How do you say Grrrr in Japanese?

Friday November 9, 2007

It’s funny, isn’t it, how the Internet has spoiled us when it comes to searching things out?  Used to be that if a record you wanted was no longer listed and not on the lists of the secondhand record shops that advertised in the back of the Gramophone you’d fold your hands gracefully and hope that things might change.

Now you turn to the Internet and search it out. Anything you want, you can find on the Internet.

Except when it’s barred from you by language.

Graham is desperate to get a CD copy of a Sad Café album–Facades, BMG Victor, BVCP-2096–released in Nov 21, 1992 but only in Japan. And there’s the snag. It’s for sale on Yahoo Japan but the translation doesn’t work, and he can’t find how to bid for it or contact the seller.

I can understand the ‘Grrrr!’ on that. We’re moving towards a one-planet market and, despite snags en route, I think that is a good thing. Except it’s not moving fast enough. It’s a major item on my I’d like to see… list. And the language snag is holding things up.

Hey ho.

Apart from the Grrrs of Frustration it’s been a quiet day. I did let out one squeak of astonishment when I discovered that two houses opposite ours are on the market with asking prices around the £250,000 [$US500,000 approx] mark.

This is ridiculous. I know that properties around major cities go for a lot more, and there are quite ordinary houses for sale even in Somerset in excess of £500,000. Even so.

It may be that, one day, this bubble will burst. Not a pleasant thought, because that’d be a pop besides which the present world credit crisis will look like a wind egg.

Makes you wonder if Marx wasn’t right on that one after all, and that property is theft and that we’re all  about to get our come uppance at last. I used to have a poster proclaiming that slogan, back in my student days. Shame I didn’t keep it.