Dan Morse from Washington Post wrote an article "Putting Pen to Paper Anew" on 20th Feb 06 about "one of the odder trends of the instant-information age" which "Moleskine use has erupted in Washington and elsewhere, driven in part by a subculture of tech-savvy people otherwise electronically gadgeted to the hilt". Check out the article here

Now the juice is here. Today I touched the actual prototypes of a few new models, I even took pictures but I'm not allowed to share with everybody for now, but these I can tell:

• Watercolor Notebook: Pocket and Large size, due to arrive Hong Kong about Feb 2006. 60/72 detachable pages, heavy paper 200 gsm - 25% cotton fiber - cold pressed, expandable pocket, no bookmark. To get the best quality paper that has same quality surface for both sides of a page, Modo&Modo sourced the paper from France. You use these watercolor notebook horizontally even though the format is same as Reporter, i.e. elastic band on shorter length of the sides.
• Limited Edition Red Pocket Diary: same as Feltrinelli version but due to arrive for 2007 usage.
• Really-Can't-Tell-U-But-I'm-Thrilled Moleskine: soft, feel good to touch, in 3 sizes, due to arrive around May/June 2006.... oh can I show the pictures please? One thing I found very interesting is that Modo&Modo is protecting the Moleskine brand in every aspect possible, which is very valid in order to not having other people taking advantages off this great brand. In this new product range I found at the beginning of the pages a small note: "All rights reserved. No part or whole of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Every care has been taken in the compilation of the information in this xxxxx, but no responsibility can be accepted for the accuracy of the data presented." Want to guess what this really is? Send me an email, I'll tell when I'm allowed to tell.

The world is so small and things pop up once in a while in my life connecting so many people thanks to the Internet. Talking about social network in the 21st century. Positive energy now covers the entire Internet world much much more than just rant and raves that I experienced 10 years ago in BBS. Links and links and synchronicity and community .... I met Janey on Flickr and weeks later today I saw a wire sculpture, just so happen Janey posted her latest drawing and I posted a comment on her blog asking if she know something about wire sculpture and she replied to let me discover Alexander Calder. On the other hand, during my business trip in Taiwan in March 05 I found from Taiwan Flickr Group that they were going to have a casual committee meeting in the next 20 minutes, I jumped right to the venue not knowing what would happen and met these great people 2 hours away from my flight back to Hong Kong. One of them was Judy and I introduced them my Moleskine drawings. 3 months later Judy came out with a nicely drawn Moleskine Japanese Album and she exhibited in our Taiwan store. Today I found from her blog that there are some Hong Kong people connecting to her months ago. The world is so small. Judysmile Experimental Blog.

• Aoyama Book Centre (Aoyama)
• LIBRO
• Nadiff
• Tower Record (Shibuya)
• Tsutaya Tokyo Roppongi Hills

• Erasa: http://yblog.org/?weblog=58
  
• Ruby: http://www.rubychen.com/
• Will: http://gpaper.gigigaga.com/default.asp

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Moleskine Icons for MacOSX and 9 (15th April 05)

I'm happy to announce the availability of these icons for your Mac. They are great to sit on your desktop in their largest sizes. When you drag a file and hover it, the Moleskine notebook opens up. The color of the notebook matches the opened book during the hovering. There are more designs coming up, including opened notebooks of dozens of designs. HOWEVER, I don't know how to compress the icons files for you to download, coz I don't have dropstuff to make sit files. Any suggestions on how to do that?

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• Baby Diarrhea: Baby Shu Long is now 3 months old, suddenly he had diarrhea probably due to bateria infection. So doc prescribed him Smecta to coat his bowl and Protexin to give me extra 7 helpful bateria. Luckily his diarrhea doesn't seem to affect his mood, just needs more sleep. He is now very sensitive to camera, mimicking my mouth movement, makes up his own words and stretching his feets strongly when excited.
• ProjEx Mindmap: I was planning proj:ex by mindmapping, like what I do on most other projects. Ideas flew like water when I use mindmapping techniques, the writing was sloppy however. So for the record I usually drew a final mindmap for later use.
• Ideas: Ideas come when you are not looking hard for them. I just wanted to remind myself that the most productive and creative time I experienced was when my mind was relaxed.
• Target: Realizing the target next financial year jumping up so much, I have to be even more relaxed.

• Picture 1: The speed of drying for real Pilot G2 is about 4 seconds. The fake one takes far longer, after 4 seconds I still get the same smear length similar to 1 second. The color of real G2 is very black while fake one is brownish. Another big difference is that the real G2 can't be erased at all, the lines appear exactly the same before I erased 20 strokes. On the other hand, the fake G2 appeared half dark only after 4 eraser strokes.
  
