Sunday - October 08, 2006
Notes from Bangkok.
"Coup, schmoo," I said. A military group had
declared martial law after unseating then-Prime Minister Thaksin, who was
conveniently not in the country at the time. "If it's anything like Manila,
people will be in the mall and everything will be quite normal." Our business
trip just happened to coincide with Martial Law Day One; calls to colleagues in
Bangkok confirmed how "normal" things were, so off we
went.
We stayed at the Emporium Suites, serviced apartments beside the Emporium Mall. During our free time, I went to Kinokuniya and Asia Books, both of which had an impressive graphic design and illustration selection. On our last day, we dropped by the newest (and supposedly swankiest) mall in Bangkok, the Siam Paragon. The department store had a section called "Read and Write," and it had aisle after aisle of luscious notebooks, ruled and blank, covered in leather, suede, woven fabric, silk, card... and a fountain pen section. Sadly everything was at full retail, but I bought ink instead: Caran d'Ache's Colors of the Earth in Saffron (a soft, transparent orange), Pelikan Brilliant Blue in the bottle with the pen rest, and Pelikan Brilliant Brown. I also bought notebooks (how could I not?).
"Zenitouch" is a line of notebooks from Zenith Paper. They are remarkably similar to Miquelrius's Flexible Notebooks, which are available here (although stock is quite thin) at Fully Booked, Sketchbooks and Bibliarch (yes, all owned by the same guy). Their advantage is they're slightly cheaper, and come in more colors, sizes and thicknesses. Geo is a lifestyle concept store - the concept hovers somewhere in between Gothic and tiki bar - and they consign items to various stores. I got a notebook from their Anatomy collection. (Skulls and skeletons get me every time.)
(The oriental-design notebook in the picture is by Paperblanks. I got it on sale during the Book Fair, from Fully Booked. At full retail even I, full-throttle notebook junkie, have second and third thoughts.)
The little Zenitouch with the maroon cover is my one-step-above-doodle notebook. I've sworn not to scribble to-do lists in it. So far, it has a picture poem, a cityscape by Jon, and a story fragment featuring an armed fairy, a mean unicorn and Diplomacy.
We stayed at the Emporium Suites, serviced apartments beside the Emporium Mall. During our free time, I went to Kinokuniya and Asia Books, both of which had an impressive graphic design and illustration selection. On our last day, we dropped by the newest (and supposedly swankiest) mall in Bangkok, the Siam Paragon. The department store had a section called "Read and Write," and it had aisle after aisle of luscious notebooks, ruled and blank, covered in leather, suede, woven fabric, silk, card... and a fountain pen section. Sadly everything was at full retail, but I bought ink instead: Caran d'Ache's Colors of the Earth in Saffron (a soft, transparent orange), Pelikan Brilliant Blue in the bottle with the pen rest, and Pelikan Brilliant Brown. I also bought notebooks (how could I not?).
"Zenitouch" is a line of notebooks from Zenith Paper. They are remarkably similar to Miquelrius's Flexible Notebooks, which are available here (although stock is quite thin) at Fully Booked, Sketchbooks and Bibliarch (yes, all owned by the same guy). Their advantage is they're slightly cheaper, and come in more colors, sizes and thicknesses. Geo is a lifestyle concept store - the concept hovers somewhere in between Gothic and tiki bar - and they consign items to various stores. I got a notebook from their Anatomy collection. (Skulls and skeletons get me every time.)
(The oriental-design notebook in the picture is by Paperblanks. I got it on sale during the Book Fair, from Fully Booked. At full retail even I, full-throttle notebook junkie, have second and third thoughts.)
The little Zenitouch with the maroon cover is my one-step-above-doodle notebook. I've sworn not to scribble to-do lists in it. So far, it has a picture poem, a cityscape by Jon, and a story fragment featuring an armed fairy, a mean unicorn and Diplomacy.