ENG 301 Project 3

The speaker, Mihaly Pasku, discusses his passion for watches and the different aspects of the watch world. He talks about how he got into watches and the resources he used to learn more about them, such as Reddit and YouTube. He also mentions the watch community and trade shows where people can buy and sell watches. Pasku explains the different types of watches, including mechanical, automatic, and quartz movements, as well as the various styles of watches like dive, pilot, and dress watches. He shares his personal collection of watches and gives advice to those interested in buying watches, emphasizing the importance of research and finding what suits individual preferences. Overall, Pasku encourages others to explore the world of watches and enjoy collecting them. Hello everyone, my name is Mihaly Pasku, I'm a senior at the University of Southern Indiana. This podcast about watches is for a final in my English 301 class, and I'll just be talking about watches, everything watches. I'll be discussing why I got into watches, the whole watch world as a whole, the communication of the watch world, the different types of watches, my watches, and some advice for you if you're going to buy watches. Now watches, I believe, are a bit of a dying breed. Everyone has gone electric on their wrist. You rarely see anyone with an actual, proper, old-school watch anymore, and it saddens me because I really like watches. I grew up wearing watches, granted not the kinds I have now, which are a little bit more expensive, but I do miss it. I wish I would see more watches in the real world, but hey, you can't have everything. Just a quick introduction on how I got into the watch world, sort of seriously how I came into the rabbit hole. I used to wear them all the time growing up, just whatever, watch habit, the time, blah, blah, blah. But then as I got into college, I realized that it's such a nice world to go into, and I never knew that. There's just so many different types of brands, people, all this jazz, and I really kind of fell in love with it. The start of it was because I had a wedding to go to, well, I do have a wedding to go to in the fall, my cousin's wedding, and I wanted to, for the first time in my life, be proper, dress up, wear a nice tux or a suit or something, and I thought, I need a good watch to go with this. And I didn't know where to get a watch, so I did what any rational person would do, and I went to Reddit. I searched around for some subreddits about watches, and I found one that helped me a lot. It's called r slash pride and pinion, and this Reddit, subreddit, helped me kind of get the gist of watches, what they are, what they look like, what I should get for this. Basically, took suggestions from people, and then I found their YouTube channel, who's run by this one guy, Nico Leonard, who is very passionate about watches, who I've become addicted to watching. But long story short, I have that watch with me now that I'm going to plan on wearing in the fall to that wedding, and yeah, so the watch world itself, it's very big. It's basically, everybody just has to know where to look. There's definitely some watch shops to buy watches here in Evansville and downtown Evansville too, and the whole thing is kind of like a car show. People show up, talk watches, trade, compliment each other about their nice watches, all this jazz. And basically, it can be whittled down to, these also trade shows can be whittled down to if their watches are new, used for a year, if they have the box and papers, if they don't have the box and papers, then the watches will usually be sold for a little bit less than what they would be cost if they sold them with the box and the papers that it came when it was new. And yeah, this communication, both online on Reddit and in person at these watch conventions are mostly done online. There's several different forums outside of Reddit and also prestigious WhatsApp groups about watches, trading, specifically that you can get invited to if you, well, are in the world of watches and you're constantly buying or selling them. But yeah, it's just like any other thing, any other hobby, buying and selling. It's just there and it's really nice and I think more people should check it out. Now I'm going to switch gears a little bit and talk about the different types of watches that you get. There's quite a few proper kinds of watches that you get. There's about three, there's called one, well, outside of electric, like Apple watches and your garments and all this stuff outside of that, proper watches is what I'll be referring to. There are about three. They go mechanical, automatic and quartz movements. Now mechanical movements is little, quite literal mechanical springs and balance wheels and all the little bits and bobs in a watch that makes the hands run, makes them move. And what makes them a mechanical type movement is that you actually have to wind it. There's a little crown on the side of a watch that you have to wind to sort of charge it to build a battery and for you to use it. Now an automatic watch is the same exact thing except that it has a little sort of half wheel at the very back that moves when you have it on your wrist and moving your wrist and moves this wheel and it kind of has like a dynamo so it winds itself as you're wearing it so you don't actually have to move the crown with that. The other type of movement is a quartz movement which is just essentially a battery current in the watch that connects to an actual piece of quartz which in that quartz in turn with the battery creates some vibration. That vibration kind of goes to a dynamo in a sense, not exactly, and that's what winds that. Now of course there's different reasons to have different movements. I myself prefer mechanical because I just find it the best and most fascinating and easiest to use, but with the quartz it'll last you 20 or 30 years and depending on how well you take care of your mechanical, your automatic and your quartz, it varies. It's just personal preference. Now the different styles of watches, it's pretty straightforward. You got some of your casual wear, your dress wear, and then you have some of the more specialty stuff like dive watches, pilot watches, chronographs, GMTs which are Greenwich meantime watches and field and military type watches. Now dive watches are just what you expect, watches that are designed for diving in water. They are water resistant and the sort of the, I'm trying to think how to say, the bezel of the watches which is basically the outer ring around it moves so you can track time while you're underwater which is what gives it a dive movement. Pilot watch, just make sure that it's standard to G's. Chronograph, it basically has a stopwatch inside the watch face that helps you time race cars. GMT, Greenwich meantime watches is what I have. One of them, it has a 24 hour, it has an extra hand which is a 24 hour clock that helps you track a different time zone and with a rotating bezel with numbers on the outside of the watch you can spin that and track a third time zone which I find really helpful. And then you have just your dress watches, your casual stuff, the kinds of watches that you would wear to events, to weddings and all this, those are actually more likely to find quartz movements in dress watches and automatic in any type of watch. The last kind of watch that I'll be covering is sort of field and military daily wear kind of rugged, tough build watches which I have a couple of those. Now the watches I actually have, my first one that I bought for the weddings, the first sort of proper watch I bought is a Tissot Les Ancles and it's an automatic and the back of it has a bit of glass on it so you can actually see the movement move without having to take it apart. It's on a steel bracelet, it's all silver with a white face on it, Roman numerals and it has the, sorry, the date on it which I find really helpful. It's really pretty, I really like it and the mechanics on the bracelet part is just phenomenal I think. My second watches, well my second and my third watch are both field watches. One of them has a day and a date function which I really, really wanted because I have a terrible memory so I forget what day it is. It's on a fabric strap, the other one's on a leather strap, they're different colors, both of their dials are dark colors so I can see the numbers easily and I just love them that they're daily wear that I can just slap on and do whatever I want. And the last watch I bought, I wanted a GMT, a Greenwich Mean Time watch so that I can keep track of the different times and when I'm traveling because I'll be traveling to this wedding so I thought I'll buy one more watch this year and it'll be this one and I really like it, it's a Zodiac Super Seawolf GMT, reference number Z09405. And the other two are Steakos, the field watches and I really like this Zodiac because it's just super simple and it's really clean and I can wear this every single day. Now these watches are very pretty, if you have any idea of what you want to buy, if you want to buy watches I would highly recommend doing a lot of research, I would recommend going to forums, different YouTube videos, talking to people, getting a feel and doing a lot of research because there's a lot, a lot of watches that you can find that you can look for and it's really hard to feel like you get all your bases covered when looking for a watch so I say take it slow, know what you want and just have fun with it because it's a very, very big world in the world of watches and I think a lot of people will really like it if they started collecting.