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Mult-tasking is a Myth

Today one of my colleagues dropped a few tears feeling overwhelmed by all those nonsense requests from here and there and wondered what management really wants from a buyer.  I couldn't offer help from my beloved GTD practise at that moment, but it is the only way we can manage things in this so called multi-tasking world.

Yes it is a myth, no soul can do multi-tasking, it is not the right term to describe it afterall.  You can only spend highly focused small chunks of time (even stealing time) and still be organized if you have a principle to follow.  The principle for me is much like a processor cycling metaphor, with a meta mind behind directing traffic.

So many seeds I've sown moments after moments.  If I were not able to have a meta mind governing traffic I would lose my mind.  One seed sown 2 years ago was a GTD leather tab thingie using binder clip and scrap leather, upon repeated usage I think it is the right time for sharing it with the world.  Just because I finally found a good manufacturer.  Still unclear of setting up an online shop, payment or logistics, but I'm all for it.  Stay tuned.

I've given up the idea of spending an extensive period of time for one activity for a long while, coz it is a luxury.  Without sacrificing quality, the only way is to make them into small projects, one step at a time.  So I got to spend these small chunks of time for things I like, including photography.  An hour or two with my belowed Voigtlander R4A and Turtleback iPhone jacket etc.

Energy is another matter, depleted easily if it were only a matter of corporeal property.  If you have that spirit, you can always find chances to deplete the way you want it.  Hair cut on Sunday, Jerry Liu the stylist told me about his sister's obsession with a pair of HK$30K hair scissors.  Gotta see it in person, maybe an interview.

I've declined an invitation to my very own event in the Traveler's Factory store in Tokyo because of tight schedule, better wait when my own stuffs are ready in time.  But I'm very happy that somehow my gathering with famous Japanese photographer Ryu Itsuki san in the Traveler's Factory shop spinned off a nice interesting small collaboration project there.  The world is small and only if you can take advantage of connections.

Lastly, I'm enjoying a little craft projects here and there, this one being customizing a few Traveler's Notebooks for our stores to display, showing customers how they can also do their own customization using lamination sheets from Japan.  6 more copies to go but I can take the time.

Middle East Starts Sunday - Chronodex Updated

I never knew people in the Middle East starts their week on Sundays and their weekends are Friday/Saturday.  They also start their day early at 7am to avoid heat, one guy from The Fountain Pen Network who works there pleaded for a Chronodex version tailored for that.  I couldn't make a full version of it so I made a version free of dates and holidays.  Hope to have more audiences over there :)

Check out the Chronodex page for the newly available download, in addition to the recently added Korean version.

Chronodex July - December 2012 Weekly Diary Free Download Released

Here comes the long awaited release of the Traveler's Notebook sized weekly planner for July to December 2012.  I'm working on the Korean version too, so stay tuned my Korean friends (update: and it is done!).

Head over to the Chronodex page to find out more, or simply download from the link below:

• Hong Kong Holiday version Jan-Jun 2012
• Hong Kong Holiday version Jul-Dec 2012
• Japanese Holiday version Jan-Jun 2012
• Japanese Holiday version Jul-Dec 2012
• Korean Holiday version Jul-Dec 2012
• Free of Holidays version Jan-Jun 2012
• Free of Holidays version Jul-Dec 2012
• Dated, free of Holidays version, modification by Coronado from Fountain Pen Network, portrait mode, dotted grid: PDF
• Dated, free of Holidays version, same modification by Coronado, particularly made for ARC/Circa notebook users, print double sided on Letter size paper, cut the pages in half and bind to your ARC/Circa notebook: PDF
• Undated version, modification by Paul David Krishnan from Malaysia, portrait mode, dotted grid, 4 Chronodex cores on A4 sized paper to be printed and folded in half: PDF
• Blank Chronodex Daily GTD, two A5 pages on one A4 paper: PDF, JPG
• Blank Chronodex Daily GTD in "GhostWriter Notes" iPad app's "paper" format, works for Noteshelf too: JPG
• Blank Chronodex core, two cores on blank A4 paper for any of your customization: PDF, JPG

Enjoy!

Here Are Some Excuses

You must be waiting anxiously for the Chronodex July-December version to come out, believe that I'm working on it and to be released definitely this week.  In the mean time, here's the excuses of being late.

