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Showing posts from February, 2025

New Pen Day - Pelikan M200 Smokey Quartz and M200 Golden Beryl

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Finally, I was able to add these two Pelikan M200s to my personal pen collection.  I had missed out on the M200 Smokey Quartz that was first released in 2017 and the M200 Golden Beryl that was first released in 2021. Needless to say, I grabbed them both when I saw them at a store in Kuala Lumpur. Even though both of these pens were the last ones the store had in-stock, I just could not pass up on the opportunity to add them to my pen stash (a.k.a. collection). For some reasons which I can no longer remember, I started to collect the M200/205 series of Pelikan pens that were released each year in conjunction with the Edelstein Ink of the Year.  To date, I have collected 10 out of 11 in the series. The only one missing from my collection is the M205 Amethyst from 2015. The price of this now very rare pen in the secondary market is really high. Therefore, the M205 Amethyst  is likely to forever evade me and remain firmly in my "White Whale List" of pens. Nonetheless, I ...

Pelikan Edelstein Ink - Apricot Achat

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Pelikan's Edelstein Ink of the Year for 2025 is the Apricot Achat. I do not have any original photos in-hand because the product has only just been announced and has not yet ship at the time of this blog post. However, product pictures are available in the internet and a simple search will bring up lots of similar photos if one is interested to know what the newly announced ink looks like.  What will the ink swap of the newly announced Apricot Achat looks like? We will all have to wait for someone somewhere to get those first bottles in hand, have that ink swap done and to post the photos online. Fingers crossed that this will be a good ink to add to my ink pool!  Pelikan Edelstein Ink of the Year, Moonstone in 2020 and Star Ruby in 2019 I am an avid collector of the M200/205 series of Pelikan pens that are usually released each year in conjunction with the Edelstein Ink of the Year. The first of this series was in 2015 starting with the M205 Amethyst and the most recent relea...

Tokyo International Pen Show - 2024

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This was my very first time attending a pen show. I did not actually planned to attend this event. But somehow, my travel dates to Japan in autumn of 2024 coincided with the show. Realising this, I gladly took the opportunity to include the show into my travel itinerary and through social media, managed to get in touch with a kind gentleman based in Tokyo who helped me with my event ticket booking. Thus, on 3 November 2024, I attended my very first pen show, the Tokyo International Pen Show (a.k.a. TIPS). I woke up early on the Sunday morning of 3 November 2024. My Japanese friend, a fellow fountain pen user, arrived at my hotel lobby and together, we walked to the Monorail Station to travel to the pen show. Arriving at the venue's reception, we showed the QR codes for our tickets and were assigned wristbands before being led to join the queue based on our ticket numbers which also indicated our schedule arrival time. As with all things in Japan, everything proceeded like clockwork...

Journaling - Recording Trip Memories using Pen and Paper

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Whenever I travel, one of my favourite activities is to write. During these trips, I wrote about anything that simply caught my attention when I had pen in hand. Now, I do not simply sit down and decide on what to write. Often at night when I was back in my accomodation, I sat and wrote about anything that came to mind. It could be a log of the day's activities, people I observed, my personal thoughts, descriptions of the places I visited and if I was really inspired, a short story centred around the places or events that I experienced. The main aim was simply to enjoy putting thoughts to paper, through my pen. To me, my pens are tools that enabled me to transfer my thoughts into words on paper. I take good care of my pens but I also use them. If I imagine my pens to have their feelings of their own, then nothing is likely to excite them more than to have ink flowing through their nibs!  Looking forward to taking more of my pens with me on my travels in 2025 and beyond! ๐Ÿ–‹ Myself, ...