Sumatra Quake

Slept badly. Decided to get out of bed at 7:30 am after many turnings and rollings. As soon as I sat down on the chair, I started yawning. Went back to bed but it was 9 am when I fell asleep, shallowly.

This late afternoon, my body felt as if floating at sea. Moving slowly, it occurred several times with a short interval. It lasted for a minute or so. It turned out it was not my body that was moving. The earth was moving because of another shake in Sumatra. When this happened, I was reading the pages of “Burmese Days” where people were panicked by an earthquake.

No Room for Relaxation

あっと言う間に９月が終わろうとしている。いつものことながら、「忙しい」とは言いたくないが、やっぱり忙しいのだろう。忙しいと歳をとる速度が増すように思うな。ゆったり感のなさ。おとといの夜、また「Russian Night」を聴いてたら、隣から「Your music is too loud」とお叱りを受けてしまった。隣人は変わったみたいやな。家庭内暴力的だったカップルは転居したんやろう。せやけど、自分やったら、「Your music is too loud」とは言わんと「Could you please turn it down a little?」ぐらいにしとくけど。罪はこちらにあり。

何とかもっとベッドにいようと「努力」してしまう。冬の寒い朝、ふとんから出たくない気分と同じ。しかし、余分に眠るとろくな夢を見ない。けさもこれまで読んできた本が大方処分された夢やった。「日本語の本はどこやったんや」と叫んでた。あぁ、いややいやや。

どっかへ旅行に出かけんとあかんなと思う。違う景色を見んと。８月にホーチミンを再訪するはずやったけど、仕事が割り込んで行けんかった。来月はどうかな。ホーチミンである必要はないんやけど。渡航費がかからんと、食いもんがうまくて安い場所。これがいちばん。

最近ますます食生活が貧しくなってる。そもそも、何を食べていいのかわからん。隣の隣にある「Hong Kong Street Fish Head Steamboat」は週末になると満杯になるようやけど、ひとりでは食べる気にもならん。せいぜい、「soup dumpling」を打包するぐらい。顔見たら、注文せんでも向うからthumb upでわかってくれるけど。英語のさっぱり通じない「東北菜館」の人たちとは「你好」とにっこりあいさつ。やっぱり毎日食べる気にはならん。ましてひとりでは。

TIRED

Proceeding with work steadily but with a reluctant mind and trying to recreate the P/L statements of July and August, forever lost with the drive. I need to look at the invoices, some of which are also lost, the cheque issuing and deposit records and the bank statements. I want to “borrow a cat paw” if anyone understands the saying.

セカンドどどどどどどっどいが亡くなった！

日本のある政党は相変わらず人気取りと票獲得に忙しい。臨時国会に永住外国人に地方参政権を与える法案を提出するらしい。こんなものには絶対反対だ。日本の政治に参加したければ日本人になりなさい。

Sometimes Good Means Bad

Work is flowing in again. Very nice, but perhaps I need some rest. It was a mistake not to get out to Ho Chi Minh in August after a 3-week interpretation work. Though another interpretation work interrupted my plan, I still could have gone, as it was all translation works that came in during the week, which I could have finished wherever I was. On the other hand, I feel this is not any time to relax. Rather, this should be an important period to restore further and build up my finance.

Shooting Stars

Whether it was during yesterday’s afternoon nap or this early morning, I don’t remember already. I was looking up at the night sky. Up there, I found stars, not very many but each one of them, rather large, had the same bluish LCD-like light though their shape was foggily obscured. Suddenly, they, one by one, started shooting down. It was an amazing sight.

Burmese Days

With “Burmese Days” of George Orwell, the reading flow stops at every italicized word like longyis, ingyi, gaungbaung, tuktoo, durwan and kit-kit though I guessed right about tuktoo. Even words like “shikoings,” not italicized, troubled me. And this: “The civilians in Burma had a comforting theory that ‘sticking by one’s job’ (wonderful language, English! ‘Sticking by’ – how different from ‘sticking to’) was the truest patriotism…”

Rakugo Voices, Irabu & Lens Dream

Last night, I watched the two “rakugo” DVDs again. Whether a story can be enjoyed depends partly on the voice tone. Voices too bright and clear do not impress. Even when a young woman’s role is played, it should be a little rugged.

Some days ago, Irabu Hideki terminated his contract with an independent league club, citing an injury. What did he want in the first place? I almost admired him for his decision to restart his career. He seemed to discover what he was truly called to, after an arrest in an incident where he went violent at an Osaka bar. Quite unfathomable.

Contact lenses have come back to my dream. Hello again. I haven’t had any dream of lenses since I changed to soft lenses. But it came back. It was soft lenses, large and very thick. Ha! I managed to put them into the eyes.

Disquiet

My mind has been uneasy since that day. On that day, my external hard disk drive dropped from the table to the carpeted floor. It was not a great height. I tried another PC hoping that the drive was still alive. Failed. A great part of the corporate financial data is now lost though, scrambling through the clients, all past invoices have been recovered, or so it seems. As disappointing, or much more disappointing, is that I have lost so many photos saved inside it. Most of digital ones, taken by myself and given by others, are gone, and hundreds of scanned images disappeared. Furthermore, my manuscripts for the Nankai blog said sayonara to me. Cursed. I was using the disk for a backup. But as the space of the PC was shrinking, I had become reliant on it as the main storage. Cursed since I lost my old phone by washing it with my underwear.

Meanwhile, I finished Andrew X. Pham’s “The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars” and “Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram” translated by him. So far, “The Eaves of Heaven,” which tells a family’s history through the three wars Vietnam fought against France, Japan and the US, is my best this year. Thuy’s diary shows a romantic, disciplined young woman, who devoted her life to the revolution as a doctor. Once again, I must say, America, why were you there? You had no business there, did you?

A few nights ago, amidst a dream, I heard a painful, rather metallic, sound of snap. The scene turned all white, and I opened eyes, scared.