Excuse 1: Obsession with Tri-Eye iPhonography

Can't stop, it is heavy, it is huge and it is fun.  Usually when people I met get interested in the monster, I got chances to take their "The Dog" photos.  Here's Claudia from Staedtler, whom I met in Shanghai a few days ago.  She is going to spend the next 6 weeks in China, it is a long trip.  Since I didn't go to Paperworld this year, I got good updates from her about Staedtler's new product release schedule from 2012 up to 2013.  She speaks fluent Mandarin coz she studied in Beijing some time ago.

And yes self-portraits is fun too with Tri-Eye, here's me in my own toilet.

I forgot to bring my shaver to Shanghai so I accumulated an ugly 5 days worth of beard, kids took fisheye photo of this begger just last night.

Yes kids, they are losing their teeths, in a healthy way.  Desserts are most welcome to them.

So excuse 1 the obsession continues everyhour, business or personal, it doesn't matter.  Here's Mr. Flury the inventor of Cyberclean.  Somebody said "I'm afraid of his nose poking me if it were a 3D photo".

Excuse 2: Shanghai Frequent Visits

We are going to have a new store coming up soon in Shanghai, our second store there (already 12 stores in Hong Kong and 6 in Taiwan).  Management is sending long emails coz they haven't seen my input enough, yeah yeah yeah I'm working on it, I don't want to hand in rubbish just to shut them up but seems like I have to.  Anyway, I'm confident my current composite of the Stationery section is interesting and strong, I just have to make it easier for people around me.  So, I am travelling there a week or two every month.

The last Monday I bumped into The Amazing Race season 21 first shooting.  They arrived Shanghai the same time I did, it was their first stop of the season and it was in Shanghai.  The camera men were super sensitive soon as I raised my iPhone, a few crazy fans were in Shanghai too, I saw them running around with the crew taking pictures and posting to Reality Fan Forum in real time.  Interesting encounter.

For a stay of just 5 days, the schedule was completely full, meeting after meetings.  Just so happened there was the 106th China Stationery Fair and I went there between meetings, not enough time to see but I got a sense that the show is nice despite the fact that import products are a little rare and usually arrives 6 months to 1 year later than the rest of the world.  Damn China import regulations and customs (sorry, don't ban my blog, I'm just saying it is not efficient).

Shanghai is definitely changing a lot and very quickly, IMHO it is one of the fastest changing cities in the world, after Seoul and Tokyo.  I managed to stop by some of the smaller shops and found inspirations every time.  Well, I just borrowed the toilet in this interesting wine cellar/bar, never had the luxury to enjoy a drink, must find time in June to do that.

Excuse 3: Experiencing for the Future Categories

Things won't be exciting at all if I were to order products from catalogs only.  Yesterday's merchanise makes today's sales, many lacks the vision to create a future category thus constantly being bugged by management for lack of 'concept'.  IMHO, the only way to create a future is to explore and experience as much as possible, inspirations will come.  We have so much to learn from other creative people.

Thanks to Petit Morpho, a tiny place which the owner is obsessed with organizing art/craft exhibitions, I had a chance to learn from famous Japanese rubber stamp crafting artist Ms. Tomoko Tsukui (津久井智子).  She has a pari of super steady hands and published several books (in Japanese) about rubber stamp crafting from erasers.  Ms. Tomoko works for the original rubber stamp crafting supplier Hinodewashi and came to Hong Kong for promoting the art.

2 weeks ago, I brought my kid to the event and learned some basic skills and it was great fun for both of us.

Ms. Tomoko carries a few boxes of her stamps, inkpad (she designed interesting sets of finger inkpads for accurate coloring) and signature stamps in various versions.  Why is there no man in any of these workshops and demonstrations?  They are probably playing with their cameras, iPhones or game consoles.  Oh perhaps their bikes....

Excuse 4: Ride Along

Social cause. Well, not as grand as it sounds, but I enjoyed the Ride of Silence 2012 event with a borrowed bike.  Yes that's an event with 80% male participants contrary to rubber stamp crafting's 100% female.  People close to me don't get enough of my attention and went sour sometimes, cut back or manage better I don't know.  I like the fact that we can ride together but in silence, for the same goal, well understood simple communications.  And I'm not talking about a bike ride only, figuratively rides to somewhere with companionship, just enojy the rides, explore without sourness.

Excuse 5: Researches

When a shop/place is good, you keep hearing things from people and you keep wanting to find out more about it.  What's the essense behind the apparent pleasant things you see?  People in their beta thinking mode usually cannot see deep enough, I prefer to find all angles from word of mouth, a visit and a time to sit back and think.

