Dissatisfaction

As I have noted previously, I've been digging even deeper into the world of made-to-measure clothing. Today I fetched my newest suit from Sartoria Rossi. The suit is simple enough: a single-breasted, two-button, side-vented, notch-collared, four cuff-buttoned suit made out of extremely dark blue wool. So a fairly traditional "dark suit" to wear to more formal occasions and to replace tailcoats and tuxedos with (as I'm too lazy and cheap to actually invest in any formal or semi-formal attire).

Anyway, as I fetched the suit, I couldn't help but be slightly dissatisfied. I couldn't precisely point the finger at any specific thing at first, but after some time I came to the conclusion that some problems that I have with the suit are:

1. The shoulder padding could have been slightly (0.5-1cm) longer on either side.
2. The buttons could have been slightly higher (the lower button by 1-2 cm and the upper button by 2-3 cm). An offshoot of this is that now the lapels seem slightly too long and slightly too thin (in reality the lapels are nearly ok width-wise, but the length makes them seem narrower).
   
3. The jacket could have perhaps been slightly longer (1-2 cm).
4. The lining should have been silver instead of the slightly pinkish-grey.

Now, after spending the day thinking about all of this, it's actually fairly evident that most of the issues that I have with the suit are things that I could have and should have directly influenced. But all of these are again things which would have been really difficult for me to know in advance. So ultimately this is another case of needing to use the first purchase as a test to calibrate the system and thus enable successes in the future.

That said, at the end of the day I do have to admit that I'm starting to somewhat like the suit. The quality of the suit seems high enough for this price range and the service I got was very good. So as of now I don't really have anything against Sartoria Rossi, which seems to be one of the better stores in Helsinki when it comes to mens' clothing. One additional thing to note with made-to-measure suits is concerning the cut: you should pay special attention to suits that the manufacturer has made earlier, either MTM or off-the-rack. This will most likely be the cut that your suit will follow, so in this regard it's imperative to find the right manufacturer with the right cut that you like.

In the longer run I'll most likely test out one or two other manufacturers. Learning from this experience, I will most likely begin testing MTM manufacturers in the form of jackets at first. This has the benefit of reducing financial risk and trousers are anyway more or less simple and cheap to make, so calibration in that area may not be as crucial as with the jacket. The next thing I was thinking of extending my wardrobe with, at some point, is a double-breasted navy blazer. Pair that with grey flannel trousers, a blue and white striped shirt and a nice tie and the result will be a very classic and elegant outfit...

What is it that you want me to learn, exactly?

The more I think and reflect against my studies so far, the more I start getting a feeling that I do not entirely grasp what it is that our education system in Finland is trying to achieve. Ever since the 90ies, the amount of starting positions in universities have increased, the ammattikorkeakoulu system has been established, and in general everything has gone to hell. Let me elaborate...

Looking at merely TKK, I can't help but think that it is ridiculously easy to get into TKK. Just write your name on a piece of paper and that's about it. I've been led to understand that in the history this hasn't been so. But regardless, these days it seems that just about anybody can get into the school, and this often also happens. This naturally decreases the quality of the student material, which is very much visible in day-to-day schoolwork.

Take an example of a recent essay we were tasked to write for school in a small group. The essay wasn't that long, but would have required a bit of understanding on the topic and preferrably some type of analysis and a synthesis of a situation based on the former. The amount of literature (articles, studies, books, etc.) is vast and finding material is trivial. What happens? The typical student appears to approach the problem at a shallow and superficial level: instead of doing an analysis over a period of time we get a snapshot of the current moment, instead of objective and quantifiable material we get the view from corporate websites, instead of any type of structured framework, we get a list of bullet points. And then my favorite: Wikipedia references. And all of this in a course which is aimed at Masters students, who should be now be fairly familiar with how to proceed with academic work and write academic papers. Sufficient to say, the situation is not looking too bright for our essay.

Maybe this is underestimating the intelligence of your average student, but the other alternative isn't that appealing either: are our students just intellectually lazy and uninterested in putting in the effort to understand the exercises? Maybe this is the point: when you try to educate everyone at a high level, you are bound to get unmotivated people to join the crowd, just for the sake of getting a paper and in this way dilute the value of the degree. And ultimately, what is the point of educating everyone at a very high level despite the fact that a fair portion of these people will then continue on to perform mechanical tasks that do not require the ability to utilize the skills that the universities are supposed to teach.

Mind you, I'm being slightly provocative here and venting my frustration at the system, since I do feel that the things we are taught are to an extent valuable and good, but I am annoyed to see this intellectual lazyness and mediocricity in a portion of the students. That said, I fortunately do know some people from school who I actually do know and trust to do a good job, so maybe all is not lost. But in practice I would still advocate restricting the number of entrants to universities, attempting to shift the ratio of faculty to students into a more favorable direction, and overall demanding more from the students (e.g. if you return a bad paper, the course staff should be keener to just flunk people as opposed to letting them barely pass).

Status update

Every once in a while it's a good idea to just stop and breathe. For me, that happened this evening for no apparent reason. I've been deep-diving into very many different things recently and been trying to kick my studies into a bigger gear again in an attempt to get all my courses done by next summer. This has meant attending a couple of obligatory lectures every week, which have infact demonstrated yet again to me that I'm studying the right things: we've had good guest lecturers who I've at some times disagreed with and openly questioned them, which only goes to show that I do infact care enough about what I'm studying to actually take part in the discussion. That's more than what many students can say, at least when I reflect my experiences from campus.

Work-wise things are going quite well and my bosses are making sure that I have enough on my plate. In a sense I've come to the conclusion that my bosses are very good and they do actually care about the employees and help us grow in the direction that we are interested in. I know it sounds like a cliche, but recent discussions and actions have confirmed this to be true to the extent that sometimes the pace frightens me. But in so many ways things could be a lot worse, so in this respect I have very much to be grateful for.

As for my personal life, I won't dig too deep into that. But I will say that over the past half a year I've run into my ex on a couple of occasions, and ultimately I'm very relieved that that is over. In fact every time just helps me realize even more how much happier and better off I am with R than compared to my previous relationships. It's scary to think how far down the sinking ship would've dragged me had I not been able to detach myself from it. But fortunately I was able to detach myself, as the improvements in my quality of life have been so drastic that it's not easy to think of words to describe the change.

But to summarize, it's horrifying to think how well things are going on so many different fronts. A cynical person like me can't help but think that this sort of situation can't be sustainable and that something bad must be lurking around the corner as the current situation is way too good to be true, if you actually stop to think about it. But hopefully it will continue to be true for a long time still...

In search of the perfect shirt

In this day and age the requirements that the workplace dress code enforces upon employees has been very much relaxed, even to the point where a white-collar worker may show up to the office in jeans and a polo shirt. This has in essence seen the disappearance of ties and suits from very many fields which previously required these. However, from my personal experience the basic shirt for men has not disappeared; far from it. The requirements for the basic dress shirt have been tightening: if you rid yourself of suits and jackets, your shirt better be ironed and fit you well, as there isn't an extra layer protecting you any longer.

Interestingly enough most shirts that people wear at the office are ill fitting. Some of the common issues that we are faced with are shirts that are too large (and thus resemble a tent in fit) or may be lacking in the sleeve length department. When someone actually wears a tie, the collar is either way too large or then it will basically strangle the person who wears the shirt. And so on.

For the past couple of years I've been going through a pile of shirts from different manufacturers, prices ranging from two dozen euros up to 150 euros. The feeling I've gotten from these shirts is that with the extra premium you often get a better quality fabric and in some cases the stitching quality is improved. But ultimately if you don't get the fit right, you're not even halfway to the finishing line. I personally have a somewhat problematic torso: I'm fairly slim in the region of the waist with a slightly broader upper torso which then has two longer than avarage arms attached to it. So finding an off-the-rack shirt that fits me has been a path fraught with headaches. But it has been a learning process and it has developed my taste to a point where I can say precisely what I like or don't like about a shirt.

The culmination, at least for now, has been the arrival of my first made-to-measure shirt, which was a surprisingly pleasant experience as I was already mentally prepared to throw the first trial away as I anticipated that it would be near impossible to get the measurements exactly right the first time round. And in a way I was right: I still need to do a bit of fine-tuning with the sizing, but the end result of the first attempt is not in fact that bad: it's already easily become my favorite shirt, not least because it's the first black shirt that I've owned in quite a while. But the next shirt will be better...

