GRR

I fucking hate shopping for watches. Why?

I can't read clockwise timepieces. And by that I mean I have to stare at the clock face and count the segments of five to be able to work out the time - because it Does Not Compute.

Some years ago, my little sister bought me an anti-clockwise watch. I could read it the second I laid eyes on it. Since then, I've only ever bought a 'backwards' 'reverse' watch. I have the same clock on my wall in my front room at home.

Trouble: every few years, my watch corrodes (I like metal ones and I live in HK, so Death By Humidity is more or less a countdown) or becomes too scratched or, in the case of the last one, broken. And then the hunt for another begins.

This time, to spare myself the ridicule of people going 'oh how cute - a funny, novelty watch!' in the comments on websites, or calling something a 'reverse' watch when they really mean a watch with some manufacturing process that has no bearing on the display, I'm looking at digital watches.

And therein lies the fucking rub. Because, for some reason, the 'in' thing just now seems to be making speedometer-like dials with LEDs. This would be fab, except the dial starts bottom left and runs over to the right. This is backwards. It should be bottom right to left. And before you tell me it's not backwards, check your perspective.

For a left-handed person living in a world not made for them, but against them, I seek out tools made for me. My pens in my drawer, my rulers, notebooks, the way I staple sheets of paper, the way I use plastic folders to slide papers into, the direction of my ticks as I mark - I do it because it's the natural way for me. Other people accuse me of 'being difficult', as if they're not forcing ME to do things in an unnatural way.

It's ignorance, plain and simple. But it's excusable - they're not used to it, they've never come across it before, they weren't to know.

THE FIRST TIME.

When people continually move things around my desk on my days where I'm elsewhere, I get annoyed. Do I go to their desks and change everything around so it's not in a natural position to use? Do you see me lecturing them on how their pens are all 'broken' and they should get new ones?

I digress. Watches. And how I can't find one that just simply shows the time - the right way round. Watches without numbers are ideal; I'm not good with numbers, so pictures\representations are excellent. But again, they're all going the wrong way round the face. The watch I really want uses LED shapes to represent hours and minutes. But they start at the top, for 12, and then continue to the right and down. Which for me does not make sense, and so the concept of flash-reading, or pattern recognition, to realise the number is destroyed.

I suppose I'll keep looking. I eventually found one last time, but the company no longer makes those. Yep, you've guessed it - not enough 'demand'.