There's no such thing as having too many pens

Writing arsenal, minus my moleskine-type notebook.

You're likely to think me a dork, and an old-fashioned one at that. "There she goes writing in her blog and all, but it's a post full of PENS! And they're not even those multi-purpose types that take dictation/have a laser pointer/contain flash storage!"

So this photo and this post constitute an ode to my pen collection. You've already met the three pens on top; so I'll talk about the pack of ten (yes, there are ten pens) on the bottom.

Ever since the whole idea of gel pens in an amazing rainbow of colors was introduced to the Philippines around ten years ago (OMG THAT LONG?), they've become near-ubiquitous. And why shouldn't they be? The good brands don't clog and don't leak, write very well even on rough types of paper, and look cool. People color-code notes with them and even create calligraphy and artwork using their bright, vivid inks.

I bought this set shortly after my birthday this year. Since my first introduction to gel pens consisted of sitting in on a focus group discussion about whether the Dong-A brand would even sell well in the country (guess what: it did), I've had a marked preference for these Korean pens. Funnily enough, I use them at work, color-coding my to-do list. Since I mainly use them on 3x5 index cards and on short bond paper I can't complain about the quality of the ink, since the ones at the office are made of relatively good-quality paper stuffs.

I know that it DOES look odd that I'm still thinking about pens but, well, I guess that's what being a kid of the '80s and '90s does to me: I'll lust after techy stuff all right, but acquisitions of pens and papers and notebooks will really make me swoon, since that was what I had when I was in school.

Just about the only thing this collection of pens can't do is fix my wonky handwriting.