Scribe Writing Essentials: The Philippines' One-Stop-Shop for Fine Writing Instruments

I remember the first few years after I started using my first fountain pen. I was so frustrated because the only ink I could use then was Parker Quink Black. When I joined Fountain Pen Network-Philippines, or FPN-P, I learned about a specialty store in Quezon City's Eastwood Mall selling not only fountain pens, but fountain pen inks and fountain pen-friendly notebooks as well. The store, Scribe Writing Essentials (SWE, or Scribe), became a very popular name within FPN-P since then. Soon, owner Marian Ong joined the group in one of our monthly pen meets to introduce a highly celebrated German brand, Pelikan. That was three years ago.

FPN-P 2010 Christmas Pen Meet, Conti's Greenbelt 2, Makati City. Marian Ong (in striped top) seated in front.
This photo belongs to FPN-P member Arnell T. Umali.

  

Today, Scribe has grown tremendously. In less than a year, four more stores were added to the one in Eastwood, all selling a wide variety of products from journal and diaries to fine writing instruments from around 20 brands from all over the world. 

Scribe now offers fine writing instruments from Japan and Taiwan in Asia, and Germany and Spain in Europe. Brands such as TWSBI, Sailor, Platinum, Inoxcrom, Kaweco, Lamy, and Pelikan are all known to produce high quality writing instruments, and most of their products are collectibles. Topnotch and highly-coveted Japanese notebook Midori is also in Scribe's shelves now, as well as Hong Kong made notebooks and stationery items from Daycraft. Scribe has also made a giant leap by offering fountain pen inks that used to reside only in my dreams: J. Herbin from France, Pelikan Edelstein from Germany, and Noodlers from the US. Other fountain pen inks from Sailor and Lamy are also available from their stores.

To officially launch Scribe, their stores, and the brands they carry, Scribe's founder and owner, Marian Ong, hosted a cocktail party at the Shangri-La Plaza Mall on March 4, 2014. The event was well-attended by a large number of FPN-P people, members of the press, and Scribe's friends. 

The Atrium of Shangri-La Plaza Mall where the Scribe launch was held on March 4, 2014.

The Scribe store in Shangri-la Plaza Mall, Mandaluyong City. Photo provided by SWE.

Scribe has three brand ambassadors who were present during the launch. They are Michael Manalo, and FPN-P's Leigh Reyes and Fozzy Castro-Dayrit. Their art were displayed during the event. 

Art by Leigh Reyes, who counts the Scribe display as her first exhibit ever.
Leigh is a known figure in the advertising world, having won the country's first ever GOLD CLIO and WORLD PRESS Gold awards. Her work has been recognized both here and abroad. She loves doodling with pen, ink and paper and making jaw-dropping works of art. She gets most of her stuff from Scribe which she considers her "happy place." 

Fozzy Castro-Dayrit's intricate calligraphy.
Fozzy has conducted calligraphy workshops for the store in the past. Her classes are sought-after as she specializes in calligraphy, designing wedding invitations and personalized cards. Fozzy considers Scribe a one-stop shop for all her calligraphy and art supplies needs.

Design by Architect Michael Manalo.
As a boy, Mico loved looking at illuminated manuscripts from the Gothic Age. He then studied Architecture with a masters degree in Architectural Conservation from the Escuela Nacionál deConservación, Restauración y Museografía INAH, Mexico City. Now, he spends his time designing new structures, trying to restore old ones and travelling to learn about the importance of saving heritage while working with the UNESCO. 

Before the program started, guests were encouraged to write messages to be posted at the Scribe Calligraphy Message Wall. Paper, Speedball ink, and colorful quills were provided to the event's enthusiastic guests. 

FPN-P members Reggie Reginaldo and Mars Hagedorn write their messages for the Calligraphy Message Wall.

Calligraphy Message Wall

The program started with a short documentary about how Scribe evolved to being the one-stop-shop that it is now. Trivia games were played as brands carried by Scribe stores were introduced, and three FPN-P members went home happily with Scribe gift certificates. Fountain pens were raffled off, with two more FPN-P members going home the happiest. 

Left to right: Michael, Marian, Fozzy, Leigh, and program host RJ Ledesma. 

