New Year's Starts

New Year's is an important holiday in Japan. To celebrate the Japanese traditionaly have a dish at midnight called toshikoshi soba (New Year's buckwheat noodles). June purchased the special noodles for Yoko in Hawaii and gave them to her for Christmas, so that's what we had for dinner on New Year's eve. I have not had toshikoshi soba in years but they are good once a year. (I have to be careful about saying I like soba or, the next thing you know, I'll be having soba once a week!)


Around 10 PM Yoko and I went to Andy and Jan Dulay's home for their annual party. (Andy is one of my clients and a good friend. He just retired from UPS where he was a 747 captain.) Every year the Dulays host a real traditional New Year's party with hats and noisemakers The noise builds all evening and crescedos on the countdown to midnight. We toast the New Year with champagne and fireworks. Yoko and I are ususally home and in bed by 1 AM.


It is aways fun to visit Andy's house on New Years Eve. The same people (mostly Andy's neighbors on Suzi Street) come to the party every year. Yoko and I have gotten to know most of the people in attendance over the years, even though we only see them once a year! Actually, Andy's New Year's Eve party has been a good source of new clients. Andy and Jan go around introducing me to their friends as "their moneyman." There are usually 30 - 40 people at the party and invariably someone wants to talk with me about managing their assets.


Jessie was invited to the Dulay party but instead decided to spent New Year's eve at her roommate's home in Boca Grand. She did not come home until noon on New Year's day. Yoko and I slept in late but we were up by 11 AM and spent the day lounging around watching football.


Tuesday January 2nd I went back to work and the market promptly took a 220 point dive. Welcome to 2008! I hope the opening day of trading does not portend how the rest of this year is going to develop. After work we had the year's first Rotary dinner meeting. Jessie was invited to the meeting to speak about S4TL (Seminar for Tomorrow's Leaders); I was the speaker for the evening and made a Morgan Stanley presentation on "Planned Giving." The presentation was pretty dry. It might have been a better had the powerpoint I prepared been working. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, we ended up having to "wing" a presentation that really requires visual aids. Oh well...I hope the rest of the year is better!