Efficiency and workspaces

Everything needs to apparently be more efficient these days. This has started to include the workspaces, also. First there was a migration from offices into the cubicle hell that can be seen in a typical contemporary office environment of a... well, apparently a yesterday's company. Some brilliant bloke has apparently since then done some calculations and come up with the conclusion that people in fact travel and are away from the office, which means that their cubicles are still unused part of the time. What's the solution? Flexispace!

The flexible workspace concept is brilliant; everyone comes to work in the morning and the first ones get to pick the best seats. You won't have a fixed seat allocated to you. It also alleviates you from the burden of having papers and books and binders and personal belongings at work. Unfortunately, however, some of us might actually have papers that we need at work and without a fixed seat, it's quite tedious to clear up the desk every night you go home and then in the morning unpack everything again. In fact, the whole concept is sort of silly and at work it's being sold as "the internet way of working", whatever that means.

I actually came up with a solution to another related problem. Even with the flexible workspaces, they are still very much underutilized at least 2/7 of the week, namely during the weekends. This saddens me to a very great extent as people are no longer commited enough to come to work on the weekends. This is also a huge waste as the offices lie empty during the weekends and nobody is utilizing the space, be it offices, cubicles, or flexible space. My suggestion is thus to increase the typical work week from five to seven days to utilize the spaces more efficiently. When this suggestion goes through (and it will, believe me, since it's "the internet way of working", i.e. non-stop, you don't go home ;), I will then continue to push this idea even further, since due to silly things like free time and sleep the offices also are still underutilized. I'm not brutal and I understand that people need some sleep. So my suggestion here is to also introduce shifts into white collar office work! This way we can utilize the spaces at the office at near 100% efficiency! Think of all the whales and rainforests this efficiency increase can save! Think about it; with all this increased efficiency and decreased waste, every weekend enough killer whales are saved to cover the land area of Belgium... Three times over!

So, won't you join me in advocating an even more efficient space allocation scheme for the offices around the world? You'll be saving the environment and whales at the same time!

Wrapping things up

Well, today is a day to seriously mark in the calendars. Today I finally returned my BSc thesis, only a year late. As I might've written quite a while ago, I started my journey in January, 2007. Since then I've had ups and downs and written a total of three theses. The first one was ~75% done before I scrapped it because I wasn't satisfied with the approach and the scoping was proving difficult. The second one was nearly finished but then I lost my briefcase and all digital copies of it, which meant that I had to retype it on the computer. And at the same time I played with the scoping a bit more and rewrote the thesis entirely in English. And this is the version I returned today. Some of the people reading this blog have had the dubious honor of reading some drafts of it lately, and I want to thank those people for all the feedback and suggestions that you gave. Especially regarding all the commas that were in wrong places or were missing. ;)

This journey did actually teach me quite a few things. First of all, I guess it would've been very likely that I would've passed the seminar course with the original thesis. The grade would've also been mediocre, but acceptable. So there is an easy way to approach things and then there's my way. In retrospect, it might've been just wiser to have returned the original paper and gone on towards the MSc at full speed. But having done the rewrites, I also feel that the third time round my touch at writing an academic paper at a rapid pace was getting better. Of course I'm too much a pragmatic personality to ever be able to make a career in the academic world, but oh well.

Secondly, some things I did learn about the writing process was that I think the following worked best for me:

1. Get familiar with the topic at a very broad level. Read a bunch of articles and other material on the subject and begin to gather the reference list. Create a brief mindmap of the aspects that you want to take into account.
2. Devise a general structure for the paper based on the mindmap.
3. Re-read the articles and start throwing thoughts along with citations into the skeleton structure from step 2. (Not marking up the citations right away was my biggest flaw; instead it took too long for me to start writing, at which point I had already synthesized a view of the world for myself and it was difficult to start disecting it into pieces again for the citations.)
4. Open up the bullet points from the structure and begin writing the material into a concrete paper. If you get stuck at some point, just add a yellow TODO tag to the paper and continue somewhere else.
5. When the paper starts having some flesh around the skeleton, stop writing new text and start hammering out the TODO tags. Fix the TODOs with in the simplest possible fashion, but no simpler. I.e. don't go off expanding the scope of the TODO too much. It's already difficult enough to keep a short paper short. In the end you'll always have too much text.
6. Finish the paper, write the intro, conclusion, and the abstracts.
7. Eat Häagen-Dazs.

