Week of June 19th

June 20th 2006

Had a meeting with Bret in the morning, there are a couple of things that I guess have become issues with ORM. They aren’t really things that I understand very well. I guess ORM’s role is to inspect the cause of errors within the bank and try to find out if there are ways to prevent them in the future and make sure that from a regulations point of view we are all in line. One of the issues is a large loss where a trader sold something really cheap to a person after he put in this two weeks. I guess it cost the bank a lot of money. The other is an IT problem. I don’t understand really well, but I guess there is a section of programming that hasn’t been updated in a while and now it is causing a problem. Mitch is pretty involved in it as well.

Also, on another note, I have volunteered to help with the translation of a website for the Dreams Mountaineering Team. They are a group that has organized climbing of a Mountain in Switzerland for two Japanese paraplegics. As I understand it, there are a experienced mountain climbers that will carry the two young men on their backs using a special kind of suit. I translated some of the technical stuff for the website. I guess it should be going live in a couple of weeks. Deutsche Bank was very involved in a project for the special Olympics held in Nagano. In fact, as I understand it, when the Dreams team needed assistance for the translation and for fundraising, they turned first to Deutche at the suggestion of the Nagano prefecture government. It seems like a good cause, and I am glad to help out in whatever way that I can.

June 21st 2006

So today I had quite a few meetings around the bank. We had one with Andrew Kamii and Yoshiko Waseda. They are in charge of, among other things, the losses in GM. We talked for a while about the things that went wrong and such and what kind of issues were involved. We also talked for a long time about the IT thing with Ishmael Jabbar, or Jabbar Ishmael, depending upon your association with him. I have to say, I don’t know what ORM’s role really is, it seems like we are checking up on the people that are checking up on things. Brad does often say though, it is all about value added. I guess he has to prepare and get a report into Sebastian the regional head by the end of the week.

Today was also the first “Lunch and Learn.” Or in other words, a day where we have lunch in board room while a guy comes and speaks. Today was a training on Japanese business manners by a woman from Globalink. I guess the are a consulting firm that comes and does these trainings and other things. Nice woman, can’t remember her name. I tried to put on a good show and ask questions and participate, but it was sort of hard because she spoke kind of haltering English. So we bowed and passed meishi and talked about where to stand in an elevator, sit in a room, and ride in a taxi. All not so important for people that work exclusively within the bank, but I guess helpful when you go and meet clients. It was pretty much like the stuff that I had learned in Warnick Sensei’s class. Oh well, I guess you can never have to much practice passing meishi. I could see though some of what Brad was talking about with the value-adding. I could see that she had sort of dressed up a couple of things, for example like placing a received meishi on top of your meishi holder to show that you are “treating it with respect” and a couple of other things that I think we superfluous add-ons designed to make you think you need a professional to come in and give this training, and that someone from HR who had read a couple of books, and had some experience, and most of all a little common sense couldn’t do the same thing.

June 22nd 2006

Today was something new. I had to get my gaijin card. I didn’t think that I would have to since I would be in the country for less than 3 months. However, because no back around here would open an account for me without one, I had to go and get it. I ended up getting an account with Shinsei, since they offer an account opening with only a receipt showing I had applied for a gaijin card. It took forever to get over to the kuyakusho, and then over to shinsei for the account.

I guess the general pattern of my job will be to have a couple of projects that are ongoing, and then with that have a couple of short things that I take care right away. Some of the ongoing stuff has been the report, or Risk Dashboard as it has been called. Another ongoing one is the mock inspection and update of procedures stuff. Some of the things I have worked on intermediately are a clarification of the New Product Procedures, (NPA) for a product in DBREEF (Real Estate), a couple of things for the Taiwan Risk workshop that Brad will be going to, and a couple of follow-ups about the equities platform.

Work is good. I think sometimes people aren’t sure why ORM wants or needs to know some of the things that we are asking about. I really think in some ways the position is one that has been created by the regulations by the government and the FSA. However, as Brad says, it’s all about value-added. Hopefully by making all these people explain their problems to us, we are value-adding.

As I am going to be using this post to update my weekly post, here are some thoughts about goals.

