O HAI! i'm Kux! :)

Oh wow, typing that title was a delight for my fingers. Try it! :) How did you spend your weekend? I spent mine visiting churches with my family and a few visitors. Yeah, churches. It's the Holy Week here and we had a really long weekend (Thursday - Sunday). I really missed being with my family at Los Banos, I even cried (just a tinny tiny bit) the night before going back to Manila. Yeah, yeah, I'm a crybaby. :)

Oh, by the way, Happy Easter everyone! :) Did you get to hunt eggs or did you snatch them away from those cute Easter bunnies? Well, if you didn't get an egg or a bunny, our featured pen for today is just as cute as Easter eggs and bunnies!

• Pen name: Toothpaste Pen 
• Ink color: Blue only.
• Where to buy: Pencil Case kiosk at Edsa Shangri-La
• Price: PhP 49

• The way you take the pen cap off. The pen is packaged as a toothpaste tube and boy, you wouldn't doubt that this is a real toothpaste tube! To take the pen cap off, you unscrew the tube cover - like a real toothpaste tube cap!
• Uber cute Hello Kitty body casing.

• It's not refillable.
• It only comes in blue ink. Now, I don't have anything against blue (it's actually my favorite color), but I like black ink more than blue ink.
• It's expensive for a simple, non-refillable, rollerball pen.

minikaniko: me-knee-kah-knee-koh

ni: knee

moniko: Moh-knee-koh

ang: ahng

makina: mah-kee-nah

ng: nang

minika: me-knee-kah

ni: knee

monika: moh-knee-kah

Can you imagine the X-Men guys as little kids? Little Wolverine, being bullied and then suddenly, he gets angry and he slashes them with his claws. Or little Rogue going to the prom with the boy that she likes. And when she finally has a chance to get her first kiss, BAM! she kills him. No?

Well, I can. In fact, I got to know these X kids when we were little. But this is another X team that I'm talking about. They're called "Batang X". Batang X was a movie, here in the Philippines. It's about 5 children - A-Gel, G-Boy, 3-Na, Kid/Lat and Control who has superhuman abilities. Dr. Kuwago (Dr. Owl) takes care of them in their high tech headquarters. Of course, there's a villain, Dr. Axis, an alien stranded on earth with her space ship. She kidnaps the kids in order to steal their powers to fuel her spaceship. Source

Our feature(s) for today came from Pilot's X family. In a way, they are a tad different from other pens and highlighters because have these superpen abilities. They can erase their own ink - without a correction tape or eraser. They use the heat generated by friction. How cool is that?!

Click to get superpowers

• Pen name: 1. Pilot FriXion Erasable Highlighter; 2. Pilot FriXion Rollerball Pen
• Ink color: 1. Green, Pink, Yellow and Blue; 2. Black, blue and red
• Where to buy: National Bookstore. These are not on their online site yet.
• Price: 1. PhP 40.50; 2. PhP 77.00

• It writes/glides smoothly on any paper.
• The ink flow is just right, not too much that the pen tip gets messy and not too little that you have to stop and go over what you wrote again.
• The tint of the highlighter is vibrant. It does the work - highlighting.
• The large pen cap is a plus for me. I'm really forgetful so sometimes I can't remember where I put pen caps. :)

What I don't like about these pens:

• The amount of time to erase your mistake depends on the paper. I found out that the fastest erasing time is with the regular white papers. Using them on colored ones takes a lot more effort and time.
• For the rollerball pen, there is no definiteness in the ink. The black pen seems to give out a darker gray-ish tint than a solid black one.
• You can't use the highlighter and the ball pen together. I mean, you can't take notes with the ball pen and highlight them later with the highlighter and then decide to un-highlight your notes later. Unless you want your entire notes to be erased. :)

Rating: 

"...salaginto't salagubang, ang babae sa lansangan, kung gumiri'y parang tandang!" This is one of my favorite songs when I was a child. I spent so many summers with my lolas and they always teach me these fun folk songs. This song, Sitsiritsit, is a Filipino folk song. This humorous song describes a flirtatious woman, threatening a store owner that the ants are going to get him if he's not going to extend credit. Here's the original lyrics:

Sitsiritsit, alibangbang. Salaginto at salagubang. Ang babae sa lansangan, kung gumiri'y parang tandang

Santo Nino sa Pandakan. Puto seko sa tindahan. Kung ayaw mong magpautang. Uubusin ka ng langgam

Mama, mama, namamangka. Pasakayin yaring bata. Pagdating sa Maynila. Ipagpalit ng manika

Ale, ale namamayong. Pasukubin yaring sanggol. Pagdating sa Malabon. Ipagpalit ng bagoong

Sitsiritsit, alibangbang. Salaginto at salagubang. Ang babae sa lansangan, kung gumiri'y parang tandang

Source: Wikipedia 

• Pen name: Stabilo Fine liner Point 88
• Ink color: Every color that you can imagine. Well, ok, not every color, but they have a lot more colors  than you know. ;) 
• Where to buy: National Bookstore.
• Price: PhP 29.50 each

• Vibrant and fun colors! :)
• If you like to doodle, these pens can also double as fillers or outliners.
• They're pretty cheap considering that it took some time before my teal fine liner went out.
• They can easily be purchased at any, and I mean any, National Bookstore.

What I don't like about this pen:

• You can't see the ink gauge. For me, this is kind of a semi-big deal because I want to know if I have to purchase a replacement anytime soon.

Rating: 

What do these cartoons and our featured ball pen of the day have in common? C'mon, make a guess. No, not cute Japanese girls. We're talking pens here, but you're getting warmer. Give up?

Sushi!

What do you mean you didn't get it? Well, they have sushi in common because our featured ball pen of the day has sushi in it! It's the sushi ball pen from Pencil Case!

• Pen name: Sushi Pen
• Ink color: Black
• Where to buy: Pencil Case kiosks - there's one at Edsa Shangri-La
• Price: PhP 149

• The fact that I drool and think of yummy Japanese sushi every time I see this pen! :)
• It's refillable. You can replace the ink gauge with any kind of roller ball pen.
• It can write on almost any kind of paper, including glossy paper.

What I don't like about this pen:

• It's too pricey for a simple roller ball pen.
• The ink isn't too clear. It doesn't smudge but still, I'd like to have a definiteness from the ink.

Rating: 

In case you're wondering about the Japanese (yes, it's Japanese) thing with the word Mary in it, it's a song. Guess what song it is? Yep, you got it, "Mary Had a Little Lamb". I got to learn it when we had to sing a Japanese song in our Jap10 class. :)

Remember when you were in elementary and you had to put a quarterly divider on your notebook? Then you couldn't just leave it, looking plain and uncolored. So you get a Stabilo, write "1st Quarter", "2nd Quarter" and so on in those kind of creepy letters and border the highlights with black ink giving it that really grungy look. The Stabilo Boss Mini Monsters Set is exactly like those big markers, only smaller and much cooler because it has monster decorations all over the casings.

• Pen name: Stabilo Boss Mini Monsters Set
• Ink color: Green, Yellow and Orange
• Where to buy: National Bookstores - mine are from SM Megamall
• Price: PhP 198.

• The body casing! I mean, who wouldn't love the creepy-cute monster faces? :)
• They're small so you can fit them in your already bulging pencil case.
• You can refill them.
• They're kind of a limited edition set. When I bought this yesterday, there was only one set left in display.

What I don't like about this pen:

• I have big hands, and the pens are small, so they're kind of hard to grip. But if you're the type of person  who grips her writing instuments near the base, you'll do just okay. :)
• It's a bit expensive. It'd be about PhP 60 for each mini monster. I guess coolness has a price, right?

Rating: 

"Hi Pao!" - you should answer. :) I went pen and notebook shopping yesterday and here's what I found:

1. Stabilo Boss Mini Monsters
2. Pilot FriXion Pen - this will make correction tapes and liquids obsolete since you can erase ink by simple rubbing the end of the pen, like you’re using a pencil. How cool is that?
3. Dong-A Decorative Pens - they can write anywhere, plastics, mirrors, paper of course, and cloth. They’re also washable too.
4. Man-made Leather Notebook from Front
5. Pilot FriXion Highlighter - also comes from the FriXion line is the highlighter that can also be erased. Of course, it wouldn’t be advisable that you use the pen and highlighter together.
6. Pilot Hi-tec C Multi-color Coleto - this is not in the picture. It’s a multi-cartridge pen than can hold three colors. I got mine in blue, red and black - the basic ones but you can get pink, green, purple, yellow and orange if you like

Maganda (Beautiful) and Malakas (Strong) are part of Philippine mythology, kind of like how Greeks have gods and goddesses. Here's the summarized story from Wikipedia:

When the world first began, there was no land, only the seas and the sky, and between them was a crow. One day, this bird, which has no where to land, grew tired of flying around, so she stirred up the sea until it threw its waters against the sky. The sky, in order to restrain the sea, showered upon it many islands until it could no longer rise but instead, flowed back and forth, making a tide. Then the sky ordered the crow to land on one of the islands to build her nest and to leave the sea and the sky in peace. From then on, the crow lived peacefully, so as the other birds in islands between the sea and the sky.

Now at this time, the land wind and the sea wind were married and they had a child which was bamboo. One day, this bamboo was floating beside the seashore when it struck the feet of the crow who was on the beach. Shocked, hurt and angered, the crow hysterically pecked at the bamboo until it split into two sections. Out one section came out a man named Malakas and from the other, a woman named Maganda ...

• Pen name: Aihao. It's a Japanese brand.
• Ink color: Black only.
• Where to buy: FUNctional. Again, I bought mine at SM Megamall.
• Price: Around PhP 50.

• You can refill it with any micro tipped roller ball pen (like Pilot G-Tec pens)
• The ink doesn't bleed to much. It bleeds just the right amount so you can point your i's and j's and end your sentences with periods without having to push the tip of the pen on the paper.
• It has a rubber grip - perfect for sweaty hands.
• It's pretty. Yes, pretty ball pens make me happy. :)

What I don't like about this pen:

• It's a bit sensitive. You have to be careful not to drop it or else it won't write as well.
• The ink gauge is covered with white paint (or something) so you can't really see if you still have a lot of ink in it or if you have to replace it anytime soon.

Rating: 

What's with the title? Well, if "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy hen" is for the Americans, "Bumili ka ng bituka ng butiki sa botika" (Buy some lizard's intestines at the drug store) is for the Filipinos. Kind of like, a tongue twister or something. You'll learn more as we discover more pens. If you're a Filipino, you probably wouldn't have to read this section. Ok, on to the pen!

• Pen name: Fruits Slim Gel. It's a Japanese brand.
• Pen colors: Black, Pink, Green, Blue, Orange
• Where to buy: FUNctional. I bought mine at SM Megamall.
• Price: About PhP 20

• Easy to grip. It's not too big and and not too small. Just right (kind of like baby bear's preference).
• You have 5 colors to choose from.
• Not too sensitive. I mean, you can drop it and it'll still work.
• It's cheap.
• The ink doesn't bleed too much. So it's good for people who don't like pens who make their handwriting too thick. Just the right thickness.
• You can write on most papers and cardboards.

Rating: 

Hi, I'm Pao and I'm a pen enthusiast. I love pens, highlighters, fine liners - the whole writing thing. I mean, who wouldn't, right?

As a child, I used to be that kid who has that most elaborate pencil case, with all the pens (red, blue, black, mechanical pencils, erasers) carefully arranged. I never lost that title, that "The Kid with the Most Pens" or "The Kid with the Huge Pencil Case, Full of Multi-colored Pens". And that's not a bad thing. I mean, pens are pens, they make life more colorful.

I find it hard to find various types of pens in my country, Philippines. Either they're too expensive that buying them would taunt your every night. Or they're not too expensive but they suck (really, I bought this cheap pen and I only got to use it for what, 5 minutes, then the ink won't flow). So here's a little something for the PenHolics (get it?) in the Philippines.

Cheers guys! :)