Wanna buy a new watch?

I’m sure when many of us watched the film Blood Diamond we would have considered what a different world we might be living in if women, mostly western women, were not so enamoured with the brightly sparkling gem.

Blood Diamond featured the Sierra Leone civil war of 1991- 2002 and depicted a country torn apart by the ferocity of diamond trading.

This weeks’ Time magazine has a report on a different gem, jade, which is causing the same sort of guerrilla warfare in Myanmar. “While conflict diamonds have yielded Hollywood scripts and rap lyrics, jade has largely escaped international scrutiny,” reported Time.

Global Witness, an international watchdog that monitors natural-resource exploitation, estimates that Myanmar’s jade trade was worth $31 billion in 2014.

The insatiable desire for diamonds and now jade and to a similar extent ivory, causing the deplorable slaughter of elephants, is arguably a sad reflection on modern society.

I’m going to take a giant leap for mankind here, but the same Time magazine has a cover that opens out to a two page spread advertising Rolex watches.

One upon a time my wife and I were on a bus tour of Switzerland and the tour director asked if we wanted to buy a Rolex watch as we were in the same region as the factory. I must admit I was tempted, but the number of euros required meant we would have to cash in our airline tickets and hitch-hike home.

I was surprised however at the number of fellow passengers who took up the offer.

Now a year or so ago one of my young grandsons suggested that I should buy a new watch from his favourite website, AliExpress. I had never heard of AliExpress and anyway I’m a bit antithetical buying on the net. Nevertheless he fired up my IPad and showed me a number of attractive watches for sale from the remarkable China-based store.

One of these timepieces particularly took my eye. I was enticed by a special feature that allowed you to light up the screen. This meant if you woke up in the middle of the night unsure of the time a mere touch of a button illuminated the vital information.

The cost of the watch was hardly prohibitive $US11.40 and AliExpress proudly announced that delivery to NZ was free at that time.

When the courier came up the drive and waited patiently while I signed for the package it occurred to me that I had probably used up the $11.40 for his time alone.

I already had a perfectly good Seiko watch, but decided to wear the flash looking new model until such time as the rubber band that must surely be powering the movement finally unwound. Lots of admiring glances and comments from people and a year on the watch still keeps perfect time and the screen light still works. I have not yet had to replace the battery.

The gold Seiko sits sadly in my top drawer, abandoned.

Diamonds, jade, ivory and Rolex.

Perhaps we all need to lower our sights.

“People recognise themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.” - Herbert Marcuse