It was 1994, I had gone from almost 93kg to 63kg in 2 years.
We have 2 beautiful kids. I was crazy about high end audio.
Bought my first of only 2 dream cars, a spanking new Mercedes 300SL at a punishing price then of $430,000 sgd and was working nights and days 6 of 7 a week.
Learning to use the inline skates earlier in 1989 had brought on the realisation of one good addiction...fitness.
Physical fitness.
Nights, 20 years of nights having 2 big bottles of beer and over eating after work...brought on misery.
Strict daily, 7 days, a week of 3.3 km of up and down hill running allowed me to read 50 books a year.
Audio books.
Thru first casettes and later CDs.
SONY Walkmans they were called, and I had rainproof ones.
My wife, Dolly and I would skate 20km up and 20 down the Eastcoast along the beaches with wine/beer on a back pack.
We drove there on every Friday morning...and skated till 11am or so.
It was defining...mentally I shed off the hobby of high end audio!
Sold off a quater million bucks of equipment for half.
And later, also the Mercedes.
Skating is TOTALLY absorbing.
That sort of ended in 1997.
A more relaxed hoby that was always in the back ground took over.
I gained a belly, watched TV, bought serials of good quality writing/scripts/acting and so on...watched them way way before any would arrive on the shores of Singapore, many did not.
The day of the 22 chapter season tv series were just about being born...and I was right there.
So was the ever evolving internet.
Netscape had replaced compuserve.
Timezone and the purists were also being born.
The collecting of fine time keeping machines was just about to burst onto the world...and I had been more than ready...I had already been keeping these things since 1973 or so.
I had remodeled our 4 storey place a little bit to let in more light to see the dense tropical rainforests that surrounded our home.
Here, right next to where I spent time reading Maus and Barefoot Gen...was my recliner..an old Le Corbusier piece.
I was NEVER even aware that soon I was about to recieve a call from TheHourGlass and that a man called Max Busser wanted to meet me.
Before that, back in 1993-6, I had met and got to know the late Gunther Blumlein. He passed on back in 2002 or so...a great man.
I would later meet a few really great industrialists...but I was not aware at all that (1) I was about to be more wealthy and (2) the watchmaking world would burst onto the scene with advertising frenzy.
From only the consistent, but not common Rolex advert on the back page....to watch adverts and magazines dedicated to watches. Watch adverts flooded all magazines...from medical, car to boats.
Googled my own name "Bernard Cheong" and I was not totally surprised.
My own world was about to change.
That's me in 2002. Ten years after the top picture on this post above in 1992.
Belly still OK.
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