Burnt out... 10:50 AM

Before beginning this trip I didn't anticipate the physical and mental toll that working and traveling would have on me. In this past month I've stayed in over a dozen hotels in different cities. In the past 9 days I stayed in 6 alone, and spent over 24 hours on buses, trains, and planes in just the last 3 days. And that doesn't include the waiting time!

I've lost about 8 pounds already and possibly more cause it's been days since I weighed myself. Too often I forget to feed the machine because I'm either too tired or lazy. I don't get much sleep either. I work until 5 am most nights and all the hotels here require you to check out before 10 am, or if I'm lucky 11 am. And then you usually have to wait until 2-4 pm before you can check into another hotel so you're stuck dragging your luggage around for a few hours.

So now that I've returned to Tokyo I've decided to settle down in one place for a while and forgo the traveling for a bit. I go out and do something nearly every day because I feel like I "should". But I need to rest and get on a regular sleep pattern so I can better concentrate on work, do some programming, test out some new strategies, and whatever. My trading has been suffering since I began the trip.

The trip to Hokkaido was amazing. I'll talk about it and post pictures in the next post later this week. Too tired... must sleep... oh wait, market doesn't close for another 5 hours...

Here's a photo of Sapporo at night. During the day you can see the city is surrounded by mountains. I'm going to include a photo with every blog post from now on just to make it a little more colorful.

Rain rain go away... 3:02 AM

I didn't realize beforehand that it was the rainy season in Japan. It's been cloudy nearly every day with a lot of light rain. For those that know me you know I don't like hot weather so this isn't so bad for me. In spite of the rain, it has been so incredibly hot here. The weather feels like Thailand but without the screaming ladyboys.

I just spent the past 7 days in Kyoto which is the old capital of Japan. I went there to experience the cultural and more traditional side of Japan. I got to see much more than I had expected because I came during the week they were celebrating a festival called Gion Matsuri. The people, mostly teens it seems, paraded in the streets wearing Kimonos all week. A few blocks were blocked off from traffic every night so the people could gather and walk around. On the final night there were hundreds of food and game vendors lined up on the sidewalks, and the large decorated floats were filled with men creating music with drums and bells. This is side of Japan that I had always wanted to see.

Here are some photos with desciptions (use one of the slide show options and increase the duration).



I just flew into Sapporo (same as the beer) from Tokyo which is up north in Hokkaido. To be honest, this place looks like Buffalo or for us Canadians, East Hamilton. The building and house style here is very much American. I'm going to tour around this large island by train and visit some of the national parks, world heritage sites, and hot springs for the next few days. My friend lent me his wireless broadband USB stick so I'm able to stay connected wherever I go... if I want to that is!

The weather here is so cool I have to wear a sweater. I couldn't get the smile off my face when I got off the plane and felt the breeze :)

Error fixed 12:50 PM

I found the solution as to why non-google users weren't able to leave comments. There was an issue with the formatting when you had to enter the word verification when posting comments. It's been fixed now. So those of you that weren't able to comment can now do so.

Update coming soon. I'm so tired. So much traveling and walking this past week... but I love it!

Tokyo Ghetto 9:09 AM

It’s been a while since my last post because I’ve been quite busy and I vowed to stay away from the computer unless I was working. So what have I been up to? Enjoying Tokyo of course! It’s a metropolitan city so I’ve been enjoying fantastic food, great shopping, fun night life, exploring whatever there is to explore, and when I have time… a little bit of sleep. Getting around is quite easy here as the subway system is great and it takes you pretty much anywhere in the city. Taxis are too expensive and unnecessary. Besides, it's fun observing people on the subway. Everyone is either glued to their cell phones doing who knows what or reading magna (yes, even 40 year old men). And when it's packed you can see men trying to ever so subtly rub themselves up against the women. My friend told me he likes to do it too, lol. So I guess that's why there are separate sections of the train reserved only for women during peak hours.

For the dudes cause I’m sure you’re curious: The girls here are by far the most beautiful in the world. The girls on the street look as good as the models and actresses (movies/tv and adult) you're used to seeing. They make themselves up real nice and dress very stylish. You have to come here to see for yourself.

Here is a photo of the place I stayed in for the past week. It’s a Japanese-style apartment meant for out-of-towners who have to work in the city during the week, minimum stay of 7 days. I’m very fortunate to have a Japanese friend here. He’s been able to get me great deals on accommodation and travel which I could never find online on English booking sites. My flight up north to Hokkaido is going to cost 30000 yen (325 USD) including 1 night at a hotel, whereas the best deal I could find myself was 60000 yen without hotel. And the new hotel I’m staying at now is costing me 5000 yen a night and it’s in a better location than the 10000 yen one my travel agent in Canada got me (which was the cheapest). So if you know someone in Japan you definitely should have them book your trip as it can save you a lot of money.

