Of social classes

Social classes are funny little creatures. They consist of many different aspects, yet they are very elusive and difficult to nail down. Some attributes which define class can include education, net worth, background, and occupation. Yet defining who belongs to which class is somewhat difficult and often classes may not be that comparable between certain geographical regions, sometimes even within countries. A net worth of, say, some millions, would land you very high in Finland if you determine class by net worth. The same amount of money would quite possibly mean much less in Manhattan. Granted, this example might have its flaws in the sense that in both cases, on a national level, the individual might be considered as decently wealthy, possibly belonging to the upper middle class. But regardless, social classes, I guess, can be found from pretty much anywhere.

The issue with social classes, however, is that they are somewhat tedious as they blatantly pigeonhole people into a certain class, thus fragmenting the mindset of the general population. Interclass and intraclass rivalry might become nasty and bitter. And in a place like Finland, if you rank people by income or net worth, the variance around the average is very small. Regardless of what some Finns will tell you, there aren't really that many super rich Finns. Nor are there that many super poor Finns. There are poor and rich people but not to the extent that, say, America has. If you look at education, there are of course different classes in regards from vocational education up to post-graduate degrees. But within these classes, there is not that much rivalry, unlike if you compare some generic American university to an Ivy League school. It does not really matter that much whether you've graduated from Helsinki University of Technology or some other university. And I would even go so far as to suggest that we do not have that much of any type of blue bloodedness in Finland either; Finland has traditionally been an agrarian state and there is barely a handful, if even that, of families that are even remotely considered to be more prestigious in Finland.

That said, I am sure that you can classify Finns too according to traditional social classes, but the opinion I am promoting here is that the classification is more or less useless and based very much on the perceptions of individuals. It is a mindset issue. And people should get out of the mindset of classifying themselves in certain classes. I know it is very difficult and I might be slightly hypocritical in saying all this, as I sometimes also succumb to viewing the world through the social class lens. But inherently I don't think that one class should be viewed as more prestigious or "better" than some other. If you assume that the overall goal of an individual is to optimize his or her happiness and if you then consider that happiness of very much subjective, it is very possible that upper class individuals are less happy than lower class individuals. So if you do feel as if you need to have a class system in place to understand the world, the least one should do is to attempt to understand that the classes themselves do not inherently imply any value themselves, necessarily.

The irony of saving the world today

Every generation, when young, has encountered some sort of drive to change the world. Typically into a better place, too. The better of course depends on the individual and can be interpreted to mean a greedy, capitalistic, free-market world or a closed Communistic system or something in between. Recently better has been defined as being green, saving seals, etc. The difference this time round, to be slightly provocative, is that nothing is happening.

The current method of helping causes is to click on the "Join This Cause" link on Facebook. And 'lo and behold, nothing happens. It's pretty similar to me sitting in cafés, drinking overpriced espressos, eating healthy salads and bitching and moaning about the state of the world only to eventually head off to work to optimize my financial situation. And as good as "we're helping raise awareness around this issue!" sounds, ultimately it's completely and utter BS. Talk is cheap and that's about it.

This might sound like a very cynical view, and it most likely also is, too. But the problem is familiar yet again. How does one actually help make the world a better place? I was recently in a situation where this topic was brushed upon and a friend of mine who had some knowledge and first-hand experience with dealing with crisis zones as a peacekeeper suggested that there might not be that much that an individual person can do. He suggested that buying a blanket for a homeless child is equivalent to, well, nothing. It won't solve anything and instead you should focus on fixing the more fundamental problems instead of fighting a fire by fighting smoke problems. In a way I can agree with that. It feels intuitively appealing to think that a primary motivation with smoke fighting is selfish--you can feel good about yourself for making the world a slightly better place, even if that's not necessarily even true.

How should we go about solving the world's problems, then? In a way I have personally accepted the fact that I do not have the drive to focus on saving the world, at least not before I'm able to save myself first. So instead I feel that financially supporting different causes is the best I can do. A group that has the financial means to perform even larger projects around the world is undoubtedly capable in improving situations than an individual. But even better would be if instead of completely open charity we would actually be able to, for instance, get Africa on its feet in a financial sense; teaching the countries how to increase their GDP by means of international trade, etc. To become self-sufficient without relying on alms, to summarize. Of course this sounds harsh and discards the plight of individuals, but as cruel as it sounds, such is life. Sometimes the well being of the society at large perhaps should be placed before the convenience of individuals. This is the tradeoff that, for instance, has to be made in free trade. But in the long run it is a tradeoff that maybe should be made to allow everyone to be better off.

