Slow Afternoon

Buddy, Menchie and I attended the last day (for this year anyway) of the SEC Symposium on the latest rules on Fixed Income trading, which involves use of the PDEX system. Today's session was held at the Century Park Hotel, Manila. Those who attended Monday and Tuesday had warned me it was boring ... simply because half the topics involve stuff traders already know about. The only exciting portion according to them would be the open forum ... where some traders raise questions, and maybe do again what one trader reportedly did yesterday or last Monday ... call the whole thing "stupid".

It wasn't totally stupid ... it's just plain crazy how they've handled the implementation so far. The regulation requiring a license for trading or brokering takes effect tomorrow and there hasn't even been one licensing exam held. If we are going to be technical about it, no one is licensed to trade/broker domestic government securities tomorrow! To get around that technicality, those who've attended the symposium will be granted a provisional license ... which I suppose is valid until the trader takes the exam scheduled next year.

Anyway ... I DID NOT fall asleep. Once I've decided to stop bugging Rey with text messages, I preoccupied myself with sketching and taking these pictures with my cellphone, which from the outset I've decided will tell a story. Menchie sat beside me and figured out early what I was doing. She had to stop herself from giggling out loud ... expecially since Buddy had no idea what was going on. Well, Buddy eventually caught on to what was happening.
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-----after the symposium-----

Since the Century Hotel is near the Harrison Plaza, Buddy asked our help in choosing a book at National Bookstore for his wife's nephew. Dodie and the kids will visit her brother in Hong Kong this Christmas. Books in the Philippines are cheaper than in Hong Kong, so Buddy thinks a novel would be a nice gift for his Dodie's nephew. The boy isn't into epics or fantasy stories, which leaves adventure, horror, detective or suspense novels. We picked two books that are more of the suspense genre.

Buddy had some hardware supplies to buy, so he left Menchie and I to browse around while he slipped out to the nearby store. At the fiction section, I found out Menchie was a fan of Steve Berry. She saw a relatively new book from him but thinks it's a bit expensive. I asked her if his books were good. She was the gushing fan when she answered yes. Asked her if I could borrow one book ... and told her that maybe, if I liked it, I'll buy the book she wanted to buy so that she could borrow it from me. That was a quick deal.

-----Dec. 21 edit-----

I realized that Vincent borrowed her books and is not yet finished reading them, but she got them from him just so I could borrow them and maybe, just maybe, buy the last novel. That's one hard-core Steve Berry fan for you.