Week of June 26th

June 26th 2006

Starting today, the blogger is set up to post my Monday blog on the other website as well. So here is a couple thoughts about the day, and then some weekly stuff at the end.

If anyone else has a .blogspot blog that they post and want to have one of their posts double posted, I can give you information on how to set it up.

Sorry if the daily stuff seems a bit disjointed. It fits in better with the stuff on my other blog: tokyointern.blogspot.com.

I sent in my confirmation for the Goldman Sachs reception that will be held tomorrow, and for the Morgan Stanley/UBS/Nikko-Citi receptions that will be held in the coming weeks. I don’t know what they will be like. I have never really been one for the smoozing at parties. I guess that will be something that I have to get better at. I really don’t like it when it is really a career fair with finger food and alcohol. But I will go, at least to a few to see what they are like.

Overall, today was a pretty quiet day. I got an invitation to go to a lunch with the Elder’s Quorum. I guess some Elder’s quorums go bowling, some have chili cookoffs, and some have lunches in Nagatacho. Makes sense though, when probably most of the people in the wards work in banks, or the foreign ministry.

GOALS:

I finished one of my books today. This fulfils part of my professional goals and personal goals. The book is called “The wisdom of crowds.” My boss Brad suggested it to me. The book talked about how, under the right circumstances, a crowd can make exceptionally accurate and intelligent decisions. Pretty interesting thought, very good delivery. I’m not sure I believe everything that he has said, but a lot of it makes good sense. The best part of the book are the case studies.

June 27th 2006

I love days of free meals. Breakfast as usual at Jonathan’s, lunch and learn, and Goldman’s reception. Today’s lunch and learn was from Brother Walt Ames. He is a head-hunter at Kearny. He has an impressive pedigree in consulting, having worked for Bain, and then Monitor. Opening the Monitor office in Tokyo and eventually placing President Eyring (soon to be released President of Tokyo North Mission) as CEO of that Office. He also worked for a long time as a sociologist studying the keisatsu and fire department in Japan. Very interesting guy with a very interesting presentation.

Dinner at Goldman’s was less interesting. They have a beautiful office way up in the Mori Tower in roppongi hills. I was very impressed with it. I talked to people in nearly every department they have. I talked for a long time with someone from research. Very nice guy. I talked to a couple of interesting guys from credit derivatives, and one guy from equities. I think that the guy from equities should be someone I should follow-up with. He is a nice guy, and I think I’ll send him my resume. The food was lackluster. I had heard that they were going to have good food, and I certainly expected it from the beauty of the building. However, it was some pasta, sandwiches, and pizza-la. Not that great. At the end a guy from commodities tried to sell the firm a little. He did say something though. He said that I should go to a place and do work that puts a smile on my face. I agree.

June 28th 2006

A good quiet day in the office today. I enjoy the days when I can just sit and focus. I know compared to most of the other interns, and probably most of the people in the office, I have a very low stress, low load kind of job. That is okay with me. I think that I would have liked to have a job in GM, but if not, it gives me more time to hang out with Kimi. I guess I should be keeping a better record of the things that we do and the stuff we are seeing around Tokyo, but I haven’t really do so yet. Maybe I’ll take a day here or there and try to catch up.

Not much else to report. My projects are moving along. The most difficult part is gathering all of the important information.

June 29th 2006

Had lunch with the 2nd ward elder’s quorum. They are made up of mostly people from Banks. It was nice talking to other members about their lives and experiences in Tokyo. I enjoyed meeting with them. I would like to visit the gaijin wards one of these times. I don’t know if I will get the chance though with the schedule that I have. I will be trying to visit other wards that I served in, so I will be sort of busy visiting around the area. Plus Kimi has developed into quite the joint for the sisters, and I think that she would like to be in Shibuya as much as possible.

I love Japan. We went to a baseball game today at Jingu Stadium. It was a great game featuring the 3rd place Swallows against the 1st place Dragons. We had really good seats right by first base. The game was really fun. Kimi and I split a bento of Katsu sandwiches and takoyaki. Great ballpark food. Japanese games are really cool, in that the fans cheer constantly with set cheers that are customized to the player at bat. They mostly all feature a phrase Katobase!!! Which roughly translated I guess means “Get a hit,” and they are accompanied by trumpets and drums and I think I heard a trombone in there. The fans that are doing most of the cheering sit out in the jiyu-seki bleachers in the outfield. In fact they constitute most of the fans, as from the foul poles in were mostly empty seats. We cheered a little and Oshima-san bought us all cool bats.

June 30th 2006

The end of my first month. Although I guess I have been working only for a couple of weeks, it is sort of strange to be seeing the end of a month here. Today was good. Brad will be going out of town next week for his brother’s wedding. He has given me one project to work on next week and then I will be sitting with CRM for another part of the week. The project I will be working on involves following up on some reporting of OR-losses. Brad suspects there are some discrepancies in the reporting and what we have in the database. I guess I get to sort it out. It means that I will be staring at an excel screen for the next couple of days, but that is okay. My findings are very important to ORM and especially in the face of an inspection. So I want to do a good articulate job. I have requested some information today, so hopefully it gets back to me next week and I can really dig into this project.

My other projects are kind of coming to a close. I have finished a draft of the dashboard, and we are supposed to discuss it in a couple of weeks with Singapore. Carola, who works in ORM Singapore, has been really helpful getting me information and other things. She seems really nice. Cindy and Tracy are very nice as well, and it seems that ORM is a fairly less stressful place to work. They have all been very accommodating and helpful to me, and I have enjoyed working with them.

As for the mock inspection. I guess other than Brad’s interview with the inspectors, we are basically done. Pending feedback and other requests from the Kfi people.