... keep up, buddy.

On crises

Crises are typically associated with bad things and maybe that is the most obvious interpretation also. In a crisis like the one I'm currently going through, I guess in all honesty I don't see anything good right now. And the only semi-good thing that I see is that in crises you can often see where people truly stand. Who sticks by you, who doesn't, and who just simply doesn't care. Even now I can say that this has been a truly eye opening experience and I guess a lot of relationships have been defined differently.

Harassment

There was an article about sexual harassment in Finnish elementary schools, especially focusing on the 9th graders, in a local newspaper today. I found the article very disturbing as such, and especially the attitudes that people have towards sexual harassment; "Boys will be boys..." It's quite unbelievable that this seems to be a general attitude of even some teachers in a country which is considered to be one of the better places in the world to live in. "Boys will be boys" is not a good answer and I think people in positions of trust who hold that view should as well relinquish their positions -- in my eyes they no longer hold any trust.

After doing some brief reading on the subject it seems like a real swamp. And it seems that people who experience harassment are in a true hell. At best bringing up the situation with the harasser might help, but I guess that's slightly optimistic to say the least. And at worst there might be powerful networks at play to silence and play down the events. The world seems to be slowly going in the right direction on other fronts (e.g. Amnesty International has a very good campaign to stop the violence against women). And I guess nowadays it is very widely accepted that for instance rape is very condemnable and must be acted upon. But still it makes my stomach turn that harassment goes on and it is performed by and condoned by people who you would assume to be even slightly intelligent.

The question of what to do is also, again, very difficult. I guess it has much to do with attitudes again and in this sense I think this issue should also be tackled at an elementary school level. And that raises the question as to how, considering that most school goers are, well, not necessarily up to par and cannot or will not grasp the problem. And even if the issue was tackled at that level, it still leaves the current situation with the people who have already left schools. It seems that the harassed person has two options: either deal with the situation by flying below radars (and often finding little or no support at all) or raise a red flag and in essence become a martyr and engage in a long and tedious fight to improve the world. Even slightly.

In this light it's clear that in the ideal world everyone who would experience sexual harassment would make a case out of it, but that leaves open very many questions of where the person would find the power, the resources, and the support to go up against a very powerful foe and the general attitudes of people. And I again have found myself holding the ever-so-optimistic view that everyone would have the energy to try to make the world a better place. But from an academic standpoint it's easy to say what should be done; I seem to very often inherently lack the micro-level perspective of how bettering the world affects people on an individual level. Sacrificing yourself to improve the world is a noble cause, but the sacrifice might bear heftier costs than can be predicted by an outsider. A lower-middle single parent of two going up against her employer begs the question: which is more important, to try to better the world at a macro-level or try to survive and protect your children. And in this light I guess there is no moral obligation in one direction or the other; assuming that the victims have the energy to fight a prolonged battle is possibly somewhat naive of me. But this situation simply makes me sick and I cannot understand what the people engaging in sexual harassment are thinking, if anything at all. My apologies for the rant, but I just had to vent about this problem somewhere.

Bubbles?

The Finnish independence day came and went again yesterday. And no, I won't blog about independence, because life's a roller coaster and right now macro-level issues aren't really at the top of my mind. Sufficient to say, yesterday was hell and I decided to just go bury my head in sand for the weekend.

I did, however, stumble across a YouTube video that was going around on some mailing lists and thought I'd share that:

Traveling

When I was quite a bit younger I got my fair share of traveling. My parents dragged me and my brother along on many different trips. So in a way I guess you could say that I grew up to be not as much a Finn as something else. But the flip side of the coin was that when we finally returned to Finland from our three year stay in the US, I was quite fed up with traveling as such. And as seems to be the general consensus these days, I still hate flying.

But. Recently I've found traveling again. And lo and behold, it is fun. A week and a half back we were in Milan for a quick weekend trip. Shot in and out in less than 24 hours. Some people have questioned what the point of the exercise was. I guess there wasn't any. It was just a bar hopping trip. Oh, and I did get to meet Micol and hang around Milan for a while. Overall I had a great time and we certainly got a bunch of interesting stories out of the trip too, regardless of the short time.

The problematic thing returning from Milan was that I in fact didn't really want to go back to Finland. And now I'm actually planning a couple of trips for the first half of 2008. We're going to do a nice three day shopping trip to London with Eve early in January (booked the hotel just now) and then there have been some discussions with another friend of mine about arranging an Italian road trip later in the spring; possibly fly to Milan, rent a nifty Alfa Romeo 159, and then drive around a bit before ending up in Rome and flying back to Finland. Anyway, the trip to London will materialize with quite a bit of certainty. Let's just hope that Italy: Redux will also work out.

Oh, and another nifty thing about traveling is that you can finally use Dopplr to brag about your jetsetter lifestyle... ;) (Dopplr seems to still be in closed beta, so feel free to bug me for invitations if you want an account...)

Assets and liabilities

Last summer's credit crunch and financial market debacle seems to still be going on and volatility seems to be back once again. I guess this, in a sense, is healthier in the long run when compared to the scenario where the bull market would've just continued on and on. Of course it's also annoying in the sense that you can't really make money as easily in a bear market as you can in a bull market. But such is life.

Anyway, the entire credit crunch situation got me thinking about assets and liabilities. And an uneducated feeling would be that very many people can get these two concepts mixed up very easily. Or if not entirely mixed up, at least the focus and perspective on things gets distorted easily. Is a house that is financed with a mortgage considered an asset? According to some definition, and asset is the sum of liabilities and equity. And an asset should generate some sort of value for the holder in order to be considered an asset in the first place. In light of these definitions, a house is of course an asset in rising markets; it keeps on increasing its value and then when you utilize other mechanisms by, for instance, selling it, you can make a nifty profit. Do that, take the money, and then buy a bigger house and start the cycle again with a bigger loan. And as long as things go up, you keep making money and can keep on upgrading houses. But the assumption was that bull markets continue and that thanks to the decrease in volatility and thus risk (via the central banks' recently learned mechanisms of interest rates through which inflation, for instance, can be controlled) leads people to underestimate the impact of the associated liabilities. Credit dries up, rates go through the roof and voilá, liabilities kill you.

And why am I thinking about assets and liabilities? I'm in the midst of a crisis; I've been looking at used cars for the past couple of days and I just want a car. A used Audi A4 or something. But as an investment it's incredibly bad, as cars notoriously only lose value (if you forget some exceptions like some rare vintage cars). Not only that, but buying a car would also require me to finance it partly via debt. And as much fun as a car would be, I'm too afraid of the liabilities and the extent to which they tie me down. Things are going decently well for me right now, but who knows how long this'll last...

Oh, and as an additional note, this is also my 150th blog entry in this blog. Hurray!

Jingle bells...

We got our first actual snow in Helsinki yesterday and in the evening I couldn't help but feel more than a bit Christmas-y. The white snow trickling down from the sky and the contrast the darkness creates combined with empty streets and a good day overall created a near perfect atmosphere. For a change it just seemed that things were perfect. At least until reality hits you again and you remember how backlogged you are... But it was a nice feeling regardless. And I'm actually looking forward to Christmas this year...

Emotional wellbeing

I was watching a presentation on YouTube today that brushed on the topic of child mortality and the correlation with GDP and the results were fairly comforting; in the past four decades the child mortality has decreased and the gap between the western countries and third world countries has been steadily decreasing. And I guess it's easy to extrapolate that overall people are living much longer and more healthy than before. This can be seen in the sense that there are movements away from trash food and towards healthier foods and the rapid growth of the wellness/fitness business.

