It seems as though the only time I have been blogging as of late was to inform all of my readers [both of you...I know I know, old joke] of these major life changes that have nothing to do with watches, watchmaking, or the watch industry. Honestly, who cares about that? Well my lack of writing lately has been because of yet another major life change. You see, my wife is a global health practitioner by trade and we tend to move a lot due to her employment opportunities. Most recently we found ourselves moving to Zambia for about a two year period. This is the most stable situation we have been in in about 2 years.After the initial shock of actually packing, storing, and picking up and moving to Africa, then the time it took to get acclimated to my vastly different surroundings; I really wanted to start writing again. I have been doing my best to keep up with the industry and what's going down, but we only recently got fair Internet service in our home. It's not like I can go to the corner mart and pick up the most recent issues of 'Watch Time' and 'International Watch' magazines [and the Patek Philippe ads on the back of 'The Economist' don't really keep me up to date].
I really wanted to include my current place of residence in my blog in some way, and I've been struggling with how to do that without changing its core subject matter. I still want to give opinion and news the best I can, with an occasional African bent to it.
Recently on Twitter I mentioned a watch shop that I found in Kitwe, about 40 miles away, where there are three generations of Zambian watchmakers called "Swizam". The shop is the ONLY brick and mortar shop I've found in the Copperbelt Province. I will be traveling to Kitwe early next week and decided that I will touch base with owners and see if they wouldn't mind a short interview and a write on The Escapement. I thought this would be a nice way to re-kick off [AGAIN] the blog. On my first visit to Swizam to inquire where I could order tools and supplies from I was welcomed into the Zambian watchmaking community very quickly. Something tells me that they will be more than happy to chat with me for a few minutes and have their picture taken for a little free publicity.
Here's hoping you will continue join me in the coming months as I do my best to keep this as entertaining as possible.
As always comments, and questions are always welcome.
