Scription

Canon F1 in Wood Interpretation

Oh BTW, I stole some time last night to execute an idea of woodenizing my beloved Canon F1n.

Not proud of it yet, coz I was just peeling off old fake leather from the macine and applied decal sticker on certain parts.  I don't know what you call this obsession of natural materials (leather, wood, etc), those stuffs please me and calm me like no other.  Someday I'm gonna grab some real thin wood veneer to make it authentic.

Canon F1n is such a heavy full brass machine, sick to carry for a long time, but I guess the emotion for me loving it originated from my youth.  No money, no taste, just love the idea of taking photos, some classmate made it to acquire an F1.  I was "just" hanging on with my 120 Yashica. Took me years later to get my very own F1n.

What then?  Treasure what I've already have or lust after Leica M?  Same as lusting after hundreds of masking tapes, the important thing is what you do with these objects.  Tresend yourself form object lust and free yourself from endless chase of equipment, AND enjoy the serendipity of not having those things in the timing you desired.  Having said that, I still want a Leica M :)

"Small"

My world has become smaller in 2012.  Well, everybody's world is, when we became so connected through the net, we know things instantly across the globe.  In another sense, my world dwindled quite a lot due to long and gruesome projects at work.  Makes me wonder what "small" really means.

I've cancelled quite a few sourcing trips due to various reasons, all somehow points to the fact that I'm part of some ill conceived and badly executing projects.  My world is smaller, I became smaller, couldn't allocate enough time on interesting projects like Traveler's Notebook special edition, Invitation of a Japanese stationery commentator to Hong Kong for talk, craft events, etc.  I'm pushing quite many limits, including my family's tolerance of my absence.  I've also put on hold some of my personal leather projects and stationery production too.  In certain context, pushing limits made me even more creative, that was the past.  I am currently in the state which I lack energy to fight long battles.

It is obvious I haven't had new instant photos to stick on my photo wall for a long while.  Realizing this, I decided to carry my film cameras even more, even though in many instances I was too busy to take even just one shot.  Well, at least last week I have two photo booth prints came out from visiting Joyce fashion store in Hong Kong.  The booth was there to celebrate Joyce's collaboration with i-D magazine, a Soul i-D Exhibition to be held in Beijing soon.  Everybody can just go there and take a cover star i-D portrait.

I didn't do it right for the portrait though, should've winked/covered my right eye.  The idea was to portrait a photographer being angried at after he took a photo of a subject and later hurt by the subject.

One of the fun project I participated last Friday was being one of the judges for an instant photo journaling competition called Instant Only.  Participants are encouraged to use instant photos like Instax or Polaroid to capture their moments and journal about them.  I was amazed by some of the participants' work, the winning entries are obvious despite the organizer's complicated rating system which rendered judges spending long time to mark, I enjoyed reading those journals in those few hours.

Earlier in October I went as usual to Shanghai for a week for work.  The happiest time during that trip was a visit to Xing Guang Photographic Equipments shopping arcade (星光摄影器材城), got some nice deals on analog films, including FP3000B to be used with my modified Polaroid 110a.

I managed to join a few colleagues for a day trip to Yangcheng Lake (阳澄湖) for a hairy crab feast!  It was just an hour and a half away from Shanghai, not as beautiful as I imagined, but it was a great chance to find some nice photo angles.

Too bad I forgot to bring my Lenspen to clean the lens, some photos had weird shadows when developed.  Like this one.  I could only give it a proper name to explain: "Soul leaving".  The other photo I took of an old lady washing bowl on river side, her face was taken away, too scary to show here.  

Thanks to Fujifilm keep rolling out films, FP3000B is great for indoor and out door shots.  In many occassions, especially wedding banquets, converted Polaroid camera using FP3000B is a great combo to give out instant photos to friends.  Many people have never seen this in action so the peeling apart moment always astonish them.