But this lead me to wonder about the overall state of us. This is nothing new but recently I've been hearing lots of stories and witnessing some first hand cases of situations where people feel really bad. The Jokela massacre last week, I believe, was mostly motivated by the bad feelings and anxiety and other psychological issues than from any political ideology, regardless of what the perpetrator stated in his writings. I guess now that we're not dying as much as before, we're becoming worse off in the scale of psychological and emotional wellness. More people are feeling really bad. Which is interesting, becuase by all meters we're wealthier and better off than ever before. And this, again, is nothing new. But it's an interesting phenomenon regardless. And raises interesting questions as to what is causing this and how could this be solved. Even though school shootings might still be considered black swan events (i.e. very unlikely to happen), the problem still manifests itself in many smaller ways.

At work I heard today of a case where a youngster had tried to kill herself. And this was supposedly already the second time. And incidents like these aren't very rare as I've heard of quite many similar ones from just a rather small circle of people. Overall I'm wondering what's the reason behind this sort of behaviour, especially when it comes to younger people. I personally can't really offer an explanation asides from the so typical answers of "the pressure that society places on young people these days through increased cut throat competition" and so on. But I'm not entirely convinced that that's a valid answer. It's too vague. I will, however, admit that the above may play some smaller role as I as a young person will also agree that on some level competition is quite fierce in the academia and work environments. But it still hasn't made me think of giving up my life or harming myself or others in any way. On the contrary, actually. Right now I'm very enthusiastic about some aspects of the world. I'm enjoying my studies and my work even though I have to give quite a lot of energy to be able to handle them to a satisfactory extent. Of course everyone comes across a multitude of problems and issues along their journey, but why do people resort to extremes instead of just trying to find a solution to the problems. Every problem has a solution and even if the solution is so difficult that it can't be found, most problems can be circumvented one way or the other. It just seems that instead of stopping and drawing breath when confronted with a problem, people instead do rash and hasty decisions and just cause more problems. And that's a shame.

Target markets

I've previously blogged about the VisualDNA personality thingy and it seems that they have found an interesting venue for making money. Or at least offer value. I was browsing Facebook this morning and stumbled on a similar test as a Facebook application, and what they've done is hooked the personality mapping to Christmas presents. Click on a bunch of pictures that please you and the system will then calculate what sorts of presents you might like. It also gives you a link to buy it. But what's more brilliant than giving people a free personality test and then using the results to find the products that best match your values. And this is actually quite an interesting application, unlike the things done by the blokes who think aliens are attached to your head.

And as a completely separate note, Guinness has a brilliant advertisement:

Wages and unions and whatnot

The debate concerning the wages in the healthcare industry in Finland has been going on for a while. For any non-Finns who might read this, the union is demanding over 20% increases in wages, whereas the employers were offering 13%. The raise was more than what other fields already got and is also narrowing the wage gap between men and women. But come on, 20%+ raises for a massive group of people! Is it so difficult to understand that a radical move like that can't be healthy for the economy. The solution, I guess, would be to print more money. I bet the nurses would jump with joy if every person were given an additional couple of grands every year. But wait, I guess that's not it. I guess it's the traditional Finnish mechanism of envy at play...

A survey some time ago focused on asking people which scenario they would prefer: a) they would earn 50 000 euros per year and their neighbor 60 000 euros per year or b) they would earn 40 000 euros per year and their neighbor 30 000 euros per year. Legend has it that most took option b). I guess there is some logic to that (maybe overall everyone would get less in option b) and thus you would be in a better off position as money is more scarce). Or then maybe it's just that it's so much more annoying when your neighbor earns more. Maybe this is the reason for the reaction that the nurses are having right now. Who knows.

Another interesting argument is the wage gap between genders. A commonly held view is that in the job market, if a male is paid one euro, the equivalent female will get something like 76 or 80 cents. There was recently an interesting blog post on a blog under Kauppalehti (a Finnish newspaper focusing on economic matters). It presented the view that whereas men might earn more, they also pay more taxes. Then men also typically have a shorter life expectancy, meaning that men get less back in pensions. Which leads to the situation that men don't really get the aforementioned one euro, but instead we get 70 cents. And maybe the supposed wage gap is a reflection of the fact that most women are away from work for a few years when they have children. And then another go when the next one comes along. So, why not just not have children and go full steam ahead with the career? The tax records that were published recently for 2006 showed that quite many women were earning seven digit figures in Finland. Not too shabby. And because Finland is a free country, the last time I checked, nobody is forcing anyone to become a nurse. Why not instead study a bit more and hit the higher salaried jobs if money is really the issue.

And that brings us to an interesting aspect again; offshoring is a real bogeyman in the US. Jobs are being shipped to lower cost countries. And I guess American salaries are in fact quite generous and the tax levels quite low. Compared to the US, the salary gap in Finland between the highest and lowest paid employees isn't really that large. People performing blue collar jobs are pretty near to the white collar jobs. And in some situations blue collar jobs pay even better. The low wage levels in Finland are one reason why Finland isn't really part of the losing team in the offshoring battle. In fact, because Finland is so cheap, I would imagine that Finns would be getting some of the jobs being offshored from other countries. And that means more jobs for Finns and more taxes for the government and more overall wealth. Doesn't look too shabby.

And to end up, I just want to suggest that everyone at least once in their life would actually try to take a realistic view of the world. It's not that shitty a place to be in, actually. And if it is, maybe you can do something about it. But if you do decide to do something about it, try not to wreck the entire place (e.g. the economical landscape as in the Tehy case) and maybe also keep in mind the simple thought that maybe you can get a lot more ahead in the game by just making sure that you're moving. I know, that's not fun because in a case like that you're the one doing the grunt work and you can't really freeload that much. And it seems that these days taking responsibility for one's self is becoming a rarer thing in general. Everyone keeps on blaming everyone else for their misery. I for one plan to just keep thinking up of plans and new plans and executing them while trying to work towards my personal longterm goals. And I'm not really assuming that any unions or any other entities will be helping me. I'm actually betting that they really won't, which just means that I'll have to just take that into account and carry more responsibility. But that's what makes this life so interesting.

Trust

Trust is an intricate thing to say the least. Some people put trust in other people and other entities too easily and others are as paranoid as they come. As with many things, I guess neither extreme is that good and to my shame, I'm still searching for an equilibrium myself. Trust is difficult to achieve and even more difficult to uphold. From a game theoretical point of view, there are quite many strategies which suggest that abusing trust in certain situations would be beneficial. Perhaps even necessary, if you have the ability to strike first and in that way defend your positions better. But game theory is also an interesting thing in the sense that it offers some lenses to view the world through, but following it blindly is not good either.

I took a Pendolino to Salo this today and a person sitting behind me didn't have a ticket. That by itself isn't that big a deal, as he was running late and wanted to purchase the ticket from the train. Unfortunately for him, Visa Electron doesn't work unless there's a direct connection to the bank with which the account balance can be checked and the money deducted. The person checking the tickets, however, did something rather unusual. He showed trust. He advised the passenger that the passenger should go and purchase the proper ticket in Turku and that he would go by the ticket office to check that the passenger had indeed bought the ticket.

From a selfish game theoretical point of view the passenger could've just walked out of the train and be done with that. Free train ride to Turku. The only incentive for the passenger to buy the ticket would be that in the future a same sort of arrangement could be used if people do not abuse the trust that they are given. At least from my point of view it's very strange that this level of trust is shown towards complete strangers. I just hope that the guy actually bought the ticket. In fact, I do believe that he bought the ticket and that's one of the things I like about Finland. The honesty.

New phone...