On the temporary nature of structures

I've frequently argued with many people about things which ultimately end up in a discussion about nationalism. One aspect is legislation: if I'm a member of a group of people occupying a piece of land and wish to remain a member of the group, I will naturally have to adhere to some types of rules. If I don't adhere to them, there are typically some types of consequences. In nature this consequence is often expulsion from the community. And in our world can typically range from reprimands and fines to imprisonment or even death (which I don't necessarily agree with).

So what can one do if one doesn't agree with the rules? The most obvious choice is always to accept that it's a trade-off situation: I will have to accept them to get the other benefits of staying with the group. So in short: do nothing. The second choice is to do something about it, i.e. attempt to reform legislation, change taxation, or do something else. So essentially bitch and moan and propose alternative solutions and apply all the rhetorical tools that you have available to you. Or thirdly you can agree that you have differing views with the rest of the group and accept that you do not wish to be a part of the group any longer and find a new group to join. There may be other options as well, but these are the blindingly obvious ones.

It is the third option which typically tends to cause the most friction with the people who I've discussed. I think the issue is that very many people can or do not want to question the concept of a nation. The problem arises when someone suggests that maybe the concept of a sovereign nation is something that should be challenged: the world should be a lot more fluid and enable us to disband with the concept altogether. Maybe that is a bit radical, but on a more tangible level I think that I personally should be able to change my citizenship if I do not agree with what the rest of the group that forms a nation is doing. Ultimately, however, I think that a nation is merely a temporary structure that is useful as long as it serves a purpose. It is a mean to an end, but not a purpose in itself. Similar to any sort of alliance between entities, but still ultimately temporary in nature, even though nations are a lot more long in duration than other structures.

The decline of journalism

Maybe the topic is slightly provocative, but it seems that at least some Finnish newspapers have been declining in quality very rapidly. I personally don't subscribe to any newspapers as they don't fit my lifestyle: I don't eat breakfast nor do I sit at home in the mornings for long enough to be able to read a newspaper. Instead I prefer to get my news online. So that's why I pay more attention to the online versions of some of Finland's larger newspapers. But unfortunately it seems that either some of these papers don't take online presence seriously or then they just don't care for their brands.

I vaguely recall that Kauppalehti used to be a semi-decent newspaper which focused on business. We still get the paper version at the office and because of some unknown campaign, my new broker is going to send two months worth of Kauppalehti to me. But to be honest, I'm not entirely sure about the brand anymore. I check out their online news about once a day, and the quality is appalling, to say the least. These days it seems that it's a rare case and a big feat when they manage to post a bit of news online without it containing a number of spelling mistakes. And even that would be ok if they would actively hunt them down and correct them. But more annoyingly I think that their overall quality is very much lacking: their news seems to be very biased and tabloid-like. They seem to be desperately seeking for sensational stories, and failing at this, as well as passing rumors and gossip. If one were to have tendencies to see conspiracies, one could easily assume that the writers of Kauppalehti were actively using their medium to drive the stocks of various companies up or down, depending on their will. But that may be giving too much credit to Kauppalehti, so maybe we'll just assume that it's just bad journalism by amateur reporters.

Another thing that I've been able to amuse myself with are the commenting features of some online newspapers, for instance Helsingin Sanomat. I've read very many different online news sites in the past decade, and seldom have I seen such an amount of trolling as is frequently present in the comments of Finland's number one newspaper. I'm not saying that it's the fault of Helsingin Sanomat; far from it. From what I've read their news, I think that they're actually doing a decent job of it. I may not be directly in line with their political stance, but I can appreciate what they're writing and where they're coming from. But the comments! If you ever have to kill an hour or two of time, head on down to the comments area of HS's web site and you're bound to get a laugh or two, or your money back.

First level reached

Earlier today (Sunday) I had my first level-test in Krav Maga. Or any martial art/self-defense system, for that matter. The experience was certainly interesting as I had practically no clue as to what I was walking into on a practical level. All in all the test was certainly much easier than I expected and I think I would've given myself some negative feedback on a few things, the most annoying of which was when I totally froze and failed to defend myself properly when the instructor was hitting hooks at my head. The situation was slightly amusing since I don't really know why that happened: I knew what I was facing and what I had to do, I saw the fist, but for some odd reason I failed to react. On the second try I got my arm in the way, but blocked with the wrong part and got another hit on my head. It was only on the third attempt that I was actually able to focus enough to get any type of semi-credible defense and counter-attack in place. In retrospect that was the most annoying thing that happened and I would've given myself a minus for something as stupid as that.

Anyway, ultimately it seemed like the P1 test was more focused on just checking that everyone was somewhat sane and able to take part in further training, if they so wished. This became obvious when everyone passed the test and there were a few people who had no clue as to how to break free from a headlock as well as other types of chokes. In general, though, it seemed quite strange that people who had attended the course would have been able to not pick up the simple moves and techniques, but oh well...

Now with the P1 behind, I guess life will go on as usual and I'll see if I can train enough to get P2 next spring. I was also thinking of supplementing my KM with some fitness boxing as the company seems to be kind enough to arrange a fitness boxing lesson every Monday at a nearby office...

On taxes and subsidies

Finland has been recently trying to revamp its laws and taxation when it comes to saving for pensions. Previously the setup has been that individuals gain tax benefits if they save towards their pensions via voluntary pension insurances, which are managed by private companies. These companies typically charge an arm and a leg for offering this service, which seems logical for them and raises the question of how silly this is for the government to essentially subsidize private companies in this way. And taking into account the fact that most likely these funds will anyway be very conservatively managed and create less-than-optimal profits for their owners (and the overpriced management fees on top), the system seems flawed.

Anyway, the changes in the legislation seem to focus on introducing a setup where the individual person can use a multitude of different financial instruments when saving, and is able to perform reallocation of capital with no tax consequences, as long as they do not withdraw the capital from these special accounts before they reach the pension age. Sounds a lot more reasonable than what we've previously had. However, I think this still doesn't address the rather fundamental problem of market distortions that are caused every time the government steps in.

I'm personally very skeptical about any types of subsidies or benefits that the government (or any other authority) hands out. They may benefit some, but most likely the overall consequences aren't understood due to the complex nature of the world that we live in. A very good example of this is in the Finnish tax legislation where you can deduct parts of the interest payments that you incur from your house loan. While I technically understand the intention behind that, I fear that in fact these types of subsidies merely end up directly into the house prices and push them further up, meaning that the net benefit for an individual who is looking to purchase a house is more or less zero, at best.

Additionally, the problem on sudsidization via taxes is that it is so bloody complex. Combine, for instance, the two above topics: saving via investing and purchasing a home. You get tax benefits from your home loan, but if you get any types of capital incomes from abroad, you start losing your tax benefit. This doesn't happen with capital income from Finland. Ok, I can see that this might encourage Finns to invest in Finland. Fair enough. But now my investment portfolio has an increasing amount of risk that stems from the fact that I do not distribute my savings geographically. So if things go south in Finland and the economy goes bad, I lose my job (and thus my steady income from wages), and then I also lose my equity that I've been trying to build up for the rainy day, because I haven't been able to achieve a properly diverse portfolio of ownings from abroad. A double-whammy right in the back of my head. (And yes, I am aware that I could invest abroad via mutual funds that are managed by Finnish financial institutions, but the amounts they charge for this service are ludicrous to say the least).

So ultimately I think the goal should be to get away from tax benefits and subsidies, which unnecessarily complicate the system and don't even achieve the intended results at the end of the day. Instead we should scrap these types of systems in favor of a lower tax rate. And as an additional benefit, we could also decrease the size of the tax authority, which would no longer need such a large machinery to operate...

On electric cars

The previous entry consisted of only a short advertisement video of the Fisker Karma, quite arguably one of the coolest electric cars yet. I've talked with a number of people about cars and I personally still maintain that a car is an aspirational thing, at least for me. If I ever get myself a car, it has to be a car that I want. Not a compromise. It has to be something that I actually want to get into and absolutely want to take a ride in it. Not something that makes a small piece of me die every time I see it.

If nothing else, things in life should be beautiful. And the Karma is certainly more beautiful than a Prius. And on every front the Karma just absolutely destroys the Prius; design, performance, treehugging, etc. Hell, the car was designed by the same bloke who did Aston Martin's DB9 and V8 Vantage, and those are absolutely stunning cars. So, the Karma will obviously be something that should serve as a good launch for the electric cars: it shows that an electric car doesn't need to be an underpowered wimp that looks like crap. And that's important, since as long as the electric car is merely something that you buy so that you can save the environment, it won't fly. But as soon as you make the electric car into something that is elegant, fast, and which makes you drool every time you see it, then you've solved the problem.

