It is unlikely that the humble ’chicken rice’ will ever win any culinary awards in the known universe at any time in the foreseeable future. However, this does not mean its a vile rice dish that would make the uninitiated cringe in horror. On the contrary, this dish is so good and wholesome that it is deeply entrenched in the Malaysian psyche. If it were ever to be made illegal (hypothetically speaking, of course), I won’t be surprised to see hyped-up protest marches being organized and a million self-styled webloggers working furiously on their keyboards crying, “FOUL!”.

So what has got to do with the ubiquitous Parker Vector Pen? Well, if the Vector was a dish, it’ll be none other than the ever-popular. If you are looking for something that hits the spot in the fastest, cheapest and most dependable way, you can’t go wrong with a Vector.

The Vector is a slender pen. Capped, it is 12.4 cm long and has a barrel diameter of 1 cm. While I am quite happy with the length (most Malaysians can comfortably write with the Vector unpasted i.e. without sticking the cap onto the end of the pen), I am not so hot about its 1 cm girth. Maybe its because - just like a woman’s breasts - I prefer to feel a little more of it in my hands when I go to work. Then again, this is just a matter of personal preference. Even with its meager 1 cm barrel diameter, there is plenty to work with and it writes just fine even if it is on the slender side.

The ink filling mechanism is the plunger system. Pull the plunger up, the resulting vacuum draws ink into the reservoir. It is simple and effective. Perhaps not as efficient as the piston system offered by German-made pens like Pelikan and Mont Blanc, the Vector’s plunger is more than adequate to ensure hassle-free inking of your pen.

The Vector has a steel nib. Naturally it is stiff with very little or no flexing at all. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The hard steel nib ensures years of very durable service. But don’t expect the Vector to write with that ’springy’ feel that more expensive pens offer. If you are looking at no-nonsense performance, the Vector is right up your alley. Again, a stiff nib isn’t the necessarily the mark of a lower quality pen. Steel nibbed pens may be cheaper than gold nibbed ones. But this does not mean that they will not write just as well. Moreover, you can be assured that they will last longer because steel is much harder than gold. Where durability is concerned, the adage “The harder, the better” truly does apply.

The Vector is a no-nonsense pen that is affordable, available and can prove to be a pleasure to write with. It does its job reasonably well, with no fuss or fanfare. It is a no-frills reliable workhorse - not exactly utilitarian but not exactly heirloom material either. Thus, it is the ideal pen for anyone who wants dependable writing instrument that will last and last. Equally at home in the classroom or in the office, the Vector will get the job done reasonably well every time.

Just because the Vector is the the pen world, this doesn’t mean that it is not a quality instrument. It is. And it fills a niche that no other pen can within this price range.

The Vector is a good ’starter’ fountain pen. Just don’t it expect it to have the ‘bling-factor’ of a Mont Blanc.

But that guy is about spinning ball-point pens, bro! Awesome, nevertheless.

Fountain pens are fascinating, at least, they are for me. I have also been told that my fascination for fountain pens is simply because they are powerful phallic symbols. To me, fountain pens rock!

What passion I detected here. Such a joy to read. Now I see Parker with a different light..ha ha. Mont Blanc definitely is bling. I received a pair for one of my birthday presents and every time I whipped any one out to write anything, I suddenly felt rich.

Montblancs are really jewelery masquerading as pens.

Yes. Whipping one of them babies out does make us feel rich… and also makes anyone within a 50m radius feel that we are rich, too!

I have been searching for work for quite some time. In fact, I put a long day in today searching for work and even had a job interview. I’m not sure how that interview went but I noticed something that concerned me. I applied at a very nice steak house and they interviewed me for a dishwasher position. They looked at my application and noticed that I asked for $8.00hr for the position they were hiring for. They said that they would only hire for $6.50!! Whats wrong with that? Well, I’ve worked dishwashing jobs in the past and have been paid wages from $7.00, 7.50, & 8.00hr; and that was in the late 1990s (like 1997/8)!! Here we are approaching 2008 and I now am faced with &6.50 jobs!

Here is a good example my dad told me about the place he retired from years ago. He use to work for a company called Jatco and they were bought out by Ryder (which actually wasn’t too bad at the time), and then they were bought out by a corporation I believe called CCI. My dad retired early and couldn’t stand the company any more. He was very angry because everything was falling apart, people thought my dad was just an angry drunk but he saw something that was true. Today, CCI has 15 to 20 trucks out of a 500-truck fleet! They only have 5-mechanics out of hundreds of mechanics! They have a very small little factory now and because of this many jobs are gone. Parker Pen moved to Germany and that broke many people and shrunk the chances for finding reasonable pay. These corporate business thugs have &old our country in the name of money, power, and sex! Yes, greed and lust is the sin they cherish.

But there is some good news. Today I learn that over half of a factory was fired (by the Feds?) because the workers did not have authentic social security numbers!! Yes, you could have easily guessed it...illegal Mexicans! The whole city has been taken captive to illegals and now I heard that their going to start cracking down on the illegals. We’ll see if that good work continues (or will the illegals come back to work once the Feds leave).

