I’ve missed your postings.
I thought you’d stopped posting, but I never deleted your blog from my bloglist.
Even if you never updated it, the old entries are still there for me to read and remember.
But now, you have posted new entries! However few and far between, your writings are always most welcomed.
Welcome back, girl.
Ochiya’s the journal of the mouse
I have very fond memories of using fountain pens in school. Ballpens (or ballpoint pens) were also a favourite.
My hands get very itchy when I read about fountain pens (there are web sites and online forums dedicated to pen discussions – much healthier than some other types of online discussions) – itchy to get my hands on one. But when I do, I don’t find them very nice to write with. Especially when compared to rollerball pens which are my writing instruments of choice these days.
But the thing about rollerball pens is that the refills include the nib part so when you dispose of a used refill, out goes the nib, too.
Sometime last year I found a rollerball pen that uses regular ink cartridges, i.e., the nib stays when the ink is finished. Unfortunately, the nib is too thick for my liking. But it showed me there are such rollerball pens out there.
I found two ink cartridge rollerball pens recently, and have been happily using them since. They are made by Pelikan, and I chose colours according to the ink I would be using – purple and orange for the Plum and Orange Crush Private Reserve ink cartridges I bought from the HisNibs web site. I also have Copper Burst (maroonish brown) and Spearmint (green), but don’t think I’ll be getting more rollerballs to use them with. Why?
Ink cartridge rollerball pens seem to behave like regular fountain pens in one respect – I’d be writing away and the ink would get fainter and fainter and I would have to shake the pen to get the ink flowing again.
Yah, rollerball pens that use the one-piece ink refills write better. I still prefer my Faber-Castell Duo Gel 1418 and also my Pelikan Epoch, which I use for my daily morning pages.
*file under Gadgets category*
Hua Mei, the giant panda born at the San Diego Zoo in 1999 and returned to China in 2003, has given birth to her third set of twins in Wolong, China. This is really hot off the press as the announcement is dated Monday, 16 July 2007, 11:32 a.m.
News item here, with pictures.
From the news item, one of the cubs born earlier this morning:
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She had her first pair in 2004, and her second pair in 2005, and was then given a year off last year. Her eldest son, Hua Ling, was chosen to be part of a gift pair from China to Taiwan, but the gift is currently in limbo as the Taiwanese Government has refused the gift, calling it propaganda, especially as the pair has been renamed Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, from the phrase “tuan yuan” meaning “reunion” , which is taken as a hint that China wants Taiwan to accept that it is a part of the mother country, and not separate and independent by itself.
One of my main worries when I left behind a steady 9-to-5 job was that I would no longer be indoors for the better part of each weekday, and how that would affect my lupus as I’m not supposed to be out in the sun too much, especially during the hottest part of each day.
When I was working, that was easy to manage. My job was mainly carried out indoors, so once I got into the office each day, I would remain out of the sun until I went home in the evening. For a long time, I didn’t even go out for lunch as I was bringing lunch from home.
Of course, that could continue even tho’ I’m no longer going to work each day. I could stay indoors during the day and go out after sundown. But given that much of the rest of the world, including the people I would be meeting, are out and about during the day and go home at night, I don’t have much choice but to do likewise.
Another problem that I am prone to is I get bad headaches if I’m out in the car during the day. And that happened a couple of times initially, but now the headaches are getting less. I attribute that not so much to the fact that I don’t drive out during the day, but to the fact that, in the time since I left the old job, I’ve been good to myself and letting my body heal. Being good to myself included leaving what I now recognise to be a poisonous work environment.
I feel good and apparently I’m looking good.
I met up with my former project team leader* this afternoon. We were chatting when she suddenly burst out, “You’re looking good! Your face has cleared … it used to be all red.”
And I used to think the redness came from being out in the sun too much. Apparently not. I can only attribute it to my new life where my stress level has gone down.
Thank You, Lord.
This time from Canada. Brought over by Anne. Canadian authors, of course.
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Three by Margaret Atwood, two of them non-fiction that I’d specifically asked for, while the third is a bonus, that Anne saw and thought I might like.
The lone non-Atwood book is by Wayson Choy, a Canadian Chinese author I’d discovered while browsing at a bookstore in either Toronto or Vancouver in 1997. It’s the same title – The Jade Peony – as the one I bought in 1997 which, for some reason, I gave away as a token of friendship that I now recognise as plain silly.
In return, Anne got from me autographed copies of Dina Zaman’s I Am Muslim and Kam Raslan’s Confessions of an Old Boy.
