on 12 February my father writes a note to my mother, which he then sends to me and my siblings. (This year via WhatsApp!)

He writes about what we’re up to, where we are in our lives, and how proud he is of us. Three of us have kids (the other two, of which I am one, have pets) so he also talks about his grandkids and us as parents.

Ami and Abu, some time in the 1980s.

§

If she hadn’t died of cancer in 2005, Ami would’ve turned 72 today.

We all mark the occasion in our own ways, often with food – something Ami loved to eat. Today I’m having alu ka parathas for dinner.

I miss her.

Ami on her 50th birthday in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Support Lisa-Skye's MICF Safety House Guide!

I love live comedy, particularly stand-up comedy. So one of the coolest things about living in Melbourne is the annual Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF).

However, for various reasons, Nadia and I don’t attend too many MICF shows. The ones we do attend, then, we’re very picky about.

Basically: we don’t want to watch performances by bigots, racists, misogynists, assholes, and so on. You’d think that in 2019 you’d be hard pressed to find people who make those kinds of jokes on stage. But, of course, you’d be wrong.

One of the best ways to avoid attending a show at MICF that’ll make you feel uncomfortable or unsafe is by checking Lisa-Sky’s Safety House Guide.

Here’s what she has to say about this on her Safety House Guide 2019 Pozible page:

In 2017, I noticed a theme among people who came to my shows - they'd tell me they loved seeing my shows every year at festivals, but didn't want to 'risk' going to other shows, for fear of being the punchline of jokes. They weren't just scared of hearing tired old material bashing who they are (fat jokes, sexworker jokes, racist jokes...) but a few of them were hesitant about audience participation, even when the artist had the best intentions.

And I thought, stuff that - everyone should feel safe to enjoy seeing live performance. 

My favourite thing is showing cool stuff to cool people, and promoting good work from performers with an ethos based in kindness and diversity. So at last year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival, I created the first Safety House Guide. 

Lisa-Skye’s Safety House Guide for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Lisa-Skye’s Safety House Guide for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Nadia and I have already bought tickets for a few MICF shows this year (including Judith Lucy and Hannah Gadsby - yay!) but we’re not going to get any more without consulting that guide first.

If you’re someone who’ll want to use this guide – or even if you’re not, but your recognise how valuable a resource it might be to others – please consider providing financial support to it via Pozible. Nadia and I have already pledged to do so. Lisa-Skye is going to produce this guide regardless, so let’s help her our as much as we can.

Making International Women's Day events in Australia more diverse

If you work in corporate Australia you’ll know all about the various events (usually panel discussions) that businesses tend to host or participate in around International Women’s Day (IWD).

As Cathy Ngo writes, most of these events aren’t particularly “diverse”.

But the problem I see with many IWD events, is that they look a little familiar. The venues may get fancier to attract corporate sponsors, but the line-ups are too often far from diverse. You tend to see the same career narrative presented: often from white middle class women, with backgrounds in journalism or TV.

I’m in no way downplaying the achievements of the speakers and panellists – but it doesn’t exactly reflect society’s broader career-pool and life experiences. An event where we are meant to celebrate all women’s progress and achievements, can quickly become a celebration of white, able-bodied, heterosexual, middle-class women’s experiences.

This, of course, shouldn’t be the only experience we consider when it comes to gender equality.

Observing gender-equality through a solo lens, only allows us to see one angle. It excludes a huge percentage of women who have a completely different lived-experience but whose stories are equally valid and critical to a more nuanced conversation. As a society and in the workplace, we must ensure our gender inclusion policies and practices are made with those who can give voice to the lived experiences of all women.

If you want your event to have more diverse representation, multiple points of view, and a discussion of different lived experiences, check out this article that Ngo wrote for Women’s Agenda (which is where that quote above is from): ‘Speakers, organisers & attendees: Here’s how to make IWD events more diverse’.

I’m on the working group that’s organising this year’s IWD events at Transurban. We know from experience and surveys that IWD events aren’t particularly interesting or useful to attendees if they can’t relate to the people who are speaking or presenting. So we’re actually using some of the ideas from that article to make our speaker line-up as diverse as possible. I’m looking forward to seeing what we come up with! 

