I’m about to leave on my first ever backpack trip and my boss has decided to give me a leaving present; a watch. It’s not just any old watch though, it’s a real beauty actually.

Now remember, this is the early 1990’s, years before people had mobile phones, email addresses or even used the internet. But this watch is seriously advanced for it’s time. It has a touch sensitive screen with world time zones, a calculator, stopwatch, multiple alarms, a calendar and can even store notes and telephone numbers. Incredible.

It was actually pretty cool when travelling to be able to change the world time zone as I travelled east from the UK all the way to Indonesia, but also being able to use the calculator to convert local currencies to sterling along the way.

It got a fair bit of interest from some of the people I met during my travels, especially by one German backpacker I met in South Africa. I was camping somewhere along the Garden Route and had gone to the campsite bar for a few drinks when my watch got some attention from this guy as I lit it up checking the time.

He asked to look at it and so I explained to him all the things it could do to which he became more and more amazed as the list went on. With his jaw hanging he said in a very German accent ‘wow ….. I bet you zat sing could even tell you my birthday’, so just for a laugh I said in all seriousness ‘yes of course it can’ and proceeded to go to the calendar function then made a load of random presses on the touch screen. Then where it stopped I said ‘There it is ….. your birthday is 12th May’ to which he slams down his drink and says ‘holy fuck, that’s right!!!’ and proceeds to take his passport out and show me his date of birth being indeed the 12th May’.

Without showing any sign of surprise I just necked the rest of my drink, wished him goodnight and walked off as he just stood there with his mouth still wide open ……

Half pissed back at my tent I giggled to myself and also thought ‘shit what were the chances of that ….. like a trillion to one or something?’

Sober though the next day I realised it’s just 365 to 1.

But still …………….