Regarding decisions

We're encountered with an endless amount of decisions each day, ranging from what to wear to what to eat to whether or not you should buy a car. And so on. And all the while every decision you make should be the best possible decision at that moment in time. And even that is not trivial as the decision should also take into account the future. What if situations change?

Very often good decisions are mixed up with good outcomes. I guess some introductory course in decision making will outline that the best choice is a good decision that creates a good outcome. And at the other end of the scale in value is the bad decision with the bad outcome. But how to rank the good decision, bad outcome and bad decision, good outcome scenarios? Decisions, to be good, should be a logical conclusion that's the best choice given the limited amount of data and time you have at your disposal. So in this sense in the long run you will undoubtedly want to make more good decisions than bad ones, even though a bad one will occasionally, by chance, bring a good outcome. So I guess intuitively it means that the second best option is the good decision and the bad outcome, as only then will you ever be able to possibly achieve the best outcome; good decision, good outcome. These apply to all aspects of life, as life is mainly a question of making the best possible decisions. You decide not to do something because it's not a good thing to do. But always the decision should be the best that you can make at that moment.

That said, things are not that clear and the mix-up between decisions and outcomes is a very real one. Today the stockmarkets were rallying, regardless of all the uncertainty around the recession that's around the corner. I was able to close my position with Outokumpu and thus ending nearly a year of being in red with it. And in the end I was able to get even. I based my actions on the view that the current optimism is too much and that in fact the situation in the world economy is not necessarily as rosy as people today seemed to think. And that Outokumpu is in even more trouble if recession hits. I guess I could open up the entire rationale behind why Outokumpu might not be a wise investment right now, but that would hardly interest anyone reading this. Suffice to say, I felt that I made the best decision at the moment.

Now, of course what happened then was that Outokumpu continued rallying for another 41 cents and ending up at 27.41 euros. Now, in light of this, I did feel a little shaken by the fact that it kept on going up and started doubting my decision and whether it would've been wiser to hold onto the position after all. But even still, deep down, I feel that closing the position was the best choice at the time and that Outokumpu will be coming down in a bit. Possibly even tomorrow as an 8.77% increase in a single day is quite much. If nothing else, if the stock goes down a euro or two, I'll at least be able to buy back my positions and then some with the same amount of money. And if it doesn't go down, well, the world's economy is still in a very volatile state and it might be wise to close positions that aren't deep in the red and that you feel good about closing to build a bankroll with which to look at possible new investments when the markets start tumbling downward again. And I do think that we haven't necessarily even seen the bottom yet. And yes, I have been told that I'm pessimistic. But the thing is that even I may hit the nail on the head every once in a while...

Smarts

The Smart cars (fortwo, etc.) aren't really anything new and the concept of a small, economical car for city use is one that has been embraced in Europe for ages. But on the eve of a financial shakedown and in a world where oil prices are surging through the roof, the small cars with little engines make even more sense than ever. I have to admit that being me, I of course automatically prefer German cars with big engines over other cars, but recently I've become more and more interested in Smarts. There are two distinct and separate reasons for this: firstly the realization that I most likely can never afford an Audi S6 (and even if I could, by the time I could, I'm afraid people with 5.2 liter V10 engines will be shot) and secondly because they are indeed quite clever.

I know a Smart isn't really that flashy, and its cheap, and it's not something that you'd use as a status symbol. And the engine is very small, the acceleration is rubbish and the top speed is limited to about 90 miles per hour because the engineers were apparently afraid that at higher speeds the wind could kick in and do nasty things that would result in a big crash. Or a small crash. But herein lies the beauty of a Smart. It's unassuming. It's by no means a car that allows you to say anything about its owner's financial status. It's undoubtedly brilliant for intra-city traveling between work, shops, cafes, your home, etc. Something that you use to quickly pop on the other end of the city. But you might still have that big S6 in your garage for the days when you have to pop to the other side of the country. Or you might not. But it's clear that with a Smart you're taking a prominent stance in a smart (I'm sorry...) way.

