Things done properly

Sakura pens are great, but they’re hard to tell apart from one another, especially in a stuffed pencil case at the bottom of a messenger bag. The pens have faint size markings, but some have worn off after a week. I have marked mine with coloured tape on which I wrote their size. Now it’s easier to fish the right one out of my pencil case. I mostly use my plastic nib pen and my brush pen, so I made them a little different. I added an extra tape loop on the brush pen to help me find it by touch. These little fixes always felt normal to me. However my friends often hint at it being a very “me” thing to do. It’s certainly a Bouliane thing to do. It is accepted that every Bouliane family visit starts with the patriarch’s tour of all the things he’s done properly. As children, it was a quirk that we obliged in our elders, but then it happend to my father, and now it’s happening to me. There is not a single engineer among us, but the engineering spirit certainly flows through our veins.…