You want minimalism? Look elsewhere. I love my stuff. This category includes posts about bills and coins, books (including books in languages I can’t read), rocks and minerals, small little bowls, embroidered patches, and animal figurines. Plus whatever turns up on Carousell and catches my eye.
Below are photos of the three Ruth Chew books translated into Japanese and published in Japan in 2016, which I just ordered by mail from Amazon.jp.
The Amazon Japan website is easy to use (there’s a button to switch the site to English), and you can check out with USD, but now I keep getting emails (marketing emails, presumably) from Amazon in Japanese!
See below for more photos of these exotic books.
While I returned from Vietnam to Singapore, my husband went on to Bangkok. After seeing how pleased I was to find The Little Prince in Vietnamese, he wanted to surprise me by bringing back The Little Prince in Thai. I spoiled his plan by asking him to look for it when I checked in with him online during his stay. Then he felt it was incumbent upon him to come up with an even surprisier surprise.
The result: The Little Prince deluxe pop-up book! Since I had The Little Prince in English and six other languages (not counting Thai), clearly I needed to have the book in 3D.
It’s pretty spectacular! I was indeed surprised.
After a bit of Googling, I realized: nine versions is just a drop in the bucket. There are more than 250!
For comparison, the sensationally successful Harry Potter books are “only” available in about 70 different languages (someone’s got them all); I have copies in about 30 of them.
What about the The Bible? It’s available in over a thousand languages.
Still, The Little Prince is one of the most translated works ever. It’s up there with Pinocchio, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and stories by Andersen.
Given how many versions of The Little Prince there are, owning just one version for English (well, two, counting the pop-up) is paltry. I should figure out which English translation I have, because apparently there are several, and some are more well-regarded than others—or perhaps it would be fairer to say the different versions well-regarded for different reasons.
More on the subtleties and pitfalls of translation and publication across language barriers, with specific reference to The Little Prince, at the link below.
http://ephemeralpursuits.com/blog/2012/10/on-translation-and-the-little-prince/
Update: I’ve done a comparison of all 10 English translations of The Little Prince!
Whenever I visit a foreign country, I try to collect one each of all the bills and coins in use; my husband also likes to have a set of his own, so I assembled one for him this time too. Nine different bills! Six polymer and three paper.
Since the coins aren’t worth much, I didn’t run across any in use. I did see some at a stall selling postcards, stamps, and other items of interest to tourists, but they were glued on to a dirty old cardboard “collector’s album” with some undoubtedly fake/replica ancient coins and some random, beat-up coins from other countries (including an American penny next to a label that said it was a nickel). No thanks.
Since the Wikipedia article on Vietnamese banknotes doesn’t let you see the images of the banknotes (you have to click a bunch of links to another site), I’ve scanned mine and posted them below.
The 200k note shows Ha Long Bay, and the 100k note shows a gate at the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, two locations I’ve now seen in person.
This is the current state of my collection of embroidered flag patches. (They’re all about the same size and quality now, yay!)
The ones in plastic bags are all ones I just bought in Vietnam.
These are all flags from countries I’ve visited (except that I haven’t been to Malaysia, the Philippines, or Mexico overnight, and one is the Buddhist flag).
China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Japan, Korea
India, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Buddhism, ,
Laos, Vietnam, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand,
Cambodia, Myanmar, Myanmar (old), Malaysia, Indonesia,
UK, Spain, Portugal, France, Hungary, Germany
I also have flag patches for cities and states I’ve lived in, plus the US, plus a variety of other embroidered patches for sites, places, brands, and institutions.
I would like to have flag patches for:
This bowl came from a shop called Maroon (156 Hang Bong St).
The price was VND 88,000 (about S$5.50).
They had a lot of other pieces with a similar glaze.
It’s impressive that the shop has custom-printed shopping bags.
On the other hand, nobody really proofread them…
I’m fascinated by books that transmit knowledge and culture across language barriers, which is why I have whole shelves of familiar books in unfamiliar languages. (I’m not crazy; I’m erudite! At least that’s what I keep telling myself.)
One of the books I own in multiple languages is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Above are copies in Lao(atian), Khmer (the language of Cambodia), Vietnamese, Portuguese, the original French, and Italian.
I bought the Lao and Khmer copies at Monument Books in Vientiane in 2015; I just recently bought the Vietnamese one at one of the three Artbook locations in Hanoi; I bought the Portuguese one in Porto, Portugal, in 2004. I unknowingly kicked off the habit of buying Le Petit Prince in other languages when I bought the Italian one in Italy in 2002. I probably bought the English version between 1999 and 2004.
The French copy is the one I used when I was a senior in high school. The book, designed for students, includes a glossary at the back, but I added footnotes.
Do I have an English translation of Le Petit Prince? Yes, but it’s not in the photo because it’s in a box with a bunch of other books we don’t have shelves for. There is more than one such box.
UPDATE: I have seven different English translations of The Little Prince and I have made a post comparing all 10 English translations!
Being an expat.
Disadvantage: Just when you get to know them, your friends and neighbors move to some other country thousands of miles away.
Advantage: They sell off their stuff cheap.
Upshot: I have way more movies than friends.
I went to the National Library to write some snail mail in peace and quiet. When the mail was ready, I went next door to drop it in the postbox at Bras Basah Complex. Then I got snared by the used book bookshop on the corner there. It must have been at least an hour later that I re-emerged with SG$20 less in my wallet and these six books in my backpack.
More on these books below.
So cute. It’s trying to hide behind that plant, but it doesn’t realize that just because it can’t see me doesn’t mean I can’t see it…
I collect sightings of JM Ice trucks because they’re so colorful. I’ve now seen at least 22 of the 38 or more trucks in the fleet.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen #15, though, and it was sitting still so I got a photo!
I thought usually #37 delivered to Chinatown… Ah well.
I love the hemispherical profile and the slightly irregular shape.