Teetotalism

I heard an interesting bit of information recently when talking with a friend of mine. She was telling me that according to some statistics the alcohol consumption in Finland in the lower age groups (young adults) has recently passed its peak and has been coming down. Another friend of mine verified this by complaining that he feels that it's now a trendy thing to be a teetotaler in Finland and that very many of his friends have dropped alcohol. In this latter case I have some sort of skepticism as to the length of the abstinance period, but even still I think that's a healthy sign. A more prominent issue nowadays is supposedly the increased alcohol consumption of middle aged segments of the population.

I personally also cut alcohol out of my diet from the first half of February onwards. Nothing religious, nothing philosophical. I just found that with the shitstorm I went through in January, I was drinking for the wrong reasons and personally felt that the situation was resembling a slippery slope. I don't, however, think that this will become a way of life for me as such, but that it is a useful mechanism to steer yourself in a certain direction. I haven't really set any sort of specific "ending date" for this either, as that would just provoke at least a night of binge drinking to celebrate, as is customary in all academic celebrations. But the point here is that I won't use any form of alcohol before I feel like it. That might sound like an empty promise as such, but the actual meaning is that there's no reason to drink alcohol unless you're doing it for the right reasons and in moderation. And the right reasons might be as simple as enjoying it in the form of a glass of wine or perhaps a well-prepared cocktail.

This abstinance from alcohol has, however, shown some interesting aspects about different things. The reactions of people have ranged from understanding and supportive to outright provocative and nasty. Especially the people who are still firmly placed on the campus and don't have that many obligations seemed to think of this as a silly exercise and it still seems that a predominant way of thinking is that you can't have fun without alcohol. To some extent that is true, but it's more dependent on the definition of "fun". The type of fun in question is, surprise surprise, the sort found on campuses, namely drinking parties. And I can see how teetotalism might be problematic then. ;) But in fact it's been an interesting experience to take part in parties by drinking mineral water and having fun then is just a matter of your personal attitude. It just requires that at some point of the evening you know when it's time to leave. That's typically when the collective intoxication level of the nearby area reaches some threshold level. I'm sure everyone can determine the metrics for themselves.

Oh, and as a positive aspect of all this, you no longer have to endure the dreaded day after. And I've heard that at some levels of yoga people typically do in fact give up alcohol because it no longer fits in their lifestyles and prevents them from getting further in yoga. But, if you disregard the last, teetotalism isn't necessarily just for religious fundamentalists and alcoholics. ;) And I guess I'll have to brush upon this subject again in a few months to see if anything new and interesting has come up...

And on a completely separate note, after eight years I found Lenny Kravitz again and have been listening to his Greatest Hits for the past few days:

Winning and heroes

Even from a young age, boys typically tend to start focusing on sports. There's your favorite football (soccer for you Americans out there) team, favorite hockey team (ice, not field), etc. I guess in a way its funny that when listing sports, such as above, the one of the common things with them is the team aspect in them. And in a way I think this is healthy, emphasizing the meaning of the team and how the individual is nothing without the team. This thought can be seen present in economics as well. Adam Smith noticed a trend that when people were made to specialize in certain tasks, the outcome was far greater than what each individual could've achieved on their own. Positive synergy. I'm not that knowledgable on the Eastern cultures, but I understand that the concept of belonging to a group, be it a family or the society at large, is very strong there when compared to the west. And that this also exhibits certain very good aspects.

How the West differs from the East then is through the elevation of the individual. Even though ice hockey is a team sport, there are still the people like Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, and Gordie Howe, just to list a few. Those are the people that are really remembered. Not the teams they played for. And in these cases the person dominates the team in the sense that when the megastar leaves for another team, so does a portion of the fans. This can also be witnessed in tailoring; when a tailor leaves one company, his clients usually follow him.

There are of course the sports, then, that are obviously for individuals. And here it is of course very understandable that the individual is the one who is worshipped. Formula 1 and Ayrton Senna, golf and Payne Stewart--and yes, I know, both sports have "bigger" names, but I prefer the two listed here. But even these blokes have a team behind them. But I guess it's fair to say that if you take Tiger Woods and his team and switch me to be in Tiger's place, the results would be, well, not as great. So apparently there is something unique about certain individuals, after all.

But where does that certain something come from, and what exactly is it? Why was Senna so successful? How did Lemieux manage to score 1+1 the same day he returned back to ice from his long battle with Hodgkin's and while having had his last radiation treatment the same day? What makes us mere mortals so different? Or I guess that's a fairly trivial question, but what made Mario so much better than the average NHL player? Was it just that he had genes that happened to be so much better for ice skating, or that he started when he was very young, or maybe it was the mindset.