<random aside>

Also, is it just me or does the #BalanceforBetter pose look like a smiley-er version of the shrug emoji?

Compare the official photo/social media pose for this year’s IWD theme:

To the shrug emoji:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

</random aside>

An excellent introduction to TikTok

If you’ve been around the internet for a while you’ll know there used be an app called Vine that let you make six-second long videos. It was hugely popular but, after being purchased by Twitter, was discontinued in 2016.

TikTok is considered by many to be the spiritual successor to Vine. But, like with Vine, if you don’t know what it’s about and what’s happening in that space, it’s a bit difficult to get into.

So a couple of weeks ago Sally Kuchar started a fantastic thread on Twitter that showcases some of the best TikTok videos and memes. I highly recommend you check it out!

Instagram wrap-up: January 2019

Here’s what I shared on Instagram in January 2019. (ICYMI, starting this year I’ll be cross-posting everything I post to Instagram to this blog.)

Maggie

We had a super hot start to 2019. Maggie, being a very Australian dog, loves the heat.

It's going to be 42 degrees today.

[@nadianiaz, hanging up the laundry] It's *thoroughly* unpleasant outside.

[Maggie, an Australian cattle dog] It's perfect.

When the weather is nice, though, we all like to hang out in the garden.

Afternoon nap in the garden with Maggie. (Yes, yesterday it was 42 degrees here. Today it's a top of 19. That's Melbourne for you. That's also why I love this city.)

Maggie loves her rope toy.

Maggie recommends a slow and steady deconstruction of your rope toy. "Take your time and pull that thing apart thread by thread," she says.

Events

January saw the start of #SlowSummer on SBS.

All set for a #SlowSummer with the Indian Pacific on SBS :) #SlowTV #sundaynight

Nadia and I went to the Australia Open tennis tournament, where every year we take a selfie.

Annual Australian Open selfie with Nadia :)

Melbourne went through three-ish heat waves in January. The last series of hot days ended with rain showers across the city. I work on the 29th floor of a building in the Docklands that has great views.

Gap in the clouds at sunset from Docklands, Melbourne.

Selfie

I finally got around to buying a quality Panama hat. Which, of course, meant that I had to take a selfie while wearing it :)

Yay, quality Panama hat! Been wanting one for years. Literal h/t to Gentleman's Gazette for the purchase inspiration and City Hatters Melbourne and Avenel Hats for the actual hat :)

Decentralizing my online presence

Starting this year, I'm going to cross-post to my blogs:

  • everything I post on Instagram and

  • most of what I tweet (and retweet) on Twitter.

Why?

Two reasons.

1. I'm sick of the walled gardens that social networks force you play in.

It’s great that I can post stuff so easily to social networks. That’s where most my non-techie friends and family members are too – which is super cool.

But, once I do post stuff to a social network, there’s almost nothing else I can do with this content of mine. I can’t archive, index, search, tag, export, or repurpose any of it. And I certainly can’t share it to any other social network. So, once my content is in there, it stays in there.

That’s not the way things used to be, back when the web was more decentralized.

In the words of Tom Eastman: “I’m old enough to remember when the Internet wasn’t a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four.”

Now I’m still a massive RSS user (yay NewsBlur!) so, for me, most of the web still is decentralized. I want my content to be part of this easily accessible, decentralized web as well.

Which brings me to reason number two…

2. Social networks are internet black holes.

If a post of mine isn’t in currently your social news feed or isn’t pinned to the top of my social profile, it might as well not exist.

Unless you’re willing to go to my profile and scroll through years of posts, there’s no easy way to see what I’ve posted since I joined Flickr in 2007, Facebook in 2007, Twitter in 2008, and Instagram in 2012.

None of my social network posts appear in Google or Bing, either. So, as far as the broader internet is concerned, this content of mine has disappeared into a black hole that you need to be a member of to access. And, even then, there’s no easy way to find what I’ve posted there over the years. (Though, to be fair, Flickr and Twitter do have fairly decent built-in search engines.)

I don’t want my content to be this thoroughly inaccessible.

So what next?

Initially, not too much is going to change. I’ll still keep posting regularly to Twitter and Instagram.

But, because I’ll be cross-posting most of my stuff to my blogs, too, you’ll be able to go to my blogs (this one and my professional one) and look through all the great stuff (mine and others’) that I’ve been sharing on Twitter and Instagram.