And finally: a Toyota isn't cool. Period.

Stunning

Specialization

I've been a customer of Nordea, a financial services group, for quite a while. On a general level they've performed decently well in their services and the prices that I've had to pay have been very reasonable. They haven't succumbed to any of the pitfalls that another group, Sampo, has been treading through over the past few years. Recently, however, I have been getting somewhat fed up with Nordea, namely the prices they charge for making investments abroad.

The mantra that the larger groups have been saying for years and years is that it pays to focus all of your dealings, from day-to-day finances to investments to loans as well as insurances, to a single entity. The logic goes that the group is able to give you significant and tangible discounts on different products, thus benefitting the end customer as well. I've never entirely bought this argument, namely because I've been somewhat skeptical in regards to putting all my eggs in one basket. This turned out to be a good call when Kaupthing all of a sudden fell down and Sampo's debit cards stopped working. I still had Nordea which more or less worked. Kudos to them for that.

However, when it comes to investments, I've recently started moving towards Nordnet, which is a specialized internet-based broker which operates in the Nordic region. The benefits for me are very tangible, and individual transaction costs from buying e.g. German stocks are a very nifty 70% lower than with Nordea. There are other benefits as well in the form of a better user interface, increased amounts of data for me to access, etc. So overall the package is better, and more importantly cheaper for me.

Now this provokes an interesting question: why can't a group like Nordea, which works with revenue of over eight billion euros per year, offer me competitive pricing in this category? Or more importantly, I know that they could offer it to me, but I would have to go through various negotiations and even then it's not that likely that it would happen. And even then their web-based interface is lacking behind Nordnet's. So this makes it very tempting to jump to the conclusion that specialization is the key here: a company of 323 employees and a specialized business model just runs circles around a mammoth of a company with 34000 employees. In this case I am guessing that the key is the increased focus and a very compelling offering in regards to increased value for the customer. The formula is simple, and thus it's easy for me to motivate the move. Let's see what happens...

Stockholm Halvmarathon '09

The one obligatory half-marathon for 2009 is now behind and the feelings are quite mixed. On one hand the entire trip to Stockholm was great and the run was good. But on the other hand I missed my target time by 21 seconds. It may seem like nothing when we're talking about a 21 kilometer run, but it's annoyingly close. Had the difference been many minutes, that would've been easier. Now I can't help but start thinking that had I in fact been just a bit faster at the drinking stops I would've been able to go under two hours. But oh well, such is life. And here's some statistics about the run (from the HR monitor, so the time is slightly different):

• Duration: 2 hours, 0 minutes, 28 seconds
• HR (average): 179
• HR (peak): 187
• Energy: 2553 kcal

And then the times that the organizers recorded for me:

Distance	Total time	Lap time	Pace
5km	0.27.17	27.17	5.27/km
10km	0.54.52	27.34	5.30/km
15km	1.23.42	28.50	5.46/km
20km	1.53.56	30.13	6.02/km
Finish	2.00.21	6.24	5.50/km

Overall it's somewhat difficult for me to analyze what the issues were. I guess one thing that can be derived from the numbers is that I started faster again and then slowed down towards the end instead of being able to run with an increasing speed. But then again, there was only one point in the run when I actually felt really tired and that was around the 18km mark (the 17-18km part took me 6:18.7, according to my own measurements). Besides that, the run was quite decent, but I couldn't have gone any faster. So in this respect I'm somewhat satisfied with my run. Next time the target time is 1.55.00...

Decision making and the recession

The recession seems to have finally hit pretty close to home. While coming back from Sunday's training I swung by the store to pick up some food and for the first time during my time in Lauttasaari I was met with a slightly sad situation. In front of me in the queue was a woman who was purchasing a couple of ciders and a salad. It turned out that her bank balance wasn't too good as her debit card got rejected twice. After the first rejection she removed one cider from her purchases. After the second rejection she returned the cider back and just removed the salad. Apparently getting alcohol is more important than eating.

Krav Maga

I recently took up a new hobby to support my quest in improving my physique: Krav Maga. The choice may seem somewhat strange when it is reflected against my previous hobbies of choice: yoga, golf, fencing, tennis, long-distance running, etc. It's actually quite exhilarating to try something entirely new again; the rest of the people practicing Krav Maga don't fit into the typical group of people who I've met in conjunction with my other hobbies.

So, why Krav Maga? Well, I've always been drawn to a certain level of pragmatism: I want things to work and be as efficient as possible. One of the key issues that I had with fencing was that it just felt a little bit silly, like I was restricted by something artificial. Why should I have to respect the right of way if the point is to kill the other combatant? Why can I only hit the torso? This elaborates why I was very quick to move on from foil and try épée instead. Nonetheless, regardless of how much I want to live in the times that have already passed, I have to admit that cross-training with other methods is a necessity that can't be circumvented. Thus Krav Maga: a seemingly very simple and efficient method of self defense, which focuses not on form but on the ultimate endgame -- survival.

This actually illustrates a very relevant point: in the search for efficiency, simplicity rules. But simplicity isn't a silver bullet. Nor is it as restrictive as it may sound. In golf one of the most common problems that many people have is that their back swing isn't efficient: it's hindranced by all types of extra maneuvers, which don't belong in the swing and just increase complexity and chances for things to go wrong. The same is true for punches: even the most basic of punches, the straight punch, isn't as intuitive as people think. It is simple, but you have to get your head around to the fact that you don't swing your arm. Instead you punch directly at the target and then retract your arm into a protective position again. Simple. Elegant. Efficient. It serves a purpose and does so efficiently...

Adaptability

The economy has been in a state of depression and recession for a few years now, and unemployment rates are going up in Finland. This has sparked a lot of discussion and disgruntled people have voiced their feelings about quite many different things. People still seem to be surprised by the fact that in the private sector public companies will act in a radical fashion and attempt to adapt to changing situations by laying off parts of the workforce. It's called adaptability; if the landscape is changing, you either adapt or you die. It's unfortunate, but that's how the game works. Unfortunately, however, it seems that in some cases companies maybe should exercise a bit of moderation as the actions have sometimes been rash at best and purely idiotic at worst.

Nonetheless, the companies will attempt to function in the best interest of their owners, or so the theory goes. But these times are well to demonstrate, yet again, that individual people must also be able to adapt to changing situations. I somehow get a feeling that too many people are stuck inside a box and when things abruptly change, they are unable to transform themselves. What this past decade or two have shown is that the world is becoming increasingly dynamic, as opposed to the more traditional stable landscape in which you sought work positions from which you would retire from. So it is up to the employee to demonstrate flexibility and adaptability by being able to jump from one career to the next, even across different disciplines and industries. But ultimately I feel that the key point is to have the skills to actively renew and retrain oneself to be able to go up against new challenges.

On a slightly different note, I have also gotten a feeling by following some discussions surrounding the Finnish welfare system that the system is in fact slightly flawed and does not really encourage entrepreneurship and active job seeking as much as it could. A friend of mine recently listed himself as unemployed, and being a non-native he was interested in using this pause in his career to learn more Finnish in order to increase his attractiveness in the job market. Unfortunately, however, it seems that there are some situations in which he will lose his unemployment benefits if he begins to take language courses. Apparently the system would, at worst, classify him as a student and then strip him of his benefits. This is not only silly, but also very counterproductive. Overall it seems that the system will very often make its victims very passive. I have some thoughts on how the system could be reformed (and overall I feel that reforms will need to be revolutionary rather than evolutionary, as the system is very much broken), but I fear that I will have to leave them for another blog post. But feel free to pull my sleeve if you want to talk about these issues, for they are very interesting.

Well...

On dialogs and debates

When I was in high school, we had a number of debates during Finnish classes, where students were introduced into the fine arts of rhetoric and the things that accompany it. The concept was very good: teach the students how to argue and debate as well as utilize words and wit. Somehow I feel that a lot of the really basic problems of society could be avoided if instead of resorting to violence people would possess the ability to talk, discuss, and communicate. But far too often when a person runs out of words, they resort to other, more unfortunate measures in trying to communicate their point across.