Tennis is a sport where it is sometimes said that the world's best players aren't the ones dominating the ranking lists, but instead their coaches. Tennis, like golf, is a game that is very subtle and many of the issues can be found from between your ears. From a technical standpoint the coaches may undoubtedly be very good, but the thing that separates the tennis coach from the tennis superstar is the ability to win. To score the points when the going gets tough and keep the whole package together even after a long battle. And maybe also the fact that the top tennis players are quite possibly younger and move a lot better than their coaches. But maybe most of the thing comes from within our heads. If you have the right mindset, you'll succeed, at least to some extent.

On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit and you go for this limit and you touch this limit and you think, ok, this is the limit. As soon as you touch this limit, something happens and you realise that you can suddenly go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and your experience as well, you can fly very high. --Ayrton Senna

Values (sans the rants, hopefully)

I was watching Jude Law's Alfie a moment ago. I recall having heard people discuss about it around me some time back, but I had no recollection of what they were saying. I also checked Rotten Tomatoes for reviews and the results were looking slightly grim. So I was slightly worried... But Alfie in fact wasn't that bad. I haven't seen the original, but I sort of enjoyed this movie, despite the fact that I guess it was somewhat light. Granted, Mr. Law's hairstyle could've been slightly different. But the movie, in its light way, shed some light on the shallow nature of the world. The lack of commitment and the search for the cure to your bottomless lust.

There's also been quite a bit of discussion lately in Finland about how teenagers are selling themselves to middle-aged men to earn a quick buck--some for even as low as a couple of ten euro bills. The questions have been around how and why have we come to a situation like this. It is horrifying, to say the least. I guess here we have a very tangible situation what happens when materialistic values get hold of children way before the classical "proper values" are instilled. In fact, traditional values seem to be a rarity these days. Or at least they've gone underground along with the people who openly say that they value them. Of course it's not very trendy or hip to have traditional values since even the term "traditional" sounds very much like "conservative" and that in turn is associated with all matters nasty these days.

In a way I'm very tight pressed to not go off on a rant about the importance of traditional values and proper moral and ethics. Some people who might read this will know since they might've had the dubious pleasure of being victims to my speeches. But an interesting trail of thought to pursue might have something to do with thinking about what the experience above will do to people at a later age, regardless of gender. I'm still hoping that the situation is that the incidents that have come to attention have been part of the few that happen, but unfortunately I fear that I might be wrong. But even still it seems that the current values of open relationships and all the other trendy new buzzwords hiding dubious meanings might in fact be hurting people very much, both directly and indirectly.

Utility

Using the concept of utility is pretty familiar from various economical and game theoretical problems, at least. But if the framework of viewing the world from the perspective of utility and utility functions is applied to normal interpersonal scenarios, this might be a slippery slope and there are very good reasons for not necessarily voicing the framework outloud. It can often be very much misinterpreted and it can seem like cold and calculating, nothing that people in general like to see in any sorts of relationships, albeit it is very much visible in some of the more utility-focused circles (e.g. the benefit of being friends with someone, etc.). And you seriously don't want a friend of yours or your love telling you that they're with you "because their utility function is at a local maximum when they are around you". That would be quite unheard of.

Yet, even still the utility view allows some room to look at interesting things in relationships between people. If the assumption is that people optimize their utility function, the utility function can be seen as having different time horizons. You can optimize your utility function for a very short time horizon, although this will undoubtedly result in very opportunistic behaviour on behalf of the person. This is of course based on the fact that a utility function that's being optimized on a short horizon will not take into account that many of the long-term implications of short-term opportunism. Then again, long-term optimization may in turn cause the utility function to disregard large moves in the short-term as they even out in the long-term. Analogically this view could be seen in a person that takes shit that is poured on them in the short-term because they see much value in the relationship in the long run. And I guess in theory the latter approach is a good and honest approach, but it too easily allows short-term optimizers to take advantage of you. So the problem is finding an equilibrium in terms of the horizon being optimized. To make the model slightly more complicated, one could argue that the time horizon being optimized should also be variable and in the beginning of a relationship (be it friendship, romance, or whatever) the horizon should be short to mid and then as time passes and rapport is built between the sides the horizon should grow longer. Applied to the real world this would basically mean that you're cautious with new people but give much more leeway once you start trusting someone.