The best part: this blog content will be archived, tagged, and backed-up. And it’ll be easy to search for, export, and share to any other social network.

Yay for a more (re)decentralized web!

I switched my mobile phone account back to Telstra

Much of my life is on the internet so slow network speeds really irk me. Which is why, two years ago, I moved my personal mobile account from Telstra to iiNet.

The need for speed

Back in 2016 the Optus mobile broadband network had among the best 4G data speeds: 21% faster downloads and 33% faster uploads compared to Telstra (when measured from my office). And the prices offered by resellers of that network, in my case iiNet, were significantly lower too.

I’d been with Telstra for ten years, but switching to iiNet — who were offering a clearly superior product — was an obvious choice. (I’d had iiNet as my home broadband ISP for over seven years by that point too.)

I need 4G at work

I currently spend about a third of my day in the office every single weekday. When I’m there I connect my work phone to the corporate Wi-Fi network. However, for various reasons, I don’t connect my personal phone to work’s guest Wi-Fi network. So, for over half of my weekday waking hours (more if you count my commute), I rely on my phone’s 4G connection.

This was all well and good till about two months ago.

We move to a new building

My office is in Collins Square, which is a five-tower complex in Docklands, Melbourne. Two months ago we moved offices from a tower at the front of the complex (adjacent Collins Street) to a tower at the back (overlooking the Yarra River). The views from this new building are much better, but the 4G download speeds for Optus mobile network users are much, much worse.

My work phone is with Telstra, so I was able to compare the 4G download and upload speeds I was getting from both Telstra an iiNet in this new building. The results speak for themselves.

The 4G speeds I was getting from iiNet were better than what they were in 2016, of course, but they were 8 times slower than what I was getting from Telstra.

Better coverage goes a long way

Telstra has always had better mobile and mobile broadband coverage in both urban and rural areas across Australia. That superior coverage was making all the difference here.

An investigation revealed that the the iiNet cell tower that gave me the best signal strength in the new office building was behind two of the other Collins Square buildings. Meanwhile the Telstra cell tower that gave me the best signal was just across the river.

So, yeah. The decision to switch back to Telstra was about as easy as it had been to switch away in the first place.

The good news is that, over the last two years, Telstra’s customer service has improved considerably. Ten minutes with an agent at one of their stores was all it took to make the switch back. And, as a bonus, I’m getting three times as much data from Telstra for the same monthly price I was paying at iiNet.

All is well again.

Update 4/2/19: Since publishing this post I discovered that Telstra has activated a cell tower at the top of Collins Square! Since that’s the tower my phone now connects to most often, my 4G connection is now even faster and is considerably more reliable from all corners of the office.

My next pilot watch: Stowa Flieger Klassik 40 Baumuster B

I bought another pilot watch – and this one, finally, is a flieger! Say hello the fabulous Stowa Flieger Klassik 40 Baumuster B.

If you’re not familiar with flieger watches, by the way, here’s a nice overview from Watchuseek: ‘Flieger Friday: Everything You Need to Know About Flieger Watches’

Why the Stowa Flieger Klassik 40 Baumuster B?

There are lots of different flieger and flieger-style watches out there so I had a seriously difficult time deciding which one I was going to get.

I knew from the start that I wanted a Type B flieger (the observer/navigator’s watch) and my must-have features were a sapphire crystal and a hacking-seconds movement. Everything else I was flexible on (ie automatic or manual wind movement, open or closed case back, etc).

In the end my decision came down to four key criteria:

  1. Which brands I wanted to consider
  2. What category of watch I wanted
  3. Where along the historical-accuracy versus modern-evolution spectrum I wanted my watch to be situated
  4. What special thing about the watch, brand, or manufacturer appealed to me the most

1. Brand options

The original flieger watches from the 1940s were designed and manufactured by five companies: A. Lange & Söhne, IWC, Laco, Stowa, and Wempe.

Lange no longer make a pure flieger watch (only the Big Pilot’s and its variations) and Wempe no longer make watches at all, so the three remaining brands went straight onto my shortlist.

Since no one has a copyright on the flieger design, lots of other brands make flieger and flieger-inspired watches. Several of these brands went onto my shortlist, as well.