Another learning from these debates was that quite often people do not or cannot form opinions, or are unwilling to argue a side. The best debates, in my opinion, were the ones where you found two people with opposing views of a common topic which both held dear. It was truly interesting to observe the jousting that ensued. But unfortunately very often the situation was very asymmetric (i.e. one was very opinionated and the other could not care less) or then the overall mood was indifferent. This is one reason why I am somewhat hesitant when it comes to the praising of democracy's flawlessness...

I have unfortunately long since forgotten whether we were taught any theory behind dialogs and debates, but on a personal and purely empirical level I think that some very obvious clusters can be formed. A dialog can be exploratory in nature, where the participants collectively work towards discovering ideas through an exchange of information and opinions. Or then a dialog can be more competitive and debating in nature, where the exploratory objective is surpassed by the objective of winning by means of either convincing the opponent of your point of view or by merely deflating the opponents arguments.

Politicians seem to venture on a very different level and are measured against different dimensions. In a debate it is not only relevant for the politician to win the debate, but also to do so while applying good form and by not upsetting the people too much. The battle of debate is subordinate to the larger war which is fought on a higher level. And one must not upset the general populace, which wields the power. It is this group which I am slightly afraid of, as it requires much more studying of a person of political inclination to understand their ultimate motive, as they often play very many games at once.

This does tie back to the dynamics of high school debates: I argue that, at least our, debate was much more political in nature than what, I would imagine, the teachers wished to teach. Ultimately it does not matter whether or not you had the more solid arguments or the ability to deflate the arguments of your opponent. Ultimately the decision of who won was decided by the rest of the class, which very often resulted in a situation where the debate turned into a popularity vote of either the debaters or then of the topics. Very seldom did the actual debating amount to anything: the judging parties had already made up the mind, even prior to the debate.

Housekeeping

It's amazing how much stuff a person is able to amass, even within a short amount of time. I'm constantly faced with the task of trying to keep my apartment in check, and questioning whether I need to keep something or not. The struggle seems to be something of a never ending streak of losses: you just can't win! I've been playing around with an idea of revising my apartment a bit in a desperate effort to clear some more room for coats and jackets and streamline everything by putting books behind some type of glass doors to keep the dust out. But in a small apartment it seems to be incredibly difficult to find the type of furniture that you actually want and that would fit the needs that you've specified.

On other frontiers I guess a bit of housekeeping is also required. In the digital world it seems that you also have to be fairly rigorous to ensure that you throw out the old as you introduce the new. I took some first steps by removing obviously dead and/or outdated links from my blog (it seems that quite many people lack the persistence to keep up a blog, so I got rid of all links to blogs that haven't been updated in a while).

An additional challenge has also appeared with the emergence of social networking sites: how do you prune your network? It isn't as trivial as throwing away an old shirt, since removing links may be a politically sensitive issue. "It's nothing personal, but I don't want you in my social network anymore" just seems sort of blunt and only works for the persona non grata -types, who you don't necessarily want to deal with in the future. But otherwise I guess it's just a matter of more carefully grouping and segmenting the network. Or something to that extent.

Patience, perseverence, and persistence

For some odd reason patience seems to be one of the rarer virtues around. This manifested itself in e.g. the overt greed of Wall Street and the City, and how sustainability and persistence were forgotten. It's especially sad to see, amongst others, longstanding and very traditional institutions be the victims of very short-term greed.

On a slightly separate note, I recently signed up for the Stockholm Half Marathon. It is held on Saturday, September 12th and I thought that it would be a great way to rectify the injustice of me not getting to participate in HCR'09 this earlier in the spring due to health issues. Also, I recently noticed that due to some slipping in lifestyle-related things I had started to amass some weight. Instead of going on a diet as such, I just decided that I would kick up my training a notch and then adjust my eating habits to contain a larger proportion of vegetables, fruits, and the like. Another policy decision concerned fast food and soft drinks: they're gone and replaced with more frequent home cooking and mineral water.

Related to this, I never really understood the point of any type of strict, project-oriented dieting, which seems to be all the craze with women. It's not only one or two women who I know who seem to be doing this; deciding to drop weight over a certain period of time and then they go back to their old routines. But if the old routines were the ones that brought the extra weight in the first place, how does this work? I think that it's the longer term policy decisions with which you hopefully more permanently alter you lifestyle that get the job done.

I also broke out my heart rate monitor from the closet again to complement my running. It seems that I may have finally matured enough to actually be able to do slower runs at lower heart rate levels, which are quite possibly the things that were missing from my previous training. It again requires a healthy bit of patience and restraint to keep yourself from just blasting away on your jogs in the same way that you've been used to before. But again, hopefully this type of strategy will pay off in Stockholm and if things go well, then maybe even on a marathon next summer. All in all I feel that this recent change of trying to integrate sports and exercising as a more integral part of my life may be for the best. We'll see...

On generosity

In brief, my position on generosity is increasingly that you should not be generous. It isn't as simple as that, I'm afraid, but if nothing else, there's no point in it. If you are generous, people will forget it very quickly. If you are not generous, then you're pretty much like everyone else and/or you just merely upset some people. Machiavelli had an interesting chapter on whether or not princes should be generous, and he concluded something similar. He did, however, also note that if you are generous, you should be generous out of someone else's fortune, as that does not deplete your fortune or the fortunes of your citizens.

That said, you actually should be generous, but not to everyone. I have increasingly gotten the feeling that there are two criteria to judge when deciding on whether or not to be generous to someone: 1) are they in a position to offer you something and 2) if they are, are they willing to give you something? Why be generous to a person who does not reciprocate at all, either because they cannot afford to or because they just do not want to?

Customer retention

I've recently had to buy quite a few pairs of trousers in an attempt to revitalize my wardrobe in that area. For some strange reason it's a lot easier to casually pick up jackets, coats, and shirts rather than trousers and jeans. I've even bought shoes online in a vim. But trousers need consideration. Anyway, without getting into the whole debacle, I would like to highlight an issue related to marketing and customer retention...

As everyone who has passed Marketing 101 knows, traditional view holds that it's a lot cheaper (and more profitable) in the long run to retain customers rather than continuously attract new ones. That's why most companies in most businesses would do better to shed the transactional mode of business and focus on building relationships. Relationships are based on trust. And trust in business is created via successful deals. Now, in consumer business, at least, it's very easy to create long-term customer relationships by rectifying mistakes that you've made and compensating the customer very generously. If the customer's bad experience can be salvaged into a good one, you'll also be able to tap the viral marketing mechanism: the customer will undoubtedly tell his friends about the good service he got.

So, back to trousers. I bought a new pair of... uhmm... Swedish designer jeans from Beamhill and a pair of Pal Zileri trousers from Fere. Both had problems. The cloth of the jeans wore down and got a hole after two weeks of use and the trousers, after being initially adjusted, started to unravel from the back seem. Now, at this point the two different companies went two very different routes. That's why I will continue to be a customer of one company, but stear clear of the other.

First, the Pal Zileris... I took them back to the store and I was met by a shocked salesperson, who seemed genuinely apologetic after I told him about the somewhat awkward situation. Then we laughed and agreed that it's a good thing that men wear jackets to cover their rear. The salesperson then proceeded to ensure me that although the tailor had gone home for the day (to be fair, I was at the store at around 5.30 PM, and they were closing pretty soon), they would fix the trousers first thing in the morning and I would be able to pick them up pretty much as soon as the store opened. All of this on top of the fact that they kindly enough gave me a discount and threw in free alterations to the trousers in the first place, and even then they delivered within 24 hours since I was in somewhat of a hurry that week. Brilliant service.

Then on to the jeans. Amazingly enough the cloth itself wore out with the jeans. And in two weeks! That can't be possible! I take them back to the store and the salesperson takes them and my contact information and promises to be in touch the following morning as she is unable to make a decision on how to proceed by herself and has to consult her boss. Ok, fair enough... Then, the following day... No call. I get interested about the situation as those were the only pair of jeans that I had at the moment and swing by the store just before closing time. The same salesperson is there, this time telling me that yes, I'll get a new pair and that I can pick them up the following day (Day 3). Not any mention of apologies for not following up on the promised call, which then resulted in me making a pointless trip to the store. Well, come Day 3 I go to the store just before closing time and this time there is another salesperson, who I explain the situation to, and just as I'm finished the first salesperson comes along and it turns out that this new person is in fact the boss of the initial salesperson. And now it turns out that the jeans are still not at the store, but I can go fetch them from some obscure location elsewhere. Or I can wait and have them possibly fetch the jeans to this store tomorrow.

At this point I'm quite annoyed at the fact that I've made two pointless trips and still don't have my jeans. My annoyance might've become obvious after I told them that let's just schedule my pickup for next week, so that they would have seven whole days to be able to handle the simple transportation to the store. They insist that the jeans will be available the following day (Day 4). Ok, I'm somewhat skeptical, thank, and leave. Then after 30 minutes I get a phone call from the store saying that the jeans are there. Excellent! I didn't typo the phone number that I gave them. Up until now I was fairly convinced that there was a possibility that I wrote the wrong phone number. Anyway, what am I supposed to do about the situation now? The information is useless as I've already gone home and don't feel like making a fourth trip to the store.

Ultimately I ended up getting the new jeans, and I've been wearing them now for slightly over a week. Right now I'm fairly jumpy and I have this strange feeling that the jeans are slowly coming apart again. Let's hope that they won't, since I do not want to deal with this company again. Actually, if the jeans do come apart, I'm just going to take them back and leave them there. I don't really even care about the money as it was just slightly more than a day's pay, but let's just say that if they don't offer any tangible apology, I'm going to be slightly sad for them.

Let's just hope that the jeans will now last. And I'll never buy anything Swedish ever again, just to be safe...

Asymmetricity of information

The internet is truly a game changing disruption. I've noticed this again recently as I've shifted even more of my shopping online. It's actually quite logical: if you're buying more or less standardized products, the main differentiator between sellers is price. Right now I'm looking for sunglasses. I've narrowed my search down to one pair that I'm fairly interested in, and there is only one place in Finland selling that specific brand of sunglasses. I haven't been there yet, but I'm imagining that they are most likely charging a premium. Fortunately, however, I've been doing my homework and calculated the price that I would have to pay if I ordered them from abroad (including shipping and handling, taxes, and customs fees). Another dimension to this is the currency market, which gives me an additional discount to offset the fees with. So now, thanks to the available information related to the product's price as well as an efficient method of transporting goods globally, I'm going to be in a lot better position to negotiate with the local merchant about the price of the pair of sunglasses that he is selling.

The interesting thing about this is, however, that it's precisely in the asymmetric distribution of information where the merchants make their profits from. Used car merchants used to be in the brilliant position to basically lie and cheat the customer, since the customer was seldom able to value the car as well as the merchant could. Now with the rise of the internet and an access to global used car markets, the buyer can calculate some different scenarios about what it would cost to obtain the car from some other dealer. So in a sense the customer is now able to value the car being sold in a lot more precise and better way. This has sent the used car dealers scrambling for the hills. One Finnish dealer was actually saying in a newspaper that the internet should be destroyed, because it's killing business. That may be, but I for one see the positive aspects in this: business shouldn't necessarily be based on lying and cheating the customer but on creating tangible value add for the customer. If you're not creating value, the globalization of markets will soon drive you out of business. And that's how it should be...

Ethical financing

I was recently in Turku during a student-oriented binge drinking spree. The idea was that people would go around the bar boats in the river Aura and have a drink in each one and collect stamps to obtain a small cloth patch that they can then stitch onto their student overalls. My freshman year came and went a long time ago, but some friends of mine were still able to abduct me from the office and drag me to Turku, so there I was...

After a couple of hours of crawling through bars, we ended up meeting some casual acquaintances from Helsinki. Amongst the group that we met was a person studying economics and finance at Helsinki. I found her quite interesting as she obviously disliked my blatant way of firing opinions and my perception of the world. She insisted that she would become an ethical financier once she graduated. This sparked my interest as the issue is very topical, but I don't think that the finance world will ever change. In my view people will remain greedy and the people on Wall Street will continue to see the world as a zero-sum game. Somebody wins and somebody loses. I don't think there's inherently anything wrong with that: as an analogy we could look at boxing. I don't think the boxers in the ring have any sort of ethical problems when they go head on and try to knock the other guy out. It's only if they come out of the ring and start punching bypassers that it turns somewhat questionable; everyone knows that it's not too nice to punch random bypassers on the street.

Similarily I think financiers and the lot will act extremely rationally in the future and attempt to optimize against their own gain. And that there isn't inherently anything wrong with this: more money is better. Saying that you are an ethical financier is sort of like going in the boxing ring and saying that you'll only use your left hand: you're doing a stupid move and giving the other guy a very big advantage over you. What's the point? I personally won't be giving any of my money to a person who is going to most likely make a loss with it because of some personal agenda and ethical beliefs that they advocate. Instead I want the person investing my money to maximize my money against the timeframe that I'm working.

Now, the observant reader will notice that we completely omitted the definition for "ethical" investing/financing in this context. That's something that my ethical financier and I didn't get around to talking, perhaps because of the many beers that I'd already had. But regardless, I don't think that's the real issue at hand. I would say that within the boxing ring and within the markets, the only unethical things are the things that are made illegal by law. It's not nice to manipulate the markets and use inside information, and so on. But the thing here is that in my opinion the ethical issues should be tackled by the regulator. They should act as the referee and determine what should be allowed and what shouldn't be allowed. One thing that should have become clear from this financial meltdown is that the free markets very rarely are able to moderate themselves over a longer period of time. They always get greedy and the game gets tougher. That's when the regulator should step in and the referee should separate the boxers and make sure that the situation doesn't get out of hand.

The argument I'm trying to provoke here is that if your job is winning, you should not hesitate to use the angles and destroy the opponent. If you look at star athletes, I don't think they go into competition thinking about whether or not it's ethical to beat the opponent. They work within the boundaries that are set by the rules and they do their utmost to win. It's very difficult to start making rules if you're the one who is competing: you can't remain objective enough. And you shouldn't bother yourself with stuff like that. It should be the regulator who needs to understand what the rules are and how they should be developed.

Interestingly enough I don't personally, for instance, engage in derivatives trading. Not because of any ethical reasons as such, but because I feel that I don't right now need derivatives to protect my portfolio and on the other hand I don't want to engage in speculative behavior with derivatives as the risks are too high for me. But derivatives are good for some things and less good for other things. The million dollar question, I guess, is how the regulators will tackle the question about speculative behavior with derivatives: is it ok or should it be regulated? And other such questions...

The new BMW Z4

... it is also a paint brush, so how convenient is that? Aspirational over rational arguments every day of the week, when it comes to cars. You should never get a car that you're merely satisfied with; you should get a car that you actually want. And right now I want quite a few different cars... You know, for different occasions...

On thoughtlessness

We went to see Angels & Demons last week with R and for some odd reason I always get very annoyed at the movie theater. Granted, the movie itself wasn't as horrible as I was afraid of, but it seems that the typical moviegoer these days is not capable of being in any way considerate when it comes to the experience of other viewers. One of my pet peeves is how people are checking their phone in a dark movie theater. Just maybe it's not a good idea, namely because when the backlight of the phone's screen kicks on in a dark room, your movie viewing experience is degraded as your view is automatically turned to the new source of stimulus. And when this happens every ten minutes you can't help but complain to the person (if they are close to you) and wish that you'd have a bottle to throw at the person if they're sitting further away.

Another brilliant thing to do is to leave the movie theater in the middle of the movie in disgust. Nothing's better than directly and immediately protesting against the shitty quality of the plot and acting than to march out in protest. That may work in a theater where the actors are present and attempting to perform (and I have to admit that even I haven't dared disrupt theater presentations in this way, even though I've seen quite a few rather appalling ones in my time), but for some odd reason I think the protest is lost on the fact that at movies you don't have a direct feedback channel available to the actors or the producer or the director. So please, fly to California and bitch and moan at them, but please don't do it in the movie theater. The only thing you accomplish is the same that you get when you play with your phone: the other moviegoers will be wishing that someone would decapitate you.

It's funny since I recall that I've bitched and moaned about these things before. But all seems to not be lost yet as the people playing with their phones seem to know on some level that they're doing something wrong. Or at least I get this feeling when I tell them to lose the phone and shut up. In my experience everyone thus far has put their phones away without trouble. Maybe it's because we Finns inherently adhere to rules or maybe it's because I look scary or something. But from my point of view it doesn't matter what the reason is as long as it continues to work in the future as well.

Alfa

On microblogging and such

Antti, a friend of mine, was recently writing about the issues with micro-blogging services like Twitter. He also reflected his own personal usage and identified the requirement to commit oneself to the micro-blogging as of the single biggest issues for him and the services in general. I see the point, but do not necessarily agree on the potential impact that it has for the systems.