Got another phone this Monday, again. Our secretary wanted to switch phones since she had recently ordered a Nokia N76 for herself, but wasn't liking it after a couple of days. So I gave away the 6110 Navigator that I had and got a shiny, red N76. I typically don't post that many comments/reviews on things, but I guess this time I'll do an exception and type up some comments.

Firstly, the clamshell is useless. You can't open it easily with one hand. You need to use two. A very big annoyance. Secondly, the back cover is a real pain in the ass to remove. If you have slightly sweaty hands and are trying to remove it for the first time, it's pretty damn difficult to do. That wouldn't be such a bad thing but occasionally when S60 freezes, you have to remove the battery to do a complete reboot. And try doing that while driving on the motorway. Wasn't easy with the 6110 Navigator and it'll be even less easy with this phone.

One of the most common use cases with a phone is switching the profile. From General to Meeting to Silent and back again. But if you have the cover open, you can switch the profile easily because the upper half of the cover blocks to power button that you've become accustomed to using when you want to switch profiles. The 3.5mm audio jack is also next to the power button, meaning that when you plug in a headset, you can't open the cover all the way open again.

The top side of the phone contains a small external screen that doubles up as a mirror. Except that it smudges very, very easily. Then the keypad. It's metallic. Even RAZR-esque. Actually it's pretty damn near identical. Unfortunately that means that it's almost as useless as the RAZR's keypad. Then there are the keys to control the audio player on the cover of the phone. And I haven't figured why it doesn't go into keylock mode by default -- meaning that you occasionally turn on the player and start it playing while just playing around with the phone.

And then the battery. The battery is awful. It can't take any sort of punishment. My old E70 stayed on for days and days. And this phone can't even make it through 24 hours. And apparently it can handle about 2.5 hours of talking. Wouldn't know, I've always had it plugged in when I'm in longer calls.

So to sum it up, the phone is pretty terrible. Or not really terrible, but annoying. It has lots and lots and lots of silly design flaws, which is a real shame because otherwise the phone is actually sort of decent. But it seems that this'll be the phone that I'll be using for a while anyway. Or at least until I get seriously annoyed with it and switch back to the E70. Which at least has a QWERTY-keyboard.

The Fourth Screen

Another Nokia video, this time about the internet...

I actually think that this video nicely points out how Nokia is eventually starting to grasp where we're at right now and starting to show a possibly interesting value proposition for the users -- a way to keep connected regardless of time and place. If WiFi cut us loose from our desks but forced us to carry along tons of equipment, then more intelligent smartphones with nifty, cheap connectivity via 3G/3.5G/4G/WiMAX/LTE/whatever will cut us loose from the ton of hardware.

Nokia is always getting laughed at for being the naive and slightly slow guys from Finland who always mess things up. And I'll be one of the first people to point out all of the stupid things we've done. But I think it's fair to say that right now we're doing some interesting things (enterprise stuff like Intellisync, then some consumer stuff like Gate5, Loudeye and now Navteq, experimenting with Open Source with the Maemo platform and the internet tablets, and so on).

Stupid things

Went for a jog today. Or actually a run. Some statistics below:

• Peak HR: 211
• Average HR: 184
• Duration: 40 minutes
• Was it wise? Hell no.
• Was it required? Hell yes.

Sometimes you just have to do stuff like that.

Slippery slopes

Nearly two weeks again without blogging, so I guess it's time to pull my act together again. It just seems that there's a ton of stuff on the agenda again. Last week was sort of hectic thanks to a day-long team workshop on Tuesday (8 AM to 10 PM), an excursion to IBM and then on Thursday I was speaking at NRC Ruoholahti about what it's like working for Nokia. The presentation might've been slightly unorthodox, but I did get some positive feedback about it and at least the freshmen laughed. Quite likely at me, not with me. But oh well...

On the job front I got a new contract. Again. This time it's no longer for a fixed time, but instead a permanent one. Additionally they gave me a shiny new title and raised my salary. Always a nice turn of events. I also stopped working full time again and resumed my part time + school routine, which became familiar last winter.

I also ran across my thesis instructor on Monday. As you may or may not know, I've been working on my thesis since last January, but it's been on hold for a while. Mostly because I hated the way I had scoped it and then because I haven't had the energy to actually start doing it. Anyway, for the past month I've been thinking about it and have sort of re-scoped the thing and on Monday I presented it to Nilay. I guess his initial reaction was sort of positive and I drafted a brief two-pager on what I want to do and sent it to him for comments. But right now I am somewhat motivated that this new direction is where I want to take the thesis. It's not after all a big thesis, but I want to do it properly. I guess I'll try to blog about it more as the work continues.

The jogging project has also been taking a bit of damage recently, namely meaning that I haven't been able to get around to running recently (the last run was a week and a half back when I blogged about the new Crystal Method album). So things are looking slightly grim on this front. I'd also need to go look for new clothing so that I could run during the colder months of the year. I think I need to revamp my personal targets (i.e. the new year's resolutions) to cover this jogging project if I want to actually truly get myself to train properly.

Anyway, that was the quick update, I guess I'll try to blog more often again, if only to keep a sort a written memory of what I'm doing for myself.

Late-night runs

Just got back from the first run since last Sunday. Das infernal maschine has downgraded my level and is now offering less exercise per week, but fortunately I know better. I think it might just be better to listen to the machine and try to finally get around to keeping rates down and stuff. But where's the fun in that? Instead I got myself a copy of The Crystal Method's Drive: Nike+ Original Run and ran a rather sweaty 40-minute jog. And I'm certain that the machine will shout at me, but I planned to hit the company gym tomorrow (or later today, in fact). Eat that, you silly technical contraption! I'll kill myself with this training routine or die trying, and no machine will stop me! :)

Oh, and the aformentioned Crystal Method album is actually quite brilliant. I guess I'll need to start looking into making some playlists for jogs, since it really seemed that I the rates were following the tempo of the music. Maybe I can try to influence my training intensity this way, since it's apparent that staring at the monitor doesn't help me one bit.

Convertible cuffs

What's the point with convertible cuffs - especially if they're barrel cuffs. Completely and utterly useless as they're just barrel cuffs that are cut entirely through. Can't really use any sort of cufflinks with them without looking like a complete moron. That said, I actually got a shirt type called The Traveller recently and the features included a cotton variant that has (apparently) been treated in some way and resists creases, a hidden pocket in the helm of the shirt and a *gasp* convertible double cuff. But in this case the button is hidden away quite well and doesn't show at all. I don't really know why I would ever close said cuff with a button, but I guess it's nice to have it in place if you happen to forget your cufflinks somewhere. Oh, and it really doesn't crease.

The Training. Updated.

Ok, I've been seriously neglecting to post updates on my jogging project. I guess mainly because there's nothing really to report. My last couple of weeks have mainly contained about two jogs a week; typically once around the island and then one shorter one. And then gym with low weights and a high number of reps once a week. So business as usual. And I'm still having trouble controlling the heartrate, but I guess I haven't really tried either.

Last night I went for another jog around the island, this time without cutting any corners so that makes it about 13ish kilometers. A friend of mine joined me, but alas he appears to be in much better shape than what I am in and he was setting the pace. Granted, 13 kilometers in a bit less than 60 minutes is not that bad, but the heartrate was all over the place and at the end I don't know if I could've kept the pace up at all. The Suunto t4 (unofficially dubbed as das infernal maschine) has been whining at me again telling me to do exercises with lower heartrates and as a result of last night it has banned me from exercising for the next five days. Fortunately I know better and it's gym day tomorrow. Then maybe try a bit of walking on Thursday.

The Original. Updated.

That's actually a fairly clever idea for a commercial.