As for trading, it has been quite disappointing lately and I hope it’s just the slow summer months. I’m finding it quite difficult to trade from 10:30 pm to 5 am because I’m dead tired by mid-session. But now is probably the best time to travel because I won’t be missing much in the markets. There isn’t much to say about my trading at the moment so I’ll tell you a little bit about my equipment setup.

I put together a server in a 2U chassis and shipped it to a co-location service in Chicago (not in the exchange). It’s an over-clocked Intel i7 920 @ 3.4 GHz, Asus P6T, 6 GB Patriot DDR3, and a 30 GB OCZ Vertex II SSD running Windows XP. Since I use multiple Sterling accounts I had to use a hack which lets me remotely log into my server with multiple logins at once using RDC (which is only available in Windows Server editions). The ping to the Sterling servers is only 3 milliseconds compared to the 23 ms I had from my home. I use Remote Desktop Connection and Radmin (made by the hackers who wrote sub7). The reason for using Radmin is because it allows me remotely view any resolution I want on my laptop whereas the max resolution I can use with RDC is that of my laptop. Did I make sense there?

I haven’t posted any pictures yet of the city but I will in the next post. But for now I’ll post some pictures of the Tokyo Stock Exchange for the traders among us. The place is empty since it’s all electronic now and the only people there were at some type of TSE regulatory meeting. Click image for sideshow


Oh yeah, why are none of my friends commenting? All the traders are going to think I don’t have any. lol. It's not just a trading blog guys!

I’m going to head out of the city in a couple of days and enjoy the historical and traditional cultural side of Japan. Peace

Greetings from Japan! 4:32 AM

Minasan konnichi wa

I’m writing this while I sit along side a river (albeit brown) in Tokyo as I wait until I can check into my next hotel. I wish I had my camera but I left my luggage at the hotel desk.

That had to be one of the longest most grueling flights I have ever been on. I came down with a fever during the Vancouver to Tokyo leg and I suspect I caught it from the girl sitting next to me. Before take off she fell asleep and rested her head on my shoulder and didn’t wake up and remove it for at least an hour. Though I wasn’t sure at first, was she sleeping or was she just really forward? A man can only hope for the latter... But I believe she was sick cause she slept the entire flight and didn’t even eat any of the meals. Though I can’t put all the blame on her because I probably shouldn’t have whispered ‘sleep well sweet princess’ in her ear and kissed the top of her head. Just kidding, I ain’t a creeper! But all is forgivable because she was rather cute. Holla when you get out of quarantine okay?

I was really worried though because I’m psychosomatic (not really) and thought I could have contracted swine flu. There were already a few people on the plane wearing masks. I had most of the symptoms and I was surprised the thermal cameras at the airport didn’t notice me and throw me into quarantine. Thankfully I feel 80% again.

I’ve been trading from my hotel and surprisingly the connection to my server is excellent. Unfortunately I haven’t had a positive day this week! I suppose I can blame it partly on the fact I didn’t sleep for 48 hours, was jet-lagged, had flu like symptoms, and my head wasn’t fully there. I’m glad it’s a long weekend so I can recuperate, explore the city, and go at it again next week.

I met up with my Japanese friend who I worked with in Thailand and he’s been showing me around the city. I’ll be sure to post pictures and more about what I’ve been up to in my next blog post.

So I’ll end this post with a quick list of what I brought with me for those that may be curious. I tried to go as light as possible and went with a carry-on so I wouldn't have to check my bags in anywhere.

- leather duffle bag
- Thinkpad X300 (13”, < 1” width, < 3lbs, 1440x900 res, 64 gb SDD, 4 gb RAM, extra battery – perfect laptop for trading on the go), mouse, keypad, lock
- Canon XSi Rebel
- 6 shirts, 1 pair of jeans, pants, shorts, shoes and flip flops, and undergarments
- couple of books, space bags for compressed packing and dirty clothes, toiletries, some meds, travel sized steam-iron (have you ever worn air-dried clothes??), 2 cell phones: 1 for talking 1 for tethering, multi-plug adaptor, misc

All in all it’s about 25 lbs. I think I’ll go get luggage with wheels because this bag is heavier and harder to carry than I thought. I was trying to travel in style but it just isn’t practical when you're walking for miles. Well I’m off to Louis Vuitton to get something more practical for backpacking….