Dear Colleagues: Thanks!!

My Colleagues at Acer Europe, when i left, gave me a nice gift. Over $200 in amazon Gift Certificates! Wow! I thought about for a while which books to buy. So, last week, i sent the order, because here in japan, English books are about double price than the retail price in USA. In addition, the choice is really small.

So, I've order about 7 or 8 books...and I've already received some! Thanks again!

Two books above are for the Java 6 certification exam and 3 others For learning Japanese Expressions and Characters.

I would like to take the Sun Certified Programmer Test still this year in the coming months. There is only one problem: Can you believe it? The Testing center is Prometrics, but in japan they have only 3 centers and only test on Java 1.3 and Java 1.4. Moreover, they have announced that the last tests need to be taken before November 30th 2009. I have no idea what happens but it looks like they might shut them down.

So, the alternative choices are: Fly to USA (Hawaii is the nearest place) for about $1000 for the flight and $300 for the test, or Fly to Taiwan for about $400 and $300 for the test. It looks like the most probable choice would be to fly to Taiwan.

Just to give you an idea, Japan has currently 3 open test centers. Taiwan, being smaller than japan, has 44 testing centers.

If I could find a ticket for around $500 to Hawaii... i wouldn't mind spending few extra days relaxing under a palm tree ;)... let's see!