2. Watch category

Not counting quartz-based timepieces, flieger watches can be broadly divided into three quality categories: luxury, enthusiast, and consumer. Each category is served by several brands, for example:

  • Luxury: Bell & Ross, IWC
  • Enthusiast: Archimede, Aristo, Damasko, Fortis, Hamilton, Laco, Sinn, Steinhart, Stowa
  • Consumer: Citizen, Orient, Seiko

I wanted to get something from the enthusiast category because that’s where all the professional/tool watches are (not that pilots need to use these types of watches professionally anymore). Like the original flieger watches, I wanted my flieger watch to be a robust, reliable, high quality tool watch.

From that category I eliminated Damsko and Sinn because they don’t make Type B flieger watches. 

This left me with seven options.

3. Historical accuracy versus modern adaptation

I knew I wanted a watch with historical roots, but not necessarily a replica. I also didn’t want something too modern.

I eliminated Archimede because, even though Ickler (their manufacturer) has been around since 1924, the Archimede brand itself was launched in 2003 – so that’s not enough of a historical connection for me. Same with Steinhart: the brand itself is old, but its modern incarnation is from the 2000s.

I also eliminated Aristo because their modern-sized fliegers (40-44mm) have a huge Aristo logo on the dial (too modern) and their plain-dial version has a whopping 55m case size (far too historically accurate!).

Finally, much as I love what Fortis and Hamilton have done with their pilot watches, those interpretations are more modern that I would like for my first proper flieger.

This left me with two brands: Laco and Stowa – both original flieger manufacturers and both with modern versions of the Type B that I really like.

The Laco flieger versions are truer to the original: sand blasted grey case, closed case back, domed sapphire crystal, straight lugs. The Stowa versions are slightly more modernized: polished case, open case back, flat sapphire crystal, curved lugs.

Laco and Stowa’s brand philosophies are neatly represented in those design differences: Laco is selling you a piece of history (albeit a smaller version of the original) while Stowa is selling you a modern watch with strong historical roots (a slightly evolved version of the original). For my first flieger watch, I found myself leaning towards the latter.

4. That special thing

The other thing that got me to pick Stowa is that I like their brand strategy more than Laco’s.

Laco want everyone to own a piece of history so they have two tiers of pilot watches: ‘Original’ and ‘Basic’. The Basic models are more consumer level watches than they are enthusiast level ones. That means some models have lower cost automatic movements (that don’t have hacking seconds, for example) and some have quartz movements.

Stowa, on the other hand, want everyone to own an excellent quality mechanical timepiece that is deeply rooted in history so they don’t have any models that could be considered consumer level watches.

As someone who studies brands, I appreciate businesses that have identified the specific, narrow customer segment they want to target – in this case, people who want to buy enthusiast level watches – and then chosen to create products for only this segment.

I don’t dislike Laco’s approach, of course. I just respect Stowa’s willingness to ignore other potential market segments and stick to the one segment they specifically want to target with their timepieces.

This focus on selling only professional/tool level watches makes Stowa a slightly more exclusive brand. And, for my first flieger, this was something I liked the idea of.

(Laco have done a clever job of differentiating their Basic and Original tier watches from a brand perspective, by the way. None of their Basic tier watches, for example, have thermally blued hands. So, while Laco are willing to sell lower priced, lower perceived-value watches that have most of the historical markers of the original flieger watches, by holding some of the features back from the Basic tier, they still manage to protect the brand value of their Original tier models.)

Stowa were also among the first heritage watch brands to start selling directly to customers via their website. This means they understood their customer segment much sooner than others did – this is, our desire to easily purchase watches online, directly from the manufacturer.

And Stowa are still one of the only brands that offer several watch customization options up-front. The availability of these customisation options tells me they still understand their customers better than many other brands do. That is, customers wanting a consumer level pilot watch won’t necessarily want to spend extra on customization (eg a gold rotor, instead of a silver one). But someone who is after an enthusiast level pilot watch might. And given that’s the only segment they’re targeting, why not go the extra mile and offer this service? It helps their brand stand out from their competitors and it helps the customer’s watch stand out, as well – a nice win-win.

