Galen Leather

In the September, my birthday month, I had made numerous purchases. One of them included some beautiful crafted leather items from Galen Leather Company.

Established in Istanbul, Turkey in 2012.

Must is written on their products to great fanfare. You can read more about them from various blogs, reviews and YouTube.

What I liked about Galen Leather are mainly 4 things. Handmade, extensive variety, fast delivery and a pleasure to deal with.

I found that their leather products were made with care. You can tell from the attention to detail that customer satisfaction is priority.

I was mainly looking for someone providing quality washi tape dispenser. There are many on Shopee, Lazada and etc but one look at them and you would rather pass. That lead to other purchases from Galen Leather. 

All items were beautifully packed and their boxes were of quality and sturdy which led me to repurposing them and not end up in the recycling bin. 

I also received some free gifts which is always welcome. My son loved the tea and coffee. He has now given me a KPI to buy more of the same tea and coffee locally. Also included was a 10% discount for future purchase and a charm to ward of the evil eye. Cool!

Now my washi tapes are not all over the place. Quality is top notch and sturdy. Now I need to get more washi tapes to fill up the gap. 

Dual case pen holder. Immediately I had noticed the beautiful mushroom like umami smell of all their leather products. A round roller stick is also provided to expand the slots should you have oversized pens.  

As noticed, the size is not small and will fit most bigger pens. That is the other thing that I found about their products. It is big. So unlike the products I usually order online based on pictures and measurements provided on websites. When I receive them, I’m usually in shock as they are tiny. Just fitting the product they were intended for and cannot be used for other bigger items.  

An added bonus is that the splitting compartment separating the 2 pens extends all the way to the bottom. Even the Montblanc case I was eying did not have that, which resulted in me not purchasing it.

The single pen case. Nice and simple. I had an unfortunate accident with this case. I placed a slim Ferris Press Brush fountain pen it it. As I had used this case for some time the leather had expanded slightly and without realizing it I picked up the case from the table upside down and the pen just slipped from its slot. If fell about 5 feet to the solid tile flooring. Lucky me the cap was fully covered and its a metal pen. So damage to the nib was averted and there was hardly a scratch on the pen.  

Pencil boxes. As you can see from the first pictures in this blog. They are large and have space for more items.  

Some other items purchased to complete the set.

   

Graf Von Faber Castell Epsom Cognac Pen case

I purchased this on my Birthday 15 September 2021.

By accident actually. Well, I mean I did not go around hunting for it.  

I was at KLCC heading towards Kinokuniya when I came across a small Faber Castell outlet that had their higher end Graf Von Faber Castell series. 

It was just a curious stop to look and see. I was not intending to purchasing anything. There was no sale signs. But I noticed that there was a beautiful pen case that had a discount card placed.

I enquirer and they informed that the case was 60% off. 

That is how I ended up with the purchase. 

This is my first Graf Von Faber Castell product. 

My advise is head on there as they had informed me the items are on discount until year end. But why wait? Go before its sold out.

This single sleeve retails for more than RM600+ prior to the discount. The magnetic catch was super strong that attracted me towards it.

Uniquely designed with tight inner grip to ensure your pen does not slip off if you overturned it

Sailor Pro Gear Mustang King

I jumped into the the Mustang king band wagon rather late. More precisely, I started drooling over this pen after it was sold out.

It was my mistake. I was just like any typical buyer. Let’s wait and see. I can purchase it another day. That was my thought process. Although I was aware that only 388 units were made.

I waited and waited until one fine day, I decided to do a random check at Pen Gallery’s website and found out that it was sold out.

Remorse immediately sank in. When it was available for purchase, I did not buy it. Now, its sold out and I’m hunting for it.

The review from Gourmet Pens in YouTube just made it worst. Ahhhhh! Why, did I not purchase it when it was available? Everything Azizah from Gourmet Pens said, I fully agreed. 

As a durian lover in particular mustang king, this fountain pen ticked all right boxes.

Mustang king is the cream of the crop. The 7 series in the BMW lineup. 

Hats off to Mr. Lai from Pen Gallery. This collaboration between them and Sailor was fruitful. No pun intended. It is truly a remarkable fountain pen that does not stray from its durian roots.

From the packaging, color of the pen and its emblem, it screams durian.

The pen arrived in this beautiful outer box. No mistaken it for anything else other than its source of inspiration. The durian.

The box inside is just a simple white box. I long for a day when packaging could me made more simpler like the Lamy Safari packaging. Simply a paper box package that will be recycled. You save space as you will not be keeping the box and furthermore, price could be lowered due to the cost savings in the packaging.

Included inside are 2 ink cartridges, pen instructions, serial number for this limited edition and 1 converter. I must say, the ink provided is a beautiful color. I cannot pin point the color but its nice. A wiring sample is provided below, towards the end of this blog. 