For those of you who never had hairy crab (大閘蟹) before, it is a delicacy.  October and November is the perfect season to try.  The benefit of going to the source in Yangcheng Lake instead of buying from the market is that you get to meet the local people there and get a glimpse of their lives.  In addition, it costs only RMB 150 per person to have 2 crabs (1 male, 1 female) and 17 dishes shared by 6 people!  Great deal!

Many of the 'restaurants' are operated by small families, it is like having lunch in their very own home.  You book in advance and drive there, they pick you up from shore using these small boats, arrive their homes and enjoy the feast.

(boat shed)

(old boat)

(boat shed reflection)

We had such a great time.  The family's grandparents picked some fresh sugar canes for us as desserts too.

So, gruesome work on ill conceived projects?  Gotta enjoy myself a bit more in between, using "small" chunks of time.  Now I figured, you fight giants using "small" stones and "small" moves.

Behind These Photos, People and Products - Yet Another Blast Update

I'm heading Shanghai tomorrow for 1 week (like every month), so here's an update before I leave.

As usual, my Dad needs your prayer, which has been helpful in many ways.  He was admitted to hospital because of fever last week, he shall be fine and come out in a few days, just wish him less painful and more happiness.

Things Organized Neatly is a very nice place to see the beauty of neat arrangement.  I hope one day they will post my arrangements.  Yesterday I was just thinking about how to effectively carry nothing but a few essential objects yet all of them look beautiful, kind of impossible for tomorrow's travel but a little thought experiement is always pleasing.  Carrying my Turtlejacket Tri-Eye on a leather holster worn on cross shoulder leather strap sure got me a lot of attention :)  I had a dinner with the guy behind Turtleback last week, they will have some beautiful lenses coming out soon which fit the Tri-Eye.  I'm so happy he lusted after my DIY holster the entire time :)

As for the Chronodex self-inking stamp many has been asking for, I nailed the way to keep the wooden cover attached to the body by adding magnets, problem solved.  There are still a few adjustments here and there in millimeters, but the outlook is great.

I can't let somebody carry the Chronodex stamp without the most stunning look (in my own terms), so the cover will be laser engraved!  Been simulating how it will look for days, I still have a few technical problems to solve on the specification but it won't be long to start production, yay!

My day job is full of excitement to see future products and challenges with people and systems (social and computer), mind boggling to think things through, switching beta and alpha all the time.  But I'm glad, the satisfaction is within.  Gee I wish I had this new Fisheye Baby 110 camera with me for the trip starting tomorrow, super cute and handy, they didn't let me keep it.

Every year our Managing Director would send out a long email thanking everybody and sum up our achievements, one sentence stood out this year: "we never put 'maximizing sales and profit' our company's core value". I guess he detected an imbalance somehow, so I'm gonna quote him once in a while in difficult situations :) Some people thought it was just a lie coz any business is after profit afterall, but I look at it differently and I hope this little voice won't die, working hard on it.

Remember I introduced nLostnFound shop a while ago?  I've finally come into agreement with the owner to create a corner with a little more content than just focus on selling products.  The first implementation will be something related to missal books and bakerlite, hopefully we will set up the shelf in Times Square city'super right after I come back from Shanghai in July.  Every antique item is hand picked by the owner and we hope we can share the stories we know about these objects to people visiting.

Smartphone photography is definitely the future, probably 95% of us will not carry a modern day camera 95% of the time, besides Apple just patented a changeable lens phone system, that tells a lot about our future too.  Smartphone photography gadgets are popping up here and there, just that it is not yet a viable business for many.  Like the iPhone cases ecosystem, one great innovation will change everything.  Anyway, we have so many photos we take everyday, we never print them out anymore.  So we worked with Fotomax to offer printing service for smartphone photos, after 2 months of testing and procrastination, finally it is moving forward, customer can now print square photos, make Instagram photo stickers and photo books.  This is a comparison of their booth revamp (in Harbour City city'super) simulation vs. the actual outcome, proud to be able to faciliate ideas into reality.  If you can visualize your ideas, making it happen is just a matter of gathering all necessary elements.  I hope I'm not sounding too arrogant here.