Cars

I might've touched upon this subject already, but oh well. Anyway, a while back I had an interesting discussion about cars with a friend of mine. I personally like cars like the BMW 3-series (the sedans) and the Audi A4/S4 lines. My friend, however, didn't. Apparently they are too common, boring, and so on. I guess I sort of agree with that, but that's precisely why I like them so much. From a technological standpoint they are brilliant German cars. The brands are very strong and communicate this certain sense of reserved style (more so with the Audi these days). And then when you slap in a big engine and trim the car a bit overall, you get a car that behaves brilliantly, goes fast, and is incredibly understated. I don't want a car to pose in that much (well, ok, I wouldn't mind have an Aston...). That said, cars are always in the end about passion and feeling instead of rationality, and in that sense I guess the BMW/Audi axis of brands are what attracts me personally. And car-wise I like the smaller cars that are more discrete and less bling than the bigger ones. I wonder if that makes me a boring person who lacks imagination entirely. Chances of that are quite big now, I suppose.

Training summary for week 35

Ok, training slipped a bit; during last week I only did a 40 minute jog on Wednesday and then two gym sets (with a high number of reps and sets with low weights, though). Again I guess I ran a bit too fast.

Then last night (does Sunday constitute as the start of a new week or the end of the old week, anyway?) I went for a jog around Lauttasaari again, but had to cut it a bit short and only did 11km. Again I guess the heart rate was sort of high, but interestingly enough at no point did I feel like getting too tired. The run took a bit more than 60 minutes. So I'm hoping that some improvement is actually happening and maybe my heart rate is just a bit higher by default? Dunno, still need to try to keep it down and maybe do some fast-paced walking at some point. The funny thing about the Sunday jog was that I actually even got lost at one point. I guess living on the same island for three years is by no means enough to get you acquainted with your surroundings...

Last week's exercise

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

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

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

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

Training

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

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

Helsinki City Marathon 2008

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

Customer service

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

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

Hygiene

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

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

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

Enlightenment

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

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

Stagnation and numbness

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

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

Interesting personality/persona

If you had to describe a potentially interesting person, what would they be like? I've talked with quite many people recently (i.e. in the past year) about subjects which border this topic. I think my personal answer would be a cross of, say, Gordon Gekko, Patrick Bateman, Thomas Crown, and Tom Ripley. One psychopath, one (maybe two?) sociopath and an arrogant asshole.

So, how to combine them? Well, obviously you take the ruthless and calculative nature of Gordon, then you combine it with the the class provided by Thomas and Tom and finally add the socialite tendencies and general contempt against the world that Patrick brings into the equation. Of course all of them overlap each other on quite many different fronts, so maybe this sort of scenario would spawn a relatively familiar result, but only on steroids.

One thing is certain, though. The result wouldn't be a very nice person.

(Oh, and apparently they're making a new movie called Money Never Sleeps where Gordon Gekko will be making another appearance, this time in conjunction with hedge funds. Can't wait.)

What's golf really about?

Maybe this video will give some insight...

"Free" vs. chargeable

Thomas Anglero has an interesting entry in his blog on how Google might take on the telco world. I guess speculation as to whether or not this is feasible is sort of pointless on my behalf as I'm obviously not an expert on any matters telco. Anyway, this sort of move would trigger another interesting question: if Google were to provide free wireless speech while utilizing the advertising model to finance the whole shebang, how disturbing would the advertisements be? And could there be a possibility of any sort of (even small scale) slashback from consumers who are getting more and more tired of how advertisements are everywhere?

There have been other similar suggestions for advertisement-based "free" mobile phone access and I guess the same questions must have popped up there too. Namely if the pendulum swings too far away from the equilibrium, will the trend turn towards the direction where some consumers would prefer to pay a -- perhaps even significant -- premium to rid themselves of advertisements. It could also be used as a status symbol; "I am wealthy enough to not have to subsidize my calls with advertisements."

Actually, this would all be in line with some widely held beliefs in regards to corporate strategy; in the long run the players who focus on competing through cost and the ones who compete in the luxury niches will survive and the middle-tier will cease to exist. Maybe in the future we'll have Google & Co. provide free calls and the current telco operators turning into "premium" boutiques, offering a bigger and more polished brand that attracts the upper-middle class?

Clothing goes online

It's actually nothing new that you can buy clothes online. I just personally have shied away from that since I've been sort of skeptical as to the quality and sizing of the clothes. But, as seems to be the trend recently, I've been eating my words and accepting changes to things I previously held to be chipped into stone with a chisel; this time I went ahead and ordered three shirts from T.M.Lewin. They're apparently having a nifty sale and getting rid of shirts for 25 quid a pop. So overall (with the S&H costs included), it's still less than 40 euros per shirt. And in anyone's book, that's quite a bargain. Especially more so considering that it's T.M.Lewin and not some obscure little company from the middle of nowhere who nobody's ever even heard of.

That said, buying suits online is something that I still won't do. At least not until I can find a decently good tailor to take my measurements properly. And that, I would imagine, is still quite a way off.

Oh, and T.M.Lewin isn't the only one of the traditional English clothing companies that has an online presence; it turns out that, for instance, an increasing number of Savile Row tailors and suit makers are also represented online. And that's a good thing since I think the plucky Brits could use a bit more visibility, especially now that they're under fire from not only the Italians, but also from various entities from far east.

Neighbors

One of my upstairs neighbors is trying to kill me by getting my blood pressure to rise, I swear. I think his/her only mission in life is to keep the elevator on the fifth floor. I've come to my flat three times today (once in the morning to drop my stuff off before work, then in the afternoon to drop my briefcase off and get the voucher that allowed me to get my DVDs from the post office and then again when I got back from the post office) and every time the elevator has been on the fifth floor. I'm going to go grab some beers tonight and when I come back home later in the evening, the elevator will be on the fifth floor. Mark my words.

Update: I came home last night: 5th floor. I left for work this morning (at around 8 AM, so I wasn't the first to leave from the building); 5th floor. What the hell is going on?

Affordable fine dining

We were celebrating Saku's return from the Caribbean sailing trip (he's been sailing his boat there and back for a year and finally returned last week) and I had to choose a restaurant in Turku. Naturally I took an issue of Kauppalehti Optio at work and checked the restaurant ranking charts from the last page and found a place called Rocca, located right on the western bank of the river Aura. It was the highest ranking restaurant in Turku and the magazine said that the value for money was above par. Some friends from Turku also acknowledged that it had a good reputation. So, easy choice, then.

The only question mark about the place was the price, which turned out to be quite reasonable. The quality was very good (but what do I know about food, anyway?) and starters were ~10e, main courses ~25e and the desserts ~10e. So with 50e you could get a decent meal and then a bit extra for the drinks. The place itself was decent enough too; the design was sleek and sort of minimalistic and the brick wall covering one wall was great. Service wasn't too shabby either; the waitress actually seemed to know what she was doing more often than not, and that itself is quite a feat in Finland.

I guess I could go on telling how great the place was, but since I have no formal background in fine dining and don't really understand how, say, a Michelin star restaurant would be better than this, I'll just conclude by saying that I liked the place and would go there again when in Turku. Who knew that above par dining could be so affordable these days...

On a completely separate note, I happened to play a front nine of +2 yesterday and scored my second eagle of the season (and career). Yay.

Where has the time gone?

Haven't blogged in a while. Again. Pretending to be busy and important. Again.

It's funny how everyone seems to be in a hurry all the time. It's actually quite easy to fill your calendar with all sorts of things and then pretend that you're "busy and important". But for 99% of the cases, I would say that that's nothing but a facade. People want to seem busy to prove that there's some sort of reason for their existance. But by looking at the way people carry out their days, if people truely wanted to be efficient, they could cut a ton of bullshit out by just arranging things better and more intelligently and by reducing all sorts of silly activities which serve no real purpose but where they put tons of effort. I use "they", but I guess I should instead be talking about "us". Just some two cents; of course this may again be a mood swing and I want to feel cynical and poke fun at things like this.