As for the actual thesis, I won't link it here just yet. But rest assured, I'll post it online once it gets graded and I get around to presenting it in the seminar. I guess I could go on with more introspection, but unfortunately there is no rest for the wicked and I have to continue onwards and begin preparing for an architecture evaluation presentation for tomorrow. I have no idea what I'm going to say, but oh well...

Do brands matter?

Most of the time I'm a keen advocate for paying more attention to the fit of clothes than how much they cost or what brand they are. Even now I will still argue that fit is the single most important thing to look out for. And the secondary thing is to get clothes that you're comfortable with and that sort of feel like you. This of course isn't anything that I haven't said before (mainly, because I've said it before...).

Now, of course this might sound like I'm completely disregarding the brands. And on some level I guess I'd like to be able to disregard brands. But because I'm all too human, brands are something that I also take into account, at least to some extent. But the thing with brands is that again I personally look for a certain type of fit there. A brand typically conveys some sort of image. A brand should be able to have a holistic answer to the question: "If I lived in a world, what would that world be like? What are the values? What sort of life would it be?" Of course there are many other questions and this is a blatant oversimplification and you can read a lot more from Kottler & Keller or some other course book on the subject. But I guess that question is fair. A brand should create a vision of some world for you. And when you place yourself in the world, you should fit into the world. If you don't, then I guess the brand isn't working for you. This is all intrinsic up to this point, I guess. At this phase it's just you and the brand and the core question is: does the brand address you in any way?

Being the optimist that I am, I would like to stop here. But that would be naive as brands also have a secondary purpose. A brand is something that you typically show on some level to other people. I bet quite many people would be able to say which brands their friends wear, at least to some extent. I know Antti prefers Peak Performance and Gant, Simo prefers Boss, and Tommi prefers Tommy Hilfiger. I personally don't like wearing any brand colors as such and try to wear clothes that do not have any logos on the outside. But that doesn't mean that I don't prefer some brands over others, because I do. And it might be very obvious to people around me. And when it gets to some certain level and beyond, it's even possible to guess with a very high degree of probability the brand of a certain piece of clothing without having any actual solid knowledge. Boss coats, for instance, are something that can to some extent be seen without any logos. There's something in the shoulder line that separates them from others, at least slightly. And if you go to premium clothing, bespoke suits and such, things become even easier if you are at least somewhat familiar with what to look for (unfortunately I'm not ;-). In these cases every tailor has a more or less unique signature to the type of suit they cut, for example.

But, back to the point. Brands are relevant. They convey values. They, to some extent, tell what sort of person you are. And in an optimal case the values that the brand has (or at least markets) should create an overlap with your values. If you value outdoors activities and sports, Peak Performance clearly conveys that. Preppiness? Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Gant, etc. Those are the easy ones. And naturally the brands aren't tied to clothing. Nokia as a brand should raise some sort of feelings in you, one way or the other. Volvo raises other types of feelings. Overall, if you start opening up the values that the brands of the products you have and use daily communicate to you, I guess you can create a fairly good image of what type of person is in question. Now, at this point I should also point out that even though brands are very often conflicting with each other, it's not possible to say that one brand is "better" than another brand on any absolute scale; again it's a question of values. What works well for me might not work that well for others. And even if I can more or less clearly open up my values and analyze which brands are on the same wave length as me, it doesn't mean that the other brands would be any lesser. They're just different. And this seems to be an interesting and relevant thing to keep in mind, since some people have previously taken quite a bit of offense after I have talked about different brands and elaborated on what they mean for me and how they fit (or don't fit) into my world. Again, it's a question of tastes.

Now, for an interesting exercise, what values would H&M and similar brands communicate? Yes, I know, it's a slightly provocative question and I guess I will have to recuse myself because my views are commonly known as I am typically fairly vocal about stuff like this.

