Last week's exercise

Ok, I promised to start writing summaries at the end of every week, so here goes...

On Tuesday I jogged from Lauttasaari to the offices in the evening to have a sauna and also to try out the heartrate monitor. The results were devastating; my average heartrate was 177 and maxed out at 195. The jog itself was a bit over half an hour, but I was running way to fast.

On Wednesday I tried again, this time I jogged around Lauttasaari, trying to keep a lower heartrate. I somewhat succeeded, but this time the average was about 160 and maxed out at 185, so not that much better. The run was an hour and ten minutes, and I'm starting to conclude that jogs like this are not very smart and I should seriously work towards keeping a lower heartrate.

After those two jogs the coach feature on the Suunto t4 told me to lay off all exercise until this Tuesday to recover from the jogs -- a good suggestion, most likely. I was able to avoid exercise up until today when I just had to do a small set at the company's gym. Didn't have the monitor on, so I guess this constitutes as cheating the coach... Anyway, the coach is suggesting a short, 25 minute exercise with minimum heartrates for tomorrow, but I was thinking that maybe I should skip that and do a longer walk around Lauttasaari on Wednesday and seriously work on keeping the heartrate below 120 or something. We'll see.

Training

Picked up a Suunto t4 yesterday after work to help with my recently described new project. It seems like a rather nifty gadget and I actually went for a run last night to test it out. The results were quite appalling. Not in terms of the t4 itself; it worked brilliantly. But it's quite harsh to notice how shitty a shape you're actually in. Plus I was running way too hard (and my heartrate was way too high). I think right now the best plan of action is to try to increase stamina by running longer runs with lower heartrates. Or I guess I could just follow whatever the machine suggests, thanks to its coach feature. I'll report on it more later when I actually learn how to properly use it.

Oh, and I guess I'll have to start tracking my progress and to further motivate myself, I think I'll need to start posting some hard facts about the so-called training. I was thinking that on every Sunday night I'd do a brief recap of how the week went by. I don't really feel like typing up stuff after every jog, since that's too much of a burden for me and wouldn't necessarily motivate me that much.

Helsinki City Marathon 2008

Ok, the competition is on! I just made a wager with a friend of mine that I'd beat him in next year's Helsinki City Marathon. The wager is over a bottle of Dom Perignon, which should act as a nifty little motivator for me. Now, unfortunately for me, the aforementioned friend of mine has in fact run the marathon before in a bit less than 4.5 hours and is looking to drop about 20 minutes off, at least. And I think I might be able to run 10 kilometers without dying, but that's pushing it a bit. So I guess I'll have to start reading a bit on how to train for a marathon and maybe set some goals for before. On a related note, another friend of mine has been running half-marathons and is currently aiming for this year's RuisRääkki.

Customer service

Of the customers who register a complaint, between 54 and 70% will do business again with the organization if their complaint is resolved. The figure goes up to a staggering 95% if the customer feels that the complaint was resolved quickly. Customers who have complained to an organization and had their complaints satisfactorily resolved tell an average of five people about the good treatment they received.

That's actually intuitively quite appealing and easy to agree with.

Hygiene

I've talked about this aspect with quite many people and I think I originally heard about this concept from some more intelligent person, but... Wealth is actually a sanitary thing. An analogy would be taking showers. Taking a shower once a day is good. Taking a shower once a week is bad. Taking a shower once a month is even worse. But taking a shower three times a day doesn't really bring any benefits over once a day -- unless you're an athlete or just get sweaty more easily than normal people. But you get the point. Apparently wealth is similar. If you have enough money to live a decent life, that's fine. If you have too little, then it's a shitty position. But if you have an enormous amount of wealth, it doesn't really matter anymore. In Finland I heard that 10-15 million euros is the amount at which you don't really perceive significant improvements in your life if you, say, double your wealth. You're already living in Westend and driving a nice car.

So, why write about wealth? Well, it seems that the bull market is finally coming to an end. So, for the first time in four or five years (to be a bit provocative), people have actually been able to lose money in the markets. The shock, the horror. So in a situation like this, I guess many people are starting to ponder the question as to how much money do you need to live a decent life. Should you close and liquidate your positions? Or can you bear the sudden increase in volatility and thus the increase in risk that has appeared recently? Maybe tighten your belt a bit?

In fact, living a student life in Finland (i.e. no real obligations in the form of loans, family/children, etc.) is quite cheap and easy. Tuition fees are zero and you have to pay less than 100 euros a year to be able to study. Maybe something for the books. Cut back on bar hopping and shopping and traveling and in fact you can get by with a couple of hundred euros a month (on top of the rent). Of course it's not necessarily very fun, but then again, at a point like this you're laying the foundations for your future. Still need to tackle the question as to what to do with the portfolio, though.

Enlightenment

I've been recently planning my autumn targets (both at work and for school) and one thing is clear; my autumn will under no circumstance be easy. If I stay at work, I'll be only working part-time and right now there are enough targets to keep me working fulltime to get them achieved. Then I have 31 ECTS worth of courses selected for school (including my thesis/seminar). So overall I have enough on my plate with school and work stuff to keep me working for quite a while.

Now, on a different topic, it's been rather warm in Finland lately and this has led me to come to the conclusion that the weather wouldn't necessarily be as devastating for me as it is right now if I'd be in better shape. Follow the trail of thought a bit further and I think that being in a better shape might actually bring some holistic benefits and maybe even help me achieve the goals that I've outlined above. So now I've decided that I'll try to break a sweat (by means of practicing some sport) at least three times a week and to include jogs in the exercise plan, too. Hopefully I'll have enough discipline to keep this project afloat... :)

Stagnation and numbness

I think it may be time to try to shake things up a bit again. Right now I've pretty much fallen prey to routines. I can pretty much predict what's going to happen for a while into the future. At least on some topics, anyway. I think I could say that things are a bit too cozy right now, but that wouldn't be the complete truth. I think the problem is that whereas things aren't too cozy, they're entirely too predictable. And right now I don't see a very big potential payoff and I'm just hedging risk.

So... In order to get a bit ahead in the game again, I think it may be time to do something drastic again to shake things up a bit. That also coincides with the current increase in market volatility. Maybe this signals a return to reality and is a wakeup call to get longer term objectives back into scope and shake the dust. I don't know. I'll have to ponder a bit more and see if I can formulate any sort of decent plan.