Tonite I will get 6.5 hrs of sleep...
Tomorrow morning I will take my first step towards the first day of the rest of my life.

R.I.P. Yu Ishihara the Student - You shall be missed.

DAMN...AIR HORRY, Comin to Stores SOON! I'd buy'em, lol.

For those of you that don't get it...that was basketball talk. Spurs are up 3 - 2, and for once, the game was worth watching. Robert Horry is the man, he needs to be put in the Hall of Fame, and when they make a movie about him, Will Smith hasta put up an academy award winning performance to measure up.

So I've actually begun to dig into this JSDA reading and practice exam stuffs. Its really fucking dense. I haven't had to memorize this much shit since like cumulative final exams in like my early college years. BIG BIG shout out and thank you to Brian Lee, my senpai, who hooked me up with extra practice exams. I need to get a 70 to pass...I think Im getting like a 40 right now....the road ahead is long....sigh.

Speaking of licenses, apparently my mother enrolled herself in some course offered at a nearby driving school called the "How to Drive...AGAIN. A course for paper-drivers". Scary thought...my mother was telling me how she only hit the curb once....great. I need to get a Japanese license too...I've been driving all over hte place in our busted old Nissan, with that piece of shit International License....it really don't get much more ghetto than that. Fuck man...all this licensing....all these tests...why am I being tested?! I thought I was done with all that...

So I'm also going to this graduate offsite thingy on the first weekend after I commence work. Me and all the new-hires are goin to some campground place for the weekend to do all those team-building exercises. Should be good times...I think I have a trading team offsite at the end of the month too...all these offsites lol, work must REALLY be stressful if they're giving me all these fun activities on the weekends...

And on a final note..I need to exercise and move around. I feel like a lazy bum...oh wait...I am. All the good food, all the studying = all the not moving around, not to mention that my ability to drive makes me even more lazy, is definitely taking its toll. I'm thinking of joining this gym where my boss goes. He told me about this program thats only once a week on like a weekend. Its about 3000, which is the equivalent of about $26, but really only has the purchasing power of like $20. Basically they work your ass til you want to throw up once a week. Sounds interesting...perhaps I need something like that...not to mention I'm supposed to get in on this bet with him and like 3 other guys that if one of us doesn't go to the gym at least once a week, we pay each other ‚P‚O‚O‚O‚O, which is like $90, but feels like $50. Either way...thats a hefty sum of money...a credible enough threat to get me back in the gym I hope. 

Back to the books....

You know...this past semester I didn't update this blog for two major reasons. One was that I had nothing to say, and the other was that I was generally busy enough that even if I did have something to say, I wouldn't have time to say it.

Lucky for you my faithful readers, I find myself with ample amounts of spare time these days! Unlucky for you however, is that once again I have failed to deliver in terms of content (ie. I have nothing important to say).

So a lil more in depth about that JSDA exam. In Japanese its called the ØŒ”ŠO–±ˆõŽŽŒ±. Anyone who wants to be involved in the Tokyo markets be it for Equity, Commodity, Currency, or Bonds,  Sales/Trading has to pass this exam. I had the option to take it in either English or Japanese. Although I was sent study guides in both languages, I took a glance through the Japanese. Needless to say it was a headache. It's not that I couldn't read it...I could...but it would have taken me forever to understand each sentence. So of course I decided to take the exam in English.

The English study guide has a nice little disclaimer in the beginning that basically says...."This translation sucks, and its not our fault"...they were right. This translation is a headache...its English...and I don't understand it....here is an example. NOTE: This is a direct copy out of the book and it is both 1 paragraph and 1 sentence.

"Accordingly, regulatory measures concerning the over-the-counter trade securities market are implemented concerning authorization by the Commissioner of the Financial Services Agency of the by-laws concerning the over-the-counter trading securities to be traded on the over-the-counter trading securities market, requisite measures taken by the Commisioner of the Financial Services Agency concerning revocation of registration or re-registration, etc., and the notificaiton to the Commssioner of the Financial Services Agency with respect to the halting of trading, or the lifting of such halt, etc."

I shit you not...thats exactly what it says...now you tell me how long it takes for you to decipher what that means!! Sigh...100pages done...only like...800 to go....

Yu