Alan made a bold statement

Alan, today, got a call from a lady recruiter of No. 5 accouting firm (I forgot the name as it's not familiar at all. Alan said No.4 and 5 are rather new to an ordinary people as some well-known are gone now either by abuse or acquisition) with a good offer, not only by money but by location.

He said he's quite happy with the current status and it's hard to leave unless the offer is much more attractive than a good prospective of a top position of a firm such as an owner. She said it's a bold statement to make but yet she asked him to prepare a resume for her. He thougth she sounded very interested in Alan.

Let's see

I've got OS X 10.3 today

I know it's kind of late but it's OK because I'm still here in U.S.and not with my Mac anyway. I also have CD-ROM version of Canvas 9 here with me, which's been delivered here last July. I cannot take Adobe premier CS to Japan with me because it will be delivered on 11/13, the day I leave. I don't think I can ask Alan to bring it over to Japan when he's coming in December as it's expected to be a heavy package. It has to wait till my next visit, probably sometime in next April.

I've ordered the Beatles' "Let It Be - Naked" CD and "King of Quees Series 1" DVD at Amazon.com today. Thus I'll have 4 DVDs and 1 music CD on order now at Amazon. The other DVDs are "Loving You", Presley's movie I've been waiting for so long, "Generals and Glories", a sequel to "Gettysburg", and "Finding Nemo." I expect Alan to bring all of them to Japan.

It's gonna be a fun to have all of them. (And I've got to add "Masters and Commanders" to a watch list of movie/DVD.)

All over again

There was a general election last Sunday back in Japan and I didn't vote - I couldn't. There were tons of updates in Mac area but I couldn't do any of them. In other words, I've missed a lot by being over here. I should've taken a Mac with me next time. That's certain.

And adding to it, the Nikkei also has been reset to square one of  10,100. I've lost more than a million yen but I'm not so angry (of course, I am) because it's gotta turn around again.

I'm flying back to Japan on Thursday Nov 13 as there'll be a game on Saturday Nov 15 and also Alan will be away to Orlando, FL on the weekend  for 3 week stay. In order to make my stay enjoyable, I need a car or bicycle and a Mac. Till then, I don't think it's feasible to stay, or rather, live here.

I've lost the key

Two days of examination were over yesterday and I felt tremendous relief after that. No matter how I'd said before the exam, it surely was a pressure. It was a heavy rain on the 2nd day and I had to make an extra round trip by car from home to the site as I lost the key there. I didn't know until I got home (not for a lunch but after the exam). I've searched my pockets and everywhere home but it was nowhere. I was almost 100% sure that it must've been at the place where I parked a car because it could've been the only place I could lost the key. I picked the car key out of the pocket where I had the house key as well. It was the only place and time it could've come out of the pocket.

Surely enough it was there lying on the pebble. Pebble, yes. When I got back there almost at 7pm. the place was deserted (that's good 'cause I could search around the place without being bothered or suspicious). I parked the car some feet away from the location I thought I parked the car in the morning and turned the light on. It was bright enough for me to look around but the line of light was sort of horizontal and even a tiny pebble created a shadow that made my searching a little difficult when what I'm looking for was a tiny key.

At first I couldn't identify the exact location I parked the car. That's crucial but I couldn't. I looked around but I didn't see anything metalic. I spent, say, 10 minutes, I'm not sure. Then I expaned the searching area but still no luck. I started to feel like giving up. I moved towards the car but I've tried to concentrate my focus on the surface. At one moment, I thought I saw it. I took a good look at the place and surely it's the key. I felt really lucky then.

Looking back, I could've have missed it for a thousand chances. It was so tiny and small. Nobody would be able to discover or notice it for years. Even if I can tell that I almost was certain it's there, it 's another matter to have located it there. Thank, God.

I've gotta think when I'll be heading home and what I'd do till then.

I have ordered some software at Apple Store US

I didn't know until it said so that the sale tax applicable at the receiving point would be applied to the sales. To my knowledge, one benefit of online shopping is no sales tax applied. It's never happened to me. Thus I've gotta pay extra $38 bucks. If I used Amazon, that much could've been saved. Christ!

I've searched the way to cancel the order but there's no such thing in their web pages. Was my searching a crap or does Apple reall not approve cancellation of the order?

"Read more..." is empty

I've been reading others' iBlogs and have noticed some annoying trend among several iBloggers.