Another thing to consider in utility functions is the internal structure of it. The time horizons do you little good if your utility function is distorted and contains no traces of altruism or other such values. Meaning that if you're an asshole, it doesn't really matter if you're a short-term or long-term asshole as you remain one regardless. This might be another reason for you to keep a variable time horizon against which you optimize. Some people indeed have distorted utility functions where they optimize only personal gain and benchmark it solely against money or position or power. These would quite possibly be the hardball players and sociopaths that progress at lightning speed in corporate environments and the types of people that, for instance, Mintzberg's Power School of Management suggests that are crucial to the success of a company. Of course having a personal relationship with such a person is tedious at best as they will continuously kick you in the head and care little for you even though they may apologize and seem to be sorry.

I guess there are many other dimensions through which one might view personal utility functions, but those were two of the easier lenses. They actually remain fairly well in line with the general understanding that people should have healthy values and avoid opportunism because of moral and ethics. But it will also provide a mechanism for attempting to determine whether or not someone is playing hardball with you, in which case you will have to be able to adapt your utility function for that specific case to be able to survive it. The concept of utility is very interesting, but again, as someone online suggested, there are good reasons why these sorts of things aren't necessarily to be discussed very openly.

Discontent

Exams are quite interesting from a psychological perspective. You know that they're coming and you have plenty of time yet things just don't go according to plan. It's that bit of humanity that just fails you at these crucial moments. It's the reasoning that "Yes, I'll get to this after I finish preparing this slide set for that meeting and then answer these emails" gets you down every time. Corporate finance will be taking a second swing at me in a couple of months, but fortunately the project management course is most likely done for good.

But! Not so much bad that not something good too. We've been working with a project at work recently that I've had some doubts about since the start and it was sort of in a volatile stage and in all honesty during the Fall I could not say that I was completely agreeing with it. But recently we got some results and they seemed more or less interesting and when we found our backs against the wall, it turned out that what we were doing might actually be very good, as I recently mentioned. And on Friday we had a rather important meeting around the topic and I personally got to spend about an hour to present the project and what we had done thus far to some rather important people and it went really well (hey! we weren't killed and there was some genuine interest from the other party too!).

It's these sorts of small victories that just keep you going even through the rough times in jobs that don't really provide that much in tangible deliverables. In this regard I've been thinking that maybe doing something tangible might make me a happier person overall, but then I would have to most likely give up the opportunity of actually having interesting fights and getting the adrenaline rush of going to a meeting and walking out with a great outcome. So in short mechanical work will of course have a lower volatility and much easier to see where it's going and at what pace, but right now I again have the clear feeling that what I'm doing right now is something that I really enjoy, despite appearances. And I do have to admit that I've been very lucky.

Oh, and I've recently become very addicted with the Sugababes' About You Now. Oh, and they're using our phones in it. ;-)

On languages and socialness

A common conception is that Finns are people of few words and when we communicate something, we do it in a very brief and to-the-point fashion. Because of this trait, people of other nationalities often perceive Finns as slightly distant and not very warm, but on the other hand the no-bullshit mentality is then associated with honesty. I've heard many forms of reasoning about why we are the way we are, from the effects of darkness and the long winter to the form of very spread out inhabitation of the land with little or no neighbors nearby. It may also be because of other traits, but I think that one possible explanation might be in the language.

By reflecting things on myself, I've noticed that when I speak Finnish (which is most of the time) I tend to be quite reserved and may come off as arrogant and closed. But when I switch to English, it seems like something changes in me and I become a lot more relaxed and open. Although at this point some clever guys will point out that I'm an arrogant asshole regardless of the language I speek. Maybe so, but I won't agree with that entirely.

Evidence that I base my theory on comes from many places and situations I've been in and, for instance, I'm much more relaxed as a person when I can get away from Finland. I don't know if its the general atmosphere of other countries or what that makes things different. Then there's my most recent job interview, which went fairly well when in an ex tempore fashion the language the interview was conducted in was changed to English. And of course the comments from some non-natives living in Finland who on occasion have commented that I may come off as more talkative, open, etc. than other Finns.