Sailor emblem is nice and crisp.

The ring states Sailor Japan Founded 1911 

Just in case you have forgotten that the color of this pen reflects the color of the flesh of the durian fruit, there is a reminder of the durian logo at the bottom of the pen. Cool!

My pen is numbered 243 out of 388. 243 in Mandarin means damn easy life. I wonder who purchased 007, 008, 088, 168 and 388? Lucky buggers.

Oh! I forgot, you must be wondering how did I purchase this pen as it was sold out? 

Well, one fine day in June 2021, Pen Gallery did advertise on its social media platform that they still had a few pieces left in Japan and it will arrive in September 2021. Nuff said. I jumped on it.

Beautiful 21K nib. Most pen’s I know comes in either 14K or 18K. 

The pen wrote smoothly out of the box at the first attempt. Impressive. It is a far cry from my Ferris Wheel Press Brush Fountain Pen. Even if I do not use the Sailor pen for 4 days. It writes on the first attempt. The Ferris Wheel on the other hand has hard starts up and takes numerous attempts before the ink flows, if left unused for days. 

All in all, I’m pleased with the purchase. Only my Montblanc is a smoother writer. This is my first Sailor pen and my first Broad nib.

But I must say, the Sailor Professional Gear Mustang King is a beautiful to behold.

Loyal Stricklin Johnny Wallet Olmo Pueblo

I am a big fan of EDC items. On one of my escapades in my quest for EDC knowledge, I stumbled upon a YouTube channel, Excessorize Me.

I was hooked by Vincent Tse comedic way of presenting the products he had reviewed. You need to listen carefully to understand his comedic punches. Usually below the waist line. 😂

Vincent is a content creator based in Toronto, Canada. His YouTube channel created on 30 August 2012 has a following of 631K subscribers with more than 75 million views. Highly recommended to check out his channel. 

In his video dated 25 February 2020 he reviewed what was in Peter McKinnon’s pocket.

Peter had this beautiful minimalist leather wallet. I was smitten by its looks.

A quick search in the description link disclosed that it was made by Loyal Stricklin and simply called the Johnny Wallet.

I was in dismay when I found out that they do not ship to Malaysia and some countries near us. But they do however, ship to Singapore. Hmmmmmm! I wonder why? 

Opportunity arose on 1 September 2021 when I found a seller on Carousell Malaysia from Johor  advertising for sale a preloved one in good condition. I made payments on 3 September 2021 and the seller was kind enough to ship it out the same day by J&T Express. 

I received it today, 4 September 2021 and immediately tore the package to see THE beauty.

Wow! Stunning! No regrets what so ever.

I had to put my personal touch and some elbow grease to bring back the luster to the leather.

These are some of the tools of the trade.

Brushed it to remove some minor dirt on the leather surface and then proceeded to use a basic Staedtler eraser to remove some minor smudging on the inner suede side of the leather. I did not have a proper suede eraser, so the pencil eraser made do.

Removed some minor grime with saddle soap. You can see the leather was brighten after the cleaning process.

Once properly dried under the fan. Leather oil was applied and once the leather had absorbed the oil, I applied another layer. Nothing fancy, just using my index and middle fingers as tools to rub the oil.

The leather had come alive but I knew I could take it a notch up. I finished the moisturizing process with mink oil.

So soft and lively to touch. The moisturizing process had brought out the umami mushroom like smell of the leather. I am now satisfied.

Loyal Strickland Johnny Wallet Olmo Pueblo wallet measuring 3.5 x 4 inches is made from a single piece of leather with no stitching in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The full grain veg leather is sourced from the Italian tannery Badalassi Carlo.  

      

Magnifying Glass 10 x Magnification

This is fresh out of the press.

I received this purchase today, 12 August 2021 via purchase from Shopee.

Imagine my heartache of such unscrupulous seller sending me a cracked item that has been glued.

At first I was pissed but then I said. Never mind let me resolve this with my own ingenuity. 

The idea came from an online platform that has a love for all things Montblanc.

I got rid of the handle and sculptured a bronze color bonsai wire into the desired shape.

I think it looks much better. 

What do you think?  

The infamous crack

Side by side the new holder and the original housing the lense came in

Picture of a nib with and without the lense. Camera angle and distance did not change during taking this picture

 

Japanese Wagyu Steak

Our recent dinner.

This is how meat eaters eat. 

The moral of the story is not to think about the cost and just eat. It’s after all once in a while.

Medium rare. Just look how jucy, tender, succulent and buttery the wagyu looks.

This is how Japanese wagyu, Australian Augus and a super large Australian grass fed steak started it’s life with us… 

The cost of all 3 steak was in Excel of RM1000. Just look at the size of the grass fed beef. Easily  filled up the whole plate and chunky. 

All were marinated the same way. Freshly grounded black peper, pink himalayan sea salt and garlic powder. 

It is then plastic wrapped and kept in the fridge to chill.

Simple recipe as we did not want to alter the beef taste. Just enhance the taste and bring it’s flavors out. 

Now the Cooking process begins over a smoking well oiled and seasoned Lodge cast iron.

Once the crust is obtained, the cooking is enhanced with butter, thyme, garlic cloves and fresh rosemary. With the exception of the grass fed beef. It was later placed in an oven to continue cooking at 200 degrees celsius  for 15 minutes, due to its thickness.

This is the final result. Japanese Wagyufollowed by the Australian Angus.

How beautiful the Wagyu looks and taste

Look, look, look at the gorgeous Australian grass bed beef. Bloody in the middle. Just nice.

Steamed 2 varities of corn. Seasoned with melted butter only. The purple one was the first time and last time we will but it. I think that says it all. The white one (although in the picture it looks yellow) was super sweet and we topped up more on the steamer.

The potatoes were simple enough to make. Peeled, boiled then roasted with garlic oil, butter and rosemary.

The potatoes were in high demand, only second to beef 

The wonderful meal was accompanied by nice scenery.

Ferris Wheel Press Brush Frountain Pen

Greetings. 

1 August 2021. It’s a rainy Sunday morning in Shah Alam. Weather is 26 degrees celsius at 8.18 am.

It’s such a beautiful day. This is my first blog typed using the IPad Pro 2021. Received 2 weeks ago, ordered online from Apple Singapore. Mainly to assist in my kids online classes.

I must say it is a dream to use. M1 prosessor is super fast. It is currently only aided by Baseus 6 in 1 hub. I still have lots of exploring to do.

Listening to Supergrass - Caught by the Fuzz, whilst penning this blog (on Bose SoundTouch 10 connected by bluetooth). 

I remember a time, many years ago when I was using iPhone 3GS. It had bluetooth but could not connect to anything practically. How Apple has progressed.

I am penning my to do list for grocery shopping on a recently acquired Ferris Wheel Press fountain pen, elegantly named Brush. It silhoutte resembles a painting brush.

I was eying this pen for sometime but kept delaying purchase as I had other priorities. 

Oh my. Soundgarden is playing The Day I Tried to Live. Takes my breath away listening. The track is also on Fear Street 1994. It’s on Netflix now. It’s a worthwhile trilogy to binge on.  

I lost concentration. Coming back to our current topic.

The pen was purchased from PenGallery. 

I was lucky. Purchased it under their clearence sale. They only had yellow. Not my preferred color but at that price, no complaints. Lucky me, it was also their last unit and now its completely sold out. Well, that’s if they ever do decide to restock in future.

The pen has been with me for about 3 weeks but I am only now taking it for a test drive. Flushed it out with clean water and inked it.

So what are my thoughts so far?

It’s a beautiful pen to look. Simple, elegant, minimalistic and functions well.

The brass nut serves as a stopper that prevents the pen from rolling.

It’s a small pocket pen, hence the absence of a clip. 

I do however find that a clip on a fountain pen, no matter how small the pen is, it’s still helpful. You can clip it to your shirt pocket, collar or anywhere else. The absence of a clip means that the pen is only confined to the pen sleeve in your shirt pocket (provided your shirt comes with one) or a pen pouch.  

I did notice that the cap squeaks when opening / closing its cap. I guess that brass cap rings will somoothen in due time and the sound will vanish.

The last unit was a fine nib. Well, so be it.

I found it not fully enjoyable and pelasant to use. A far cry from my Montblanc fine nib. But at that price, no complaints. Anyhow, just look at the nib and grip section. It’s such a beauty. This is the only pen that I own that grip has such lovely engraving.

My gripe is with the writing experience of the nib. At times it is scratchy and skipps. Oh! There are also times it stopped writing and I had to give it a jerk and tug to force flow ink to the nib.

It could be the paper. A4 80 gsm Double A. But none of my other pens have had this issue on the same paper.

So in conclusion, I will use it until the ink runs out then I will put it on rotation for future use.

I understand from checking Ferris Wheel Press website that they now have gold plated nibs at an additional USD$ 30. That might be a better option as their steel nib is not to my liking. And a check from forums, it’s a mixed review on their steel nibs.  

But the smooth sunburst yellow barrel gives me ideas for future projects. 

I could have it airbrushed as inspired by the picture belon taken from the net. Urushi Le Petit by Taiwan 3952. 

Now, wouldn’t that yellow look amazing after the makeover?