Last week a colleague of mine thought I knew someone who could fix a phone, but I don't, so I took the challenge myself.  Err, not an iPhone but a retro rotary one with a slightly improved 1970s circuit board.  Everything worked except the unbearable noise on the speaker rendering conversation impossible.  First I thought it was a problem with the phone line plugging into an ADSL broadband line so the separator screwed up, but after checking with the phone company that was not the case.  So I picked up my screw driver and tempered with every circuit route inside with a magnifier.  Turned out it was caused by a poor circuit board layout design, there is this one place where a screw is supposed to fix the board onto the phone but the screw was not insulated by eyelets, so the circuit was damaged, not enough electricity could pass through at that point.  A simple bypass using wire fixed the phone.  I had so much fun so instead of charging her HK$200 to fix a HK$165 phone, I wavied it :P  Like how I used to play with making Gundam models, it is tremenduous fun to isolate problems and create solutions for the fun of it.  Great education, are kids exposed to these experience these days?  Probably not from the system.

So now the topic changed to kids.  This is an evil kid, on the surface :)  My niece is actually a super cute kid with a lot of smile and very talkative.  She was just playing a disturbed look with my fisheye lens, don't worry we are good.  Her dad my little brother is a hard working architect building schools.  We just had a family gathering in this Dragon Boat festival.

And a week ago, we had a gathering of 14 kids on a squid hunting boat trip on a rainy day.  We got nothing, not even one squid, and it was funny that all their energy were used up in anticipating and preparation so the boat trip was like the last stop of a great hang out :)

Watching them all together was a bit sentimental, they were kindergarten friends, some went to other schools some stayed and more of them will definitely scatter.  Where are my kindergarten friends?  They were so close to me and we are no longer in touch, we don't even remember each other's name anymore.  This generation of kids is probably the best connected kids ever found on earth, at least their parents have facebook.  I wondered, when we/they look back in 14 years, how will they feel about this video and their time spent together?  Well, in our next gathering, I'm gonna ban iPhones and iPads, they are evil products in this type of gathering.

 

Look At Serious Stuffs As Games And Remember The Happiness Within

I was enjoying a research evening walk in Shanghai a few months ago, in an area called Shanghai Old Street (上海老街).  Carrying a Canon F1 was painfully heavy, I brought along a 85mm f1.2 lens and that added weight, my body screamed "What the fxxk, you are carrying this weight for the whole day and you haven't shoot a thing".

Well, when the moment was right, I saw a lovely socializing chess game going on in a public area and I pulled out my camera.  They were so happy laughing, one guy lost and another guy jumped in to the game, so I took photos of the scene and everything around it.  Happy moment for me, got to remember how they enjoyed their game and how I should enjoy my own gameS.

Film: Rollei 200

Welcome to Hong Kong - Our Nice and Culture Rich City

There's been much talk in the media and social networks about rich mainland Chinese coming to Hong Kong to spend millions in luxury shopping and how their etiquettes ruin everyday life of Hong Kong people, a kind of culture clash.  Fumed by emotions against the increasingly severe income disparity and developer hegemony, our society has become pretty restless.

Demonstrations after demonstrations is one way to deal with hegemony and poor government policies, it has to be done, but we can do better in other small ways too.  Let's not forget that those rich Chinese are just a small portion of the entire Chinese population whom God knows where they get their money from, let them waste their money on luxury goods, there are a lot of young people who genuinely want to explore our nice city and culture, including people from other countries too.

(photo: Voigtlander 35mm, UXi200)

A few weeks ago I spent a little time taking a young couple from Shanghai to see our nice and culture rich city.  It was a short day's tour but it was great fun sharing stories of our streets, I wish the government had ambassador programs to teach us how to do it properly (but I guess there is no point waiting).