You know that "Read more..." will show you a body preceded by an abstract, but some guys leave a body empty often. They just put everything in an abstract. It's handy in a way because you don't have to open a body to read everything there, but who knows there's nothing to read there until you actually open it.

It's understandable to write everything in an abstract myself but if you do, don't you think you should warn a reader to spare him/her a click.

It's really annoying to open an empty body.

My first Halloween

I knew that there'd be a Halloween this friday when I left Tokyo last Tuesday but I wasn't really thinking about it. When Christina told me about it when we were at Kroger for groceries, it was still someone else's job to me.

Then today is a Halloween day and Christina told me again that I'll be the one to open the door for "trick or treat". Then suddenly I was serious and started to wondering how to respond to it. How should I offer candies? How should I greet them? And most of all, do we have enough of candies or too little of them?

Alan wasn't here and Christina left for a dinner. I'm all alone and kids started to bang on the door. I didn't know anything about it so I just stick out the candy  bowls (actually that's full of chocoloates like M&M and Milky Ways) in front of them. Most of kids were kind of shy and took one. I figured then there'd be a ton of candies to be left. I started to hand them more or ask them to pick more than one.  We still had a plenty of them.

Then Alan came home and told me not to let them have more than one. Alan was rigtht. More kids than I started to expect came to pick them up and we were out of them sooner. I learned a lesson. I'd be able to handle it better if I'd lived here. Well, I wasn't

Most of kids are at elementary school ages but some are older than that. Majority wore some sort of costume but some wore none, just ordinary.

Thus at 7:30pm, candies were gone and we had still some knocking on the door if we had turned out the door lights.

It was fun, though. I'd handle them much better if I'd be here next year. 

I'm here in US

I got here yesterday on 10/28 without much of trouble. Two flights involved were delayed for about half an hour but, after all, I met Alan at the airport as scheduled.

Alan looked tired and spoke that way and I'm sorry for that. He said it's the way of life as a public accountant. Well, it's just this season.

It was raining on and off when I arrived in Richmond, VA and kind of chilly, he said. I didn't feel that way when I got off the plane but then I started to feel the same way. That's maybe as I was shuffling around the luggage I had to carry and I'd been indoors most of the time.

At the Kansai aiport, I saw Ouchi-san who said she's just transfered from Tokyo a month ago. She looked happy, that was good for her.

Owada-san  sent me an apology mail for failing to list me. I told her never to mind as I have to rely on her in the future for my listing and status-checking. At least she admitted her failure and she is honest about it. That's good.

I haven't talked with Alan much at all yet. Hope we can talk a little longer tooday.

Nikkei hit 11,000 yen once

I was correct when I said Nikkei would hit 11,000 this week. It did and dipped a little bit at the end of the week but it's OK.
The important thing was it didn't bounce back to 10,000 yen. That's all it counts.
Though the average acted as expected and hoped for, I lost some. What a fool!

So the score is two for good and one for bad; another good thing was I kept some balance for Nasdaq to continue next week.

Right now, I've no feeling about the next week, whether bright or not. At least for Nikkei, there's no reason to think bad except for one variable - the re-election for Japan prime minister. As for Nasdaq, I've no idea at all but is there anything ominous - struggling in Iraq and damage by Isabel?

Nikkei average in the week

As expected, Nikkei average fell by 200 yen at the end of the week and it's going to be the main subject if it passes 11,000 in the next week. If it does, I guess it's not before that long to make 12,000 yen. If, however, it bounces back to 10,000 yen level, it may take a while to make 12,000 yen if it ever makes as there'll be some variants to consider such as re-election of Koizumi and the general election in November.

Nikkei average

I'm damn happy today as Nikkei broke out to 10,900 without making a slight stop at 10,800, which is my hell of a milestone. It's like a dream, given it was below 8,000 once, not long ago. It was dismal then but now I can anticipate more than 11,000 level.
Yet, come to think of it, it was once 12,000. Since then it just slided down like a water shoot at Universal/Orlando. I'm sure there'll be some pull back before going over 11,000 but if none makes mistake, it surely goes there. Or you'd better, man.

Airline stock

Yesterday NWA came back to $10 after a long recess just as other carriers because they made relatively good performance in August. Maybe we can say we're back when they make $20 at least, but I'm not sure when it'll be. Toru-chan, how's your mother? Is she still gaining? I hope so.

