ANAKAYUB's Notes

Here's notes on a drug that's used everywhere and all the time, yet poorly understood.

Another half a month, another mass shooting incident in the land of the free and the home of the brave, where people are made free to buy guns and afraid to send their kids to school. It's so bad that the Onion sounds like a website with serious shit.

"He is fully aware of what is going on, and he’s just a broken human being." Whatever. A terrorist's a terrorist.

And I finally got some A4 size stock of Tomoe River paper, which is almost impossible to get in Malaysia. None of the local fountain pen shops sell them, and CzipLee's Bangsar branch only sells (the full range of) Rhodia products. Apparently it was the only stock left. It's definitely expensive, but the smoothness and the way colors just pop on the page (as it literally repels ink while being thinner than your typical 80 gsm paper) makes me happy. Anything that pushes me to study is good. Now where's the ice I've always wanted to give me unlimited energy?

So I was again careless, and again one of my fountain pens fell to the floor. This time, it happened while I was getting out of my friend's car.

I had some severe dandruff problems problems so I tried to shake them off my shirt while out of his car in the parking lot. I shook my shirt so hard, my Parker Paremier flew out of my pocket, and the cap wasn't there with the pen.

The cap flew off below my friends car. For the cap was retrieved I had an uh oh moment; the nib was sprung, again. I tried to keep my cool, considering that this has happened before.

The last time it happened, I initially tried to fix it myself, but I was greedy and unhappy with the end result. The nib end was slightly bent laterally. But it was writing perfectly well (just a thicker line) with normal writing; unlike other Parker pens like the Duofold, the Premier just doesn't write with the nib reversed so I sent it to KS Gills on Jalan TAR, paid about 60 ringgit, and got my pen back. The good thing was that the nib was more straightened (but not perfect). The bad thing was that the work scratched off the ruthenium coating over the distal end of the nib, and the pen became a much wetter writer with a much wider line to a point of being almost unusable for someone who has a rather small handwriting size.

So now that the nib is sprung again, I decided to first accept that I don't have to get a perfect repair, and I should save some money and accept my own repairs; to get perfect repairs I guess the only acceptable way is to send my pens to the famous international nibmeisters in the States or Japan (this is expensive).

I've learned some techniques watching the videos on the Pen Habit and SBREBrown YouTube videos, so I decided to apply them. After 10 minutes of work, I'm happy with the results. The thicker lines are with writing with the usual nib orientation, while the thinner lines are with the nib reversed (yes, the pen can now write reversed!).

So I really need to be extra careful from now on (I've been trying to be careful of since forever, anyway). But at least for today, a sigh of relief.

This was written on to Tomoe River paper using Graf von Faber Castell Carbon Black in a Parker Premier Monochrome Black pen with a medium nib.