Monde des Stylos

While I have not been updating this blog much recently due to a heavier than expected workload in my day job, much has been happening in my journaling activities as well as in the wider community. For a start, Pelikan Hub 2025 was on 24th October 2025, a little over two weeks ago. In the South East Asia region where I live, we had the inaugural Malaysia International Pen Show (MIPS) held on 27th and 28th September in Petaling Jaya , just next to Kuala Lumpur . The first ever Singapore Pen Show will be happening on the last weekend of November, but I will have to skip this event in my home city because I will be overseas during that weekend. In addition, the Tokyo International Pen Show (TIPS) is currently happening this weekend, 1st to 3rd November 2025. I attended last year's edition of TIPS and it was my first time attending a pen show. What an eye opener! On a personal note, despite a promise to myself to buy less and instead spend more time enjoying the writing instruments t...

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 ...

And so I attended my second Pelikan Hub event in my home city of Singapore on 27th September 2024. My first Hub attendance was last year, also in my home city. As usual with Pelikan Hubs, I got to make new friends in the community, tried out lots of fountain pens that I had never seen or held in my hands before and of course, I allowed my new pen friends to try out my pens as well. This year, I brought along 12 fountain pens for the Hub; mostly Pelikan.  M1000 Black & Green Stripes, M800 Green Demonstrator (Original 1992 version), M805 Black & Blue Stripes, M600 Vibrant Orange, M600 Glauco Cambon, M600 Green-White, M605 Stresemann Anthracite, M200 Smokey Quartz and M205 Aquamarine.  I also brought along a few pens from other make and models including a Pilot Custom 823 "Smoke", a Delta Gallery and a Sailor Shikiori "Manyou". And there were the usual Hub souvenirs courtesy of Pelikan; an event commemorative Notepad and a bottle of Pelikan's 2024 Ink of th...