(photo: Voigtlander 35mm, UXi200)

If you haven't eaten our famous street snacks like fish ball, you haven't been to Hong Kong.  It can be fun to watch my tourist friend ordering snacks to fish ball ladies :) I wish they can put up a more welcoming face to foreigners though.

(photo: Canon F1 85mm, UXi200)

A stroll in the Upper Lascar Row near Hollywood Road gives you a glimpse of antique business in the old days (my Dad roamed around this area a lot!) and you can get some pretty nice reproduction (or genuine?) goods like watches, communist badges/books, old vinyl records and posters, etc.

(photo: Leica CL, AGFA400)

In some areas, newer galleries and cafes sit right beside temples and old buildings, very romantic to write your travel journal while absorbing the contrasting atmosphere.  If modern cafe is not your cup of tea, go Mido Cafe to experience Hong Kong's afternoon tea culture (Time: Hong Kong 10 Things to Do).  The place is close by to Temple street, an interesting flea market often crowded late in the evening, if you are lucky you may be able to have your fortune told in a small fee.  There is also another flea market just a few stations away called Apliu Street, suitable for geeks and audiophiles, often very crowded in the afternoon around 4pm.  The Audio Space tube amplifier show room, made famous by the movie Infernal Affairs (American adaptation The Departed, well I suggest you watch our Hong Kong original, it is way better), is right on Apliu Street!

(photo: Voigtlander 35mm, UXi200)

Passionate about analogue photography?  You must visit FilMe where you can find hundreds of 135/120/Polaroid/Fuji/etc film brands, you will love the atmosphere there.  Interest to get an old but refurbished Polaroid SX-70?  Well the technicians at :Mint: do hell of a great job fixing these treasures, the shop is a distributor of Impossible Project films and they designed and made their own SX-70 battery operated flash!

(photo: Voigtlander 35mm, UXi200)

If you are coming to Hong Kong and like what I'm recommending, message me and I'll see if you are worth to give out a google map for places to go, perhaps we can have tea together if you are lucky :)

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's Perfect System 2011-2012

I didn't realize until 3 days ago when I put these 3 things together (which contain a whole lot more of other things inside each), that this bunch of tools are actually EVERYTHING I need wherever I go, and it is quite compact IMHO.  Powerful isn't it?  In a moment I'm gonna share with you the details but first, let's contemplate on the pattern behind, which is beyond objects and tools, but of planting seeds which someday all coagulate and become something more.

Today I have a dream job most of you envy and I myself enjoy tremendously, but this dream job is just one of the things I surrounded myself with.  My core has always been planting seeds, finding tools, connecting unrelated stuffs and sit back to look at all of these actions once in a while.  Sitting back is most important of all, it is one of the happiest moments when you can most certainly find and reap innovations and insights.

Back to objects and tools.  This so called "Perfect System" which I assume is valid at least until the end of 2012, is a result of me continuously simplifying my daily needs, finding tools that fit and beautifying them along the road.  Somehow it all made sense when I put them together.

Traveler's Notebook

(customized Traveler's Notebook refill cover)

It is not a perfect notebook but you have a choice to carry only what you need and I customized it to fulfill my needs for: travel, GTD, scheduling, mind mapping and drawing.  It is basically holding all my plans and thoughts.

(all travel essentials can be put inside my Traveler's Notebook)

(card pockets to hold credit card and name cards, etc)

(zip pocket to hold tickets, receipts, anything even coins)

(a journal page I made during my stay in Phuket)

(journaling pages)

Travel: card pockets to hold business cards, hotel access cards, mileage cards, medical card.  Zip pocket to hold receipts, post cards, stickers, paper clips.  Elastic band to hold my flight itinerary, boarding pass and passport.