Fang Sou (方所) claims to be the best lifestyle store in China, many suppliers said great things about it, so I paid a visit there on a day trip to GuangZhou.  It is a bookstore with a fashion boutique, a stationery corner, a cafe, a home objects corner and an exhibition area.  Like it, although anybody with sufficient amount of money and connection can build one as easily, it is a noble attempt to composite such a mix especially in China.  It is a beautiful place to be.  I managed to stop by a few other interesting small shops in GuangZhou, all these researches help me to orient and pick the right sets of values to convey to customers when creating the next merchandise mix.

Excuse 6: Personal Projects

The best advice to a Gemini is probably "to focus", and I'm still meditating on it.  Leather projects for personal use and to gloat about are fun, creating something useful like GTD index cards and Chronodex to share with people is satisfying, blogging about products not available just yet is ..., ok some of these projects must go somewhere soon.

Excuse 7: Beautiful Hong Kong

Extremely proud of this city, such a great melting pot for many of the world-changing things to happen. Many wrote to me asking for interesting spots to visit, and I gave them a Google map if we have some common interests.  Some day our Tourism Board should have independent agents like me all over the place, equipped by the coolest map and stationery travel kit.... 

Excuse 8, 9, 10...: Skipped

Yup, I'm just giving you excuses, getting back to work now.  I hope you can have a sense of the "mess" I'm in.

12 Years of Descriptions Shows

It's the most important time of the year when we re-visit each department's concept.  Although it is an everyday process to find out what's next and how we are doing, we have to lay down some concrete actions to make things happen in this fiscal year.  For those buyers who are prepared, pulling out key observations and solidifying them into concrete plans is easy, the others just pulled out rubbish, no offense.

This is one of the side projects I've been working on, to have some kind of objective meta data composed to give me angles and insights.  The oldest data I could pull out was 12 years old, I was interested to find out the most frequent words appearing on our product descriptions, the more frequent they appeared, the larger these words appears on this word cloud.  Interesting isn't it?

Correlating frequency of appearance vs. sold quantity (not shown here for business reasons) was such a fun project to me, had a great time.

This explains the lack of post on my blog, please follow me on instagram @patrickng, twitter @scription, flickr @moleskineart, if you want to catch up with tiny feeds instead of waiting for blog post to come up :)

Will be travelling to Shanghai next Monday to Friday, hopefully I can get some free time to update the next Chronodex download for July - December 2012.

Pony Brown's Visit to Hong Kong

We had a great time with Pony Brown's president, illustrator and the translator when they visited our Korean Stationery fair and met their fans in Hong Kong.  I was particularly happy to be able to chat with as many fans as possible, they all love the postive messages and cuteness of the main character.  One of the fan was upsetted by something this very morning, but when she found out Pony Brown's presence and came, she felt way better.  That's why we love to bring positive energy and pleasure through these events.

Contrary to many's perception, the person behind this cute character is a tall handsome hard-bodied guy Mr. Oh.  You can pretty much see the similarity of him and the character, cool from the outside, bright and positive but sometimes shy within.  We were expecting him to just give out signatures on postcards but for each of the fans whom came, he drew something special and worked very hard in details to make every stroke counts.  I believe fans were not disappointed, at all!

After the event today, we've brought the Pony Brown team to a seafood restaurant in Lei Yue Mun (鯉魚門) tonight and enjoyed a great time chit chatting.  What a lovely evening, nice weather too.

Last year when I visited Seoul, I found out their project with a Korean music instrument brand called Countess.  Upon Countess' request they made these lovely Ukulele prototypes!  They are finally available in music instrument stores in Korea now.  Excited about this cross over with music, Mr. Oh brought along 2 Ukulele so that we can gift them to Pony Brown fans through a small competition.

So far, Pony Brown is the most successful Korean brand we've brought to Hong Kong, I hope in the future we will have a lot more collaborations and bring more happiness, no matter how tiny, to many.

Realizing the hard work Mr. Oh and the team went through.... you know what, for the past few weeks they've only slept for 2 hours every single day, working hard on projects, so we admire a lot of the Korean speed and dedication really..... last night I decided to make personal gift to them, leather jackets for Cricket lighters, embossed with "PONY BROWN" and "city'super stationery" on them.  Took me hours to design and made, until 4am, but I'm happy that it was a perfect gift for them.  Looking forward to more PONY BROWN stuffs!

It Was An Idea 4 Years Ago

Tomorrow our friends from Korea will come to help out on a Korean Stationery Fair in our shops.  I'm especially happy that Pony Brown's designer Mr. Oh and president Ms. Lee will come and meet our customers and press.

