I’m a little younger than that, but fountain pens and cartridges were sold separately — thus the ability to choose from a rainbow of ink colors
I honestly didn’t care about the smudging on my hands (kids don’t tend to care about that kind of thing), but my teachers weren’t happy about the smudging on the writing/paper.
I recently had to fill out the sizable questionnaire at a doctor’s office with a marker. Most of it was illegible after I was done, and the side of my left hand was black.
I really prefer typing —much faster & no legibility issues.
I lived in Kolkata from the late 80s to the early 2000s. Even when I was at university in the late 90s to early 00s, it was frowned on for women to attend classes in Western clothing. Also for women to consume alcohol or dine in restaurants with bars or that served alcohol. I was aware from relatives and friends who lived in cities like Mumbai and Bangalore that life was much less restrictive and women had greater freedoms in relation to dress and behaviour in these more cosmopolitan cities. Kolkata has evolved now but I’m sure as a city it’s a snooze compared to the dynamism of the other big Indian metros.
I like when the doctor’s office emails the forms over (in advance) and they are fillable .pdf files. I can type away and the final product looks so much better.
That and uploading any documents into my “portal”. That way when I get to the appointment, the doctor has already reviewed the information or if he/she needs something its at his/her fingertips.
Well, this was some rando doc in Berlin. My docs back home have all this information available to them online, so I generally don’t bother filling out the physical questionnaires, even though they are handed to me every time
Except when the staff doesn’t review them. I recently had a long (for me–12 days) hospital stay and was discharged with about 12 prescriptions. Last week I had a follow-up with the surgeon. I had updated the e-forms they sent me to remove the rxs I had finished (antibiotics and some opioids). When I got to the exam room, the nurse reviewed my current meds–she used the initial discharge list, not the updated list I had sent, then crossed off by hand the meds I no longer use.
ETA: Wow, we have officially drifted this thread far off course
I haven’t been to Kolkata yet though some of my closest friends in New York are from there, I have family history there back generations, and a bunch of the home food we eat originated there
One day
That’s surprising to me. However a school friend’s daughter started med school outside Mumbai last year, and they were given a list of acceptable clothing that essentially excluded anything that could be considered provocative. (Simple tunics / tops and pants, whether indian or western, pretty much.) We were kind of shocked. But then it also kind of made sense given repressed sexuality in society and how women still get blamed for men’s misbehavior. (She had to take her daughter shopping for a new classwear wardrobe.)
Not Bombay. Bangalore was the first with pub culture and women drinking freely outside the home, because it was a young working transplant city where people lived on their own. Fortunately that culture spread to the other metros.
However now the conversation I seem to have most often is why people aren’t over social drinking already, because it’s almost obsessive.
I still have my Shaeffer cartridge pen from the ‘50’s. It was an earlier model than the one you pictured. Clear barrel, and the cap was rounded. A card with the pen and 5 cartridges was $1.00 in the School Store.
@medgirl I spent my formative (edited from formidable lol) years (early 20’s) in Chicago, which has a sizable Indian population. And I was working in a tiny biology lab at U of Chicago and fortunate to be labmates with an Indian woman who took me under her wing. Although I loved Indian and Ethiopian food when I was in Boston, the first time I saw an Indian person eat with their hands was when she invited me home for dinner. I had never seen anyone eat so elegantly, hands or utensils (I’m Korean and a chopstick user). It made a big impression on this 20-something’s impressionable mind, for which I am grateful.
