My 'grail' watch!

So much of me talking about Audemars Piguet and Hublot of late; though the Royal Oak Offshore and Big Bang Unico with their respective in-house chronograph movements are indeed enticing, for family and friends who really knows me knows that my 'grail' watch is actually the IWC Big Pilot Perpetual Calendar.

Being a gear head and a watch enthusiast, I am forever intrigued by the three 'grand' complications in mechanical watch making; the tourbillon, the minute repeater and the perpetual calendar. Not only does the BPPC displays the complex gregorian calendar in full glory and synchrony, which itself is extremely rare in the horology world, it is the only one that comes as self winding with 7-days of power reserve. It is a mechanical tour de force, packed with inventions by legendary technologist, Albert Pellaton (for it's highly efficient winding system) and Kurt Klaus (for it's synchronized perpetual calendar). All hundreds of its components are housed within a WW2 B-Uhr inspired 46mm case that fits my fat wrist to a T.

Prohibiting price aside, IWC only makes metal (precious or otherwise) versions of it in very limited editions. So difficult it is to find a brand new one of them, my wife had to resort to custom making a lookalike cake of it for my 40th birthday.

Big Pilot Perpetual Calendar cake from my wife

Me pretending to 'adjust' the watch on my wrist

I've tried on the 'regular' ceramic version of it, but being entirely in matt black and at 48mm, the proportion and size of it just doesn't make the cut like the 'metal' versions!

For more than 2 years of active searching in vane, I thought I'll never ever find one. Never in my wildest dream would I thought I could chance upon an unworn collector's piece 2 weeks ago! A one out of 70 piece, 'Middle East' edition in steel with blue accents. From the pictures below, you can tell the rest is history, I got my grail watch, finally...

IWC Big Pilot Perpetual Calendar
1 out of 70, 'Middle East' edition

Ref: 5026-20

On my wrist

Whenever faced with difficult choices in life, I always say we can't have the cake and eat it. But from now on, I might just say, "If you're lucky, you can eat the cake first and have it, later"

As my first blog entry of 2016, I'll like to wish everyone a happy new year, and may all your hearts' desire come true.

Day/Date/Month/Year/Moonphase transition
from 31st Dec 2015 to 1st Jan 2016