The significance of this fair to me is that it was foresaw 4 years ago and it became a reality finally.  At that time, I asked myself why we had no sourcing from Korea at all, nothing.  They have great products and reasonable price and why nobody ever built a network to get those great stuffs for our customers.  Since then a chain of events happened, many failed attempts and empty promises, poor communication due to language and culture differences, nothing worked for one and a half year.

I remember thinking, "it is impossible we cannot do it, it will work especially when everybody says it won't, I will get enough good stuffs and make a Korean Stationery Fair happen."  Well, thanks to those who care and those who don't care enough, they put in efforts afterall, this is happening now, not as elaborated as I imagined but it has come true and I appreciate all the small moves.  So what happened between nothing and now has a lot to do with tenacity and working out of ones boundaries, which I will share in a talk I will give to a university in Taiwan this year.

If you are in Hong Kong, come meet Pony Brown people this Friday evening and Saturday afternoon where I will also be there in Festival Walk LOG-ON store.  There are these 3 rubber stamps for you to stamp on your notebook, they are made specially for this event and for these 2 days only.  Don't miss it.

BTW, last Saturday was a great and efficient day I spent with my kid.  Bought him a pair of cheapest possible shoes, painted in color he loves, I'm yet to paint a crazy chicken on it though.  It was a creative day too, we explored different media for his homework.  I even had time to clean up my fountain pens and made a few sketches on my Traveler's Notebook.

Only You Can Figure It Out

Today I brought a young visiting couple from Shanghai to see my version of the world in this tiny little city of Hong Kong.  They were not looking for comfort, they were not rushing, they were curious.  So I had the freedom to show them around not worrying too much whether they like it or not.  Imagine you had those young minds regardless of your age, you will have no shortage of teachers.

I was hauling 3 analogue cameras trying to spend all the films left in them, it was great fun, plain shooting at anything as I pleased.  At the back of my mind, there was this phone call from Mom being nervous about Dad's condition, whom called my name in bed with huge discomforts in the afternoon.  On my left shoulder, a camera bag from Korea I was testing, compact and light at relatively low price.  Bringing friends to shops I know, chatting with owners and telling stories, finding pleasures in every turn of events.  Finding tiny pleasures while I can, that's probably the single most important constant I can find in life.

Don't look down at them tiny pleasures, they always show you something beautiful.  When you taste that delicious feedback loop, you will never quit.  No matter how bad a trade show would look, I keep walking, and walking and telling myself "that's not it!" until I found something interesting or somebody worth chatting to.  Next week it is going to be a Taiwan trip, let's see whom I'll meet or what I'll find.

The secret of a balanced life?  There is no balanced life I figured, there is just constants, which ones you hold onto, it is just up to you.  Again, City Slickers quote "just one thing, you stick to it and the rest don't mean shit… that's what you have to find out."

A short time to regroup your thinking (Feb, Tokyo)

A beam of warm sunlight and fresh air from outside of an airport (Feb, Tokyo)

A burst of inspirations from objects (Feb, Tokyo)

A sense of peace at your desk (Feb, Hong Kong)

 

 

 

A glimpse of people's lives from photos (Feb, Tokyo)

That's all.  Tiny pleasures.

Scription Posts Coming Up :)

Lack of posts?  Here's why: a lot happened in 2012, been to Vegas and Tokyo, will go Tapei and Shanghai shortly.  Dad's been in and out of hospital and his new home.  Kid had fever for the whole week now catching up with homework.  Dad came out of hospital today, last night he managed to speak repeatedly something until we figured out he wanted some tea, so we raced to the hospital's employee canteen and got him a bowl of nice hot Tieguanyin (鐵觀音) with help from a kind cleaning lady.  I'm quite sure his mind is not in sync with our time, but we were so happy we could give him this tiny pleasure.  I saw a chiropractor and my knee is fixed, will bring mom there to fix her back.  Now back to posts….

 

(Traveler's Notebook, Slip-on pen holder, Gizmon iphone case, Chronodex)

BTW, most up to the minute Scription news is on Flickr or Twitter, so do follow

 

Amazing MT Masking Tape Stop Motion

Forwarded from our MT Masking Tape friend in Japan, this cool little video is a cute stop motion animation created by artist Taijin Takeuchi (竹内泰人) in Shbaura House, a workshop space located in Tokyo.  It took him 11 days and 1700 photos to composite this 4 minutes video.  Great work!