Moments

Life doesn't come down to a small amount of moments. Life comes down to the amount of grunt work that you're willing to put in to lay solid foundations and build up from there. When the background work is thoroughly done, the moments will follow.

One day at a time...

Intuition is a bitch. It really is. I guess most people very often live by just following their intuition and doing things according to what feels good and avoiding things that don't. Add a small spice of rationality (especially if it's in line with intuition) and mid- to long-term perspective and I guess that might be quite a winning combination. Success follows, or something. But then there are the situations where intuition/feeling and rationality conflict. These include moral dilemmas, relationships, etc. I'm personally reminded again about why there are so many love songs and songs about lost love and so on in the world. The most popular subject of songs. And operas. And theater. And many other mediums. But my only hope is that through conflicts between rationality and intuition you just might be able to grow as a person. All extremes are always bad and I guess right now I'm oscillating between the ends, but the equilibrium just seems to be out of my grasp.

And with that, I'll leave you with a link to Leona Lewis's recent song. Yes, it's a list hit, apparently.

Savile Row

Having just arrived back from London very early this morning, I guess I need to touch up on some points of the trip. I'll blog about my feelings about low cost carriers later, but right now there's only one thing on top of my head: Savile Row.

As people who know me or have read my blog are already familiar with, I'm quite interested in tailoring and traditional men's style. I've also been to London on quite many occasions but I've never been to Savile Row. Anyway, this time we did get around to Savile Row and I dragged Eve along and made her listen to me rave about how much I'm in love with the street. It's a small and incredibly idyllic street near Bond Street and houses quite possibly the best tailors in the world. And just by looking at the coats and suits displayed on the windows of the shops, it's not too difficult to understand why there's a slight price difference when compared to some obscure copycat manufacturer in the east.

Anyway, I already got into a discussion today about whether the prices are inflated or not. I guess I will have to admit that without a doubt there's a bit of air in the prices. But then again, if you consider the amount of work that goes into making, for instance, a bespoke suit and then consider the price and what it has to cover, it's not necessarily really that much. And you're not only buying a piece of clothing, either. It's handmade and unique to you, it encompasses centuries of tradition and craftsmanship and it's a work of art. Tailors have different signatures and it shows on their clothes. And I guess there's pretty much always a reason why something is done and something isn't. And in a world where everything's mass produced in China, I guess this is one of the ways that a single person can make a stand against the mass shopping hysteria that's so visible in, for example, the American way of life. A suit of this caliber will last and last and last. And it'll always be in style. Sort of like traditional high-end Swiss watches...

Lifestyles

How do you sell a watch that costs a couple of grands or more? Simple answer? You don't. There's no rational reason why anyone would buy one. But what do you do then? You sell a lifestyle, an image of what the better life would look like. After that people will come and buy the premium stuff from you. It's not about rationality, it's about feelings.

I especially like the music from the second part of the video (especially note the broken strings and the bassline from 2:16 to 2:30).