One good place to see "busy and important" people is at work. Someone once described that people in the Keilaniemi campus seem to be walking around that much faster and that the tempo is also faster. Can't comment since my experience of large companies and the difference between HQs and other centers isn't that big.

Oh, but I did play three over par for the front nine this evening. Still need to get a new bag since my old one sort of broke (it's about 7 years old).

And finally, I started working on my thesis again! Moved the scoping around a bit again and ditched the SME focus. Now I'm thinking of looking at the motivators and challenges in general and breaking the types of outsourcing projects into four fundamentally different groups using my own framework of looking at who initiates the outsourcing activity and what the actual scope of the activity is (typically the size; is it corporate-level or just project-level?). I guess now I'm out of excuses and will need to also start blogging about the progress of my thesis more actively. Just to show that I'm actually doing something with that.

Paper address books and calendars...

I think I may have already posted some entries advocating for paper versions of address books and calendars before. But today was another fine example of why it's quite useful to have stuff on the paper. At work I tried to switch to a new push email/synchronization software. We shall call it software product Foo, which is shipped by a major hardware company Bar.

So, first of all I can't install Foo onto my phone, because my phone was shipped with a previous version of Foo, which is integrated with the phone's software so well that it's impossible to remove the previous version of Foo. It takes quite a while to figure this out. Fine, I think I'll just update the phone's firmware, then. For that I need a cable. Luckily I own a cable and hook up the phone with my PC. The phone notices that it's hooked up, but the PC for some reason decides that it doesn't want to see the phone. What's the problem? Yeah, the cable is of a wrong type and I have to use another cable with the exact same plugs but which for some odd reason actually works whereas my cable didn't.

Ok, so I was able to update the phone's software and I had my calendar stuff and address book backed up on Outlook. You can see where this is going, of course. Anyway, after the update, I restore my backups from the phone memory card (which don't include my contacts as the installation procedure for product Foo advised me to nuke my address book and calendar before installing the software; fortunately the stuff is still in Outlook). Lo and behold, the previous version of Foo is now gone and I can install the new version! Yay! So I install it and it actually works. I fill in the server and user information. It starts to synchronize. It fetches my inbox. And it works! I can access my emails. But then I notice that it didn't fetch my contacts. Ok, maybe there's some checkbox I haven't checked and it won't fetch it because of that. Well, turns out that that wasn't the case. But instead at some point the synchronization features of product Foo decided that I don't need the contacts that I have in Outlook. Nor do I need the calendar entries either.

To sum it up, I now have a spiffy piece of shi*cough*software that can do stuff, but I no longer have any of my contacts in any digital form anywhere. Same goes for calendar entries. And to add to the insult, Foo stopped working for me and will no longer even boot up.

Sailing

I've been watching some videos of sailing on YouTube recently and the sport has a certain special appeal to it. Inspired by this, I've been recently reading a bit about small catamarans (e.g. the Hobie Cats) and right now I seriously want to try to sail one. Maybe I'll be able to get some reason into my head and not pursue that any further as my golf is already taking enough time and effort.

Related to golf, I've also started to keep track of my golf for this season and am publishing some statistics online on my web site at the university. The page itself is available here. Again, I'm fairly certain that no one is really interested in those, but as always, that page is more aimed at helping me keep track of my progress than actually offer anything very insightful to other people. Tough luck.

Eagle

And no, not the bird kind either. Please avoid all sorts of contact with me for the next 24 hours as I just came back from the golf course and not only did I play the back 9 with 38 shots (par 36), but I also made an eagle on the 14th hole of the course in Salo. I opened with a 3 iron and an about 200 meter shot straight down the fairway (the actual shot wasn't very sweet; slightly thin). The second shot was a 150 meter approach against the wind with a 7 iron with one bounce on the green and then dropped into the cup. That said, had I played the front 9 as well, I would've been able to drop my HCP from 21.5 to about 4-5. And that illustrates perfectly why I don't want to return cards or drop my HCP. I'd lose my competitive advantage. And then again, I'm not sure that my game is stable enough to allow me to play another half like that for a while, as I don't even have the time to play that many rounds this summer. Mainly due to work.

Oh, and the new grips for the irons worked fairly well too and I'm satisfied that I finally got around to changing them.

Colin vs. Hugh

Colin's victory may have been premature. Technically he still comes out on top, but Hugh's performance in Love Actually was, well...

Visited Countries

Traveling is something that I think everyone should do to at least some degree; it not only broadens your horizons but also teaches you about different cultures and that there in fact is a world outside your own little world. That said, I'm not a very big fan of the typical tourist trips and different types of resorts. Anyway, below is a map of all the countries that I've visited that I could recall right now. Apparently 22 countries. Looks like I'll have to start going to new countries, since I think the last time I visited a brand new country was, well, I can't remember...

VisualDNA

More personality tests... This time with a twist; pick the image that you think most appropriate when presented with different questions. My result isn't entirely precise (or at least I don't agree with everything in my results, but maybe I'm not that objective... oh well...).

Imagini also gives a nice and superficial description based on the choices you picked. As one would've guessed, my description holds quite true, but then again, it doesn't really say anything concrete. Regardless, the idea is fun and I bet the statistics that they're able to generate are fairly interesting.

Day 7: Brighton

Or actually we arrived here yesterday in the afternoon. Brighton concludes the sailing journey this time and right I'm just waiting for my flight out tomorrow evening. Then there's still the other week of vacation left... At this point I've concluded that I'm not old enough for vacations. At least not for long ones. Maybe two or three day long trips; just shooting in and out of some place (sort of like the Malmö trip). But a week and a half sailing was a bit too long. Nothing wrong with the trip per se, but a couple of days would've sufficed. I don't know whether I really feel this way or if it's just the shitty mood that I've been in recently.

Anyway, I'm sort of anxious to get back already, but am sort of terrified about the flight. I have nothing against flying in general, but in its current form where people are treated as cattle and I can't even fit the seat (I'm not fat, but try being 1.89 meters tall and bend your legs in a way that you'll be at least semi-comfortable in a plane -- it's impossible!) and then you get placed next to some annoying person who won't shut up about their daughter's dog's problems and won't even switch seats with you so you could have the aisle seat with slightly more leg room... And now a deep breath...

Day 5: Cowes

Somehow it doesn't seem that surprising to see JPMorgan Asset Management being the sponsor behind the Round the Island Race (a sailing competition around the Isle of Wight)... The race starts on Saturday and some competition boats have already started to show up, but we'll hopefully be gone before the whole circus gets underway.

Day 3: Brixham

Day 3 consisted of a short hop from Dartmouth to Brixham. Original the idea was to go a bit further, but the winds blew straight against us from the North-East, so after about three hours we just decided to call it a day and dock in Brixham. Tomorrow is apparently promising to have slightly better winds, but supposedly the weather will still be rough. Oh well.

Day 2: Getting sea legs

Ok, day 2 of sailing today. I've summarized some key points in the list below

• Number of fingernails nicked: 1
• Number of times thro... Fed the fishes: 2
• Number of rolling genoas killed: 1
• Percentage of time contributed towards paying off perpetual sleep deprivation: 80%

In the morning the weather was sort of rough with winds of about 25 knots and rather high waves. I got soaked fairly quickly and it was pretty close that we would've gotten a bit of water indoors. We stayed in a buoy in some river for the night and when we left in the morning, some other 40 footer left at the same time, but it says something about the weather when they decided to just turn back. Granted, they we're slightly smaller and undoubtedly much lighter than the HR.