The Scribe launch was a joyful celebration for me. I knew it was a very important event for Marian and her group, and we at FPN-P were just happy to celebrate with them. It was also an occasion where I get to be with my FPN-P friends who are the kindest, happiest people I know. We get to meet once or twice a month, but being with them at an event to launch our favorite store is just awesome!

Indeed, Scribe has brought not only the sophistication to our choice of writing instruments, it has brought back an art long considered lost and archaic. More and more people are enjoying the art of using fountain pens nowadays, and the growing number of FPN-P newbies is proof of that. 

To say that we at FPN-P are happy that we now have a "one-stop-shop" for fountain pens, ink, and notebooks is an understatement. No longer are we envying neighbors Malaysia and Singapore for their pen boutiques for Scribe, in Manila, is offering us a haven for our pen and pen-related needs.

Below are some photos of FPN-P members during the event. Photos courtesy of Scribe.

Marian with FPN-P's Raffy Roxas and Peter Bangayan

The Archer, Cesar Salazar, Gelzon dela Cruz, Ernesto Tabujara, Ronnie Geron, Mars Hagedorn, 
Mona and Reggie Reginaldo

Allan Caindoy, Peter, Jonathan Isip, Carlos Abad Santos, Dennis Duran, Raffy, 
and FPN-P's founding father, Butch Dalisay

And again, FPN-P with Scribe's Marian Ong and Cindy Dingkoi. I hope the next FPN-P + Scribe group pic won't take another three  years in the making.

For more information about Scribe and the brands they carry, visit their website at: http://www.scribewritingessentials.com/ or like their Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/ScribeWritingEssentials.

You can also visit a Scribe store nearest you. Below is a list of Scribe's stores, their store hours and contact numbers.

EASTWOOD MALL
Level 3, Eastwood Mall Eastwood City

E. Rodriguez Jr Avenue, Bagumbayan Quezon City

Mon to Thur 11:00am – 10:00pm
Fri to Sat 11:00am – 11:00pm
Sun 10:00am – 10:00pm
Tel. 900-0053

SHANGRILA PLAZA MALL
Lower Ground Floor, East Wing Shangrila Plaza Mall 

Brgy Wack Wack Mandaluyong City
Mon to Thur 11:00am – 9:00pm
Fri to Sat 10:00am – 10:00pm
Sun 10:00am – 9:00pm
Tel. 654.5071

GLORIETTA 5
Level 2, Glorietta 5 Ayala Center 

Brgy San Antonio Makati City
Mon to Thur 11:00am – 9:00pm
Fri to Sat 11:00am – 10:00pm
Tel. 804.3889

SM AURA
Level 4, SM Aura Premier 

26th Street corner McKinley Parkway 

Fort Bonifacio Global City Taguig
Mon to Sun 10:00am – 10:00pm
Tel. 519.5346

SM MEGAMALL
Level 4, SM Megamall Fashion Hall, Mandaluyong City
Mon to Sun 10:00am – 10:00pm

Tel. TBA

I Got Green Pens Too!

I was rummaging through my pen wraps last night looking for a Hero when I realized something: several green pens are peeking out of their slots. Whoa. With six fountain pens and two gel pens, I seem to be getting them faster than those white pens I'm trying hard to build on to a collection. But I'm not complaining. Who knows I may just move on to green pens later when I get my fill of those whities. And these green pens remind me of the green Conway Stewart Dinkie pair I saw at Leigh Reyes' blog yesterday. My pens, are of course worlds different from Leigh's and from those in her collection. *Wink.*

Green pens abound.

From left: Chelpark Moti (Fine, inked with Parker Quink Blue-Black); Inoxcrom Agatha Ruiz de la Prada (Extra Fine, uninked); Hero 332 (Fine to Medium, inked with Private Reserve Copper Burst); Youth 208 (Fine, just cleaned, I also got this in teal); MonAmi Gel Love Pets; Schneider 0.5 XTRA 892; M&G Joy Box (Fine, inked with Waterman South Sea Blue); and Schneider Zippi (Fine, inked with Schneider Black).

(Ice) Tray for my Pens

Everyone has his or her own way of organizing writing instruments. And everyone has their own pen holders to do this. I've always had pen holders on my work/writing tables at home and in my office. Some are gifts, like the Ikea pen holder set I got from someone's Singapore trip, or the wooden set I inherited from someone else; but most are modified pen holders, like mugs of all shapes and sizes, or large peanut butter jelly glasses. For long, this worked as long as my pens are organized. However, when I started collecting fountain pens, I realized that the previous pen holders could damage the barrels of my pens. I found relief when I got my flannel pen wrap. (More about it here and here.)