Professional:
Well, the days keep moving on. I'm learning a lot about Risk, the managment of Risk and IBanking in general. But I'm learning more about the culture of the office. The more I work, the more I see how the people view each other in the workplace. The more I work, the more I understand about having a real job, the hours, and the politics. I learn more about "value-adding" and wonderful things like that.

This past couple of days, I have enjoyed the conference calls between Singapore, Taiwan, Tokyo and Hong Kong. I think it's neat that we can get trainings over the phone from London.

I am working research of some current issues in the bank. Although I don't really know what ORM's job description is, I kind of think we are the second level of control. Control, Legal, and Compliance make sure as best we can that we limit mistakes from happening. We make sure mistakes don't happen again.

It is an interesting perspective of the bank. I get to see all the things that are not going right. You get to learn both sides, how things should work, and what happens and it what ways people mess up. I have heard more stories about frauds, suspicous mistakes, and boneheaded errors that I though were possible for large institutional banks.

Most of all, I enjoy learning.

Cultural:
I have been mostly going back to places that I have been before. But the most interesting thing is I can see them in new ways. We go out probably 3 nights of the week and also Saturday. It's weird to be out past 9:30. It's weird to not stop and talk to people. Night is more normal. But the other day I was walking through Shinjuku during the day. It felt just like I was doing some morning streeting. I would stop people with the same phrase that I used when I was a missionary. "Chotto okaigai shitai no desu ga." But this time it was only to ask directions.

One of the neat things as well, is to hang out where all the nihonjin hang out. Not that I go to izakaya, or anything like that, but now I sit and hang out in cool resturants. I walk around the park, or shinjuku with the rest of them. It's weird to blend in. In some cases, like when I'm riding the train to and from work, I blend in. No one is looking at my badge, I'm not scanning the car to find people to talk to. I just pull out my book, and start reading. The only difference now is that I'm reading a book in English.

Language:
I'm looking as hard as I can for an electric dictionary. I have my eyes set on a Casio. I really wanted a Canon that could look up characters with the stylus. However, those dictionaries are really weak on characters, and they tend to have fewer books on Japanese-English and more stuff on Chinese. The problem is, I really don't need Chinese. Oh well. So Canon is out, otherwise their dictionaries are sort of futsu. The Casio's are nice, and the Sharps. I like the Casio setup a bit better. The screens have backlights, and the interface is a bit more stylish. Some of suites of books on the sharps are a bit better, but not by much. So perhaps a Casio.
I have been checking books and on kakaku.com, but I think my best deal will come out of Akihabara.

June 23rd 2006

Well, finally got word back about DBREEF. I really hate calling people that I have never met. I called Jon Tanaka, I’m sure he is a really nice guy and all, but he was very short with me on the phone. I know it would have been better if I could have met him before and this was follow up. I much prefer email when I call someone that I don’t really know.

Today was a bit wilder day. I all sorts of funny things to do. One of them was to use an insanely poorly designed program to get access to a network drive in Singapore. I usually feel I am somewhat skilled in being able to figure out computer programs. However, this one took 3 calls to IT before I could even figure out how to input information. I’m starting to notice a pattern in some of the software that I have seen developed in-house. They all come with terrible user-interface.

I had a couple of calls/emails with Tracy back and forth as she was trying to find out about the DBREEF NPA stuff. That was a bit rough, because I hadn’t really be given a deadline from Brad to find out, so I was going to give Jon Tanaka one more day to give me a firm answer before I asked again.

I also had a funny one happy with an email. I was supposed to email a woman named Serene in Singapore about the IT issue. So I was looking in the database, and found that there were two women named Serene that worked in Singapore. So I asked Brad if it was Serene Yeoh. He confirmed with a quick “Yep.” So I sent the mail. She got back to me in about twenty-minutes not knowing a single thing about the issue. I replied and tried to explain what kind of information I needed. Then thinking it was a bit strange that she had no idea what I was talking about, I asked Brad about it. He looked at the email I had got in reply and was sort of stunned as well. Then he said, “Well, you sent it to the wrong, Serene, you should have sent it to Serene Yap.”