Social software like blogs and social networking sites do require some level of activity. If I don't blog anything here for a while, the few readers that this blog has will disappear. I disagree, however, with the notion that the commitment needs to be that big. Even less so with sites like Twitter. If I don't post anything in a while, it doesn't really matter: I might be away from network connectivity or something similar, but I doubt that people would send search parties to find me. I can't help but feel that Antti's example is not necessarily that realistic. The real value from these services comes from the network externalities. The more friends you have using the systems the more you get from them in the form of updates and such. Even if you're not too active yourself, you can still follow what other people are doing. And when you do post something yourself, you're contributing something to the system, making it that much more valuable.

Now, the systems do indeed require activity, but for me this activity comes from intrinsic motivators. I don't blog for others; I blog for myself. I may update my Facebook status or send a tweet to notify other people, but again I do this out of free will, not because I feel that I have to do so. Antti does, however, brush upon one point that is relevant here: if you feel that you "have to" update your blog and if you are driven by external motivators, you are of course a lot more likely to stop blogging and using Twitter than if you were doing it for yourself instead of other people.

While most of the social software these days does benefit from network externalities, I do feel that there is one very tangible threat around the corner. While technically the more information that goes through the network has traditionally meant more value for each node of the network, the same problem lurks nearby that Google has been tackling for the World Wide Web since the mid-90s: creating some sense into the chaos of information tidbits. So the risk is that as our social links go increasingly online, there need to be proper tools to filter and manage the information that spreads in the network. A fine and very tangible example of this is the Facebook phenomenon of quizes: many people feel a need to fill out tons of different quizes to supposedly learn something interesting about themselves. These quiz notifications go out to all of the friends in the network, but even with some hundred contacts the problem is easily that the quiz notifications drown all the other signals in the network and thus actually reduce the value of the network by increasing the noise level and making it more difficult for me to pick up the signals that interest me.

Crisis, opportunities, and change

The economic downturn is finally hitting more tangible and personal levels. Our unit at work began negotiations to "streamline" its operations (as can be read from Finnish newspapers). According to the Finnish labor legislation, there is a six week long consultation period during which representatives from the employers and the employees attempt to negotiate the specifics of the arrangements.

Interestingly enough I was talking with a few people about this situation and the general attitude people have is negative. That's not very surprising per se, but if you do the math and carefully plan different scenarios, at least I noticed that getting laid off might not even be the worst possible scenario. Amidst the crisis and the events that have begun to unfold, there are plenty of opportunities. The driver of all this is change: change in the market place, change in the organization and competences, change in the financial setup, and so on. Change isn't inherently good or bad. It can have good resulting effects or bad resulting effects. Most often both, depending on the perspective you take.

A major reason why people think negatively of layoffs is that they fear change, because there is always a deal of uncertainty involved. And more often than not people equate uncertainty with lack of visibility to the future. But in many cases the situation can be helped merely by looking objectively and mapping out the future according to different assumptions. And eventually you'll notice that there are some scenarios with suboptimal results and others with much better results. But during the process you also make the fog a bit less thick and enhance your visibility about different situations. And more importantly, you can also identify the different crossroads and decision points that you can actually influence yourself.

I won't go into my thinking on the current subject per se, as that I fear does not really fit the scope of this blog. As with poker, often in times of tight situations its better to keep your cards to yourself rather than spilling all the beans. Sufficient to say, I'm not very worried about the current situation. There are one or two scenarios that may have clearly negative impacts, but the probabilities of those materializing are very slim (not least because they're the ones the I can actually influence very well myself). But besides those, there are a few paths which are more probable in regards to how the events might unfold, and none of these paths is especially poor.

And as a closing thought, one of the key things here is flexibility, both in strategy as well as operations. If you lose your flexibility, then you're a sitting duck. As long as you have degrees of freedom left, you are still able to execute maneuvers and attempt to flank the situation and sieze the moment.

Drastic times call of drastic measures

It's been a long break from blogging again. Part of it is due to a certain increased level of self-consciousness stemming from the fact that it turns out that apparently more people are aware of this blog than I had anticipated. And that in turn has unconsciously caused me to become slightly more critical about what I write (= I've started writing on multiple occasions but then abandoned the pursuit in a streak of self-censorship). But another, perhaps bigger part of the lack of activity has been the refocusing of energy to other pursuits, namely work and exercise. But because work is work, we'll just discuss a bit about exercising instead.

I recently signed up for the Helsinki City Run, a half-marathon, for the second year in a row. I'm hoping to make it a habit of sorts in an effort to keep myself at least somewhat fit. This was caused by the sudden realization that I had weighed 79 kg after the surgery last summer, but more recently my weight had popped up to 91 kg. This in turn created an imminent issue with my wardrobe, namely that my slim-fit shirts and aggressively cut suits would soon have to either make another appointment with the tailor or just make room for better fitting clothing. And with the economic downturn, going to the Zegna-shop just seemed like too suicidal, the logical conclusion was that we'd of course take aggressive measures driven by vanity to curb the trend of increasing waist size.

Actually the situation isn't as hopeless as this might sound. The only real measurement of size that you want to use these days is in fact the aforementioned waist size, and a perfect measurement for that are your jeans. And I still fit into the same jeans as well as I did five years ago. The other measurement, in light of the HCR, is how long and fast I can run. I have occasionally been doing some running on the treadmill at the office, but last Wednesday I went out for the second actual jog outdoors this year. The target was to run around Lauttasaari, but then halfway through I was feeling so good that I decided to extend the jog to cover also Keilalahti. In the end I managed to do about 16 km in pretty much exactly an hour and thirty minutes. So on that dimension the HCR should not be that big a problem as long as I continue doing some running before it.

But more importantly I've again found the drive to actually do some training. Running outside has turned out to be more fun than I remembered and I've also been averaging a couple of times to the gym per week. And best of all I am actually seeing some improvements in strength and stamina, which further motivate me. So hopefully this pre-emptive strike will have more positive effects and ensure that the basic backbone of my wardrobe will be safe for years to come.

On a completely unrelated note, I watched Geraint Anderson's documentary on investment banking and bankers in London last week and got interested in the subject again. I also ordered his book along with some others that I had been meaning to get. Check out his somewhat provocative and very much hilarious music video below...

The problem with Finnish (or: Why we should all just be engineers)

We went to the theater last night with R to see Teatteri Takomo perform Ihmeellinen armo. It was about the rise and fall of an Evangelical-Lutheran preacher. I won't actually go into the plot too much, but sufficient to say it made me think of There Will Be Blood more than a few times. And they also played the National Coalition card; nothing's easier than to poke fun at the upper classes. Anyway, I have to admit that I'm not a very big fan of Finnish television or theater. Or very many art forms in general. My issues are multifold: on one hand I always feel that Finnish as a language, while average for literature, is entirely appalling and unsuitable for any sort of verbal artform. On the other hand I feel that an average Finnish actor has the stage charisma of a shoe. The starting points are thus not too good for the Finnish "intellectual" artforms.

Maybe it has something to do with the overall Finnish attitude and temperament. We've traditionally been very sparsely populated as a country and very much oriented towards survival in a climate where the winters are dark and cold and agriculture stands firmly on its own, as long as the European Union is supporting it. I talked to a Polish acquaintance a few years back and he explained that they see Finns as good intending folks, who may be slightly naive and like to cut trees, swim across rivers (as opposed to using bridges) and then drink vodka to get warm again. And once a Finn starts to do something, s/he will typically do the best s/he can. So it's not a surprise that once a Finn decides to act, it will be something that you will remember: "Now I am acting and I am going to let everyone know that I truely am acting." Not too good, especially if acting is supposed to be the act of pretending or portraying someone who you are not. If acting is deception, then Finns will be unbelievably appalling in lying.

And then about the language: this is slightly difficult to elaborate on, since it's just something that personally annoys me very greatly. I don't consider Finnish an especially beautiful language. It lacks the finesse that some other languages have and the language is difficult to master. I've never read Douglas Adams in Finnish, but I somehow feel that if I had, I would've had to contemplate hurting myself to ease the pain. There are some famous Finns who have been able to make beautiful and great things with Finnish (Mika Waltari comes to mind, for obvious reasons). It's just a shame that had they had access to better tools in the form of other languages, they could've potentially achieved very much more and on a more global scale.