My pen wrap. I'm still using it to keep (and protect) my pens inside my backpack. Nowadays, its permanent residents are my precious fountain pens, some are pictured below, some I keep uninked for the time being.

Then again, untying and retying a pen wrap and spreading it on my table didn't look very pretty at all. And so the quest for a better pen organizer went on... Until I went to a pen meet last December and saw fellow fountain pen collector Cindy Trinidad's pen trays. At first I didn't think it would work for me, these trays. Then again, when I saw them at a mall's kitchen supplies section, I got hooked on these beautiful ice trays made of soft rubber. Each tray has seven slots and each slot is long (and wide) enough to accommodate a pen. And what's best about these pen trays is that they're available in blue! Now, my pen tray looks like this:

(It's my Moleskine on the foreground, yes. That brown ink is Private Reserve Copperburst on my black Schneider Base.)

Up close, this is how my pen tray looks like on an ordinary day. *Wink.* My pens, from left are: white Schneider Base (Medium, inked with Waterman Florida Blue), black Schneider Base (Medium, with Private Reserve Copperburst), Rotring 600 (Broad, with Private Reserve Avocado), black Hero 616 (Fine with Waterman South Sea Blue), Inoxcrom P-200 (Medium with PR Avocado), green Schneider Zippi (Medium with Inoxcrom blue), and a white Parker Jotter with Medium Black ink.

And yes, I've completely shifted to full fountain pen use. I only got the Jotter there for signing documents that need ballpoint ink, or when I'm filling out forms. Otherwise, I'm enjoying full use of my fountain pens and enjoying their ink colors even more!

My Fountain Pens

I really do not know how I got into the hobby of fountain pen collecting. I know I have always preferred gel pens and ballpoints for my everyday writing. Perhaps my interest in getting more of these interesting pens started when my sister-in-law Jelyn gave me a Parker Vector a few years back. It was an interesting gift but not interesting enough that I kept the pen but didn't use it.

Months later, I went to attend a writing class and felt the urge to use the pen so I finally inked it and used it during our writing exercises.

My Parker Vector and my first bottle of Quink black.

Later on, when I got interested in buying Moleskine notebooks, I also became interested in getting more fountain pens. But I have just moved into my apartment and money had to go elsewhere and so I could not afford to add more to the Vector to start a collection. It was only until early this year when I was able to get another, a blue Inoxcrom Vivaldi. Even that cannot be considered a 'serious' pen by purists. Then again, I cannot collect vintage pens now. Not yet. So I focused on the 'fancy' types of fountain pens, especially the ones from Inoxcrom and Rotring.

Here are my Inoxcrom Vivaldis. The blue one has my name engraved on its barrel. I'll get the pink one later on to complete the trio.

And then two Saturdays ago, I went malling with a friend and got myself these three. (Yes, I got three fountain pens in a day.)

Top to bottom: My Rotring Core Rubidium, a red Inoxcrom Vivaldi, and a P-200, another Inoxcrom. Among the three, only the Rubidium has been inked.

Above are my five fountain pens. I'll be getting more later. More reds, more blues, more... Yellows? Greens? Basta more...

My Valentine Loot

I really didn't have the time to write about my Valentine loot, which actually are several items I bought from our recent trip to Makati on V-Day. Yup, our Valentine's Day was spent coordinating a seminar-workshop and a press conference at the Hotel Intercontinental in Makati. Well, for most of us, the Day was just another ordinary day, except that flowers are being sold everywhere we went. The day started early for us, since we still needed to travel to Makati from Los Baños, and all of us in the van were deep asleep because we only had two or three hours of z's the night before due to the GS launch. Hehehe. The seminar started late by almost an hour, and went overtime by two hours!!! The press con was over by four, and we were given two hours to roam the malls before our group dinner at six.

When we went to the mall, I went to Landmark's toy department and got these:

New fire trucks!!! These are Tomica Nos. 41 and 74.

There were other fire trucks in the store, but I wanted to get all the Tomicas first, before I move on to Cararama, Maisto, and Corgi.

