A Jolly Good Fellow

After seven and a half years of taking exams, I finally have my FSA. The final step was heading to a 3 day admissions course in Toronto. Lots of ethics and professionalism classes, but it was also capped by a nice banquet, so Tracie decided to join. Tuesday night we headed to the CN Tower, 3rd highest tower in the world. The elevator ride up has two glass sides, and a couple of glass squares, so you can see the world disappearing below. Cool views, and a Canadian Moose.

We went at night, so here is a better shot during the day. Tracie spent one day at the Spa and the other two days covering as much of downtown Toronto on foot as she could.

One of the highlights was St. Lawrence Market. Lots of good meats, cheeses, breads and other items that we couldn't bring back to the US. Oh well, it was cool to walk around. Thursday night we went to Suser Lee's restaurant. It was delicious, especially the Singapore Slaw.

Friday night was the big graduation banquet. Cocktail hour started at 6, our water and hors d'oeuvres were a nice start. At 7 we moved down to the ballroom for dinner. It was a large group, 200 actuaries plus their guests. Dinner was done at roughly 10, then they started calling names one by one to get the FSA certificate.

Befitting actuaries they started at a random letter, which turned out to be N. So my name was at least somewhat towards the beginning. It got pretty boring pretty quick, but we decided to spice it up by being the loudest table when one of us got called. After someone named Wan, I thought I would be next. The drama built than waned as not 2 or 3, but 6 Wans were called in a row. When my name was finally called, the table erupted. We were loud 3 other times for the guys at our table. 4 bright spots in a long couple of hours.

The final names were called just shy of midnight. Look how fresh we look!

Of course, after getting back to the hotel, packing, then getting up at 5:15 to make it to the airport for our 8:30 flight, we weren't quite as bright-eyed. Luckily we've had a long weekend to recover.