Today the football team of the Netherlands will have their first match against Denmark. Normally I am not much into football. I always enjoyed individual sports above team sports. My girlfriend works irregular shifts, so making appointments is pretty difficult. When there is time I get my bike and ride around the islands.
If I watch team sports, I like watching volleyball. When there is national importance I like to watch the orange football and the orange hockey teams. Football is probably by far the most popular sport in the Netherlands. Every Sunday evening many families eat with their dinner on the couch watching national and international football.
The team of the Netherlands plays in orange (in Dutch: oranje) shirts and is called “Oranje”. When Oranje plays, a lot of people wear orange clothing. A few weeks ago people began to decorate their houses orange.
The first match of Orange is already big news in The Netherlands. Since the match begins at 13:30 half the country is trying to get a day off or try to watch the game at work. Doctors and dentists have mailed their patients to ask if they are sure coming to their appointments or reschedule their appointment if they forgot about the game. Although I think it’s all a little exaggerated, it is also interesting to see our nation show their chauvinism, while under normal circumstances chauvinism is not done.
A few days I wore an orange T-Shirt of “The Big Orange Nation”. I got a lot of attention from people, saying it was a great shirt. “So you are supporting Oranje too?”. “No, I got this shirt from a friend, The Big Orange Nation is an American Football team from Tennessee!”. I just wanted a nice shirt to match my orange Gulfman.
I think I am going to wear my nice orange T-Shirt with the text “Belgium” printed on it. Just to poke the orange crowd a bit. A good watch to accompany me is this orange DW-003H-4T.
This model of the Tough Label series is a Clubber Version of July 1997. The style is inspired by the American Club Scene. The Tough Label series are models inspired by and aimed at the music and club scene. This model actually has a hidden function, which is cool for clubbing. If you press the top right button, the upper display, that shows the day converts into a spectrum analyzer. Well, actually it isn’t really a spectrum analyzer, but it shows a spectrum cycle of one second. It looks pretty cool though.
This model was released worldwide. In Germany it was named “Stage Tomato”, I think it is somehow a good name, but on the other hand, aren’t tomatoes not red? I have actually 4 or 5 of these Stage Tomatoes. They were pretty easy to find 7 to 8 years ago and they went cheap from owner to owner. I think I paid about €50 for a new model in box and maybe €25.- for a used one.
The display of this model can show the digits in two colors. If the light falls in from an angle, the digits are green, while the digits are amber when the light falls straight on the display.
The label on the strap is even more special. Under a normal angle the display seems black, but when light strikes over the label under different angles all colors of the rainbow are shown. It looks very much like a hologram.
The strap is an Velcro-elastic cloth type. These elastic cloth are pretty thick. Although these straps look thick and make the watch looks heavy and bulky, this strap wears very comfortable actually and is not heavy at all.
The watch is packed with functions. It has a Telememo function, Dual Time, a 24 hour Stopwatch, a 24 hour Countdown timer and a Alarm Function with Hourly Chime on board. Don’t expect too much from the Dual Time function. Only the seconds are synced with the internal time, you have to program the hours, minutes, date and year in Dual Time mode. A bit strange I think. So you could have the current time on June 15 2010, while you can have Dual Time on 24 December 1998.
This DW-003H has a negative display. The display on this model is not always good readable. Under angles and in dim light situations, this display is harder to read than a regular display. If you like the look of a negative display on a new G-Shock model, you should not worry. Casio has improved the negative displays very much over the years and the readability of current negative displays are almost as good as the normal displays.
If you can’t read the display properly, you can always use the EL backlight. On this model the EL backlight is blue. If you have turned on the Flash function (standard it’s on, a kind of star like icon appears on the display), the EL will also light up when an alarm sound is produced. Although an icon for Auto-Illumination is present in the display, I can't find the procedure to turn it on in the manual and on the watch. I think the disigners first wanted to implement this feature in the watch, but then left it out.
Well, I think I have written enough, so I am going down to the school cantina. Let’s see how our students and colleagues look with their orange entourage while watching the game on a big screen. Go! Orange, Go!
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