Oh, and on an off-topic note, right now it seems that I'll most likely be in London in early August, around the 7th, so if anyone reading this blog happens to be in the same area then, feel free to drop me a line and let's have lunch or go grab a pint. And if there's anyone interested in web development and that sort of stuff, a friend of mine from Germany is apparently taking part in some sort of talk there at the same time, so feel free to tag along to go listen to what's happening in that part of the internet.

Paranoia

It's interesting how life indeed seems to be a rollercoaster. Especially this year. It started off brilliantly, but then it took a serious dive and I hit rock bottom in a very rapid fashion. But now it feels like all of the pieces are fitting in brilliantly again. Can't really talk that much about work, but to say that it is going very well would be an understatement. School is getting back on track and my thesis is pretty nearly done and I am in fact even sort of satisfied with it. I've met interesting new people and gotten back in touch with people who I haven't been in touch with for a while. Everything is looking sunny. And then some.

Now, the real question is when will this come to a crashing end? Because when things seem to be too good to be true, they often are. And I'm starting to question how long I can continue winning...

Work styles

We've been recently hearing that respectable newspapers and magazines are in quite a pickle as their subscriber base has been slowly eroding. Reasons have been plentiful: the internet is killing the industry, TV is killing the industry (and has been since the 1950s, but oh well), and that people just aren't reading anymore. Now a new bread of newspapers has been popping up in Helsinki, too. Namely the free newspapers like Metro and Uutislehti 100. These fine pieces of editorial brilliance (umm... right...) often have other interesting themes beside the boring and tedious daily news. Today I noticed that one or the other, most likely Metro, had a full page article about how to dress for the office, i.e. what's in fashion. The article covered both men's and women's fashion and my god, it was horrid.

The styles of the models weren't necessarily that horrid, but the points were entirely rediculous. I mean, here we have a brilliant example yet again of why fashionable people are always out of style. If people are taught to only look at slim jeans and... Wait a second, it's no longer slim, now they're going towards bootcuts... No, back to slim... Anyway, if people are taught silly things like these, they'll still look horrid. They'll look like they're trying too much and so on. And the advice is superficial and if everyone listens to these fashion tips, everyone will end up looking the same. As always, it's silly to say that a single car will suit all the people in the world. You shouldn't even say that a red car will suit all the people in the world. Or that a car should always have tornado lines. But instead you should maybe approach the problem by defining an overall framework, attempting to find a so called fit for you. A fit for the values you represent, a fit for the needs you have, etc. Fit is important. In strategy, strategic fit is essential. So if you do not remember anything else, remember this: FIT!

So, maybe a better approach to this work fashion nonsense is to outline some broader suggestions and frameworks and leave the specifics for the individual. This way, in an optimistic scenario, we'll have more people looking better while still retaining their unique style. Again, I can't comment on women's clothing as I know nothing about it. And even if I did, I'd still be wrong about it. ;) But for men, a quick thought would suggest the following pointers:

1. FIT! Make sure your clothes fit! Seriously! It shouldn't be too difficult to find clothes that fit. A well fitting piece of clothing will not be too tight, nor will it be too loose. It'll allow you to move around in it comfortably, but still highlight the good parts of your body. Even if you have entirely unfashionable clothing, you will still look pretty damn good if your clothes fit. You'll be better off than the upstarts picking up 2000 euro Armani suits off the rack and not have them adjusted properly. Hell, fit is why all the big business guys and the world's leading politicians look so much better than you do. They know it's the fit and they can afford to get clothes that fit. But ok, maybe you got the point already.

2. Attitude. Wait, what has attitude got to do with clothing? Well, you have to wear clothes that fit your overall attitude. You have to be comfortable wearing your clothing. If you're not comfortable, then the clothes obviously do not fit. This misfit maybe caused by physical uncomfort or by an attitude mismatch. These days it's not that common anymore for men to automatically wear suits. But the British have a saying that if your new suit looks new, nasty things should be done to the tailor. That is because your new suit should look like an old suit; it should look like a suit that fits you so well that you might as well have been born in it. Now, here again you see the fit from point 1. But this also illustrates attitude, at least to some extent. The British gentleman wearing the well fitting suit also has the attitude for the suit. He's comfortable wearing it, emotionally as well as physically. If you're wearing a day cravat with a shirt, you should look comfortable in it and not think about what everyone else might be thinking. You have to be confident with it. If you're not, then maybe you should be wearing something else. That's the attitude.

