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As a Moleskine user I am shocked, Shocked at all the colors and variations on my beloved black carnet. First there were those silk-covered notebooks for the Van Gogh Museum, then all the commemorative stuff—Woodstock, Helvetica, and so on. In soft cover! What is this world coming to! Must those young whippersnappers defile the classics with such impunity?

That’s my fuddy-duddy tone. I like this: the limited edition My Pilipinas notebook, a collaboration between Moleskine, Collezione C2, and National Bookstore. The notebooks are now available at Collezione C2 and National Bookstore branches—P995 for the pocket notebook, P1480 for the large notebooks. My one complaint: it’s only available in soft cover.

At our interview, Rhett Eala mentioned that Collezione C2 now has a bespoke service. Hearing the word “bespoke” triggered my endorphins; I’m at the age where I get excited over the concept of “made to order”.

The thing that’s kept me from buying a Collezione C2 map shirt: Everyone’s wearing it. It’s like a uniform. However, with the bespoke service you can customize the shirt to your requirements, choose the color combination, and add your initials. It takes less than hour for the Rockwell store to do it; longer when more people hear about it (So get it done pronto).

I chose a white map on a white shirt, with my initials. I should get more white clothes for the summer. Besides, my cats are always sitting on my shirts, which are mostly black, and they all have white bellies so I have to go over everything with a lint brush.

My initials are fairly unique, although I share them with Beyonce’s husband, my ex-publisher and his dad, and John Zorn. Total cost of the bespoke shirt: P550 for the shirt, P150 for the initials, P250 for the map embroidery. I had mine done at the Power Plant branch.

This is the smallest they can make the map. You could have the map embroidered on the center of your chest and ringed with your initials if you want. Or have your initials ringed with maps of the Philippines. Your call.

Map bags have just arrived at the stores. This one holds all the stuff I carry around (3 notebooks, 5 pens, etc), in a cat-hair-proof shade. (Pin not included in the design.)

As long as we’re talking about our houses, I finally picked up my wooden trunk and put my notebooks in it.

I used to spend too much on leather-bound journals with thick paper. Then I realized that they were too heavy, and that they were were too beautiful for what was written in them. So I switched to Moleskines.

My cats love the baul and take turns lying on it. We call it the Hornburg.

This week: Moleskine (left) vs. Ciak (right)

The Ciak sketch book is not a ripoff but a competitor to the Moleskine. It has heavier paper and a horizontal elastic enclosure.

The soft leather cover has a little notch on the side for the elastic. Ciak doesn’t have the expandable pocket on the inside back cover. It has a cloth bookmark. The paper is more suited to drawing than writing, but if you’re into calligraphy or penmanship you can’t complain.

Ciak is more expensive and harder to find than the Moleskine. If you think Moleskine is too mainstream and you want something slightly different, get a Ciak.

Today: Moleskine vs. Scribe

Moleskine notebooks come in black. This one is a diary issued on the fourth anniversary of the Moleskinerie site. Note how the Scribe notebook on the right is actively pretending to be a Moleskine, down to the packaging. The elastic closure is an almost exact copy. Neat fake.

The pretender also has the expandable pocket on the inside back cover

and the ribbon bookmark. The paper has a slightly coarser texture

but soaks up ink nicely. Like the previous wannabe, however, it does not open flat the way the Moleskine does. Not bad if you can work out the philosophical dilemma: If you want a Moleskine, why would you buy something that is openly pretending to be a Moleskine instead of getting yourself a perfectly good notebook that only wants to be itself?

Scribe is sold in bookstores for P199, a quarter of the price of a Moleskine carnet.

The Greenapple notebook looks like a Moleskine pocket carnet—from a distance. Instead of smooth black oilcloth its cover is a thicker leatherette. (Moleskine is on the left, Greenapple on the right.)

The ribbon bookmark is almost the same but the elastic that keeps the notebook shut is thinner, like a rubber band.

Inside the paper is slightly thicker, coarser, and whiter. Unlike most Moleskine facsimiles, the pages are plain, unlined. They soak up ink very well.

There is also an expandable pocket in the back cover. I’ll have to use it for a few months to see if the binding holds. (Almost forgot, thanks for asking: No, the Greenapple does not open flat. It has to be held down. Moleskine binding rules.)

Greenapple retails for P169, less than a quarter of the cost of a Moleskine. I am devoted to my Moleskines but in a pinch I guess I could live with a Greenapple. The Greenapples are available at National Bookstores.

I’d gone to the bookstore to pick up Andre Agassi’s autobiography Open, and am happy to report that it lives up to the hype. All the reviews and talk show interviews (You must check out Andre’s appearance on Letterman) have mentioned the paternal bullying, the Lord of the Flies years at Bolletieri Academy, the fake hair and crystal meth use. But Andre’s accounts of what was going on in his head during his big matches are riveting, and tennis fans will enjoy his descriptions of his rivals.

Pete Sampras was the archenemy, but it’s hard to hate someone whose only interest is tennis. I did like the part where Andre drags Pete to see Grease on Broadway because Brooke Shields is playing Rizzo. Pete does not have a good time. The player Andre hates with a passion is Boris Becker, and he doesn’t love Jimmy Connors, either. He has a lot of admiration for Patrick Rafter and Roger Federer.

Open by Andre Agassi, P1,215 at National Bookstores.

My friend Reret and I share the view that Andre Agassi became an awesome human being when he won the French Open in 1999, then dated and married Steffi Graf (Before that we capital L Loathed him). Andre’s courtship of Stefanie (she prefers to be called Stefanie) is covered in detail in the book. He’d had a crush on her since the early 90s (“She looked, somehow, as if she smelled good. Also, as if she was good, fundamentally, essentially, inherently good, brimming with moral rectitude and a kind of dignity that doesn’t exist anymore.”) and was crushed when he discovered after winning Wimbledon in ’92 that the traditional dance with the women’s singles champion had been canceled. Then they both won the singles crowns at the French Open in ’99, and he decided she was his destiny. Awww.

Open: An Autobiography was written by Agassi with J.R. Moehringer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Tender Bar. “I was late in discovering the magic of books,” Andre says in the acknowledgments. “Of all my many mistakes that I want my children to avoid, I put that one near the top of the list.”

The Graf-Agassis do not have a tennis court in their house.

This would not have passed the inspection of my second grade teacher. There is a gap on top of the “a”. However I’m probably the only person in my second grade class who still in cursive.

In The Guardian: Umberto Eco regrets the passing of good handwriting.

Recently, two Italian journalists wrote a three-page newspaper article (in print, alas) about the decline of handwriting. By now it’s well-known: most kids – what with computers (when they use them) and text messages – can no longer write by hand, except in laboured capital letters.

The tragedy began long before the computer and the cellphone. . .