I had this Japanese made analogue/digital watch for about 10 months now – a black Wake-V analogue watch. Its vibration is powerful enough to wake me up whatever state I’m in. It does tell the time and has a backlight. That’s about it.

As you can see below, it looks like a cheap $10 watch from the 1970s and materials feels cheap too:

Water proofing? None whatsoever, even sweat will upset it – and that killed my watch after numerous showers, handwashes and, er… sweaty moments. It’s a shame as this is the one functional aspect where it really need sorting out to become a usable work-watch. Don’t believe its splashproof claims and if you go to somewhere like Cambodia, the humidity will kill it.

So qu’elle surprise when it stopped working! Time to order another vibrating watch – if you need one, there’s plenty on offer at Conevans.co.uk – see http://www.deafequipment.co.uk/store/productSearch.do?query=watch

However, the styling of most of the watches and features are very limited – most are variation on a theme – blue straps instead of black, for instance. Not many seems to be waterproof – an absolute must for my needs. I don’t care it if can tell me the temperature, but if it’s not waterproof, it won’t last.

I dug deeper and see what else is available – there is a Timex one that looks nice to me, more suited to my natural taste and looks “manly”. Pink watches just doesn’t suit me.

Expedition Watch with Vibrating Alarm
Price: US $70.00
Product Code: T417319J

Now, try and find the same watch on timex.co.uk – not there! Tried ordering it on timex.com, but it won’t ship outside the USA.

Casio have a vibrating watch in its G-SHOCK range, great – I’ll go for that. However, I changed my mind when I read this review – the vibration is barely noticeable and one would have to be incredibly light sleeper to be woken up by it.

I understand from my googling skills, that it got superseded by the Casio G-Shock GL-7500HD in 2006, but there are scant information on its ability to wake up the dead.

It seems www.watchreport.com is a good resource, so I will have to investigate further to see if I can find a decent vibrating watch that can wake me up in the morning, can cope with baths and showers and high humidity, while not looking like a cheap £9 Timex watch or costing more than £400 like this Tissot High-T MSN Direct SPOT Watch.

Tina found a really funky one according to her blog article – but it’s only a designer’s drawing, and not made into reality – even its features like a fire alarm notification would be very useful.

Deja vu?

No, I’m having more communication-related problems with my bank again even though I switched banks. To be fair, it is a non-standard account with a small

team responsible for it. However, I’d have thought by having a small team responsible for my account type, I’d have more luck with them knowing me and be prepared to be more flexible.

Oh boy, how wrong I was! I needed to do something regarding the account, and this was back in early July this year. To date, it’s not resolved despite going into three different branches in London and a branch up near my hometown. Argh!

I will post more once the issue has been rectified cos it’s a bit sensitive at the moment.

As a deaf person, it is difficult to imagine a more challenging job that could be realistically be undertaken than mine.

I work with a crew of around 150-250 people. The vast majority speaks English as a second language, and loaded with their own strong mother tongue accent. The crew consists of people from Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, Niger, Turkey, Russa, Kazashstan (sp), Croatia, Greece, Italy, Germany, France, USA, Canada, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

It is really is difficult to understand someone who is talking in English as a second language, I’m usually hopeless and often resign to writing it when I’m at home for the occasional time I do meet someone like this. However, out here, it is on a daily basic and have no choice but to really concentrate.

My technique is to get them to repeat about three times, and remember that their pronounciation of the vowels is greatly exaggerated and changed. “Donk ga to bithraam – ah dirtee!”. I’m sure there’s a British accent somewhere that resembles this. The word “salary” gets me stumped every time – “saal – aal – reeh” when pronounced by north Africans. After a while, it gets easier as my ears become accustomed to funny pronounciations.

The worst people to listen to, for me as someone from the north of England are those from western Australia, specifically Perth, and the French from France. The Russians and eastern Europeans comes a close third.

The biggest surprise to me is understanding Texans remarkably well. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing to hear someone from the Lone Star state.

As the time comes nearer for me to go back to work after a 7-week hiatus, I’ve been given an itinerary detailing my flights.

I then contacted the airline… Air France …only to be told that all the reference and ticket numbers and my names are not on their system. Arrgh France advised me to contact their ticket handling agents – a third party company also used by British Arseways.

Deja vu time.

Sure enough, Swissport doesn’t have anything on me, none of the reference numbers I gave, or the itinerary I mentioned showed up any reservations.

Oh boy. Funtimes in the next few days as I prepare to fly on Monday.