3. And finally: the rest. The boring and easy stuff. Simple things like you shouldn't wear brown shoes in town, only in the countryside. And that certain colors go with others and that the tie should just about always be darker than the shirt. And so on. The beauty with these rules and suggestions are that after you know them, then you know that you can also break them. But the deal is that you aren't supposed to break them before you know them, because it is only when you do know the rules and boundaries that you also know the extent to which you can cross them and still remain decent and tactful. But as said, this is easy as you can just read a bunch of books or talk to people who are old enough and well taught enough to know about these things. Most of it in fact is just common sense.

And after you have mastered those three points, you should also know that the fashion tips in the magazines are complete and utter waste of time. As has been said so many times before: style is always in fashion, but fashion is seldom stylish. Or something to that extent, anyway.

Compensations

There was a bit of new in Helsingin Sanomat recently about how the compensation differences between the executives of large publicly listed companies and average salaried employees is diverging at a great pace. According to the article, the salaries and bonuses of executives rose from about 649 000 euros in 2006 to 722 000 euros in 2007. In the same timeframe the average employee's earnings rose from about 33 000 euros to 34 000 euros. And this has resulted in tons of bitching and moaning.

To be honest, I can't understand the criticism that is inflicted on the executives. They may be making tons of money, but how is that anyone else's issue besides that of the executive and the board, which in turn is acting on behalf of the owners. In publicly listed companies the main objective of the company is to increase the wealth of the owners. It really is as simple as that and I don't see a point why this should be made any more complicated. Granted, you can extend that to suggest that maybe the purpose of the company is also to create a better, greener future and so on. But even still, when the day is over and the shit hits the fan, the reality is that if the company isn't increasing the wealth of the owners, the owners are pissed off and will demand changes. And in a situation like this, the owners have the mechanisms to drive through changes.

But apparently companies do in fact increase the wealth of the owners. There was some study that I saw a while back (sorry, can't remember where, but I'll post a link if I stumble on it again) where it was shown that if you consider the increase of executive compensations over the years and plot it against the wealth increase of owners, the owners win hands down. Why aren't the people demanding that the owners be stripped of their excessive capital income! It's amazing, since the owners don't necessarily even do any concrete work with the company, yet they are the ones reaping the biggest benefits! And if they decide to compensate an executive, it is their business, not the business of the general public. In light of this, I in fact think that the practice of the Finnish tax authorities to disclose income information to the general public is sort of silly. What purpose does it serve besides helping people whip up a rage when they notice that some people are earning more money than they are. Sometimes even very much more.

The bottom line, however, should be that the rules of the game are clear to everyone. Some people get dealt a better hand from the outset, others may get lucky and succeed for other reasons and the rest of us will have to rigorously work and study and work some more if we want to climb higher up. And that is fine and everyone should understand how the game works. If you aren't earning as much as you want to earn, then maybe you should do something about it instead of moaning about how some people who have most likely done a lot more work than you are now reaping the rewards.

Summer's coming...

Summer's coming again at an incredible pace and it seems that I'm backlogged in every regard. Work, school, etc. And thanks to the cold I caught, I missed yoga today too since I didn't feel like going there if I would have to blow my nose every five minutes. And if I don't feel any better in the morning, I think I'll miss the second chance that would be on Thursday evening.

Additionally summer is also very annoying as you can't wear nice overcoats and layered clothing anymore. And in this regard I'm also backlogged, since I totally lack the clothing for the summer and I think I will need to see about getting a couple of linen suits and such. It's already pretty much pushing the limits and to get the suit for the summer, I guess I have to start aggressively working on finding them. Oh well...

Oh, and it's almost 3 AM and I slept four hours again last night because I got to bed rather late, thanks to having to prepare a bunch of slides for a presentation that I have to give on the current state of the US dollar at class tomorrow. And this night isn't looking that much better... I guess it's time to head to bed...

Handshaking and games (Power and Sexuality: Redux)

Ok, so it seems that the previously briefly discussed topic seemed interesting enough to warrant some more thoughts...