• Picture 2: The printing of the fake G2 (bottom) is a lot more corse and bigger than the real one.
• Picture 3: The refill of the fake G2 (bottom) has no cap at the end of the tube. The gel that stops ink gel from evaporation appears much darker orange than the real one. The diameter of the fake one is less than the real one. The printing on the refill is very rough comparing to the real one. Basically the refill is completely different from the real one.
• Picture 4: The grip of the fake G2 (bottom) is shinier and thinner than the real one, and is easily removed from the barrel. The clicker of the fake G2 is removable, not like the real one.
  

Hong Kong Exhibition Video

I was planning/mindmapping proj:ex on Moleskine, I wanted the exhibition to have something special coz the fixture they made is totally not what I expected (shhhhh...it). A month ago I went to Japan and saw a design shop called Cibone using thick acrylic blocks to display product info. I murmured about it to Monica our merchandiser, turned out she had a friend in acrylic advertising business and I could get some free blocks from him if I give him a spec. I gave her two sizes of square blocks. My proj:ex mindmap was in front of me when I was talking to her, I thought why not make some acrylic Moleskine Diary, add an elastic band and have fun since it was free? So I gave her a M daily diary under my reach and a week later the Acrylic Moleskine blocks came! I thought it was something fun to do for the exhibition but Monica said "I thought you wanted them for practical use, as paperweights for displaying Moleskine". Geee, what a great idea! Just when I needed them!

You see these things connect strangely you never knew which came first and why they happen at the moment you needed them. They click.

• Moleskine is with fountain pen is with paper and paperweight.
• Aurora demonstrator transparent pen I fell in love with but couldn't afford years ago is similar to acrylic block I saw in Japan a month ago.
• proj:ex mindmap in front of me when the block conversation was on air
• The impulse to buy a fountain pen met a 40% discount from a specialty store which has a Visconti Van Gogh Crystal.
• Van Gogh Crystal and acrylic Moleskine arrived the same day
• I'm dizzy, look at the pic, only one scenario of millions of quantum possibilities
  

This is not news anymore partly because I updated late and partly because everybody already read Jeremy's article PLUS his weblog on this issue.

Jeremy did some interview with some of us Moleskine fans through email, ICQ, etc. He wrote an article which was published on 14th Jan 05. Since this topic about "digital vs paper" has been around for ages, most of us already have solid perspectives and answered looong, so he included these interviews in full details on his weblog.
Here's what you we have summarized so far:

• Jeremy Wagstaff's Column LOOSE WIRE: Turning Over A New Leaf
  I scanned from the paper directly and this is a non-commercial use, so I guess they will spare me from lawsuit
• Jeremy Wagstaff's LOOSE wire weblog
  His coverage on Moleskine keeps coming, I wonder if he's addicted to it by this time
• The Moleskine Report Part I
  Interview with Marc Orchant
• The Moleskine Report Part II
  Interview with Mike Rohde
• The Moleskine Report Part III
  Moleskine links Jeremy collected
• The Moleskine Report Part IV
  Interview with Merlin Mann
• The Moleskine vs The Alwych, More on Alternative
  A notebook made in Scotland
• The Moleskine Multi-Tab Hack
  Hack suggested by Jerry Brito
• The Moleskine Report Part V
  Interview with Patrick Ng

About the drawing: the background is about me as a new buyer trying hard to meet sales for my department, which generated a lot of unbalanced forces in my psyche. Sales trend as blue water that flows uncontrollable vs Red burning desire to manage work, from inking flames to burned page. Sales as a worldly illusion vs the tree of life, being set on fire by my indulgence to smoke for an escape. Red burning flames over cast on my deep thinking self you see the immobility vs desire. I wish I could manage to think that these all fall into one big pale blue sky. Realizing that the sky is so clear and these are just incidents that is passing by in our conscious stream of thoughts, I found peace and a better sense of control.

It's been a hectic week trying to cramp every merchandise into a new store in Taipei. Now I'm gonna look after stocks for 5 stores in HK and Taiwan. The fun part is that I now have increased some new sourcing and have one more store to play with. Some Taiwan artists are now being contacted, although according to them, Moleskine is not well known there, they are quite interested in joining proj: exhibition to be held over there. Hopefully, Taiwan store will hold the 2nd exhibition if I can gather more Taiwan local works. Heavy work pressure, but got something fun to play with, happy.