GTD: I carry two refills inside Traveler's Notebook.  One is used for GTD, drawing and mind mapping.  Instead of carrying extra deck of GTD index cards like before, I use my Leather GTD Tabs to clip on specific pages for various purposes (Next Actions, Projects, Waiting For, Someday).  In addition, I created some custom inserts to facilitate my mind mapping needs.  It is a PDF in A4 size which you can download, print double sided, cut into the right size, fold in half and insert into a refill notebook very easily.  Here's the file!  Try it out and let me know your feedback.  On blank page of the refill, I enjoy drawing things randomly or sketching my next leather project ideas.

Scheduling: The second refill I use for scheduling.  I've decided that no commercially available diaries fulfill my needs and most of them too rigid.  So I created a way I temporarily called Chronodex, which you may already had a glimpse in some of my previous photos.  I'm still adding and modifying things but here's a version you can download and try: CHRONODEX VERSION 6.  It is a PDF in A4 size, you can process it the same way I mentioned above and use it as a free weekly diary.  The main advantage of it for me is that I can use the space freely but still referring to the correct time slice/pie, it is visually more pleasing and less rigid to me.  Again, I'm happy to hear your comments, good and bad.

(priority based mindmapping, more important things appear earlier in the clock face)

(my GTD leather tabs)

(mindmapping ideas, book darts seen)

(meeting notes in the form of mindmapping)

(hang tag + masking tape + clips, helpful to locate pages quick)

(my typical week schedule using Chronodex concept in weekly format I made for Traveler's Notebook)

(detail view of a typical day in my free weekly planner)

(fun to use rubber stamps to start my week)

Well, I also stitched a leather loop onto the back cover of the Traveler's Notebook to carry an extra pen the way I like it.  Other customization is just aesthetic, like the bookmark charm and the camera charm.

Twelve South BookBook and iPhone

This BookBook leather case for iPhone is super popular and we are always out of stock.  I found it perfect to be my wallet and communicator all-in-one.

Wallet: I use Twelve South's BookBook to hold my credit cards, staff access card, transport card and occasionally paper money.

Communicator: I customized the BookBook to allow better experience photo shooting with iPhone.  For work, using iPhone for photos is good enough most of the time.  Besides, my iPhone is, like many people, for: Instagram to have fun with photos and image loving communities, email, music player, phone calls, Facebook, whatsapp, audiobooks (I now "read" books mostly in audiobook format, at least I won't fall asleep), meditation (I use binaural beats to achieve mind states), alarm, address book, teamviewer (to connect remotely to my work or home computer), tethering, calculator, etc.  Thanks to Charles Kao and Steve Jobs, never been so powerful connecting to the world.

Pen Holder on Neck Strap

It seems trivial nowadays to many people but it is so useful for me.

Pens: I carry 3 pens close to me (I want to carry one more, a mechanical pencil either by Rotring or Kaweco, but that's just too much to carry sometimes).  A Pilot Capless Matt Black: it is efficient like a roller ball, just click and write, but produces elegant strokes as a fountain pen even at fine nib, I use it mostly for scheduling and mind mapping.  A Kaweco Sports ball point pen: I hate ball pens but sometimes you need to use them on laminated name cards or coated papers, very good price and small to carry.  A Graf Von Faber Castell Classics Platinum fountain pen: thanks to a dear friend who bought me this, I now use it for important signature (not much actually), its medium nib allows me to generate beautiful calligraphy and heavier strokes for sketches, I love the classic shape a lot and …err it is also something I can brag about :)

Leather Pen Holder on Neck Strap: I made this pen holder modeling after one made by 4GATS, a talented Japanese leather-craft company made of 4 staffs.  If you like the look of this, all credit goes to 4GATS, I made it because I couldn't get one myself and I love to DIMyself.  Having pens readily accessible but with style is satisfying, how?  I get more than 30 people staring at my chest every single day, anyway I hate putting pen and especially more than one of them on my shirt pocket.  One additional function I like to have this on my neck is that I can clip my visitor's pass onto it whenever I go to trade shows, no more ugly event straps hanging on my neck!

