I know that my taste buds have a good luck.

When I feel the attractiveness of a food has receded, there will be always one appearing to attract and inspire me. By the way, I consider myself is not a deft-handed man. But my taste is such strict that I have an enormous gap between ‘acceptable’ and ‘good’ in my mind. Under a long time, I became so weary of that very few of things interest me. Certainly, the life of little delight is very hard, so I have to develop the habit that being more active than most people for looking for good things and inspiration. Fortunately, there is always a good result to fill me more energy to tide over the ordinary days.

In an evening, an idea came though, ‘go to have a different kind of dinner’. Then I went to ‘for Farm‘ （田樂） for their vegetarian-featured burger. The atmosphere of this shop, which is redeveloped from an old house, transpired a natural and delicious smell.

I ordered a ‘toasted chicken burger’ set. The mixture of chicken leg and shiitake mushrooms with miso sauce is an unique creation. Although it is not a role of the general meaning of ‘tasty’, but it can lead a fascinating exploration of savour. It has some analogy with listening to a talk of a philosopher.

The only drawback is the chicken meat which is little overly firm. It is a good feature to somebody wants to have a chewy taste, but not me. And at that time I must consider that I never really like to eat meat. Next time I may choose “Tofu burger’. Generally, it is more delicious than other burger I’ve tasted, by making by a special way. Besides, Their potato chowder soup is another delicious, which is merged plentiful ingredients such as potatoes, celery, mushroom, enokitake, parsley and bread cubes which are for relish. Can feel that they are made with genuineness and worth the relatively expensive price.

Record the landscape of this shop on my Moleskine watercolour pad is another purpose. Because at for Farm there are two floors, I sit at ground floor while I did not want to miss the season vegetables clock at upstair, so I use the intermixture style, which is inspired from cubism, when drew the scene. In brief, I began to try to do it not only for a simple description of this space, but creating my own imagination of it.

Also this time, I also attempted to draw a person (she is one of staffs at the shop). On the finished drawing (on the top of this post), the gradient technique seems still not in adequate skill, in some ways it can be blamed on these is no grey in Winsor & Newton solid watercolour set, then I must mix it from raw umber and ultramarine. However, if I continually mix the mingled grey with other colors, it is so prone to appear small gray points. In order to it, I started to take the Holbein cake watercolours in account. But, disappointedly, this stuff is hard to get to them who are not live in Japan.

One more thing invigorating — When I was drawing this, two girls who sit next to me stroke up a conversation with me, praise my drawing has good quality. And including the manager, the staffs all showed their interest to my drawing after they passed by and took a view of it. In fact, this piece of drawing is not ‘good quality’ enough in my standard. But surely, especially when most of the moderns just want to take a shot after find a scenery they like; painting, the kind of traditional art, had indeed become more profound and spiritual. Usually people resist being photographed, but do not hold a dislike of being portrayed (unless the painter is a caricaturist).

Thank to this experience, I actually recognise that painting — can be a job to plant the joy around. Of course, the concept of creation can be an effective way to promote the creating process, but if we make concept transcends the simple joy from the creative process; in my opinion, it is similar to putting the cart before the horse. I would like to give the world we exist a new idea and meaning; meanwhile, I hope the creation can probably kindle people’s mind and palate. Perhaps what I like to do just resemble the ‘for Farm’ burger with miso sauce as condiment that enliven the sensory with the vitality of nature.

田楽 漢堡 鬆餅 午晚茶小館
for Farm burger, pancake, café

臺灣臺中市西區美村路一段102巷1號
No.1, Lane 102, Mêicūn Rd. Sec. 1, West Distinct, Taichung City, Taiwan

forfarmburger.blogspot.com

　　Moleskine 這家義大利公司，就像 Rolls-Royce 之於引擎，是筆記本中的超級名牌（甚至有醞釀成「傳奇」的實力）。相信也是多數手繪或紀錄愛好者的首選筆記本。在 2010 年新推出¹的 Moleskine Passions 系列根據功能分成食譜、紅酒（這兩本排在最前面，果然是義大利的作風）、書籍、電影、音樂、健身六種。主題式分類的功能，可以根據不同的活動攜帶不同的筆記本，如去書店帶 Books Journal、觀看影片帶 Flims Journal、烹飪帶 Recipe Journal，而去歐式的餐廳（通常會提供酒類）則帶 Recipe 及 Wine 兩本。Moleskine 特別推出 Moleskine Passions Exhibition: “Share the loves of your life” 計畫，整理後精選作品展示。
　　但這還沒完。Book Journal 又推出加碼試用的計畫：跟知名的書籍社群網站 aNobii 合作，不過只提供內頁格式。參加方式是：

加入此群組，下載以下的壓縮檔，印出裏面的 Moleskine 閱讀日誌，利用它寫下一篇讀書心得或感想，然後把它電郵到 contact@anobii.com 或寄到 …… 便有機會得到一本 Moleskine Passions 系列閱讀日誌，參與【Moleskine Passions 分享生活中的最愛】展覽，於 Page One 書店與大眾分享閱讀樂趣。

　　由此可見，是要將閱讀日誌的內頁印出來，寫滿它（至少我是忠實地寫滿了），然後掃描寄到 aNobii 的服務信箱（為何不用負責人的專屬信箱？），或是整張紙本寄到香港（Molskine 的香港代理商 Working Unit Ltd.）。

　　內頁（可參考 PDF 檔）的格式特地做得和 aNobii 相近，除了基本的書名、作者、閱讀日期、初版（原版剛問世）年份、既版（就是自己手上讀的版本）年份、出版單位等內容之外，摘句、筆記及評論簡直是為 aNobii 量身打造的。

　　這應該是經過特意設計的，因為一般人不會邊閱讀邊用電腦紀錄閱讀（絕對會分心，但這事我做過不少次），但書旁邊放筆記本紀錄反而可以更專心於書頁。Book Journal 以明晰的框架提供讀者隨時隨地寫下即時的摘錄及感想，到準備好時，就能到電腦前面整理並在 aNobii 或 Blog 分享，能有效避免了意念流失和記錄閱讀歴程的熱情冷卻。經過自己的測試後，證實這種筆記比較適用於閱讀中的書，已經讀完的書反而比較沒有紀錄的熱情。因為我在上面紀錄的兩本書：《緩慢的人》及《為什麼設計》分別是讀完幾天和正在閱讀中的，書寫後者的筆記時更有紀錄的熱情，且紀錄的熱情可以讓閱讀的速度更快，所以藉著這次的紀錄，一口氣讀完了《為什麼設計》，也驚嘆於 Book Journal 的強大能力。

　　相信 Moleskine Passions 一系列 Journal 能更有力地喚醒「手的感覺」。用手永遠最快，最直接，即使是評論寫到一半要畫圖解，只要換隻筆就可以立刻上手了。以之前的產品來說，厚頁的 Moleskine 繪畫冊如果當作旅遊日誌，可以利用鉛筆或水彩來紀錄旅途風景，讓日誌更加豐富多彩。不過今後確實要多練習繪畫和書寫的技巧，才能做出快速又精細的寫生記事了。

　　這一頁已經掃描寄出去了，希望可以得到一本 Book Journal 和作品被展示的機會。不過我想在得獎之前我早就迫不及待地買一本回去了。