Newest submission to EastTouch magazine

Sitting in a cafe holding a piece of POP from Food Division, contemplating the difference between organic farming/lifestyle and commercialization of organic life forms. It seems trivial to find a difference as people get so used to the symbolization of "health" in terms of organic food. What we are buying is not the food itself but the believe that we are healthier each day instead of just getting older. That strong consumer motivation drives the concentration of efforts/nutrients to produce what's called "organic" products, which somewhat deviated from the grand illusion of the definition: "The principal guidelines for organic production are to use materials and practices that enhance the ecological balance of natural systems and that integrate the parts of the farming system into an ecological whole." Balance means everything has its time, farming commercially means speeding up certain life form in certain direction/dimension by concentrating supply/nutrient and drainage of other resources before their time. I mean if the end result of organic farming is commercialization, it would hardly be a practice that enhances ecological balance and integrates life forces. (Reference: The Organic Explainer). Why I'm thinking all these? Coz I'm thinking how to cultivate my soon to be born son, organically or commercially? What it means to grow a child organically? and commercially? .....

I just met Pilot today and they presented some new products to be launched in Jan 2005. A lot of Moleskine lovers use Pilot G2 pen, there are 3 colors (Red, Blue, Red) currently, but a new Dark Blue is coming out soon. On the other hand, a smaller sized Pilot G2 is also going to be launched. The smaller version seems a very good companion with pocket size Moleskine. Finally, they will launch a new 7 color pen series called Illusion. The amazing thing about this is when you write with these pens, the ink are all black on paper, but if you use any eraser to rub on them, which generate heat, the ink will turn into colors. Even more amazingly, if you put the paper into fridge, all the ink turn black once again. Well, I was amazed by the magic but still haven't been able to think of some creative use of them, so let me know if you have any idea!

Since Moleskine diary has no Hong Kong holiday indication, I bought a sticker which has HK, China and US holidays I can peel off and stick on particular dates of my Moleskine. It is a very nice idea and useful for me, even better than the dates that indicated for other countries coz mine is showing in Red! On the other hand, I wonder why Modo & Modo doesn't produce diaries that cross the years, say from August 2004 to January 2005. I guess it would increase sales significantly. They might be able to get some switcher earlier.

Newest submission to EastTouch magazine

To me post-it are notes to other people, notebooks are notes to myself. But sometimes a little obsession with a twist can mean something very special to yourself or others. Say, on weekly basis collect as much sticky notes as possible, probably those you wrote, stick them on one Moleskine page, revisit the page 3 months later and see what you wrote and how much you can recognize what you were saying to your colleagues. Sooner or later you will think that you have brain damage and need to write even more sticky notes, but when you get to this far, you know you should stop and see a doc. On the other hand, putting your thoughts and feelings on Moleskine for somebody else is also equally challenging and dangerous, coz most of the time you either fall in love of what you wrote you want to keep it to yourself or you have too much time to review and laugh at yourself for the stupidity of your self-centered "thoughts and feeling about you". Finally you wonder whether you are writing to youself too much or you are actually talking to yourself thinking you are writing to somebody.... errr after a month's time, the page is still empty. Nevertheless in both cases, they are great reflection tools for me and lot of insight came from self-awareness through peeking at myself in a different time frame.

Finally the new Moleskine 2005 diaries are arriving city'super store today. The daily version is actually too thick for me, I had a struggle to choose between pocket or large weekly versions. Well, finally I decided to use pocket size weekly due to its portability and work. On the other hand, it wouldn't be a bad idea to use daily version to write/draw something as reflections. Also this is the first time we have sketch book here, pocket size is available in small quantity, while large size is yet to arrive Hong Kong.

I wish I could've done this on Moleskine. I was deeply immersed in the Myst saga (Myst, Riven, Exile) and painstakingly taking notes and drawings during the game play. It was done on a small sketchbook too bad not a Moleskine, if you give me those games today, I can easily follow my notes and play it all over again pretty easily. Richard Downs, my favorite artist also did the drawings inside two of these games. In the saga, you can travel to different worlds (Ages) through books and the characters wrote all of their journals and designs in these books as well. All these are strangely related in mysterious ways Carl Jung calls it Synchronicity. The game journal I wrote, the drawings from me and Richard Downs, the Age jumping books, Moleskine, etc, all these connections only I would know and a deeper meaning is always embedded in these chains of events. I am that type of person ready to immerse myself into something I appreciate, so deep sometimes I have difficulty coming back (see the CCFS sickness I got back a few years ago). Notebooks are portals to ages, ages that transcend the time/space continuum where souls meet through medium of various forms without necessity to recognize shapes/forms.

Matches on paper versus Matches ON paper. Finally, Matchman comes into life. He told me of his very own manifesto and I have the pleasure to start recording some of his wisdoms on M. I'm inviting him to do more, but at this stage he seems jumping around boxes after boxes busily. I'm sure he has more to offer, so if I can catch him, I'll let you know. BTW, before his last jump, he said something about Nausea and Jean-Paul Sartre and asked me to learn from him. After hearing that I started to have a very unpleasant feeling towards something hidden, which I'm supposed to reveal. What's that? That very same feeling happened when I had an unfortunate incident with CCFS (Color Classic Fixation Syndrome). Weird. Note the jornal I kept years ago here.

