You need to know time, thus you need a watch - don't you?

by Lawrence Stephen

When you spend most of your life in a country so different to the USA and make your first trip ever to New York you need to make some adjustments.

Watching a movie tonight focused on the famous 5th Avenue New York I recall my only visit to that city and me wandering into a store with a familiar name, Tiffany's. Fascinating displays of exotic jewelry.

Looking at one attractive sparkling item I casually asked the shop assistant how much it would cost me. $20,000! I quickly wandered out of that store and looked instead for a place which might be able to replace the dead battery in my PNG purchased wrist watch. After a patient wait in a short queue in a little store I presented my dead watch asking for a replacement battery.

The store keeper looked at the watch and looked with some amusement at me. "Sir, the battery, if I had one, would cost much more than the watch. Maybe it's time to buy a new watch".

I withdraw from the amused queue and blushed my way back onto one of the most expensive streets in the world realizing that our concept of a wrist watch as a simple time keeping device is very different to that of a city which sees as normal such items as male jewellery with prices in excess of the annual salaries of most PNG people.

It was a good lesson and taught me to look more closely at the watches of our PNG government officials who far too frequently appear to be wearing jewelry and displaying assets costing far in excess of their official annual salaries.

One should not judge them by their jewlery. Just be alert to ostentatious displays of wealth.