Then there is the general problem that amateur theaters have to struggle with: building credibility and getting noticed. This isn't necessarily applicable only to Finns, but based on personal experience, it just seems that Finnish theater, especially on the lower levels, is very much based on silly gimmicks and plots and dialogue that has been written for the sole reason of trying too much to be controversial, thought-provoking, and intellectual. Or if it doesn't aspire to the former of the three, then it's because it wants to be so artsy that it will be credible in the right circles. This combined with the "I'm acting now!" trait, as described above, can result in very... err... well, something.

Now, I know I might be fairly cruel. And I have to admit that Ihmeellinen armo was surprisingly decent for Finnish theater. And I know that theaters have trouble to compete with other entertainment forms in the contemporary world and for the niche that is still left it's a cutthroat competition to the end. But that does not change the fact that more often than not I just cannot stand Finnish theater. As an experience, I much more prefer the opera.

And one last thing: I seriously hate it when the actors start interacting with the audience. The audience is often very courteous and respects the presence of the fourth wall, but when the actors break the wall, I personally have a very big urge to also abuse the broken wall and throw something at them in return...

On deltas, again

I was watching the latest episode (S02E19) of Gossip Girl on Tuesday morning and I noticed that indeed the most interesting things in life often do revolve around change. We hosted a very interesting seminar at work where we benchmarked various things and there also the most interesting tidbits of knowledge were concerned with trends, or deltas and amounts of change over a time period.

As with benchmarking trends, Gossip Girl is also interesting because of the deltas. My favorite character from the start onwards was always Chuck, who on the surface is a very superficial and manipulative chap, but it was obvious from the beginning onwards that this setup would afford the most juicy character development prospects, at least from my perspective. And now with season 2, things have come true. I won't spoil anything for the Finns reading this blog who are following the series on Finnish television (and thus lagging 18 episodes), but I will say that right now Chuck's situation is interesting to say the least. And it's all thanks to the deltas.

Count your blessings, not your problems

Now I've pretty much seen and heard it all. I've been called a lot of things by very many different people, but I've never been called a Count before (well, the closest one prior to this incident was when I was told that I had a slight resemblance to the Count of Monte Cristo; I don't necessarily entirely agree with this...).

Anyway, we were checking out the new entrants to the Helsinki nightlife with Istvan on Saturday and thanks to his magnificent charm and exotic appearance, my friend was gathering the attention of the fairer gender for the most part of the evening. We eventually found our way to the recently opened Tiger where we ran across some of the people from the previous destinations. I kept myself out of the discussions and let my friend enjoy the ride while I kept myself preoccupied by working on my recent Twitter addiction and trying to figure out what I would like to drink next with an additional constraint that the generic, but still very friendly, bar staff would actually know how to make (it turns out that Manhattans are way to exotic). The bomb of the night arived when I briefly rejoined the conversation my friend was having: our new pals were very much intrigued whether or not I was a member of nobility, a Count perhaps. Unfortunately I had to admit that to the best of my knowledge I am nothing of the like. Nor are my ways in general very noble, so there we are...

I didn't get around to asking what this was about, but I have formed two mutually non-exclusive theories regarding my supposed promotion. The first is that Finland is still not entirely ready for any sort of dandyism, and I would very much argue that what I was wearing wasn't very dandyistic in the first place--a black blazer with grey buttons, a white-and-blue striped shirt, relaxed jeans, brown oxfords and a black Ascot tie with slightly slicked back but still wavy hair. My second theory is that I might've come off as slightly arrogant by excluding myself from the conversation and also exhibiting a decent posture and restraint of unnecessary facial expressions.

Now, asides from these two theories I'm still very much baffled. But this begs the question as to whether or not Finland is destined to be doomed; are Finnish men really so lost that Finnish women will mistake a semi-decently dressed person as a person with class and are youngsters so ill after being exposed to hip-hop-pop that they cannot hold a decent posture? Now that one actually begins to think about it, maybe it seriously is so...

Moving on, surprisingly enough The Tiger seemed like a semi-decent place. It's still essentially Lux but with a slightly different colorscheme and women who are more aggressively trying to steal drinks that your group has positioned onto a table. Then again, it was opened on Friday, so I guess we'll need to give it a month or two and see what it turns into. Privé opened up again a while back after being closed for a few years. The opening event saw the place packed up pretty tightly, but last Saturday it was more or less empty. Is it so that trying to position yourself in the upmarket amidst a recession is a foolish thing, or is it just that the places that are truly founded in the upmarket are ones that stay around year after year and are not even competing in the same category as the fad-ish clubs that come and go in three year cycles... Anyone see the parallels to the fashion and art worlds?

Spaces and decorating

I was watching an episode of a Finnish home decoration/renovation series last night and they were renovating the home of one of the hosts of the program. His home was a large loft apartment and being an interior decorator or something of the like, he had fairly solid views about what he wanted and what he didn't want. The outcome, while technically ok, was not something that I would've done.

I really like loft apartments thanks to the vast amounts of space they provide. But in my opinion the whole philosophy of a loft apartment is to be industrial and minimalist in some way; in the show last night the end result was very much crowded and looked like something that was forced into the world for the sake of doing something "different" and making a statement. It just didn't work, in my opinion. There were too many tricks and gimmicks to keep the open and spacious nature of the loft intact.

But I guess there might be some issues with decorating large areas. A person I once knew lived in this quite decent sized apartment, but the problem there was the typical Finnish mentality of decorating: put all of the furniture along the walls. There were other issues with not having any continuity or having interesting details, but the main turn-off for me was that by piling everything against the walls, it looked empty and soulless. As if no effort and creativity was used at all. In smaller spaces it's more difficult to place furniture due to the constraints, but in open areas this constraint doesn't exist and things should be a lot more easy. If you want to go for minimalism in open spaces, you should take very bold stances and not fear about placing furniture in the middle of the room.

But I'm nitpicking here and provoking a fight. While I have strong opinions on these subjects, ultimately I guess the core point is that you have to feel at home in your apartment or house. That said, you can decorate things in an interesting way, or then you can be a Finn...

On support

All in all I would say that I'm fairly responsible as a person. This manifests itself in various different ways and when I typically start doing something, I want to do it properly and strive to keep within the given timeframes. In practice this means that occasionally I put in decent amounts of time and effort at work, which I guess most people do. It's also sometimes called commitment.

Based on empirical evidence, the reactions to this sort of effort and commitment are interesting, to say the least. They vary very widely from just acknowledging that "yeah, that's life" to the oh-so-traditional "you're working too hard, you should take it more easy". It's very seldom that I've heard very many encouraging things, which has led me to wonder why that is. It's actually surprisingly often that I encounter the "you should take it more easy" reaction, and somehow I always get this impression that this is just something that you should say to attempt to discourage the person from putting in more effort into something and as such tries to inhibit the progress of the other person. I know that this may be quite a strong interpretation and that there are others as well, but on some level it just feels that when someone tells you that, they're in fact trying to tell themselves that it's ok that they're not putting in as much effort and obtain some sort of better consience. It's something that happens when the other person feels that they're not ahead in the game and might be feeling threatened.

And as usual, this has been slightly provocative in an attempt to bring out another aspect to this phenomenon. So take it with a grain of salt...

Pensions

There's a very populist debate going on in Finland right now about what to do with retirement age of people. For a few years now it has been 63, but now the government is suggesting that it should be raised to 65 on the grounds that with the declining population and other factors related to the financing of pensions, it is very possible that this bomb will blow up in our faces sooner or later and that we should attempt to counteract that by getting a few extra years out of people.

According to recent surveys, the majority of people are very much against this turn of events. I am not one of them. It's very selfish to assume shove the problem on the people who will be financing the pensions of tomorrow. In the past the retirement age has been even higher than 65. Additionally Finland prefers the model of pension financing where a part of the pensions are paid directly from the taxes collected each year and a part is paid from funds collected in the past. Obviously with the current financial crisis the situation is slightly more difficult with all investments deep in the red, so even on these grounds I think the raise is somewhat warranted. Although I have to admit that I haven't done the math myself; but then again, I get the impression that the social democrats have flunked their math too.

In fact, because of this debate I've started to wonder why we even have this central system of pensions. Why do I have to be a part of it? What if I want to arrange my future pension myself? If I think that I can get a better ROI on the money I currently pay to the government myself. In that case the argument about the retirement age would become smaller: you should be able to retire when you feel so yourself, and if you can afford it. If you can't afford to retire, that's of course a problem, but one that you should have thought about before. Now the social democrats will rush in and tell us that we can't leave anyone behind and we have to support the weakest. And they do have a point in that, but I'm increasingly fed up with their populist arguments and the fact that I have a feeling that I'll be one of the poor souls who will end up as part of the upper middle class who will be paying for the mistakes of other people.