The weather of course got the best of me too and on two occasions I got fairly closely acquainted with a plastic bucket, which was then used to feed the fishes. I personally haven't sailed that much before (just some casual sailing in the Finnish archipelago and then twice to/from Sweden), but even then I've never actually thrown up. So I consider this somewhat of a feat; granted, I did have a sort of large breakfast, which didn't help the situation at all. We eventually got to Dartmouth in the afternoon and the dinner was quite smashing (I just love the way how Brits use English; a lot nicer than that god awful dialect of the Americans...).

Right now the plan seems to be to try to get to Brighton by, oh, Friday. Then just stay there for the Saturday and then on Sunday get back to London and fly back to Finland.

And Micol, yeah, I'm still working on finding you a nice postcard... Fear not.

Vacation

It's my first official vacation in a while. I took two weeks off and on Friday I flew to London (or Stansted...) only to take a train from Paddington to Falmouth on Saturday. Today was the first actual day when we were sailing, and as much fun as sailing is, I can't help it but I always sleep most of the time while on the boat. Today I helped in the typical tasks associated with leaving the docks and when we had gotten the sails out and the decks cleared of all the ropes, I fell asleep. I pretty much slept through the entire day and woke up to take part in the landing (or actually we're right now positioned in the middle of a river in a buoy). That said, today was fairly uneventful as the sailing was quite straight forward and not much trimming of the sails was required.

Anyway, vacations are weird. I'm just about ready to go back to work. I actually did take my work laptop and RSA SecurID card (for the VPN connection) with me, so I guess I could do some work and at least check my emails. The problem is that I know that I have about ~40 MBs of emails with attachments in my inbox right now and downloading them using the GPRS connection via the mobile phone would take ages. So I guess right now I'll just not check my work emails. I can still access my personal emails, though.

Oh well, I guess I could sleep a bit more...

Testing...

Just testing to see how the mobile blogging features actually work with Blogger...

Strategy & the Real World

Ok, I threatened that I was going to write more about these subjects. And considering that I just came home from the pub and am in a provocative enough mood, I might as well type up whatever I please. At least I can just delete this afterwards (assuming that archive.org doesn't get around to indexing this first...).

So... Strategy? Just like decision-making, strategy is everywhere. You follow a certain strategy in regards to how you invest your money, whether or not it's deliberate or emerging in nature. Some people are more conscious about strategy than others. I find that I'm personally a person who has multiple alternative plans plotted out at any specific situation and then I intuitively make decisions according to the strategy that seems the most likely to bare fruit in whatever timeframe I deem fit for the strategy at hand.

This is all fine and dandy for school. My progress at school is essentially only limited by my personal capabilities and my time. In essence, I'm the bottleneck. If something goes wrong, it's because of me or because of my other undertakings. So the responsibility is clear. Work goes into this same category, although interpersonal dependence takes a slight role in this environment. If some task depends on some other person, you can't finish your task until the other person has finished his. To make things simple. More complex situations, of course, occur. Personal life is a completely different animal. Superficially it seems similar to the work environment; the common denominator is that both involve people. The fundamental difference, however, is that in the work life you can assume that people will act more or less opportunistically and attempt to maximize their own personal profit. The Economic Man (homo economicus) succeeds in this environment, thanks to his rationality and capabilities to objectively analyze situations and calculate the optimal strategies for each situation (according to his own perceptions).

Personal, inter-personal (non-work) relationships are in fact the difficult part. This reveals the true nature of people. There's quite possibly no such thing as homo economicus. Rational people fail when faced with apparent chaos and irrationality. Why do stock markets crash? Yeah, the same reason at hand there, too... Inter-personal relationships, as mentioned, are the difficult thing. You can apply whatever schools of strategy you want there, but the fundamental flaw that's still present is that (at least in my opinion) it's not a game. The same laws do not entirely apply. Foreign concepts (such as altruism) emerge in these situations. Granted, some clever economist will of course find a way to model altruism into the equation, but the thing, from my point of view, is that people act more randomly in this world. Chaos and gut instinct (uneducated intuition) reign supreme here. I greatly fear that I have made a truely stupid mistake.

Decisions

Relating to a project at work which has been recently starting, I've been looking a bit into decision analysis and stuff like that. How to take a formal approach towards analyzing and making decisions, so that when the day is done you'll still have something hard to justify your decisions with. It's an interesting topic, although I have to admit that I'm firmly in the Intuition camp. And in very many ways, decision making is applicable to all aspects of life. Sort of like strategy. And recently these two fields have provided interesting lenses with which to view the real world with; I'm still not entirely convinced that they're good tools for maintaining your personal life with, but oh well.

As already mentioned, I'm a firm believer in intuition (heck, just look at the MBTI test results...). I prefer expert opinions over rigorous analytical frameworks. Granted, calculating things is useful most of the time, but you just have to keep yourself in check when approaching issues that way. I think the problem is that if you calculate things, the calculations never end and you're always missing that little bit of fuzzy logic, that anomaly that might slightly weigh the results in the right direction. And at some point you just have to make a decision and in the end the person making the decision will have to make a call in regards to whether or not he believes the numbers. And there's intuition again.

I guess I have to admit that I'm becoming slightly old. You see, I acknowledge completely that both formal frameworks for analyzing decisions and intuition are needed. One without the other won't work. Some wise men said something about the problem with being absolute. The world isn't black or white. It's in fact neither, since it's all grey. I know it's such a cliché, but personally I very often succumb to treating it as merely black and white and completely fail to acknowledge the subtle shades of grey. And there are millions and millions of shades of grey. And because of that, even though I don't believe in formal models as much as I believe in intuition, I'm still going to try to fit in some decision analysis into my degree as well as tackle some projects at work.

I could go on about strategy, as I've recently witnessed first-hand some truely terrifying applications of it and I'm not certain that in all circumstances the world is such a nice place when viewed through the lens of strategy. But I think I'll blog about that later, if at all.

Personality types

Problematic? You bet.

Trip

I just got back from the Malmö-trip and the weather and atmosphere in Helsinki is sort of strange. It's not quite dark yet, but it's by no means light either. The clouds seem to hang quite low, the humidity is quite high and it would appear as if we'll be getting at least some rain soon. But then again, the wind is also non-existent, and I live in Lauttasaari, right on the sea shore. Could this be the calm before a storm?

The trip, albeit brief, certainly gave some perspective and helped clear my thoughts a bit. It's time to come out and admit it, I've reduced my life into a set of routines. More or less. Some sort of shake-up would be in order. While walking around downtown Malmö and then taking the train to the airport on the outskirts of Copenhagen, I was sort of sad that I was coming back to Finland. Or that was the overall general mood. Of course there are also some things in Finland which I'm looking forward to engaging in again.

I haven't been travelling that much recently. When I was younger, my parents were quite keen travellers and I was subjected to a bit of globetrotting. So in that sense I would guess that the Born Global -model has been present with me in some way from the get-go. But since then I've been mostly keeping my feet firmly on Finnish soil. Not that I have anything against travelling per se, but too much of any single thing will cause you to suffer from overeating. This trip helped to wet my appetite again.

Now, travelling is of course sort of fun and enjoyable. But being a tourist is annoying. If I go somewhere, I don't really give a damn about the history of the place or doing any organized siteseeing. That's just annoying. I guess I just want to fit in. To be a part of the large organism, typically a foreign city, rather than just observing it through the lens of a camera. And the best way to achieve that is to just spend more time than a week in one single place. Maybe get a job or study something. To just lead a normal life there. To experience more than the shallow and superficial surface that tourists either cannot or will not dare break.

