Mastodawn

Back in the 1970s Burma, students were taught (forced to learn) typing, shorthand, and penmanship. Upon being promoted from lower school to fifth grade, we were finally permitted to switch from pencil to fountain pen. No one in Burma used ballpoint pens, in those days. Later in engineering school, we were taught to use technical pens and calligraphy pens, which were dip-ink types.

The first #fountain #pen I learned to use in middle school was my grand father's Parker 51. It was about as basic as a fountain pen could be.

Through the decades, I have used other fountain pens from Parker, Cross, Waterman, and Pelikan. But my daily-use fountain pen is still my trusty old Parker 51, which is several years older than FORTRAN.

Ah yes, I still #write meeting notes, technical concepts, algorithm designs, etc., on paper (Japanese made) with fountain pen (Parker 51).

And no, I do not use ballpoint pens, rollerball pens, felt-tip pens, and other types of ink pens.

Show thread

Dima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱

@AmenZwa same here, except that fountain pens were allowed already in the 1st year. My handwriting with most anything but a fountain pen gets impossible to read even for me after a few sentences, so texts are written with a #fountain #pen Lately it's a basic Japanese Pilot, and a bit less basic (and ready to fly, it's a pen which is closed hermetically, and so changes in air pressure don't cause leaks) Taiwanese TWSBI Vac 700.

Show thread

amen zwa, esq.1d ago

@dimpase
I’ve used the fantastic Pilot Vanishing Point. But the retraction mechanism became a tiny bit loose after three years, and someone at the office—believing it was an ordinary ballpoint pen—picked up my Pilot, thumbed the pusher hard, and curled the nib back onto itself. It broke my pen and my heart. I was done with the Vanishing Point, after that.😢

Although I no longer own one, I love Pilot fountain pens. Even their disposable one, the Varsity, writes exceedingly well—especially on Japanese paper.

Yes, the general wisdom dispensed to us kids, back in the day, was to use either pencil or fountain pen, but never ballpoint pen, if one wishes to develop penmanship. That was good guidance.

I’ll have to give Taiwanese pens a try. Thanks mate.

PS—All my pens are 40 some years old. Still, none of them leak on land. But they all gush like NYC water mains, when in an airplane at altitude.🤷‍♂️

Oh and, the reason why my school forbade lower school kids from using fountain pens was because, typically, our fingers, copybooks, desks, classrooms, and even our school uniforms, were well inked before noon.😀