I wish we all had the persistence to follow it through. That is to put those matches in their right boxes and review constantly according to the Notes On Matchbox II. Stephen Covey developed this matrix for priority to illustrate one of the habits of highly effective people. For people like me, I need visualization to practice it correctly, so matches are natural metaphor for me coz I really want to burn all the to-dos, burn them burn them all, effectively. Anyway, to summarize, Matchbox II is a long term focus for improvement which pursue opportunities instead of solving imminent problems. Well, MatchMan and PhiloMan did said something worth exploring more... (see this drawing)

There's been so many insights everyday and there is no better way than to jot them down on Moleskine instead of leaving the precious "wisdoms" on office A4 papers waiting to be lost. You too have tons of To-Do adding to the already piling up Yet-To-Do list right? Here's my view, each To-Do is just like a piece of matchstick, you want to burn them all, but you can't. What's the more wise option? Store them in different match boxes and label them .... well, you have to turn the page which I haven't drawn, so stay tuned.

Here's a latest drawing from Lisa's gallery. Titled Collage Sketchbook "Orans: Magnetic Pull" (Paper items, colored pencil, watercolor pencil and markers). This is her test to use watercolor pencil on M. "I have just completed this collage in my sketchbook notebook (See details). I was curious to see how the heavyweight pages hold up to watercolor pencils and am happy with the results."
To see what kind of pen she uses for these beautiful drawings, visit the forum posting here

Russell from Japan sketches all the time. While he has a lot of talents as an "American Christian artist in Japan", as seen from his personal page, he has a habbit to carry a sketchbook and try to sketch during lunch or travel in the subway. Check out his Compact Sketching Kit which consists of a Moleskine pocket sketchbook, a mini water brush and a watercolor box he made. If you are interested in sketching, take a look at the online sketch book from him and books he recommend.

"I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine". Emily Dickinson

"There's nothing more difficult than a line". Pablo Picasso

"Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare". Guy de Maupassant

"Nulla dies sine linea". (No day without a line. i.e. without something done) Plinius

"It's easy to write one's memoirs when one has a terrible memory". Arthur Schnitzler

"I don't use a typewriter, I write longhand, with a pencil. Essentially I'm a horizontal writer. I think better when I'm lying down". Truman Capote

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters". Frank Lloyd Wright

"Who am I? I am a poet. What do I do? I write. And how do I live? I live". Boheme

"We stayed at home to write, to consolidate our outstretched selves". Sylvia Plath

Working Unit is sending out this press release in Chinese. From my observation, the current people buying Moleskine notebooks are 80% expatriates/foreigners, 15% educated/designer, 5% casual yet classy people. Let's see if this will change across time while Working Unit promote Moleskine in HK. I certainly want M. to be a special object that is not too widely used by everybody, like Apple computer. Anyway, we'll see.

Previously I only saw 9 stamps on some small size notebook, but today I found the 9 postcards that came with the small size notebook. I'm yet to see the 9 labels anywhere, and wonder if the same format is happening to the large size notebook. Anyhow, it seems that Modo & Modo would like to have the fans collect these stamps, postcards and labels to push sales. Also learned from the store that the Moleskine diaries are coming to HK soon.

What is your best loved writing instrument on Moleskine? I personally like to use Pentel's Tradio Stylo pen in black. The water based pen has a fibre head, which allows you to draw/write lines with different thickness by turning the angle, sort of like a calligraphic pen. Best of all, I have a practice to add shadows after drawing, which can be done by using a wet brush or tissue paper and smudge the edges to create the effect. What is your favorite pen on Moleskine? Send us your comments here

The brand new series of Moleskine notebooks are now packed with a sheet of stickers appears to come in random, each notebook may come with a different set of stickers with quotes from people like Picasso. On the back of the stickers it says:

Each notebook and set of 3 journals contains 9 stamps
or 9 labels or 1 postcard, for sending signals, exchanging
messages, collecting ideas. Send your quote about writing
to info@modoemodo.com. They will be published in the next
reprints of stamps and postcards

East Touch magazine started a pilot article to introduce Moleskine's history on 1st Nov 2004. There will be an article or HK local artist's drawing being published every 2 weeks. Keep come back to see more, we expect more artists contribute to propagate the greatness of M.

Gallery

Organic Child Growing him organically or commercially?	Matchstick To-Do The Matchbox II	Matchstick To-Do Each To-Do is a piece of matchstick	Hidden God What is hidden is to be discovered	My Son Message to my future son	Book Cover Sticking photo on M.