But this only works if you’ve done your research and have thoroughly understood your customer’s wants and needs (which Stowa has done) and you’re an innovative and nimble enough business to deliver on those customer wants and needs (which Stowa is).

All of which means…

All of which means I chose the Stowa flieger watch over the Laco one.

I do still plan on buying a Laco watch in the future – possible their Type A flieger replica or one of their fantastic special pilot models. But, for now, I’m happy with what I’ve got.

About the Stowa Flieger Klassik 40 Baumuster B

Normally this is where I’d run through the watch’s specs and talk about how awesome a timepiece it is. Fortunately, I don’t have to do that because lots of others have already done all that.

If you want to know more about the Klassik 40 Baumuster B, here’s a recent-ish review from 60Clicks that I quite like: ‘Stowa Flieger Klassik 40 Baumuster B-Uhr: Hands-On Review’.

Final thoughts

I received my Stowa flieger in early October last year and, over the last four months, have worn almost none of my other watches. It’s rare that I give any one watch this much exclusive wrist time but that just goes to show just how much I love it!

So, yay for my first flieger and yay for how excellent both Stowa and this watch are :)

 

The NBN is 62% faster in our new house!

This time last year we finally got connected to Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN).

Doing so dramatically increased our average download speed from 6.9MBps with ADSL2+ (over the old telephone copper wire network) to 46.7MBps with NBN (over a new NBN fibre optic connection to the closest telephone/internet exchange).

A little over a week ago we moved into an independent house in another suburb. This meant we were no longer sharing that fibre optic internet connection with the other residents in an apartment block.

I checked to see if this had increased our connection speed and, sure enough, our download speeds have gone up by 62% to 75.7MBps!

Woohoo! 

Pro tip: If you’re looking to move house and, like me, can’t live without the NBN, check out the nbnm8 Chrome extension. When you use realstate.com.au and Domain to search for properties it’ll automatically do the nbn availability look-up for you :)

My first mechanical chronograph: Seagull 1963 Airforce

One year ago I started my mechanical watch collection. This was thanks to Nadia and a bunch of awesome friends who got me a Techné Goshawk for my birthday. Since then I’ve bought two more mechanical watches, an Orient M-Force ‘Beast’ and a Vostok K-65 Komandirskie.

For my birthday this year Nadia and that super awesome bunch of friends got me my fourth mechanical watch – and first mechanical chronograph – the Tianjin Seagull 1963 Airforce chronograph. 

I’ve been wanting to get a mechanical chronograph for years but most of these are ‘luxury’ level watches (ie in the $1,500+ price range). Only a handful can be classified as ‘mid-range’ ($500-$1,500) and, of those, the Seagull 1963 Airforce chronograph is probably the coolest.

Given this is a brand new watch, you may have guessed from its name that this is a modern reissue of the original chronograph that was produced for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force in 1963.

About the 1963 Airforce watch

The particular variant of watch that I have is the more historically authentic 37mm version (there are newer, 42mm versions, as well). It has a polished silver case with a sapphire crystal, a crown, and two chronograph pushers. 

The cream dial has an outer index with black Arabic numerals and black minute-markers that double as second-markers for the chronograph. Those second markers are subdivided into one-fifths of a second (which only becomes relevant when you’re using the chronograph). The inner index has applied gold Arabic numerals and applied dart-shaped, gold hour markers.

You use the large blue hands to tell the time and the red hand counts elapsed seconds for the chronograph (which means most of the time it remains in the 12 o’clock position). The two sub-dials have small blue hands.

The ‘small seconds’ sub-dial at 9 o’clock shows you running seconds (this runs whether you’re using the chronograph or not) and the sub-dial at 3 o’clock is a 30-minute counter for the chronograph (it loops if you run the chronograph for more than 30 minutes).

At the top of the dial there’s an applied red star with a gold outline (there are also yellow star versions of these watches). Printed on the dial is the text “21 ZUAN” (21 jewels) and “中国制造” (Made in China).

The watch is powered by the ST1901 movement, which you can see in all its glory through the open case back. 

The ST1901 is a hand-wound, column-wheel chronograph movement with 21 jewels, shock protection, and a 40-hour power reserve.

To see just how cool this movement is, check out this video from Long Island Watch (the link will start the video from the 08:50 mark).

