A Personal Reflection on 

TEMPUS/IGOTT

August 27-29, Singapore

by Roger Tsai
© September 2004
  

Well I think it is safe to say that TEMPUS in conjunction with the first annual IGOTT is THE most highly anticipated watch event for many watch enthusiasts and Purists (myself  included) worldwide this year. Ever since the first announcement of this particular event back in early May, I was in the process of  planning my first trip to Singapore. After three months of waiting and numerous e-mails from Curtis Thomson, I was set to arrive Singapore on August 25th. Little did I know that life is full of surprises! There was a big typhoon approaching Taiwan the eve of August 24th, and many international flights that evening were delayed. I figured that since my flight left the next morning I decided to give it a try, but as soon as I got to the airport I learned that my flight to Singapore was already delayed for at least three hours. I would rather not to give too much details about what happened afterwards, but to make the long story short  myself and my mother ended up spending more than 12 hours at the airport before we finally arrived in Singapore around 11pm that night! Anyway, I was very glad and relieved by the time we got to Singapore and as we were about to go through immigration, we saw the following banner hanging along with all the welcomes in different languages: TEMPUS is here!

After a nice ride from the airport on a Mercedes Taxi, we arrived at Raffles The Plaza, one of the two designated hotels for TEMPUS. The hotel itself is linked with another hotel and there's a shopping mall underneath, across the road one sees the original Raffles Hotel. We stayed on the highest floor of the hotel's newly renovated south tower. Here are two scans of what the room looked like: 

The next day (Aug. 26th) I spent time with my mother visiting her friend who has been living in Singapore for more than 20 years. In the afternoon we went strolling the world-famous shopping heaven Orchid Road. While my mother was fascinated by all sorts of things inside each store, I was totally blown away by the number of watch stores I have seen!! The three main retailers (Cortina, Sincere, and The Hour Glass)  are all over the place with many others. I finally got the feeling why many watch nuts called Singapore a paradise for watch lovers. 

That evening I had my first TEMPUS event, Panemania- Perspective on the Allure of Panerai Watches. I got the chance to meet Thomas and several other Singapore-based Purists for the first time and we were given time to handle new Panerai pieces from this year's SIHH. Sorry I didn't have any photos for this event but I'm sure you'll see some from other people who attended the event that evening posted soon. 

August 27th- Day 1 

I started my first day at TEMPUS by having breakfast with many Purists who came to Singapore from all over the world. It was really interesting to connect each face with the screen names I got very familiar with by browsing the forums day after day. Afterwards a brief orientation was conducted by Thomas and Curtis and I was on my way to various seminars. The first one I went was "Watching Collecting for Novices" by our very own Dr. Bernard Cheong. Here is a scan of Bernard explaining why a nice watch (an IWC in this case) holds up its value overtime by comparison with a BMW 3 series (the red line representing the value of the BMW, the blue line for the IWC). A job well done Bernard!

After lunch myself and my mother devoted the entire afternoon exploring TEMPUS. The registration station looked like this: 

The big display showing all the brands that took part in TEMPUS, a total of more than 30!

Right in front of the entrance we saw the commemorative editions commissioned by The Hour Glass to celebrate its 25th anniversary (Thanks to Jaw for all the preview photos!). 

Bregeut CLASSIQUE 5353, limited edition of 25 pieces in rose gold.

Cartier Tortue watch from the Collection Privee Cartier Paris series. Limited edition of 13 pieces in white gold and 12 pieces in rose gold. 

Jaeger-LeCoultre special edition Master Eight Days watch. Limited edition of 88 pieces in steel and 28 pieces in rose gold. 

Patek Philippe special edition World Time watch. Limited edition of 25 pieces in Platinum. 

Ulysse Nardin special edition GMT±Dual Time watch. Limited edition of 50 pieces in steel.

A video featuring the movement of the Tourbillon cage of Breguet CLASSIQUE 5353 (the file is about 5.5 mb):

Once inside, the only word I can use to describe the TEMPUS exhibition is "speechless". The setting was almost identical to the Swiss watch fairs in Basel and Geneva, but with the advantage that one can actually go into each booth and handle all the new timepieces! This is the ultimate "watch playground" for WIS!

On that afternoon I had the pleasure of talking with Mr. Rolf Schnyder, UN's President. Since my last UN write-up included the world premiere of the new Blue Wave watch, he advised me to take another world premiere photo of the following timepiece: a GMT perpetual in a Sonata case, limited edition of 500 in Platinum. Later a fellow Purist Alwyn Powell decided to include this No. 008 into his collection and has been wearing it for the next three days. Congrats Alwyn!

I also saw the JLC Gyrotourbillon I for the first time inside the JLC booth and all I saw say was "wow". Here's a video featuring the movement of the JLC Gyrotourbillon I Tourbillon cage (the file is about 3.9mb): 

In the evening we were invited to a dinner co-hosted by Breguet and The Hour Glass. The venue was on the 69th floor where one gets a great view of Singapore at night: 

Chatting with fellow Purist Steve Ang who's also based in St. Louis (Southern Illinois to be exact). 

Appreciating Breguet's new collection and the wonderful music (when was the last time you saw such a beautiful Saxophone player?)  

The dinner was wonderfully executed (any photos, MTF?) and we got the chance to tried on all the new Breguet timepieces including several Tourbillons. Sorry about the poor light condition of the following photo but you get a rough idea what it was like. As usual, Thomas (the one wearing the black strap around his neck) was talking about watches with fellow Purists for the entire evening. 

The Breguet dinner ended my first day at TEMPUS and there are more surprises ahead!

Click here to read about my second day at TEMPUS