watching in mexico

Fitness is a numbers game.

It certainly is for me.

I have never been a person who likes to compete with others. (Ignore my life-long friends rolling on the floor in hysterics.) But I am competitive. With myself.

And technology has given me a lot of tools to make that competition far more interesting. Digit scales to monitor my weight. Compact cuffs to watch my blood pressure decrease. And, then, there is always the latest in exercise wrist wear.

The wrist fad started with the rather primitive Fit Bit. It was essentially an electronic odometer that would track the user's daily steps. A helpful number to know, but rather boring. After all, telephone apps will do that.

I was not even interested in putting one of those devices on my wrist until Samsung started selling them.

I tend to be brandphobic. If I find something that works, I do not care who the manufacturer is (though I do tend to avoid anything made in Communist China, if I have the choice).

Samsung is an exception. The South Korean company has become a mainstay for my electronic purchases.

Part of that is relational. The hotel where I stay in Mexico City is also where visiting Samsung executives are housed. I have thoroughly enjoyed meeting every one of them in the 15th floor concierge lounge where the breakfast items are almost exclusively Asian. It is a bit like visiting Seoul.

But the big reason is reliability. I have surrounded myself with Samsung products. My computer. Big screen television (Isn't it about time we stopped using that adjective now that all televisions are big?). DVD player. Washing machine.

So, when Samsung put an exercise watch on the market, I was an early adopter. Like most Samsung products, its design could have qualified it for inclusion in one of those craft museums beloved of a certain type of person. Lincoln had them in mind when he wrote: "People who like this sort of thing are going to find it is the sort of thing they like."

But I soon discovered design can mask other flaws. After all, isn't that the whole idea behind makeup? (I redacted "women's" from that sentence because we have apparently moved past that type of ghettoized genderization. But it did not keep me from reflexively writing it.)

The watch would not count all of my steps. My left arm needed to be in motion for it to work. Pushing shopping carts or carrying items in my left hand would scramble my step count. At the end of the day my telephone might register 35,000 steps, but my watch would register only 30,000.

A step counter that cannot count is no more useful than a flashlight with no batteries. I also discovered it was not properly counting the flights of stairs I climbed.

Then, the design started to fail. On my trip to Copenhagen, the band broke. Well, it disintegrated into its component parts. I replaced it.

Then, one of the gold charging contacts on the back disappeared. Without it, the watch would no longer charge. Samsung told me it could not be repaired.

Ignoring the omens, while I was in Oregon last November, I bought the latest iteration of Samsung's wrist wear -- the Gear Sport. And it has been a good purchase. It keeps track of steps better, and it is waterproof. The last version would act up when it came in contact with sweat. A rather odd weakness for an exercise tool.

I have now been wearing it daily for just shy of three months. Last night disaster struck. I will call it the Copenhagen Syndrome.

There appears to be an endemic flaw in Samsung's wristbands. Most of the band is a comfortable silicone. But there is a metal clip on the end that attaches to the watch. And that is the device's Achilles' Heel. Whatever adhesive is used does not adhere. Or, does not adhere for long.

Admittedly, my tropical home is rough on almost everything. And my daily 15-mile sweatfests are not conducive to keeping anything in pristine condition. Well, other than me. But I would think a wristband for an exercise device would be designed to last longer than three months.

Saying that does not change the fact that the band is broken. So, at 3 AM, I opened the Amazon.Mx app on my telephone and ordered a replacement band. Actually, two. History says I will have another broken band in a few months. It will be here before I head off to Zacatecas later this month.

And I guess that is the moral of this little tale. We buy stuff. Stuff breaks. We buy more stuff. And, in that sense, our lives in Mexico roll on just as they would if we lived in Saskatoon, Paris, or Soweto.

Or, perhaps, as always, Stephen Sondheim has it right: 

What is the moral?/ Must be a moral./ Here is the moral, wrong or right./ Morals tomorrow!/ Comedy tonight.