The last point might nullify my original theory at first sight, but I in fact feel that its roots might in fact be based more on the simple truth that Finns are fairly shy and if a Finn doesn't feel entirely comfortable with using a language that they don't feel they master, they will prefer to keep interaction in that language to a bare minimum. In this sense Finns might be less inclined to go on a limb and discuss the weather in English if they have an option of just standing around and playing with their mobile phones instead. Who knows. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here altogether, but I still intuitively feel that Finnish as a language may not necessarily be the best language to facilitate small talk and casual chatting. Finnish is also fairly monotonous in regards to pitch and also, I guess, sort of angular when compared to smoother languages with varying levels of pitch.

So, as a friendly tip to anyone who might run across me at some point; use English instead and I'll be a much nicer person...

Elegance and humility

Today was another yoga lesson and thus far yoga has been really fun. Today, however, we tried the sarvangasana or the shoulderstand. It's a fairly simple asana, but because I'm tall and clumsy, I of course made a total fool of myself. The teacher had just concluded that one key thing to remember is to come back down in a slow, calm, and controlled fashion when yours truly made a total hash of things and fell down with a huge thump followed by the obligatory curses. Not the finest of moments, I might add. Elegance was far from it and the embarrasment was doubled as all the other students seemed to be capable of doing the asana with little or no trouble at all.

An interesting thing was that I took it pretty hard that I couldn't do it that well. Recently I've been surprisingly calm, all things considered, but after this failure I was totally boiling. I guess primarily I was angry at myself, but it started to manifest itself as a general hostile attitude against everything. I really couldn't focus at all for the next hour or so and I just quickly got back home, fuming. The reaction was sort of interesting, as it was triggered by a really small thing. Maybe it's all the stress that's been around thus far in early 2008 which I've been just neglecting to handle coming out now. Who knows.

On a completely different note, I bought my first ever bowler hat today and a friend of mine took some pictures of me, my bowler hat, and a dark suit on the Lauttasaari bridge. The idea is of course that she'll paint me a version of Magritte's The Son of Man with me in it. I'm already really anxious to see how it'll turn out and I think I already figured out a place for it in my flat. The only question mark now is the size, as I was fairly adamant that it would have to be the same size as Magritte's original, so now I have a 1.2x0.9 meter painting coming, and I guess I really didn't grasp the real size of it up until now...

On suits and globalization

I recently re-stumbled upon the interesting company called A Suit That Fits. They're supposedly offering handmade made-to-measure suits for very decent prices and they're mainly doing that by cutting out a bunch of middle-men, having you measure yourself, and then finally contracting the actual work out to tailors in Nepal. And the result is supposedly a very well fitting suit that you can customize until you drop that is priced between 100 and roughly 1000 GBP (the high end is achieved by selecting more expensive fabrics, like cashmere). The idea sounds plausible and I think I'll have to test it out at some point. My major problem these days is that my closet is running out of space very fast, meaning that I'll have to put an end to obtaining new suits fairly quickly. Or move to a bigger flat. But that's not really going to happen in a while.

And speaking of A Suit That Fits, I also noticed a piece of news in Helsingin Sanomat today which discussed the views of Immanuel Wallerstein, who sees that because of the increasingly faster and greedier world that we're living in (thanks to the capitalists), the capitalists will end up ruining the economic system on a global scale within the next 50 years and as a result some sort of new order will have to arise when the havoc and anarchy gets too bad. His view is apparently based on the view that the richer countries have always been exploiting poorer countries, that have in turn been exploiting the poorest countries. But now that everyone is getting wealthier and prices in the least developed nations are rising, capitalists who own the bulk of the wealth in the world today just can't make decent profit margins anymore without turning to speculation. And that this will drive the financial crowd to take even more risks to earn even more money and eventually the fragile structure of the global economy will topple down under all the stress.

The view is interesting and it ties back to A Suit That Fits, since apparently their cost advantage ("made-to-measure suits at off-the-peg prices!") is based very much on the cheap labor provided by the Nepalese tailors. Of course they're saying that they're paying 50% above the standard labor costs of tailors in Nepal to get the best working for them, but if we are to believe Wallerstein, prices are going up and it might be that the business model that A Suit That Fits uses might be under fire in the near future. This is actually also in line with the things that are happening in the offshore outsourcing front these days; traditionally everyone wanted to offshore their business operations to India and China because they provided so much cheap labor. India has been continuously getting more expensive and we've already been seeing a phenomenon where companies are taking flight again from India to countries in the Far East that provide even cheaper labor. And undoubtedly globalization and the internetworking of the world will drive prices up as people in the developing countries start earning more and demanding the same sort of services and offerings that we in the west have gotten accustomed to.

In a situation like this, it's also very possible that the nature will also be on the list of losers as the developing countries start buying cars and building industrial capabilities. And telling the developing countries to spend even more money on environmentally friendly technologies just won't fly as they don't have the money to pay the Support the Nature premium that the western countries can afford. So I guess one possibility for us is to subsidize the developing countries and attempt to get them onboard on the Save the Planet train. But voicing this sort of opinion might make you very unpopular as this will cut even more into the profit margins of the companies in developed nations, which will cry foul if they're taxed more heavily so that their competitors in the developed countries can use green technologies at a reduced price. But, the problem is difficult and I have no clue how one should approach it. I do, however, know that I will need to test the suits that A Suit That Fits offers.

Oh, and as a nearly off-topic comment, my god is this guy in a navy window-paned suit in this picture ridiculously good looking.

On haircuts

Fortunately (or unfortunately?) I've been blessed with sort of curly hair. In a way it makes life somewhat easier when you can just acknowledge the fact that you can't really control your hair and that you don't even have to stress about it that much. On the other hand that's also very annoying. But it also means that because of curly hair, your haircut won't matter as much as it will most likely matter with a lot more straighter hair as, for instance, a crooked cut in the back will even out very soon as the longer hair will curl up and make the neckline obscure anyway.

But even in light of this understanding of why curly hair is nice, it's amazing how after getting a haircut you're always unsatisfied with the result. Or maybe it's just me. But rarely I'm truly satisfied with the haircut. But after a couple of weeks things typically even out and you get used to the differing haircut and things are good again. This effect increases for me as I'm a lazy person and only get a haircut a couple of times a year and then let it grow out a bit again until getting a second one. Plus you also save quite a nice sum of money by just getting a cut once a quarter... But yeah, I guess I'll need to report back in two or three weeks time about whether or not I'm satisfied with the haircut. I'm guessing that a bunch of gel and suits will at least offer an easy way out of any hair-related problem...

Walking

It's amazing how nice the feeling of just being in the moment is. I just came back from watching some movies at Istvan's and walked back to my flat over the bridge from Ruoholahti and was listening to LUX's brilliant song called Norther Lights (yes, it's the same song that plays in the Sex and the City episode when Mr. Big and Carrie are driving arround New York with the horse carriages when Carrie is suddenly forced to go meet Miranda, who's having a baby). And I just couldn't help but notice how beautiful Lauttasaari was in the dark. And how, in fact, I was quite content, even happy, right then.

Happiness has been a recurring theme recently and it's been suggested that I spend way too much time thinking about it and how miserable my life is. It was also pointed out that happiness is when the amount of moments when you're happy outweighs the amount of moments that you're not happy. And this evening I understood that even all things considered, I am still quite happy. Of course I could be even more happy, but that's just the inherent greed that's in all of us. When I was walking back, my back wasn't bothering me at all and my right foot was completely pain-free. So I'm more or less healthy, I'm satisfied with what I'm doing with my life, I read, I think and explore new things, I get to spend time with my friends and my family. I get to talk with intelligent people and reflect. And I get to stop all that when I want to and just be by myself. So all in all, at least right now, I'm happy. It was even fun to meet and briefly get to know Kate yesterday and catch a movie. I doubt I'll ever see her again, but even briefly meeting someone new is fun. So I guess in this respect it's also turning out that I may not be as much of an introvert as I had assumed.

I'm becoming sort of like a broken record in this blog, but I still have to say it just so that I'll continue to remind myself that perspective is good and perspective will help you see that your life isn't in fact as bad as you may think most of the time. And tomorrow morning I intend to wake up early, dress in a nice suit to celebrate the International Women's Day and head downtown to grab myself a nice breakfast before heading to the countryside for the weekend. And it will be one of life's nicer moments.

Affluenza strikes again!

As I recently mentioned, I'm infected with affluenza. I argued that it was a good start that I was able to admit it to myself and that I was doing my best to heal myself. Today wasn't a very good day in this regard.

