A story from ten years ago

The start of 2024 makes me reflect on the eventful year I had in 2014. If you’ll join me I’ll spin you a tale…

I started 2014 running my own small business and making plans for the future but an unexpected crisis saw that business close in May 2014 leaving me unsure about what I should do next.

After a few months burning savings while I worked out what to do I secured a great new job working for SolarMax, a Swiss manufacturer of solar inverters for solar power systems. I was thrilled that one of the first things they did was fly me from Australia to Switzerland to be trained in their head office in Biel/Bienne (see photo above).

I hadn’t taken up watch collecting at that stage so the fact that the Swatch group (and Rolex I think) are based there was interesting but not really exciting at the time. When you walk around Biel/Bienne you see all sorts of great watch related things like Rolex clocks at the bus stops. It really is at the heart of Swiss watch making, I just didn’t have an appreciation then.

I spent two weeks training in Biel/Bienne and then flew back to start working. I had a standard three month probationary period but one day before the end of that period when I was to become a permanent employee the sole owner (it was a private company) decided to close the entire company globally and every employee lost their job. Not exactly how I’d seen that job going! 😭

Needless to say I found another job and managed to keep my career on track despite being made redundant twice in a year.

It wasn’t until last year (by which stage I’d keenly taken up watch collecting) that I was surfing around in my maps application when I found that I’d saved the street address of the head office I’d trained at.

Imagine my surprise when I zoomed in further to discover what business was based in the building now.

Yes! The building I spent two weeks training in ten years ago is now the head office of Hamilton Watches 🤩

Maybe 2024 is the year I get a Murph 😉