Oh, and while I was writing this, it started to thunder. So it would certainly seem that we might be getting one of the first storms in Helsinki this year (at least as far as my memory serves me right).

Airports

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I like airports. Then again, I don't fly that often, so I'm not that annoyed with them yet. And when I fly, I usually don't have any connections, so I don't have to sit 10 hours at the gate, waiting for my next hop. Flying itself I don't like. But the airports are sort of like true melting pots and hubs of life. At least during the daytime. You see all sorts of people, going about their lives. You see the business men in suits, scurrying to the lounges and fighting with Outlook and their laptops. Then there are the groups of people who're going on a trip and are getting into the mood by downing a couple of pints before the flight. And of course there are us, the lone travellers who are not on business, but nonetheless need to fly for some reason or another. And tons of other types of people too. It's fun to observe them as they go about their business of buying their tax-free products, catching a quick bite before the flight, brushing their teeth in the bathroom after being stranded at the airport for the night, and so on. But, time to go as the boarding is just about to commence...

To err...

Nokia has recently revised various strategy-related items, such as missions and visions. The new stuff is available on the Vision and Mission page. Now, consider what Alexander Pope said...

To err is human, to forgive divine.

And then consider the statements on the page that's linked above...

... we take a very human approach to technology

How are we supposed to interpret this...? ;)

Golf

It's the 9th or 10th season that I'm playing golf this summer. Can't quite recall. I started when I was at the seventh grade. Can't remember whether it was before or after the grade, but close enough, anyway. Last summer was sort of quiet on the golf front as I was mostly marooned at the office. I think I played something like five rounds then. I'm hoping to play a bit more this summer.

Golf is an interesting sport since I think that it's one of the most psychological games in the world. In the sense that it's all in your head. On a give day, everything might go perfectly. And then the day after, your swing all but disappears entirely. And everything in between. Granted, this problem could be alleviated to some extent by just playing more regularly and just more to get the routine. But still there are people, professionals, who just may lose their touch with the game all of a sudden and are then forced to retire.

I was already knocking a few balls on the range last Friday, and as typical, my swing was in a surprisingly good shape and out of 60-70 balls, I only hit one top, 4-5 quite off-center hits and the rest were average or good shots. But as typical, I'm also betting that come season, my game will have deteriorated to the usual hell that it was last summer. Going to go play my first round this morning, so...

Soul and romanticism

The two words of the topic might not be the first to pop into mind when discussing Jeremy Clarkson, of Top Gear fame. Yet I've been reading Jeremy's I Know You Got Soul and can't help but agree with some of his views. Back before people started to worry about 4Q2006 and whether or not they could leverage the economies of scale to help create a sustainable competitive advantage, the world was a lot more romantic. Or at least that's what intuition would say; of course back then people were just as interested in viewing themselves as important, efficient, etc. But concepts like heroic failure and such fit fairly well as some of the ventures of the older times have been completely useless, yet they have this certain appeal. Clarkson talks about, for instance, the Zeppelin (not Led, but the other flying kind) and how its purpose isn't really to take people from place A to place B as quickly, efficiently and cheaply as possible. In fact the primary purpose of the Zeppelin might not have been to really go anywhere in the first place. It would be fairly nice to just float around in one and observe how the world goes about its business.

I think a certain sense of naivety is precisely which makes the older times so romantic. Especially around the time of the start of the industrial revolution, a maybe a bit before then. Judging by today's yardsticks, the methods of those times were, well, not very good or efficient. And not everything made economic sense. Such as the Zeppelin, for example. But people did it anyway. And there were Barons and whatevers. There was this whole gentleman-esque aura to the thing. Now it's all pinstripes and quarterly reports and the like. And we've lost the cute, innocent, naive view of the world. Granted, this is premature again as in 100 years people will most likely think we were so cute and gullible with our ways.

Spring...

Spring this year, as always, is turning out to be very depressing. Or I don't know if it's just an excuse or the actual reason. In this current state I'm sort of indifferent to that, too. I guess in parts it has something to do with the extra light. Some people argue that winter is long, dark, and gloomy and that when spring arrives, they feel re-energized. I'm the opposite. Darkness is nice. It helps in covering up all the stuff you don't want to see.

If you're arranging a party of any sort, what's one of the worst things you can do when trying to set some sort of atmosphere? Turn the lights on at full strength. There's not a single person on earth who benefits from extra light. The light just helps bring out the faults in everyone. And everything. The room that was so nice the night before turns into a dusty and soulless place when the sun rises and sheds its light on all the untidyness which up until then seemed to just bring a certain romantic appeal to the situation.

It's sort of similar with everything. I think it may be universal, but mediocrity is quite possibly the worst thing in the world. I prefer the extreme ends of the scale. Mediocrity, at least for me, leads to apathy. To indifference. When everything is grey, there's no more black and white. And the lack of contrast annoys me. I've been told it has something to do with age. Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows. The people who typically tell me that elevate themselves to a sort of upper ground by offering semi-nihilistic views. That's too easy.

I guess this is all pretty irrelevant and the point I'm trying to make is that I want to apologize to everyone who I may have offended or may offend in the near future. The spring never brings out the best in me.

Every breath...

Who said students of technology are the only ones with a good (albeit a sort of twisted) sense of humor...? (Thanks for the pointer go to Mikko M.)

Some thoughts on clothing

I ordered Nicholas Antongiavanni's The Suit a while back and apparently it arrived today. Too bad I was leaving Helsinki in the morning and when I checked the emails on the train, it was already too late to pick the book up from Sanomatalo. I should be reading Organizational Behaviour for the Work Psychology & Leadership exam right now, but instead I've been reading Antongiavanni's articles online. And I must say that I have fairly high expectations for the book right now.

It's obvious that I don't agree with everything he writes, but that's not an issue. I actually prefer when instead of being all politically correct people actually offer something provocative to bite into. Especially when the person has demonstrated a fair bit of knowledge on the subject. And in this case I would think that the aforementioned author is quite knowledgable in said field.

Anyway, some things I don't agree with him are, for instance, that men shouldn't wear black suits. His argument ran along the lines of black being such a dominant color that it eats up all other colors. I personally, however, like black suits for the crispiness and contrast. And besides, formal wear is something that is worn less often these days, so I don't really feel that tuxedos and tailcoats own the exclusive right for black any more (ok, dark blue might, according to some sources, be an even more preferrable color for a tux than black...).

Then there's the issue of stripes and tapered suits. The issue with pinstripes or chalkstripes is understandable in the context of tall men. I won't argue with that. But I happen to like stripes and because I don't need to please anyone except myself, I'm fairly content in wearing stripes. The second issue was with slim suits. I've already given my views on slim suits before and I don't really like this ultra-slimness. But Antongiavanni suggests in one article that tall men should prefer more cloth over less cloth. I would prefer to take the route of doing some exercising and trying to develop a somewhat, shall we say, bulkier physique to compensate for the tallness. And I would also offer the point that if a slim and tall man wears suits with more cloth and which don't bring out the physique of the wearer, there may be a problem that the man is lost inside this big pile of cloth. And that's not a pretty sight.

Granted, I'm sure that Antongiavanni has mastered the art of clothing and that his suggestions are very good and knowledgable. However, I personally prefer some things over others and my personal preference overrides other things, where possible, and I feel that instead of trying to hide the slim and tall body, effort should be spent into developing the body itself and then embracing the good features, not trying to hide the slimness with various trickery. And as said, I like pinstripes...

