SOSA · The Founder Diaries · Car Fragrance
The card is the instrument
The measurement fails on the card, not on the glass. Here are the four things worth writing down, and the two of them that everybody leaves out.
People think the glass is the instrument. The glass is the dial; the card is the instrument. I have watched a perfectly good month of marking go to waste because nobody wrote down which speed the unit had been on, and there is no published figure anywhere that could rescue that month afterwards.
The answer in 30 seconds
What should I write down to get a reliable number?
- In one line. Date, line, hours, speed. Four entries on one card in the glovebox, and the hours are the one people leave out.₹3,999
- The short answer. Write four things and nothing more: the date, where the marker line sits on the 20ml bottle, the number of hours you ran the unit since the last entry, and which of the three speeds you used. SOSA publishes no rate of use, so this card is the whole instrument. Safar is Rs 3,999.
- If you only add one column: make it the hours. Days pass whether you drive or not, and the glass cannot tell the difference between a month of commuting and a month in the car park.
- What goes on the card? The date, where the line sits on the glass, the hours you ran it and the speed you ran it on. Four entries, one line of handwriting.
- Which two does everybody forget? The hours and the speed. Without them a busy month and a quiet month look the same on the glass, and no per-speed duration is published to convert between settings.
- Where should the card live? In the glovebox, with the pen. A log you have to go and find is a log you stop keeping in the third week.
The answer, in full
Four entries and one habit. The date goes down first, because a mark on the glass with no date beside it measures nothing. Then where the line sits: a fine marker pen on the 20ml bottle, drawn at the level, is more precise than any description you would write out. Then the hours, which is the entry people leave out and the one that makes two figures comparable - a tick for every session, counted up at the end, tells you how much running happened between the two dates. Then the speed, and whether you used the one, two or three hour timer, because SOSA publishes no per-speed duration and a figure taken on one setting cannot be converted into another. The habit is that the card lives in the glovebox with the pen, so writing on it costs four seconds. SOSA publishes the refill price, ₹1,049 for 100 gm and ₹1,849 for 300 gm, and no rate of use, which is why this card exists at all. A portion of every SOSA order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali.
The four entries, and the two people leave out
Two of these are obvious and two are the ones that decide whether you end up with a figure you can use twice or a figure you can use once.
The date: first, every single time
A line on the glass with no date beside it is a decoration. Write the day you filled the bottle, and write the day you read it again, and the two of them are what make the reading a measurement rather than an impression. If there is no room on the glass, the card takes it. If you are the sort of person who loses cards, photograph the glass with the phone that dates the picture for you.
No date, no measurement. It is still the step that gets skipped.
The hours: a tick for every session you run
This is the entry that turns two readings into something you can compare. Days pass whether the unit is running or not, so a month in which you drove every day and a month in which the car sat outside the office leave the same number of days on the card and a very different line on the glass. A tick per session, with the timer length you used, gets you close enough. Nobody needs a stopwatch here.
The speed and the timer: which setting the figure belongs to
Safar publishes three speed settings and a one, two or three hour auto-off timer, and it publishes no duration for any individual setting. So a figure you measure is a figure about the setting you measured it on, and there is no published conversion to carry it across to another. Write the setting down and the figure keeps its meaning. Leave it out and the next month's reading has nothing to be compared against.
A figure from one setting is a figure about that setting only.
Should the scent go on the card too?
I would write it down. SOSA publishes the scent names and a fragrance pyramid for each, no ranking across the nine and no consumption figure for any single scent, so nothing published says whether one behaves differently from another in the bottle. Writing the name costs you a word, and if two of your own readings ever disagree it is the first thing you will want to check.
A log is easier to keep when the cupboard has a refill in it. The nebuliser refill oil is ₹1,049 for 100 gm and ₹1,849 for 300 gm. See the nebuliser refill →
What each entry is for
| What the record says | |
|---|---|
| The date | The only thing that turns two marks into a measurement. Write it before you drive anywhere. |
| The hours you ran it | The entry that makes two months comparable, because days pass whether the unit runs or not. |
| The speed and the timer length | Three speeds and a one, two or three hour timer are published. No per-speed duration is, so the setting is logged rather than calculated from. |
| A published rate to check the card against | There is none. SOSA publishes the refill price and no rate of use, so the card is not a cross-check on a figure. It is the figure. |
One card per bottle is enough. I keep mine as four short columns and a line of handwriting per fill, and the only discipline it asks is that the pen lives in the glovebox beside it.
“The glass is the dial. The card is the instrument, and the hours are the column people leave out.”
Keeping the log, in four steps
- Rule a card into four columns: date, line, hours, speed.
- Fill the first row the day you fill the bottle, before driving.
- Add a tick for every session, and the timer length you used.
- Keep the card and the pen in the glovebox, not in the house.
SOSA car fragrance
Rule the card before you fill the bottle
Four columns and a pen in the glovebox. The refill in the cupboard is what keeps the log going when the line gets low.
10 ml sprays ₹459–₹559 · 12 ml hanging bottles ₹459–₹519 · 15 ml refills ₹399–₹449 · 50 ml spray ₹1,509 · three-spray discovery sets ₹709–₹909 · SOSA Safar ₹3,999, ₹4,499 hotel-inspired
View SOSA SafarSee the nebuliser refillQuestions, answered
What is the minimum I have to write down?
Why does the speed matter if I always use the same one?
Does SOSA publish a log sheet or a consumption table?
Is a phone note as good as a card?
Should I write down the weather?
If you would rather ask a person
Ask Sonal
Safar is ₹3,999, or ₹4,499 for the hotel-inspired variant, and the nebuliser refill oil is ₹1,049 for 100 gm. A portion of every SOSA order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali.
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