I recently lost my briefcase and it has caused quite a bit of annoyance in trying to rectify the situation and get back up to speed. So obviously I was faced with the task of obtaining replacements for the things I lost, and one of the most obvious things that I was needing from a practical standpoint was a new briefcase or a bag for carrying around the rest of the stuff that needs to be replaced. It was a shame that I lost my briefcase as I was rather fond of it. It was nothing really special, just a bag that I picked up in Stansted last summer when the girl at the check-in refused to allow me to take my supposedly too big bag along as hand luggage. So I was stranded in Stansted with all of my electronics in my lap and in a desperate need for a bag to put them in. The result was that I quickly got myself a nifty bag with a shoulder strap from some boutique. And life was good. As said, it wasn't fancy, it wasn't expensive, but it served a purpose even with the annoying small design flaws that it had (from my perspective).

So, today I hit the stores in search for a replacement. And to cut the story short, I am now an owner of a spiffy new Claudio Ferrici. There you have it, the affluenza is still present and going strong. I did try to motivate the decision and the rationale I came up with was that if I pay enough for the briefcase, I would be much more careful in the future as losing it would make me incur even heavier financial losses. After discussing this concept with a friend of mine, I was facing quite a bit of skepticism as to how exactly buying expensive bags helps me to not lose things in the future. I haven't really worked it out that well myself, but I have a strong intuition that things should work out rather well. We'll see...

Technological evolution

I was recently reading a paper by Gaynor and Bradner about using real options to value modularity in standards. As a concept, it's interesting to think that modularity will increase value by allowing you to create small, simple pieces and then slowly build on them in a structured way. They also present the idea that as you're building things in stages, you can also apply models for pricing real options. That's all nice and well, but this leads me to wonder about the nature of using simple standards and evolving them over time and what sort of implications this might have.

The authors cite Dyson about how "we should not attempt to construct the Internet, but we should act like gardeners providing a conducive environment for growth". The problem here is that even an enlightened gardener may be faced with difficulties in steering a garden's growth. A fine example is HTTP, which lays the foundations of the World Wide Web we know and use today. The adoption was so explosive that right now I have a gut feeling that you can't really do anything about the protocol, since it's so widely adopted. In fact, a new HTTPbis working group in IETF was recently formed to revise the protocol and fix editorial problems. Fortunately the group doesn't apparently have a mandate to make any large changes. But that wouldn't in fact matter that much, since I guess making concrete changes to HTTP is just about impossible. Standardization blokes can standardize all they want, but getting the changes adopted and getting everyone to update their servers and browsers and proxies means that it won't really matter at all.

So in light of this, it might be that modularity is very nice, but using the baby-steps approach of starting with simple and slowly adding things as it grows may be difficult to control if an explosion in the adoption occurs. But then again, designing protocols in a very complex and exhaustive way or running and ruling the process with an iron fist will undoubtedly kill the innovation and interest from around the technology. So, again it seems that everything is about equilibriums. Again...

An aspiring author...

Well, maybe I'm not aspiring and definitely not an author. But I did make the mistake of drumming the fact that I was thinking of trying to write something into a book a while back. What more, I even got a bunch of people to promise me that they'd get my book if one ever materialized. Then this whole project got put on an indefinite hiatus as it was not only a completely silly idea as I can't write to save my life but more importantly because I don't think I have enough to say to even fill the introduction of a book. And then consider the "more important" obligations that I'm supposed to be juggling around. Like school and work... But I guess those are just a poor excuses.

Anyway, yesterday I finally decided to try to start writing something up. And I did in fact write two and a half pages of the introduction. I still have no clue as to what I'm writing about, so that's a bit of a problem. But I did get letters onto the paper and the letters make up words that make up sentences that make up paragraphs. And it is all terribly bad.

Now, if I take a step back and try to think about why this is happening now, a few reasons pop into mind. Or one. The alternative for what to do if I didn't do this. Namely reading about option pricing models and getting ready for the corporate finance exam that's been lurking around the corner for a while. On a pop-science level the subject is interesting, but my god, I just can't seem to be able to get a firm enough grip of myself to force me to read the course book through. I've even been writing my thesis a bit more, just to avoid preparing for the exam.

So considering all this, I have been able to devise a brilliant and cunning piece of advice for all the real aspiring authors out there: book a ton of exams for yourself, spanning the next 6 to 12 months. And then start dodging them and as a result, you'll have a brilliant book done in no time at all! Unfortunately as I'm me, I can guarantee that my book will be anything but brilliant. But this at least gives an interesting side-plot for the next year that I may occasionally touch upon later. And if I do actually get a book written, then I guess that's a big deal. At least for me. And I'll force-feed copies of it to all the people I know. So beware!