Scription

Scription 2012 - How Was It?

Scription has been very slow in the past year of 2012.  I thought situation at work would become smoother but it didn't.  Simply opening too many stores too fast, losing important connection between sourcing and customer wants/needs.  In addition to under staff situation in my departments, I had a lot of tedious problems to tackle for developing new stores in Shanghai.  That left me essentially no time in cultivating people and projects at work, let alone my own Chronodex adventure.  2012 was a very tiring year.

(Le Jardin Secret)

(A Room vintage cafe: dolls from the 50s meet present day Traveler's Notebook)

(A Room vintage cafe: Tri-eyes of different ages. Bell & Howell model 333 8mm movie camera vs #turtlejacket on iPhone. 3-lens turret)

(GZ cafe: which I brought a dear Korean Traveler's Notebook super fan/friend there)

I did managed to stop by a few nice places during my business trips, which is like Shanghai every month, such as Le Jardin Secret (秘密花園) restuarant, A Room which is a nice cafe flooded with vintage stuffs and GZ cafe which the owner is always there to chat with.

(Shanghai airport lounge)

(Shanghai airport: roof window looks like leaves from certain angles)

I did managed to steal time, like I said before, to do something I like in small chunks of time too, but that's not too fulfilling and I always feel like missing a lot of things.  Like bringing personal projects to business trip hoping I could work on them in hotel but eventually too tired to do so, like I needed to organize ideas floating around but there was never a quiet moment I could use productively.  Despite what you think apparently, I myself feel like losing myself bits and pieces here and there.  2013 new year resolution? Be smarter. 

Smarter!  Like forget about Apple's Map, use Baidu in China once and for all. For the rest of the world, Google Map rocks.  Yup, Apple led somebody in Australia to a dessert, it led me to a wrong building too.  Not smart to roll out an app like that.  Not smart when you don't know you are not ready for it (I'm reminding myself).

(Sensu brush is the best stylus I've ever found! Writing with it on iPad is effortless, not to mention the amazing low friction digital painting in apps like Paper)

(Words notebook: made in USA, carefully chosen paper and ink, size the same as Moleskine Cahier, unique system of notation for tasks and bullets. Fountain pen will bleed through pages, finer rollerballs, pencils and ballpoints are perfect.  I would say it is the tasks/bullets version of Field Notes)

(Varacil mechanical pencil PUZZLE, HK$108 kind of challenging to finish, but it is our 2012 Xmas TOP seller! 砌死人嘅鉛蕊筆)

As for product reviews in 2012, I believe I did nothing at all.  Did managed to post some pictures with short comments on Instagram/Twitter feed, but no analysis and comparison, zero.  Well, Scription is not about product reviews afterall, I am sure you trust what I share here or on Instagram/Twitter has some points of interest.  Maybe I filtered too much, should have revealed a little more.

(Kaweco props for retail display: sick and tired of data analysis and fighting against biased opinions on that day, so I played with tihngs on my table for a few minutes)

(Frame and lenses: I was just posting something I stare at for a long time, bet they are pleasing in some ways, to you too)

(Headphones and cameras cleaning day of the year)

Yes I posted porns on my feeds too, judging from the responds I get, I figured people really don't mind.  I hope in between these porns, you can see tibits of my life and practise perhaps something good will come out of the sharing.

(Love film, no edit great colors and texture, not too real. Mangrove in Tainan. Canon F1 85mm/f1.2, AGFA Vista plus 200)

Oh meeting people in 2012 was fun, great fun.  I took the liberty to further disrupt my work boundaries and went to Tainan University of Technology sharing my retail experience, hope I had inspired some students there.  They are very polite and teachers are super friendly, I appreciate the opportunity.  I also went to a forum to speak to dozens of secondary school students in Hong Kong, sharing thoughts about creating a sustainable campaign for their Chinese New Year projects.  I love sharing, which is part of my very own learning, I just hope I can have more time to do that in our industry as well.

(Thanks world Traveler's Notebook fans @fishball and Colin for sending me lovely greetings! Merry Xmas!)

Lastly, thanks to all of you Scription readers and Chronodex users whom have been heart warming and supportive.  Let's continue the Scription journey in 2013!

Please do comment for the Scription content so far, I'd like to see what I can improve.

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".

Somebody is obsessed with my son's gardening project, while I am obsessed with Dymoing

Sometimes getting involved in your own way is a lot of fun.  My son's school project required him to pick a plant, grow a pot and submit a report.  Without knowing it, he chose the most difficult plant, Chinese Cabbage.  We found that the seeds his school provided had a 99% failure rate.  So his mom took him to a gardening shop to get replacement seeds, next, all hell broke loose.

In addition the Chinese Cabbage, we now have Baby Carrot, Thyme, Perilla, Peppermint, Parsley …, pots all over the place.  I was growing things like crazy back in University, weeds excluded, but this time it was my wife's turn.  Eventually, she made a great report out of it.  The part I played was to label all the pots with Dymo tapes.  I also put my son's tiny dinosaurs in the pot and added a few model trees to create a scene for the report :)

(If you are wondering where I got this cool flat Dymo 1450 machine, it is from a UK site called Present and Correct)

Another project we did in November was to create a recipe book and send in a report.  This round we chose a dish passed down from my father.  It is called "Sliced Noodle" (搣麵).  My father learned this from his Northern China friends, the texture is really great and easy to make.  We had so much fun doing it.  I decided that the content is too good to be just some print-outs on A4 papers.  So KOLO's Amelia photo album was used.

Time with family is a rarity all working parents face.  I'm glad we made it, from small chunks of time.  Like how we make the "Sliced Noodle", one piece at a time and be there means a lot.

 

Moleskine Recipe Journal - city'super special edition

This year's best selling Moleskine products for us is definitely the Passions recipe journal!  It has been our number one Moleskine product since Passions' launch.  So we did a special edition to cross promote with our food division.

This also serves as a special product to commemorate our newest and first city'super store in Shanghai, China.  In addition, we finally published our own cookbook after 2 years of production, everything seems to just fall into the right place at the right time.  I'm so happy about making this happen.

Beautiful Tour de France Leaflet

This is one of the leaflet I would pick up from city'super, one which has a beautiful design on good paper.  Most other leaflets have too much information with too little content just attract no one, almost like coupon flyers.  Big thanks to the designers who joined us recently, we can see the difference and proud to see some improvements.

Here's the details of our Tour de France promotion: "French wines are renowned in the world. The wine regions of France provide a stunning and spectacular picture-like scenery. This is the 3rd year we organise the Tour de France promotion. This year, in conjunction with the French Ministry of Agriculture, we will travel around eight wine regions in France, including Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhone Valley, etc... to discover the characteristics of each appellation. Come and savour the glory of French wines and food!"

city'super Recipes x Moleskine Passion Recipe Journal - request for comments

At city'super we have literally hundreds of recipes made by star chefs and organized by our executive chef.  Many of them made it to the store in printed format for customers to pick up, but shelf life of these recipes are kind of short.  People do file them away in their own ways but isn't it such a waste if they are not available online?

Moleskine Passion Recipe Journal is really the first product allowing me to cross over our stationery department with our food division.  I've borrowed one of the recipes from our recent "Italian food and wine from Sicily" event and converted the illustrator file into a MSK format (which is a PDF) just fit for the Moleskine Passion Recipe Journal.  Imagine all those recipes including those from our cooking classes and demonstrations become available online in a searchable library, once downloaded what you need, you can choose to print and paste them onto your journal to create a book of your own, adding notes, rating, etc for your own future reference.

 
 Readers from Moleskinerie and food lovers, I would like to ask for your comments about whether this 'system' is anything good for you.  Is it useful as a practice?  Do you find it hard to convert online recipes into the format you want in your journal?  Do you think I should continue to pursue our executive chef to make the library online in this format?

If you already own a Moleskine Passion Recipe Journal, you can download and try this Ditalini with Borage recipe on your journal and see for yourself.  Anxiously awaiting for your comments.

Spices of Traveling Life - aging brass with worcestershire sauce

You might not notice this paper cover before when I customized the Traveler's Notebook Passport size for an exhibition last year.  It is too pretty to be hidden inside the leather cover so I now use it on my actual passport cover.  Not very durable though, wondering if there is any way to laminate it nicely.

 
Traveler's Notebook Large and Passport Size + new brass accessories (oxidized)

From this photo (wow, this photo is on Flickr's Explore front page on 21st Feb 2010!) you may notice the newly released brass collection (pen/clip/ruler) from Midori is significantly aged nicely comparing to how they looked 10 days ago.  I actually speeded up the oxidization process by soaking them in sea salt and Worcestershire sauce for 2 days.  If you are planning to do this to your stuffs, don't forget to let air to reach the brass surface coz the process obviously need those oxygen molecules to react with copper and zinc respectively to create lusting greenish-yellow and coppery red colors.

 
 Leather-bound notebook bearing the Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce recipe

Why Worcestershire sauce you said.  Despite the acidity I needed, it is my favorite spice after all.  It works great with V8 to produce the Virgin Mary taste I like, it is used in Hong Kong restaurants for dim sum dishes such as steamed beef meatballs and spring rolls.  Its original recipe was found last year in a skip inside a leather-bound notebook, which was bought from a stationer right next door to the original Lea and Perrins shop, see that's related to stationery too.  (photo source: newsteam.co.uk)

 
 Union Station Los Angeles - Canon F1 Lomo 400

Having been using wider angle lenses most of the time, I recently fell in love with the 50mm field of view again.  It was once my secondary school dream to own a Canon F1 (which happens to have a very strong brass body as well), so after acquiring it finally last year, I've been traveling with it almost daily.  In my last trip to U.S., I had a chance to stop by L.A. for a day and I chose Union Station as my first stop and took some beautiful photos there.  No wonder so many people go there to take their wedding photos.

Worcestershire sauce, leather, brass, camera, notebook , pen etc, what do they have in common?  More than the brown and nostalgic quality they posses, they give me warmth through senses in solitary travels.

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