I really wanted to get this watch, not just because it’s gorgeous and has a fantastic chronograph movement, but also because so much history behind it.

History of the 1963 Airforce chronograph

The 1963 Airforce chronograph is historically important because it was the first chronograph built in China that was issued to air force personnel in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force.

There are two parts to this story of this watch, one set in Switzerland and one set in China.

In 1960s Switzerland there were three competing chronograph movement manufacturers: Lemania, Valjoux and Venus. Venus made the popular Calibre 175 column (or pillar) wheel chronograph movement that was used in several watches in the 1940s and 50s.

Competition in this space was fierce and Venus needed money to develop newer movements so they first tried to sell their existing Cal.175 machinery and designs to the Soviet Union. The Soviets, however, already had the Strela chronograph movement (a copy of Venus’ Cal.150) which meant they weren’t interested. But the Chinese were.

In the 1960s the Chinese were importing all their chronographs from Switzerland and the Soviet Union. They wanted to remove this dependency so the Ministry of Light Industry kicked-off several projects to develop Chinese-made clocks and watches. 304 was the code given to the project that would develop, test, and source a Chinese-built chronograph wristwatch for air force personnel. (100-series projects were for the navy, 200 for the army, 300 for the air force.)

In 1961 Project 304 assigned the task of developing and producing this air force chronograph to the Tianjin Watch Factory. This was partly because Tianjin had already created a popular watch movement of their own but also because Tianjin (the city) is physically closer to Beijing than, say, Shanghai (and, therefore, the Shanghai Watch Factory).

Tianjin bought the Cal.175 machinery and designs from Venus and then upgraded the original 17-jewel movement to their own 19-jewel ST19 movement. They completed their second round of prototypes in 1963 and, for whatever reason, this is the year that gets added to the watch’s name when collectors outside of China refer to it. Inside of China this watch is named after the project code and is called the ‘304 Airforce chronograph’.

By 1965 these watches had met all the requirements and passed all the Ministry’s tests so an order was placed. In 1966 Tianjin delivered 1,400 of these watches to the air force.

Jump forward to 1990 and the Tianjin Watch Factory was promoted to a national level enterprise. This was followed soon after by the creation of the Tianjin Seagull Corporation in 1992.

(‘Sea-Gull’ was the brand name given to the export version of the ‘DongFeng’, ie ‘East Wind’, watch that Tianjin made in 1965 and started exporting in 1973. This ran on the 100% Chinese designed and manufactured Calibre ST5 movement and was the first watch ever to be exported from China. So it made sense to add the most internationally well-known brand to the name of the new company.)

In 2003 Seagull resurrected Project 304’s movements and, by 2005, had reissued the first batch of commemorative aviation watches. The watch version I have is one of the newest models that runs on the further-upgraded, 21-jewel ST1901 movement and has a sapphire crystal.

Final thoughts

I’ve only had this watch for a couple of days (we celebrated my birthday on the weekend before the actual day) but I’ve worn it pretty much non-stop since then and I can safely say that I love it!

All my other watches have black dials so I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about a watch with a lighter dial. Fortunately, this watch is gorgeous and I think it looks nice on me. The awesome RIOS 1931 Bright Brown leather strap that came bundled with it from Poljot24.de adds a lot to its overall aesthetic, too.

Sure the watch doesn’t have a day-date complication or any lume anywhere (which makes it more like a dress watch, really). But the fact that I can instantly start the chronograph with a push of a single button more than makes up for anything that’s ‘missing’ from a near-authentic reissue of a 1960s watch.

I’m also loving wearing smaller watches for a change. I still love my 47mm dive watch, and have worn huge Casio G-Shocks and ProTreks for much of my life, but smaller watches work surprisingly well on my 7¾-inch wrist. I think my next watch will be a vintage watch from the 60s or 70s so this small-watch trend is probably going to continue for a while!

Let me end then by saying a HUGE thank-you to Nadia and all the awesome friends who contributed to this watch! Mechanical watches are very much a luxury item for me and it’s only (a) this year and (b) with your help that I can actually afford to own any of them. So thank you for indulging me and for not looking at me too side-eyed every time you hear I’ve bought yet another watch :)

Further reading

If you’re interested in buying this watch or want to find out (much) more about it – particularly its history and the history of its movement – here’s where you should go: