Fu De 筆 nib fountain pen for practicing Chinese calligraphy on-the-go

 

(Translation of the words in the picture: Dear respected Urner sir, my sincerest thanks to you. Arigatou gozaimasu. from 明良 my Chinese name)

 

Special thanks to Mr. Urne Hoo for selling me this fude (pronounced as Foo Day) nib fountain pen for only SGD$10. Fu De is the Japanese-language pronunciation of the Chinese character 筆. Yay! Now I can practice Chinese calligraphy on-the-go. hahaha

 

I have also found a free PDF guide which show beginners (like me) how to write Chinese charaters using a fountain pen. Great! Hahaha. I am so happy! The free PDF guide can be downloaded from:

http://ishare.iask.sina.com.cn/f/21922027.html?from=like



 

This was my first horrible attempt copying out these words by Chinese poet Li Bai 李白 using a SGD$10 Sailor brand fountain pen with a Fu De nib. I have not practiced any Chinese calligraphy for more than a year since dropping out from my part time class in NAFA. Lol.. Lots of terrible writing mistakes 败笔 hahaha... Spacing and strokes all haywire. hahaha... Now that I have this Fu De nib pen, I don't have any excuse not to practice writing Chinese calligraphy any more. Lol

Using headphones to hear myself playing guqin in noisy environment

My home was very noisy... with people watching TV and talking, laughing... so I inserted my lavalier microphone into the larger sound hole of the guqin (on the bottom of the guqin) and connected it to a battery operated el cheapo portable amplifier (the small silver box in the picture below), so I could hear the guqin through my head phones. Haha... No problem now! I could hear myself playing on guqin and continued to practice. Lol

(oh my word, I look soooo obese...) hahaha... Through the headphones, I could still hear myself playing guqin, even though there were noises from the TV and the rickety fan blades paddling the humid night air.