ReNe: cannot study, stationery suck

So I hunkered down tonight to start organizing my class notes.

Cracked open a $3.99 notebook I bought from home depot (after much, much looking for a suitable size, type, etc... so much so when I saw a suitable looking one, I bought it on the spot), and realized that the notebook sucks. The ring, one long copper spiral and not individual rings, was tucked into itself at the end. This means that the ring-bound notebook cannot be opened 360 degrees, which was the REASON why I spent so much time looking for a ring-bound in the first place. Then I looked closely at the paper and it's thin, rough and of generally poor quality.

Why did I pay $3.99 for it again?

Last weekend, I was at Walmart and I saw notebooks going for 10 cents. Same quality paper, practically.

So I was complaining to Mike about the general poor quality of the stationery here, because the pens I've been getting suck too, and he had the same experience.

Now, I don't think we present a good sampling of the stationery quality in North America, and I have to add the big caveat that I haven't been in all that many bookstores here yet, but it does seem that stationery isn't that huge a deal here. Walk into the co-op in NUS or Popular bookstore or any neighborhood store back in Singapore, and the stationery rack is prominent and well-stocked. Here, at least at the bookstores on campus, it's a bit more well-hidden, a bit less stocked.

That's not to say the bookstores here are small. No, they're huge. They have Starbucks (med campus), multiple floors (main campus), textbooks, fiction and non-fiction that has absolutely nothing to do with coursework, couches and tables by the side to read these (exactly like in Borders), magazines and calenders, clothing of all sorts (both campuses but especially the main campus, and all branded with the Wash U name and logo; on the med campus, the 'medical campus' is prominent), art supplies (main campus), medical supplies (med campus, includes scrubs, white coats, even stethoscope). There are banners, cups, gold-plated pen stand, all sorts of little trinklets, all 'branded'.

I just want a good notebook and a good pen.

Well, it's not that bleak a picture for the pens. But the notebooks really do suck. I miss the (relatively cheap) Azone notebooks and the made-in-Japan pens. (I can't tell where the pens here are made in, but looking at a highlighter I nicked from the lab, it's made in Mexico.)

Here's an idea for a care package from Singapore... Anyone willing to send over a box of Azone notebooks and Japanese pens?