As Jeff pointed out in the comments, the traditional idea of men-seek/women-decide might very well be true. Even common sense reasoning and intuition supports it. But where does this actually stem from? Is it inherent in us from day 0 onwards when we're born or is it learned? One might argue that it is present by default as similar behavior can be witnessed in some wild animals, apparently. Not that I'm that much a specialist in wild animal behavior, but anyway... I would, however, be careful in attributing the traditional model only to behavior that has been hard coded into humans. The behavior is also very much supported by social norms and customs. The man is supposed to ask the woman out on a date, the man is supposed to pay for the date, demonstrate that he is healthy, wealthy, and so on. But why does it have to be this way? And according to some more liberal women these days, it doesn't have to be and it's ok for the women to make advances, also. So in this respect the tables are evening out and for this we can, I guess, thank the more liberal women.

But even still, take the men-seek/women-choose framework. In the scope of it, the man still has the choice of which woman to pursue. Now, I may be very forward by saying this, but the traits that the women display and have are also important for men when deciding which women to approach. It is seldom, however, a good idea to pick apart and open up the decision frameworks behind the decisions as they typically just provoke hostile thoughts and reactions. But it is good to understand your preference and screening framework for potential mates, especially so if you're looking for a person to actually share a longer part of your life with. And even though it might seem that men in a nightclub setting try to attemp to pick up everytyhing that has two breasts and two legs, I would still feel that many perform many quick screening and decision processes when intuitively deciding on who to approach. In light of this, the situation might resemble an opening for a two-player game where player M is the man and player W is the woman.

1. M: Identify other player W from the group of women in a given space. Requires some sort of selection process regarding who to approach.
2. M: Approach player W with opening.
3. W: Evaluate player M and determine whether or not to begin game. Requires some sort of evaluation process regarding whether to accept opening.
1. W: If threshold score isn't reached, ignore player M. Wait for process to begin again from step 1. with a different player M.
2. W: Otherwise, continue.
   
4. ... players M and W engage in building mutual rapport, this might include opportunistic behavior by either player or both players...

So in light of this, both players are in fact performing a selection process. Granted, W in this case has the option of shooting M down by deciding not to enter the game. This result is often very visible and humiliating for M. But on the other hand, if W makes the initial approach, M also has the possibility of performing a visible act of turning W down.

But another dimension can be added by possibly looking at a similar situation which happens online. This is a wonderful application for all the useless technology that has been developed: e-dating. The nature of the game remains the same, only with the distinction that this time round the players supply each other with discretized and classifiable information on which the selection processes are based on. The game differs in the sense that because of the anonymity and distance afforded by the internet, the role of probabilities is further increased. In the original nightclub scenario there are probabilities also involved, but not to as great an extent. In the nightclub scene you are able to verify information about what the person looks like and can evaluate the general appearance of the person and perform better estimates (depending on your level of intoxication) as to whether or not the other person is lying. Online the selection process is based on more uncertain information. But regardless, the same handshake routine is present there, also.

The difference with e-dating is that from the outset the temporal aspect of the game changes from a very rapid game in the nightclub to a more visibly turn-based game that is played with a slower tempo. Also, the relevance of physical attributes is lessened as the greater uncertainty around the descriptions or pictures provided forces one to focus more on other bits and pieces of information. In this sense the handshake process may put more emphasis on writing skills as well as related attributes. This medium, in a way, is possibly more democratized than the nightclub setting and it is possible that women are more active in initiating contact through this media, further diluting the positions of the men-seek/women-choose framework.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that even though women still often are afforded with the visible veto possibility, men are also provided with the option of deciding not to engage unattractive women. Feel free to comment, as I'm certain that this post is also very flawed and can be shot down with great ease.

Hooks

You only learn to appreciate the hooks for coats and jackets in bathrooms when you are brutally deprived of them. And on that note, the bathrooms in the Cafe Java in downtown Helsinki are horrid. I guess it's time to start frequenting other places (not that I've been frequenting Java that much lately, but oh well...).

(Oh, and Jeff, I'll revisit the previous topic tomorrow, so you can pick me apart then if you can hold on for that long...)