If you think about it: the people who work the hardest earn the most. Not always, but there is a correlation, I would say. They also get taxed very much, thanks to the progressive taxation that is in place in Finland. At the same time if you work when you study, you cannot get any support from the government, unlike if you just decided to be drunk all day, every day at the campus. Then you graduate and start earning money, out of which you finance the elementary school dropouts and drug addicts. Then you also pay the retirement taxes to finance the pensions of people who are retired, either because of age or because they're in such a bad shape that they can't work anymore. And by the way, you won't ever be able to enjoy any of the benefits because you'll die of a heartattack at the office when you're 45.

So let me apologize, but I do not always understand how the world is fair. The current system, at least in Finland, is penalizing you for trying to succeed in any way. If we want to keep the current pension system working, then by all means raise the age requirement to 65. I'm quite convinced that I personally won't reach that age, but I am certain that whether I want it or not, I'll be contributing my fair share to the health and wealth of the nation at large. I'm, however, increasingly starting to feel that maybe I should go make my contribution somewhere else...

Back to basics

It turns out that my football coach was always right... If we look at the past few years and think about the lessons we should learn, one of the core ones is this: STICK TO THE FUNDAMENTALS! If the foundations aren't good, there's no point in building a house on top of them. Now the million (or should we say several billion?) dollar question is how do we actually remember to do this.

Even very recently, I still see events which trigger the question: why so hasty and why these rash actions? Where are the fundamentals?

X is right, works, clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit

People aren't complex. People are simple. The world isn't hard to understand inherently, but the difficulty arises from us artificially creating opacity ourselves and not even always understanding it. We create endless amounts of artifacts and build monuments to ourselves, but lose touch with everything else and just sink into the bottomless pit of quicksand. It's ironic how reaching for the stars never results in anything permanent, no clarity and no fulfillment. It's all a big joke, but seeing it may at times be difficult. Some people might argue that it's drama, but it's all a satire. Embrace the dark humor and find solace and terra firma in that, since the castles in the clouds are merely that: not there.

Find X.

The vacation that wasn't...

A mental note to self: the next time I go on vacation, I'm going leave all laptops and mobile phones to the office and be entirely unreachable. I've been at work more than I've had true vacation days during this past month. Sheesh...

Summer's around the corner...

It's nearing the end of January already and that means only one thing: only a few more months (and then a few) until it's time to ditch the tweeds and hide the leather gloves and get your hands on the all time favorite summer wear: linen suits, seersucker jackets, polo shirts, etc. Another sure sign of this is that everyone's already got their spring and summer catalogs prepared and available. So in short, time to start checking out what to get and then start pestering the tailor again to have things adjusted.



This time around I think that the first thing to get is a decent seersucker jacket, which is unfortunately missing from my wardrobe. And because it's a very preppy thing to do, obviously the right choice is to turn to Brooks Brothers for the quintessential American attitude and cut. Some people who follow this blog will obviously be completely at a loss as to why I'm all of a sudden interested in Americans once again. And to be honest, I have no idea. At first I was going to say that it must be because the only real way to spend a summer is to be at the Hamptons, but, well... That's not exactly true. In Europe we have the Italians who have the brilliant ability to dress well for summer.

To add to the confusion, I'm turning into a serious mess now that I've been turning to Italian clothing in the immediate past (a couple of coats by Zegna and a suit by Valentino Roma), which in itself is a mild change of direction from the British attitude. So I'm sorry, I don't have a coherent answer for this. It's just a thing that depends on the feeling, I guess. Some days you wake up and feel that New England is the way to go (yeah, yeah, I know that it's a horrible thing to say) and on other days there's nothing better than an aggressive Italian cut and slicking your hair back and waving your hands around uncontrollably while elaborating issues like this to your friends over a cup of espresso.

But maybe, just maybe this is not a weakness but a strength of sorts. I know that it somewhat conflicts with the notion of having a clear and focused personal style and is borderline fashion/faddish, but it need not be. While writing all this, it's starting to become more clear. Maybe the following rough outlines will help to clarify the stylistic positions that I hold at this moment:

• The British attitude in general and the cut of their suits in specific are a sure choice for the office. Conservative, boring, and fitting into the masses and the classes around.
• Weekends are somewhat more difficult, but blazers and knitwear and a right balance between the Brits and the Italians may be a good idea here. And during the nights out on town, nothing can come close to the Italian flamboyance.
• The winter is the time for heavier cloths and as the weather gets tougher, the clothes need to be able to withstand more as well. The British climate, at least in some respects, is closer to the Finnish climate than what the Neapolitan crowd is accustomed to.
• In general the American sack mentality is entirely horrid, but may be acceptable in casual circumstances, making it an ideal competitor for the Italian summer look. Balancing between the two may require tons of effort, but can potentially be an interesting path. Let's face it: the New England crowd and the Italian crowd are both into sailing, so they can't be entirely incompatible...

And now that I briefly re-read this entry, I'm no longer at all certain whether or not I'm saying anything in a consistent manner. But oh well, I'm still getting myself that seersucker from Brooks Brothers...

"I have to return some tapes..."

Oh, and I did buy a new coat from Ermenegildo Zegna today...

You either die a hero, or...

In the recent follow-up Batman movie, The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent uttered a view that "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Being a villian is often just dependent on the point of view, but I was personally intrigued about whether this thought could be applied to the corporate world with some modifications to capture a key part of career creation...

A very well known strategy to climb the ranks in the corporate world is to continuously keep moving. Often moving within a single part of the organization, or even the same organization, is not enough and if you want to turbo-boost your career, you should just jump from company to company and back again. A cynical person would say that if you look at the life cycle of a project, the organization climbers are most visible from the outset of the project. They hold the speeches and launch the projects, but soon afterwards they move onwards, leaving other people to deal with the shit.

If we consider Harvey's quote and remember that surprisingly many projects fail (i.e. are not fully succesful along the metrics that they are evaluated against), maybe the dynamics are that you should quit while being "victorious" (i.e. before you've been defeated, which is the same as moving on even before the first battles ensue) or if you stick around, you will ultimately fail. To elaborate: give a person, a job and enough time and eventually the person will fail in one way or another. And the more you fail, the more difficult it may become to justify promotions. Failures decrease momentum, and momentum is precisely the thing that gets you promoted.

On the other hand, if you actively switch jobs and pursue new challenges, you don't have the time to fail because you're already elsewhere. You seem very proactive, energetic, and dynamic (and a lot of other meaningless adjectives as well). It seems that you're continuously on the move and are able to make things move with you, and thus it is easy to get promotions. Additionally, once you've left, assuming that you didn't totally mess things up, time will take care of things and people will mostly remember the (small) accomplishments that you were able to achieve. Then when you come back, not only do you already, by default, have a larger paycheck and a niftier title, but because nothing is really ever taken away from you, it's all the easier to give you an even bigger paycheck and a corner office. If you had initially asked for both and suggested that you should jump a paygrade or few to your superiors, that would quite potentially have been met with a fair amount of skepticism.

So maybe in the corporate world Harvey's view is distorted into "You either continue to move as a hero, or stick around long enough to fail (and thus die)." Or something to that extent. People who are better with words can undoubtedly make that sound more sexy.

The thing about fine dining...

Fine dining is typically considered a joke in very many circles in Finland. I guess it's also quite universal that people poke fun at the "small" size of the dishes and the large amount of forks and knives present on the table. But in fact, fine dining is a very nice way to spend time with friends and acquaintances. The servings may be small, but from experience the overall amount of food is pretty much perfect; when you leave the restaurant, I've seldom felt hunger. The very many different courses take care of that. Also, more emphasis is spent on the experience on a holistic level: the waiters and waitresses can help you coordinate the food and the wine to achieve a completely different taste than what one can achieve with casual dining. And overall the whole situation has that "old world" charm in it. Instead of the hectic pace that is so present elsewhere in this day and age, you can just enjoy those small luxuries in life.

Oh, and I'm sure that by exchanging McDonald's with Chez Dominique, a lot less people would be obese. :) And speaking of which, I'm going to to that piggy restaurant on Wednesday. Yay.