Monday, March 18, 2013

Pen and Paper



The IT technology evolves at an extremely fast pace in the past 20 years. In retrospect of the days before 20 years ago, we had manual or electrical typewriter; we had fax machine; we used pen and paper a lot. We used pen and paper so much, in writing letter, issuing an invoice, doing school works, taking notes in the classroom or what your boss wanted you to do. Pen and paper were important everyday items. We would feel we were not fully equipped for the day when we left home for school or for going to work without bringing some forms of pen and paper.

Nowadays we saw a dramatic change of the devices in the offices. Typewriter has disappeared; fax machine is still seen in some offices but are generally covered by a thick layer of dust with plug still in the power point; paper and pen are seldom found on the desks.

Pen and paper were so essential in everyday living that paper was one of the top 3 inventions in the progress of human being's civilization.  When researchers were ranking the nations with regard to their civilization advancement, paper consumption per ca-pita was the index used to determine the place of this nation in the international ranking. Paper has been an important resource to the society of human being, and was particularly important two decades ago. Pen is not mentioned much, but it is naturally a part of paper, because paper is precious and useful only when pen is doing its work on the paper.

Recently, a friend of ours gave all of her major items of household wares to her friends and we were one of the families being given the high grade desk, chairs, beds, and cabinet. The items that stirred up my thoughts in the miscellaneous bags were the paper products such as A4 notebooks, diary books, note pad, portfolio with notepad in it and envelops. She knew we would not need them, yet she must have difficulty throwing them into the rubbish bin too, she put them in a shopping bag and let the truck driver deliver them together with other big items to our place. I am sure I will be very unlikely to have opportunities to use those paper and pens, but I could not make up my mind and throw them away either, so they are neatly stacked up and kept in a corner of the cabinet  awaiting a chance to be consumed.

I had a habit of writing one or two entries of diary in Google Docs for a few years now. An idea came up my mind when I was tidying my desk and unexpectedly opened that bag of hard-to-get-rid pen and paper. Why I don't try to use this lot of books to be my diary?

So this photo shows one of the page of my diary of the conventional version. I find it nostalgic and a warm touch when I review the records of previous days.
--the end--



No comments: