Today here in Sweden we have the general election, parlament, county and municipal. So me and my wifw we drwssed up and wenr to cast our votes. I wore my Casio UTP-1302PD-2A1VEF since it is a gift from my wife. I thought that it suited the occasion.

This one has been calling to me lately, the Casio Marlin is hard to resist.

A little follow-up on my Tiger’s Eye Titan. When it arrived, I was disappointed that my particular stone didn’t have as much contrast and variation as I’d hoped for. Since natural stone dials vary so much, I reached out to Erebus to see what options I had. I want to give Erebus—and John in particular—a lot of credit for how they handled it. They checked the remaining Tiger’s Eye inventory and actually took individual videos of the three watches they still had, moving each one under the light so I could see the character of the stones before deciding whether to exchange mine. They also offered an exchange or a return/refund and were completely straightforward about the costs involved. After looking closely at all three alternatives, I just didn’t see enough of a difference from mine to justify shipping this one back to Australia, paying the exchange costs, and essentially rolling the natural-stone dice again. Erebus agreed that none of the remaining dials really had the stronger contrast and character I was looking for. One thing that got somewhat lost in my disappointment with the stone: the Titan itself is a monster—in a very good way. This is a seriously substantial watch. It has real presence on the wrist, the build feels appropriately beefy for what the Titan is supposed to be, and the whole thing feels extremely solid. And I have to specifically call out the bracelet. I'm a pretty committed strap guy, so the fact that I'm looking at this bracelet and thinking it might actually stay in regular rotation is saying something. It suits the watch extremely well and contributes to that substantial, purpose-built feel rather than just being something I'm immediately itching to replace. That being said, I am still me—I already have four BluShark straps and three Etsy customs ordered for it. 😂 So the bracelet is going to have some competition. Ultimately, I decided to keep mine, unwrap it, size the bracelet, and actually start wearing the damn thing. The dial still isn’t the Tiger’s Eye specimen I would have picked if I’d been choosing from a tray of stones in person. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But it does have some nice banding and movement when the light catches it, and maybe actually wearing it instead of scrutinizing it under every possible light source will let me appreciate it for what it is.