Not something I’ve come across myself. Your logic sounds pretty good, though - air not getting back up would stop the ink flow after a while. I presume the Verve is a cartridge/converter filler? Are you filling the converter in the pen, through the dipped nib, or by taking it out and dipping the converter in the bottle?

If you’re dipping the nib, a paragraph might be about right for how much would be held in the feed and nib after dipping, without anything making it out of the converter. You could try dipping the nib right into the ink, then writing with it, and see how long you get then - if it’s a similar time, it might be you’re not getting anything flowing at all.

You could also try partially operating the converter again with it in the pen, to force some ink out through the feed - carefully, so you don’t get covered in ink ;) If that then works again for a while, the air pressure idea could well be right. Soaking the section overnight might be the best plan, just in cold water. Water with a little household ammonia is usually the next step.
Cross fountain pen ink doesn't flow

I have a Parker classic fountain pen I have sent to Cross twice because the ink stops flowing using their cartridges. When I use the converter with Parker ink it works fine. I would like to use the cartridges as I travel quite a bit. I have cleaned the nib at least ten times with no joy. Any ideas?
The only suggestion I’ve seen for that sort of situation is to use a little dilute detergent - washing up liquid - to flush it through a few times. Sometimes oils left in the feed from manufacturing can cause flow problems, and the washing up liquid will break down the oils. Might be worth a try, if you haven’t already done that.

Can I recommend that you use the pen regularly, daily if possible? You can also do the following, wash out the pen between each cartridge, use the converter to pump water back and forth through the mechanism. Sometimes I use the bulb part of a camera blow brush to force water through the nib.

I would be tempted though to give up on cartridges. They are a criminal waste of money and landfill space and instead change to bottled ink.

If it’s an Aerometric, they don’t usually need much doing - the collector can get blocked up, but the Sac is usually pretty reliable, and there’s nothing in there that needs specialist tools. The Vacumatic does need some special tools, but it’s supposed to be a very difficult fix - might be better left to someone who knows what they’re doing.

Firstly my fountain pen is an unknown model from China and I am sure you know the low cost fountain pen branded 'Parker hero 89-x'. I have one and it has gone through some things… I cleaned it with Cutex… is it ok?? My fountain pen the black thingy under the nib is a bit out of shape… how do you fix it back… and also…. If it is possible, could you send me a picture or diagram on how to align the nib?

I have a Rotring Isograph .10 (I bought the College Set) that won’t work. I stupidly left it with the ink in for several days and… I guess it clogged, because now it won’t write.

I’ve tried “quick” cleaning and “thorough” cleaning, and now the nib (that’s what it’s called right?) is soaking in a bowl of very warm water and some mild liquid soap. A thin trail of ink is slowly rising from the nib (it’s pretty cool watching this in the water). I’m hoping this will work.
they are a bit different, but probably pretty similar for cleaning (in a fountain pen, the ink goes down a slit cut into the nib - technical pens have a tube for the ink to flow down instead). They’re all plastic, so I’m pretty sure soaking is a good thing for them - may take a bit of time. The biggest practical difference is probably the ink - drawing ink is different stuff to fountain pen ink, so may be slightly different to get out - water is still going to be the best thing to try first, though.
I would think the household ammonia trick would probably work, well diluted. I’ve only heard it recommended for clearing fountain pen ink, but I doubt it’s that different.

If the ink is coming out with a soak, though, you’ll probably ok that way. Just give it a swirl around every now and then, and change the water as it starts getting all inky.
I left the pen tip to dry on a towel while I went to school today. I got back and decided to try it. The pen tip still had some ink coming out of it (from the.. umm.. rear end) actually, but I decided to try it nonetheless and it unsurprisingly still didn’t work. Grrr. So now it’s soaking again. SIGH

I hope my local bookstore has that cleaning kit in stock. That “pen key” thing didn’t come with my college set though.


Do you mean for removing the sleeve from around the nib unit so you can get to the feed? It’s the cap! Push the centre part of the cap out through the cap from the top - the bit with the width marked on it. Just push where the “.50” or whaterver is marked, and it should drop most of the way out - might need poking with something to come all the way out. You then push the nib in through the top end of the cap, and the part that centre bit was sticking in is the key. Push the cap over the nib, give it a bit of a twist and wiggle, and the bit surrounding the feed should come right off.

That should make cleaning a good bit easier.

If it won’t come clean, Sanford are pretty much killing Rotring off now, so you might stand a good chance of finding them getting sold off cheaply. Our local Staples sold the Parker fillers off for £6 each - used to be £18 - and I’ve seen quite a few of them going cheap on eBay.

I’ve just opened and tried our set, probably left full of ink and unused for a long time - all three work fine, so it looks like you were pretty unlucky there.
My Parker 51 fountain pen worked well for 2 years. In recent months, I write a paragraph or two and the inks ceases to flow. I unscrew the piston and reassemble it, the ink flows again, a mite too copiously at first. A paragraph later the flow stops once more. I do not think the problem has anything to do with dirt blocking the flow of ink. I suspect that for some reason air is not flowing back into the piston to push the ink out.