Spin caps are great for night journals, the seconds it takes to spin the cap off provides a time to recap the day. It enhances the ceremonial process.
Snap caps are great for work. The reality is, the time to spin the cap off and adjust the grip is enough to cost an idea or two. The length of the cap counts too, cap of Lamy Safari requires less travel than Pilot Elite; shorter is better.
At work, fountain pens are tools, the more brainless the better.
55
In retrospect, I realize that we did not exhaust all the options available to us…..I was young and impatient, and did not see any virtue in waiting. Escape seemed the only way.
84
We were not different people with separate languages; we were one people, with different tongues.
182
I saw how my own people had remained in one place, while I had moved on and seen new worlds and gained new ideas…..if I had returned, my political evolution would have been stunted.
192
I was not going to let my involvement in the struggle and the scope of my political activities be determined by the enemy I was fighting against.
201
A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.
267
The key to being underground is to be invisible. Just as there is a way to walk in a room in order to make yourself stand out, there is a way of walking and behaving that makes you inconspicuous.
298
Guerrilla warfare…was not designed to win a military victory so much as to unleash political and economic forces that would bring down the enem…..not to neglect the political side of war……international public opinion…is sometimes worth more than a fleet of jet fighters.
305
A liberation army is an egalitarian army. You must treat your men entirely differently than you would in a capitalist army……But when you are off duty, you must conduct yourself on the basis of perfect equality.
367
many leaders of the newly independent states of Africa, who accepted the need for some form of socialism to enable their people to catch up with the advanced countries of the West.
390
It would be very hard if not impossible for one man alone to resist. I do not know that I could have done it had I been alone.
488
To survive in prison, one must develop ways to take satisfaction in one’s daily life.
526
There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way.
623
I was not born with a hunger to be free. I was born free — free in every way that I could know.
As an engineering student walking in campus, you’re given a handout by a middle age man on the sidewalk. The handout read “Challenge on French Translation”. Out of boredom after the final exam, you pull out Google Translate and ChatGPT to kill the time.
A week later, dean of school called. From this point on, you’re given the honor and responsibility to translate French for him. It turned out, the old man that day was the dean. Your engineering background does not seem odd, instead makes you a genius.
New semester begins, you work the way between dean’s work and school work. Feeling honored and a sense of proudness inside. Then your professor called. He always has the tendency to ask you to write his paper for him. This time is no different. What can you do? After all, he decides if you graduate or not.
Tangle turns into strangle. You struggle to find priority between the dean, the school work, and the professor. You tried pulling long nights, but it’s too much to endure.
Painfully admit the defeat, you asked the professor about dealing with the dean’s work.
“You should tell him.” Was his conclusion.
You went to the dean for advice.
“It’s not that difficult.” Was his reply.
It’s a warm summer. The proud feeling seems to be a feeling long ago. Am I a good engineer? Do I have the talent in French? Your identity and self recognition is fuzzling.
The feeling of running out of ink in a middle of a meeting and trying to touch the paper lightly to squeeze its last ink drop is disturbing.
That made Lamy Safari a fountain pen worth constant revisiting. It’s a bless not having to unscrew the pen and flip it upside down to check the ink level.
Like many, I watched Jon’s TED talk years ago; before I was married, before I had a kid. I have been feeling trapped, at work and at family, these 2 years. That gave me the motive to attend his speech in Taipei.