Chinese brand "Hero" Victoria Pen with "Hero" Blue-Black In

 
 
This is my first post and I am not new to fountain pens. I grew up in China and moved to Canada when I was 14. That was 10 years ago. Most of Chinese uses fountain pens today. It's my first time, however, to use fountain pens to write English. So, just in case my writing are illegible. Below is the full content of the hand written review.

Hello Fountain Pen Network:

I wanted call this a review, but nost likely none of you would ever know this pen. In fact, I bought this pen at a general convenience store in Toronto, which most likely imported all of their inventory from China.

They said this pen is "Hero" brand, which is well know in China. Its [Hero branded pens] status level is equivalent to General Motors in Auto industry. [That is, if people can afford better, they wouldn't use Hero, but general population uses Hero] This ink is also "Hero" "blue-black" colour, which I don't really like. [I just don't like the colour, but the viscousity is great] However, I haven't used a fountain pen in nearly 10 years so I am really excited to use one again.

This pen is sturdy, a little bit on the heavy side. I would imagine this to be heavier than Lamy CP-1. The flow of the ink is very well, as you can probably see. I would consider the nib to be between medium & fine. [Of course, it depends on how hard you press down on the nib. Chinese people actually press down on the nib. It would create a thicker line, which visually places an emphysize on a stroke of the character] The cap closes very well, not very tight, but have a "click" to it. However, it doesn't have a "click" when you post it.

This is my first time writing in English with a fountain pen.
My previous experience is always with Chinese.
[Chinese writing]

Michael [My Chinese name]

("PS." I would prefer black ink)

Below, I just did a comparison writing in Chinese. Left side did not have any stroke "emphysized", right side had 3 strokes "emphysized". As you may see, right side looks more visually appealing. The picture is from blackberry which isn't good quality. I also forgot about the ink bottle.

update:

The pen is converter type.

Pen costed $3.99
Bottled Ink costed $2.99 for 60 mL
 
The location is near T&T supermarket near Steeles and Warden in Toronto. It is just one block west of T&T supermarket. The store is in the basement of New Century Square, in the same plaza as Metro Square.
 
Review is also posted on The Fountain Pen Network 
 

Loonie soared verses Greenback as Bank of Canada announces intere


 
This morning, Bank of Canada announced that it will keep its overnight lending rate at a record low of 0.25%. However, they are also hinting that they may not keep the benchmark rate constant until July, as promised earlier this year. Bank of Canada stated that Canadian economy is recovering faster than expected. They are currently looking into increasing benchmark rate as early as June.
 
Moments before the announcement from Bank of Canada, loonie was trading at 98.63 cents with the US dollar. Within 5 minutes after the announcement, Canadian dollar were up 1.3 cents to 99.93 cents per 1 US dollar. Currently Canadian dollar is trading above par, at 1 CAD = 1.0016 USD.
 
Bank of Canada raised its economic growth outlook to 3.7%, stating that it is already above expectations.
 
Loonie was flirting with greenback for more than three weeks while taking the biggest daily loss on last Friday, due to the fraud charges laid on Goldman Sachs from Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Loonie were lowered to around 98.5 cents per 1 US dollar.
 
I believe that this would be the best opportunity for the Canadian dollar to build grounds above and beyond parity. However, if net export numbers are decreased due to a high exchange rate, loonie would eventually need to fall back down.

Lenovo Thinkpad X100e now has dual core processor in US



Yesterday (April 6, 2010), Lenovo USA site got two new options for X100e laptop. As rumoured for months already, Lenovo finally pushed out the new x100e with dual core options. Sadly it seems impossible to just spend less than $100 to add a dual core option to the base model as of this point. As tested on many other netbooks, AMD dual core performs just a notch under Intel CULV processors. I am very eager to see the first testing results for dual core X100e. I would also hope that the battery life isn't too bad.

US Lenovo X100e