Power and sexuality

There was recently a book published by the Finn Henry Laasanen about the power that women in general have over men via the control of sex. The topic is also fairly interesting as the former minister of foreign affairs in Finland, Ilkka Kanerva, was fired for getting tangled in some sort of affair with a Finnish exotic dancer. Anyway, Mr. Laasanen's main thesis in a somewhat simplified fashion is that because women can control who they have sex with and when, they in fact have power over men and this power causes e.g. the slow moving of wealth from men to women, especially when it is considered that the life expectancy of a women is much higher than that of their male counterparts. I'm sure that by googling for the person above, you can find a more detailed explanation of his view.

In short, my intuitive feeling is that the view is very naive and does not take into account or appreciate many subtleties, which do happen to balance things out. The assumption apparently is that it is the woman who controls sex, but I would argue that it may be too bold an assumption to make. It is true that beautiful women have the ability to choose partners, at least when it comes to short term flings. But it is equally true that by the same measurements gorgeous men (or even mediocre men) can decide not to have sex with women who they feel are not attractive enough. And even here we're just playing on the level of physical attractiveness and lust.

If one broadens the scope from simple and boring lust to cover a more fulfilling relationship, it's easy to see that sex is merely one part of a bigger structure, and although it is an important part, it is somewhat silly to disregard other parts of intimacy. And if you take into account the other aspects besides raw sex and focus on the emotional aspects, I guess a fairly easy conclusion might be to see that the want for emotional intimacy isn't necessarily that much tied to gender. And thus in a relationship between two people, it is equally easy for both parties to abuse trust or intimacy to their own ends. I am certain that this approach also has its pitfalls, but it should be sufficient to suggest that the view that "women have the power" is flawed and saying that one or the other gender is more powerful is a dangerous argument to make and can't necessarily be easily justified. Just as women have their "flaws", men have theirs.

Of course Mr. Laasanen might be very correct that in a night club world by default women of decent physical attractiveness might hold a slight advantage over the men. But it is equally easy to say that men with a bit of social skills and a right attitude or men with enough money will easily be able to acquire the women of their choosing in the same setting. I guess one problem in the scene is that most men (the author included) just seem to lack that certain last bit of arrogance required in this type of game. As such the game itself is undoubtedly fairly easy and subjecting oneself to a bit of classical conditioning and self-manipulation would allow nearly any man to achieve satisfactory results, considering the quantities of us mere mortals fumbling about cluelessly. But the same again holds true for women and again it may be difficult to say who has the overall advantage in a game like this. Maybe the women actually do, but it's again not an easy question, nor an easy answer to give.

Regardless, the latter scenario, at least in my opinion, is sort of pointless as the night club scene is essentially merely a game of who can capture who and how one can justify or elevate themselves in a social hierarchy, spiced up with a bit of lust. Because of that, I find it fairly hard to believe that in the current state of the world it is that easy to find meaningful and intimate relationships from that world. Instead they might be found elsewhere, where people are not so focused on playing games. And again, chances are that I am incredibly wrong and harboring too romantic views. Who knows. But I'm not ready at this point to agree with Mr. Laasanen, at least not without putting up a fight first.

A superficial description of a day

The alarm clock rings at 7 AM. I've been asleep for five and a half hours and the sun is slowly starting to shine in. I turn the alarm off of my Nokia E70, which I have been using for a while as my primary phone has been sent to be repaired and has been away for a week now. I check the time and acknowledge that I should get up, but fall asleep for another hour. When I finally do get up, I start panicking as I should've already left for work. I take a quick shower and decide to pick a slimly cut white two-fold poplin shirt with thin blue stripes and double cuffs but decide to ditch the tie. I had the shirt and a few others shipped from London a while back since it's just a real pain trying to get decent shirts with the extra couple of centimeters from Helsinki.

To go with the shirt I pick out a dark gray pinstriped and single breasted suit with two buttons. I'm still slightly annoyed at the back vent as I usually prefer side vents. It also has three cuff buttons instead of the more traditional four. Because of the lack of tie, I decide to also grab a sand colored slipover vest and a pair of dark brown leather shoes to add a slightly more casual appearance. I also marvel at my slim black overcoat that I decided would fit well with the rest of the outfit. I hope that a rigorous exercise routine will keep me tall and lean for years to come.