Nikkei daytrading

I made a nice little gain and Nikkei held 17,000 yen level. Wish we would be equipped with a better tool, though.

I woke up past 11 am. I knew it would be late for a stock market in Tokyo. Nikkei was up & down about yesterday's level. Softbank made a gap-up and started to fall to close a gap soon. It could climb up from there after a lunch break. I watched MLB as usual and Mariners were struggling 7-7 at the bottom of the 9th against Tampa bay. Ichiro was, as usual, nothing but a flop but somehow other players made an effort for 3 runs in the 10th and Hasegawa managed the last two innings with one run allowed. Definitely Athletics are unreachable; Red sox is the one Mariners shouild beat if there's any chance.

After a lunch break, Nekkei wasn't sure itself about whether it should go up or down. Softbank made some rally but at 14:40, it started to break down past a support level. It was more then 200 yen drop in 10 minutes and I scalped some gain from there. It wasn't bad at all and a nice gain for 10 minutes short play. If there'd be a RealTick level device, though, I could manage more than 50% short gain. (Wishful thinking? Maybe.)

With this, I made back-to-back gains, UFJ and Softbank. As I trade in Nikkei more, I feel the brokers in Japan should cater more to the customer by developing efficient and effective trading tools. It may not be only the brokers' blame but also of Nikkei market management and some bureaucrats in the ministry. There's no equivalent of the Realtick. They ask for a password for every order and log off after fixed time inactivity. It's not possible to act quickly when some breakout/downs occur after, say, 1 hour. I have to log in first for the broker's home. That's alone a drag enough. Then , let's say, you want to buy and sell in 3 minute. It may not be possible to act quickly in that time span as they require a designated password to buy and to sell. Remember that the password is designated, provided by the broker, not the one you like. It's hard to remember even for the user as the password is meant to be. Very unfriendly and discouraging system. And they say it's for the benefit of the customers for the security reasons. Well, they should come up with the better system even though proprietary.

Toru-chan, if you ever go to Halifax, try to visit Mr. Furue, an old friend of mine from ICU. I understand he must be sort of everyone-knows Japanese there, who's been there since mid '70s.

Japanese input method

It's always difficult to input Japanese correctly, especially to differentiate "zu" and "du" - "daku on". For instance, take the word "tetuzuki" - "procedure". When you input them "tetuzuki", I might type "tetuduki" for "tetuzuki" because they sound exactly the same - the same phonetics and phonemics and sometimes "du" is easeir to type than "zu" for its position in the keyboard. Yet, "tetuduki" doesn't produce a correct Kanji by converting. Only "tetuzuki" converts correctly. How do I know?

When I write them in Pen, I use them interchangeably, although I know I shouldn't. I write "zushi" for "dushi", the seaside city in kanagawa prefecture. How do you write in kana - "izu" or "idu" for "izu" or 'idu" penninsula?

Hey, when I do a new entry using IM, there's no title. The only way is to enter "Edit" mode via AOL interface or web interface. That is not neat.

That is my understanding about commenting

Well, I tried it myself and found out they asked you to sign in with an AOL screenname. That's strange as "Help" page says otherwise. I've sent a questin on this to the Help desk. Let's see then.

So you've got a new "Rena-chan". Is she cute? Have they come all the way from Japan to see you or just rather Canada? Do you keep in touch with JT somehow if you cannot forget her? I guess it's about time to decide or you won't get married for good.

By the way, I don't understand why Korean people acts like they way ther are, especially their President towards N. Korea. They are so lenient. I hope they act tough in the 6 countris meeting in Beijin. Don't you agree?  Korean people are really inexplicable.

Retort curry

Today I bought a retort curry ( you know what I'm talking about - a sort of instant curry food packed in aluminum pouch after retort-processed) and I really liked them. It doesn't taste like one of those bland retort or freeze-dried food. It really tastes like curry - good one. It's "Shimokitazawa France Tei";you know where Shimokitazawa is and "France Tei" is a name of the curry house there. Have you been there? Maybe I should try one of those days. It's a "Hotter" type and comes with egg plant and beef. Recommended.

By the say, how's your love life? Are you seeing someone lately? Or have you sneaked back to Japan lately for Omiai - Matching? Give me your memment anyway.