After an hour at Landmark, my next stop was the Toy Kingdom at SM Makati. Sadly, the Tomicas there are all cars, no fire trucks. So I declined.

Next stop: National Bookstore. Guess what I got?

This is the Inoxcrom Vivaldi Fountain Pen I've been wanting to buy. And it came free with my name engraved on the plastic barrel. And it's blue.

Our group of 13 finally met at six, and by six-thirty, we were like a bunch of kindergartens walking in the sidestreets of Glorietta looking for a place that can accommodate all of us to dinner. By seven, we were seated at TGI Friday's waiting for our salads and steaks. Whoa. But before that, since Hardrock Café is just across TGIF, Popen and I made a dash inside HRC to buy a pair of Hard Rock Café Makati shooters. Here is mine:

See? Valentine's wasn't so bad after all. We were working, we got free ride to Makati, we shopped, we had free food. Not bad at all. (*wink*)

Back to Basics

People are probably confused why they now see me use an old Nokia 1100 and an even older Nokia 3100. I’m tempted to ask, what’s wrong with these phones, anyway? Friends are surprised to see me enjoy these two phones nowadays because they used to see me with high-tech phones and gadgets.

Barely a year ago, I carry in my backpack a small purse that contains, more or less, the following: a Nokia N70 (a craze at that time), a Sony Ericsson K608i, an HP1940 iPaq (with a wireless keyboard), a 6GB iPod Mini, and a Creative Zen Nano Plus. Also in the backpack are: Kodak digital camera, my 80GB external hard drive, two USB flash drives, USB card reader, USB port hub, three Phillips headsets, and an assortment of Cross, Parker, Sheaffer, and Inoxcrom pens. For safety reasons, my backpack’s zippers are always locked using two Master combination locks. Whew!

Fast forward to today.

I still carry the same backpack, and the same purse. (Grin.) But in the purse now are: two Nokias (1100 and 3100) and the iPod Mini. I still bring along the camera, external hard drive and flash drives, because clearly, they constitute a reasonable necessity. The card reader and USB port hub are either at the office or at home, but I have stopped carrying them with me.

There are new additions, though. (Big grin.) In my bag are my Starbucks 2007 planner, a personal journal that still needs a name (Grin. Grin. Grin.), and another notebook for what else, note-taking. (Big grin.) Also, there are more pens in my bag now, as I love to color code (and I love to hoard, according to Lilia). I purchased a set of three Pilot G-TEC-C4s (Bigger grin.) and a set of five HaloZee twin highlighters. Currently, I am drooling over the set of available-only-in-the-US Pilot G2 gel pens.

In terms of data management, I can say that I have truly gone back to the basics now. It didn’t take me overnight to do that, though, and quite a number of reasons contributed to this ‘historic’ change.

My iPaq. The PDA that is supposed to make life easier for me (and for others, too) only made things worse. I had an earlier version (1930) which worked well, and so I thought the 1940 will work along fine, if not better. But I was wrong. Sometimes it doesn’t synchronize with either my PC or laptop. At times, the battery is suddenly drained of power even after a full charge. But what busted my patience was when it didn’t turn on minutes before an important presentation at a staff meeting. All of my notes were in the iPaq, and I had to reconstruct everything out of memory. So after seven months of using an iPaq1940, I decided I had to part with it.

My 3G phones. Like so many Filipinos, I liked to keep up with the growing trend in cellphone fashion. So that when the first batch of 3G phones came in the market, I immediately grabbed not one, but two new handsets. For the price I had to pay for them, they were clearly a big investment. And so when the time for need came along, I was forced to ditch them and learn a hard lesson: I only need a phone that can send and receive calls and messages. Period. It was a big heartbreak for me and it was a lesson learned the hard way, but still a lesson, anyway.

Going back to the basics did not come to me overnight. And it obviously became possible through a variety of reasons. But for several months now, I have been immensely enjoying a less-electronically-constipated life. My Nike backpack is heavier with three notebooks and dozens of pens inside, but I have no regrets. Not one bit. It’s a little tough for my back, but the satisfaction I get when I read my notes and journal entries is indescribable. Call it OA, but it's an amazing experience. I admit missing TextTwist and Bejewelled in the iPaq, but I guess I'll just consider it one among my life's big (and not-s0-big) trade-offs.

For now, at least. (Biggest grin.) Tomorrow is another day.