The leather pen holder is usually hanged from my neck or in my shirt pocket, BookBook in my pant pocket, while I carry by hand the Traveler's Notebook.  Well, the "Perfect System" may sound like a clumsy organizer to you, but it is my constant (remember Faraday's "constant" in LOST?) and I invite you to think more about the constant concept if you will.

Finally, if I had the luxury to carry one more thing I would carry an analog camera: Voigtlander R4A 35mm f1.4 or Canon F1N 50mm f1.2 or Polaroid 110A converted to use Fujifilm peel apart.

What Happened in 2 Months

Hong Kong is such an amazing place a lot can happen in just 2 months.  For those of you who don't follow my tweets or Instagram feed, I feel obligated to blast out what happened (Colin, I'm talking to you!).  Or to put it better, I want to share my colorful life with you because I know I won't have the time to go back and post tibits I wanted to describe in more details.  So here you go.

Had a privilege to be invited to speak in a conference in Basel.  Flown to Zurich on Swiss Air.

Before the conference, I had a few nice walk with conference attendees from different parts of the world, taking time to see and had coffee while journaling.  Visited stationery and lifestyle stores like Waser, Book Binders, Seven Sisters, etc.

One afternoon was particularly pleasant with nothing to do, so I cycled to all 3 countries sharing this lovely little Basel.  Between the border of France and Switzerland I had a couple of beers by the river and a nice chat with a fellow conference attendee.

After my presentation and the weather permitted, we went for the maiden flight of the newly made Cyberclean hot air balloon.  I was privileged to be on that very balloon, while the rest of the conference attendees rode on the other 9 balloons.  Champaign after that.

I stole half a day from the conference and met two persons I knew but never met before.  My blog reader Yvette who took me to Zurich to see stationery stores and bought me a nice pen, we had lunch in a famous restaurant Zeughauskeller, she showed me her lovely Traveler's Notebook and pens in brass pen case, we shared love in stationery and photography.  We talked about business and management near the end of the day as she is the head of a medium size company.  Since I'm a serious Treemap user, I arranged to meet the founder of Macrofocus Treepmap, Luc, in Babu's Bakery & Coffeehouse.  Interesting to see his other versions of Treemap and found that surprisingly the software's biggest clients are … I can't tell, but very interesting.  Thanks Yvette and Luc, I had a great afternoon with you even though it was very brief!

Visited Museum Tinguely amazed by his work, went up to 1291 meters Weissenstein mountain top to lunch afterward.

Chased by a cow there after showing her my Traveler's Notebook, literally chased by her and being laughed at by a 10 years old kid.

Before we left Weissenstein, I had 30 minutes laying on grass breathing clean air while looking over this beautiful country.

It was quite late that day but we managed to stop by Solothurn, a beautiful little town having a lot to do with the number 11… (check out my flickr feed by clicking the photos).  Fountains, churches, clock tower, cafe, etc.  Too short a stay but feeling lucky.

Back to Hong Kong from Switzerland.  Mid-autumn night playing with kids and lights and camera.

A cycling day with my Strida and Olympus PEN.

Worked a lot on Inkling campaign, which has a long queue of waiting list now as production speed is still slow due to their strict quality control standard.

Went with my modified Polaroid 110A (by Patrick Putze) to Ma Wan in Hong Kong, where an Instagram event in Hong Kong took place, check out Hong Kong Instayay keyword.

The Instayay group is getting bigger and bigger, lots of new faces I couldn't find time to meet.  Great to socialize with a very diverse group of people.

Oh I did take my Voigtlander 35mm too, stunning colors to capture in Ma Wan.

And it was the first time I saw my son so seriously taking photos with his digital camera, love that he enjoys photography as much as I do.

September was Switzerland, October was Korea.  For some reasons this trip was delayed to October and I couldn't change flight schedule but to accept a midnight flight to Seoul.

