Monday morning and I find myself led to an email written by one Philip Gabriel, Murakami translator and professor of Japanese literature at the University of Arizona in Tucson, addressed to Jay Rubin, Murakami translator and professor of Japanese literature at Harvard University and Gary Fisketjon, editor at Alfred A. Knopf.

I was still in the middle of reading it (still am now) when I came across a part which I couldn't resist talking to K about.

ebuddy conversation:

I say: ewol i reading a long article of an actual email of a guy who translates murakami's books

I say: this part - I always recall Raymond Carver's comment about his favorite part of writing being the slow, careful re-writing process after he was finished a decent draft of a story. The polishing and repolishing part. I really enjoy this part of the process, too, and spend a great deal of time going over the translation as an English text--before going back to re-check it against the original.

I say: heheheh.. wouldnt you like to work doing that lol

Khyr says:ya lorz!

I say: i actually dont know if you would like it or not

I say:on one hand it would appeal to your somewhat meticulous and uptight about language nature

I say:but on the other hand it seems to be on a level of tediousness you wouldnt want to do

Khyr says:lol you know me well

Khyr says:i have a strange affinity and intolerance for meticulous detail

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Which is the summary of what we have been doing these past few days and possibly for the next week or so.

On Tuesday night, I was in the good fortune of surveying second hand but looks brand new furniture, choosing the ones I want, most going at about 5-20% of their original price. My aunt had already taken the very lovely pink sofa going for $150 and the original was around $900, a lovely long mirror with dark wood panels, wood shoe shelves for $20 (!!) and a long solid wood cabinet for $100. Albeit with a twinge of envy at my aunt's finds, I was still quite glad to make the most of my aunt's invitation to peruse through furniture going at excellent prices and still in good condition.

(The primary reason I had dragged K to go with me on that day was because of a dining table set complete with 6 chairs. Although K has told me again and again that he doesn't care how furniture looks like, if I'm comfortable, just get them, but I still have to have him around when I get furniture, especially large pieces. )

Anyway to cut the long story short, we decided on getting the 6 leather bound chairs with the dining table with a thick glass top - for $150! We ended up also getting this huge solid wood tv bench at $100 and a large mirror with antique wood panelling for $40! WOOT!!

Now if only we had this truck! Woohoo!

K didn't organise the transportation and moving of the furniture and since my aunt is a Sanguine by nature, we naturally were at the Plaza from 630pm to 1030pm because someone didn't arrange the right sized lorry, causing one *Ah Pek Sayur (he still had empty vegetable crates covering 1/3 of his truck!!) to wait for half hr and had to leave, and making hasty arrangements only later to have her friend rescue her by asking another friend with truck to come by.

My zzzz frowning at random wall face cos I was damn tired after work but cannot complain cos I know my aunt is not very organisationalness type and that this was bound to happen. And of course it was her who invited us to look at the furniture and she really is a nice person actually so it's hard getting annoyed so I just frown when nobody's looking lol. Actually I lied. I'm not that cute. Plus I lost my Cat Empire cap and I generally don't wear caps sideways.

SO at the end of the day, besides me aunt, me and K and her friend who works at the Plaza, she had involved one hapless guy friend who was very annoyed with my aunt's lack of details which caused him to send away the Ah Pek Sayur (who was his contact), the Ah Pek Sayur and his wife, the cargo lift guy, and the truck guy. Added to that, her husband and son waited for us at my place to help carry the stuff. Lol. (You have got to read Personality Plus by Florence Littauer (she's a Sanguine) and read her stories especially the one of how she lost her car at a shopping mall carpark and ended up with a group of men helping her to locate it lol.)

Me, Ina and Aznie (bro in law's wife) on the bed in the aircon room.

Me and K and his brother and wife would sometimes congregate in me mum in law's previous house which is mostly rented out now, with K's sis and mum to have short nostalgic moments and we would sometimes tapao dinner there, switch on the aircon in one bedroom, lie down on the mattress and bed and just talk. This time around she had new tenants moving in some stuff so she had me and K and K's sis there for dinner on Sat night while the 2 new tenants walked around carrying their stuff in. As the tenants were not going to stay overnight, she decided to stay at our place for the night with Ina (K's sis) so that she could meet them again the next morning (her house is 2 blocks away from mine).

I made the suggestion of setting up the dining table, since there were 4 people around (the glass top is bloody heavy and scares me cos I keep thinking of failing to grip it and the glass shattering on the floor and killing me) but positioning the table in its place in my living room would make it difficult to open the store door, so we ended up clearing up the store to lessen future usage of the store-and its door of course. Unfortunately, this *feeling kemas2 soon spread to my guest room. You see our one guest room has not been cleared of boxes and plastic bags of things me and K brought from our previous houses and it has been steadily accumulating bits and pieces of things which do not have a place in the house yet. So you can imagine how the night went. I spent Sat night and a good part of the morning till about 3am clearing out my old boxes and shifting assorted things around to their proper places in the house. Everyone else was asleep by then -_-

Sunday saw K doing the things mentioned at the beginning of the blog. He had to drill precisely.. 16 holes? in various parts of the house, mainly to hang things on the walls. He was measuring the hole distances in our bedroom and I asked why didn't he hang his OCS sword in the living room.

"I don't want to show it off!"

'But then why are you putting it up then if you dont want to show it off?' .. glance at thick dust on the casing, getting distracted..'And tell me you will wipe that dust off first..'

" Don't tell me what to do with the dust! Cos its taking up space on the floor, so must hang up mah.. "

Zzzzz..

So now we got the wall fan up in the kitchen -finally!- OCS sword up in our room, casing still caked in dust!, toilet sprayer holder in toilet so we wont need to keep leaving the sprayer across the toilet seat and K says he has about 8 more holes to go. Meh. V difficult meh drill hole. Kekekekekekek.. its so fun to rile him up.

Anyway, he's damn meticulous la measuring the holes and distances etc etc etc, but I know he's liking the details but not really liking the fact that he has to do these tedious things. *grin*

My favourite Murakami book: Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World

To round this post up, back to the beginning. I really don't think I'm losing out to reading a supposedly abridged version of Murakami's translated works. Maybe when there is a complete translation, I will read it one day and find it gives me a totally different feeling from when I read the first abridged translation. But its still Murakami. Even while reading a shorter version, his meaning gets to you. It just does. When I read his books I get totally engrossed, but the moment I'm done I take a break until I feel I'm ready to immerse myself in his words and voice again. The experience is just sublime eh.

Currently reading Bell Jar-finally! Running out of books again after my mad rush to finish Feist's Darkwar series and thwarted by Singapore's horriblityness at stocking good books cos I can't finish my Twilight series.

Books, music (most recent Wicked Aura at Esplanade-wicked!!! and coming up Singfest), furniture, Dvd collecting, DoTA till mornings & hanging out with K and family = happiness :)

PS Pics of furniture will be put up soon.

* Ah Pek Sayur = Chinese man, vegetable seller

*feeling kemas2 = in the groove of things of getting things tidied up - this is so not from an online translation thingy hurhur.