I get to the office and decide to start working on a project that I've been postponing for quite a while now and which actually had its deadline last week. Nobody's been asking about it for a while, so it's safe to assume that I can still get it decently done before it spawns any questions. I also notice that the guy from Ruoholahti who I was thinking of going to meet is actually at the HQ today and is proposing a meeting here, so I decide to check and reserve a decently sized meeting room. Small meeting rooms are always so dreadful and cause claustrophobia. So even though it's a waste, I decide to get a meeting room for 10. I also SMS the guy who's wallet I happened to find from near the coat rack and tell him to come fetch it if he feels he still needs it. He shows up in an hour and turns out to be the person who I am slightly annoyed of since he has better hair than me and the bone structure of his face resembles that of Jude Law.

Lunch is typical. Some folks from our unit and I head off to the closer restaurant at the office at 11 AM sharp; a sort of daily routine. I can't for the love of life remember what I had to eat. Probably something mediocre, but at least it'll keep me alive. My doctor had told me that I should put on more weight since it's very likely that after a surgery in a couple of months, I'll lose up to 10 kilos afterwards and that I should prepare for it. I cut the lunch short since I have to run to the campus to catch a lecture on international economics. The lectures are actually quite interesting so I for once get around to campus. The topic of the day is about the problems with Heckscher-Ohlin and about how it could be adjusted to make it perform as a better approximation of the world of international trade.

After the lecture I run into a friend of mine on campus and he's heading to have lunch and invites me along. I already had lunch but I quickly decide that I should have a second lunch, as per the doctor's orders. Now this time I actually remember what I had, as it was typical campus food and more or less horrible. Although I dare not revisit the memory of it, so I shall just skip forward...

After wondering around the campus for a while and noticing that one of my accounts has been closed since I have apparently forgotten to change the password in time I decide to head back to the office to actually read up on the topic of the meeting so as to not be entirely at a loss. The guy shows up a bit late we have a decent enough discussion. It turns out that I can actually use his expertise a bit in the project I'm currently running. Unlike a typical corporate person, he actually seemed very eager to help out. Strange. Well, the cynicism will hit him one day.

After the meeting I jump to the campus again as I'm already late for another meeting. We're supposed to rap up the second phase of a project for one course. I really couldn't give a damn about the course since I can't fit it into any meaningful place in my degree, but somehow I just ended up in the project. I sort of hang around for a while and then excuse myself back to work. It's already 9 PM and for a moment I wonder if I should head quickly downtown to find something to eat. But then I decide to actually come back to work and finish sending some emails I hadn't had time to reply during the day.

At 10 PM I decide that it's time to hit the gym again and run a bit on the treadmill. I'm still training for the marathon next summer even though the doctors suggested that due to the surgery I might not be fully up to speed by the marathon as the sick leave they're suggesting is somewhere around 4 to 6 weeks. Who has time for sick leaves these days, anyway? I decide to run for 60 minutes and try to keep my heart rate in check, but it starts slowly creeping up towards 150 and then after half an hour it's already near 160. At then stabilizes at around 165 and after the 60 minutes I decide to run a bit more. 15 more minutes and I decide that it's time for some vanity motivated exercises with the dumbbells.

At the shower I'm slightly annoyed that the sauna has already been switched off and instead I just quickly put my things up to dry and head back to fetch my coat and check my emails. There's one from a person in Turku and she's asking why I haven't replied to her prior email yet. I have no idea what email she's referring to and suggest that maybe there's been a glitch somewhere. She then admits that it's possible that the mail didn't leave in the first place. Who knows. I decide that it's time to head downtown to grab a late night snack and then head home to enjoy some greasy McDonald's meal as every decent place in town has already closed hours ago. I also make a mental note to myself to swing by Stockmann in the morning and get myself 10 new white t-shirts and enough new socks to last me the next year, as they have their bi/tri/whatever-annual sale starting tomorrow again. I'm already terrified of the dumb yellow bag they'll give me, so I guess I'll have to prepare and take my own plastic bag with me in the briefcase...