Rare in Seoul but it happened to me, bed bug bite in a decent hotel, luckily they moved me to a super nice traditional Korean style room, 5 times bigger but I was not so used to sleep on the floor with thin bedding.  Managed to find a lot of great stuffs to bring to customers in our shop.

First time to try Budae Jjigae (Army hotpot).  A type of hotpot originated from Korean War when meat was scarce and people picked left over food from US army base.  Yummy.

Met dozens of suppliers over there and found new masking tapes which quality finally catching up with Japanese MT Tapes.

Stopped by 10x10 cafe again, a must visit cafe even though the decoration is changed significantly from my last visit.

Finally visited Jetoy's very own shop, met the founder once again and had a real nice meeting and planned ahead for the coming year's collaboration.

Visited dozens of stationery and lifestyle shops, as usual.  Small world, I arranged a meeting with a Korean guy I met back in Switzerland, to learn more about his business in Korea.  Chose the Toycamera shop to meet.  Found in that shop selling a book with dozens of my Polaroid photos inside.  I agreed to let them use my photos for the book, for free, in return I asked them to send me the book but they never did!  Toycamera shop owner was nice enough to ask me to sign that book and I was happy enough.  And I bought the book.

Turned out there was a firework display in one of the night I stayed in Seoul, went all the way to get close to the firework and it was awesome, so many people.

Back to Hong Kong from Seoul.  Kid is having more homework, I invented some ways to help him learn English spelling, turned out successful and each round I would make a small booklet for the bunch of words he needs to memorize.  Eventually, I made a leather cover for those booklets.  My kid supervised me to make the leather book, and he specified a pencil holder too.  I named in "Spell(ing) Book".  Fun.

Cycling in Cheung Chau with kids, what a lovely day.  Ice cream, cycling, chit chats and of course Instant photography, this time with Chocolate Polaroid film.

Middle of October, after weeks of thinking about it, I finally took 4 hours (or 6?) to make this leather pen holder with strap for myself.  I followed a design from a Japanese company called 4GATS, I admired their design a lot but I couldn't buy it anywhere in Japan in my last visit in July.  Will import their products to Hong Kong, but I just had to own one created by my hand :)

More product sourcing, repeatedly, happily.  Knew Jac Zagoory's key pen for a while but finally saw it in person first time.  Great quality, good looking, but probably cannot arrive for this Xmas.

Couldn't join Strida gatherings, but managed to visit a bike store opening.  Met a serious biker who customized his Strida with speed drive, drop bar and Megahorn.

Got my hands on the Polaroid Z340 instant digital camera!  Love the look, hate the Zink prints.  Launch event with media on 23rd Nov.

Lomokino launched.  Got a sample but haven't tried to use it, I have low motivation to do that afraid of spending all my money in seconds.

Phew, a whole lot more happened, I guess these are just tip of the iceberg.  Better follow my tweets Colin! :)  BTW, finished reading the "Steve Jobs" biography and re-read "Why We Buy".  In the process of reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow".

Shelves and Shelves of Treasured Things and Stories to Tell

If I were to have my own place (gee it is almost impossible now given the high property price here in Hong Kong and I am probably too late, too unwilling to work my butts off giving my entire salary to mortgage), I would have all walls filled with bookshelves, custom made or genuine trays of the letterpress shelves, boxes and blackboards etc to build memories, concepts and ideas.

In these shelves/trays, they hold small chunks of memories though collection of objects and visuals.  Each object tells a story of my adventures, places I've been to and concepts coming from my little brain.  A real life Akashic Record of myself open to everybody.  I don't know what it means in front of God, or if it means anything to anybody, but at least being able to see those shelves of my life in my mind already gives me the basic grasp of who I am, that's what life is about isn't it?  To discover yourself.  Now I accept donations :P

Miun's Way To Preserve Impossible Film

Designer and photography enthusiast Miun shows us how to preserve your precious Impossible Project film instead of letting them to crystalize or change colors in time.