E-dating

A couple of months back I decided to embark upon another shrowded territory of the Web 2.0 world. Social networking is fun and everything, but e-dating was something that I have been fairly succesful in avoiding. But what's more fundamental then migrating the whole social game of dating and paír making to the internet? It's the penultimate thing in migrating a person entirely to the internet.

But it's not all dancing on roses, obviously. These thoughts are partly backed by what I experienced and partly by what I've read and heard on various forums and other contexts. Interestingly enough I got the impression that one of the major problems in fact is the anonymity that the net provides. Apparently lying and deceiving are a real issue; I personally didn't witness this, but then again, I only got around to meeting one person in the Real World, so who knows how many actually lied. But apparently, and quite understandably, people do seem to distort the facts, some more than others.

In the traditional practice of dating, it's been said that as with financial markets, liquidity is the key to collective success. If so, then the e-dating scene would certainly be nirvana. But it apparently isn't. Due to the aforementioned distortion of facts, trust is somewhat difficult to form when you people don't attach their names to the things they say. This isn't even restricted to only e-dating, but to everything that happens on the internet. I try to stand by everything I say with my real name, so if you're reading this blog entry right now, it should be fairly easy to figure out who I am and how to contact me. But because of the voluntary nature of attaching your real life identity to your internet persona, people are naturally tempted to push the boundaries because they feel they cannot get caught. Completely understandable.

Then there is the issue of wasting effort. Or the fear of wasting effort. Because of the trust issue, people tend to be somewhat reserved and skeptical of each other and not give out very much of themselves. A typical ad for someone usually includes non-information like "I'm outgoing, social, like to travel, exercise, and I'm 23 years of age." Or something to that extent. It doesn't matter, because you haven't given any sort of edge to grasp. It's like saying "I like to breathe". Well, not quite, but you get the point. So naturally an ad like that will only provoke responses that are as shallow. And as a result, the original poster of the ad will develop a negative mindset after only getting shallow, uninteresting responses from people who most likely are lying anyway. And this turns into a self-reinforcing negative loop that feeds itself.

Now, of course the above will give an impression that I'm very hostile against e-dating. I have to admit that on some level I'm disappointed in seeing how the system works (or how in reality, it doesn't) in a large scale. But I'm still cautiously optimistic that it might work for some people. As proof of that, I did actually meet one interesting person and even though it resulted in no romantic love story, I think that even that has been a positive experience and made me a better person, if only by so much.

And of course one can't circumnavigate the issue of the taboo nature of e-dating. I think to some extent there is still a slightly negative stigma attached to e-dating, at least in some circles. Some thoughts are that e-dating is still for people who cannot attract any form of relationship in traditional face-to-face situations. Fortunately this stigma is losing its former might as the emerging generations of young people are getting comfortable with the fact that the internet is just another forum or extension to their daily, real lifes.

Will I engage in any more e-dating? It's difficult to say. Right now I would venture a guess that I'm not in that interested in pursuing this venue any further due to the negative issues which, from my point of view, outweigh the positive effects. But I'm not ruling it out entirely, since I do still believe that just like your local coffee shop or some party, the internet is capable of providing a venue for finding and creating relationships.

Is this it for tailcoats?

I just finished reading an article from a few years back by Nicholas Antongiavanni on the status of tailcoats. I have to agree that the tailcoat is one of the most brilliant items of clothing today. I personally don't own one, but I've worn one on some occasions. But Nicholas outlines some points and trends in fashion and style and without a doubt I can believe that tailcoats will be all but extinct in the near future. Americans already consider the Tux to be the most formal thing. At least the rather small group which I've talked to regarding this seemed to believe so...

But Finland seems to be perhaps one of the last standing bastions of the tailcoats. There are essentially two types of white tie events in Finland these days; the ball held by the President of Finland on the independence day and then academic ceremonies. Even in the student world, white tie is the preferred form of dress for the annual celebrations for different guilds and student bodies. Naturally there's an increasing trend to use a dark suit with this latter event, considering that acquiring a complete white tie attire will be fairly steap to your average student who looks to stear clear of loans and finance his/her studies with the dismal student allowance and by working on the side.

As such, however, be the tailcoat as brilliant as it is, I will not see myself purchasing one anytime soon. Unfortunately.

(Oh, and I finally got around to ordering Mr. Antongiavanni's book, The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men's Style.)

Second Nature

I previously discussed about the Nseries commercials some time ago and I thought they were fairly brilliant. Just now I stumbled upon this new Nokia commercial, which I've embedded above, and I think one thing is clear. In my opinion the commercials Nokia is pushing out are excellent and well ahead of the competition. Although I guess it may also be that I represent only a small segment of the overall market which actually likes these commercials that aren't all "in your face", so to speak.

There is, however, one possible problem. In the past Nokia had such a strong brand and recognition that you didn't see that many commercials. It was also fairly refreshing to see that they didn't jump on the marketing bandwagon and shove silly commercials down everyone's throats. But now with these increased advertising efforts - undoubtedly mainly because of the increased competition in the marketplace (well, at least up until 1Q2007, anyway...) - there are tons and tons of Nokia commercials, which from my point of view might damage the brand. Especially if the quality of the commercials deteriorates. And again, it may be that I'm so unhip and uncool that I don't really get what's the current status of different brands in the mobile phone world and that in fact this is precisely the direction a company should go towards if it wishes to capture the youth markets. And the youth markets are precisely where Nokia has in the past couple of years had trouble, if I've understood correctly.

And I still need to go take the marketing exam...

The return of the ugly web sites

Some might argue that the ugly web sites never even left. Everyone remembers these awful personal home pages people had in the 90ies. With blinking text, marquees, bright colors, etc. The ones that looked like a big mess. Well, now with MySpace and whatever, things have gone to a completely new level. I can't understand how the majority of people who author content online and run their home pages appear to be blind (no offense to blind people, I'm actually fairly certain that you could do an even better job of designing a web page than the MySpace crowd).

And to make things even more fun, the entire Web 2.0 movement has a strong foundation and belief in mashups. Mashups are essentially created when you take data you have in different sites or services (e.g. Last.fm, Flickr, etc.), pull them all together, repackage it and provide onwards. So now every self-respecting site is providing these simple tools for pulling together the data to show on your own personal home page. I can have my Last.fm recently played tracks on my home page. I can have my Jaiku status on my page. Flickr images? No problem. Except that there, in fact, is a really big problem...

All of the plugins/badges/images/etc. are different. They don't offer any sort of nice and consistent feel. You can see precisely which part of the web page is polled from a different service. And it looks ugly. That's one reason why I haven't bothered slapping my sidebar full of stuff, even though I'd like to. Then there's another thing; with people cramming every imaginable thing from Flickr photos to kitchen sinks on their personal home pages, the pages take an incredible time to load and the resource usage is at worst a pure nightmare (first you load the page, then you execute the JavaScript on it, then the JavaScript pulls in even more JavaScript from wherever, or pulls data from somewhere, parses it and then presents it). It's unbelievable. And then the resulting page looks like pure crap.

Thoughts

I just got back from having lunch. Ate some stuff I can't even remember at some Chinese restaurant. Then holed myself in that café at the first floor of the WTC Helsinki building to get through last week's The Economist. Still some work to do with that before the next issue hits the inbox tomorrow morning.

I still need to fix some stuff for work before Monday to make some Chinese people happy. I should've done that yesterday, but instead I just hit the gym at work after my Principles of Strategic Management exam. It's interesting that the entire parking building at work as empty. Nobody was putting in the extra effort, going the extra mile. What does this imply? Dido's Here With Me was playing at the gym, and it's been playing in an infinite loop in my head ever since. Downloaded it just now, so now it's also playing on the PC. Along with some other stuff.

I want a dog. A Siberian Husky or something. It at least looks like a dog. And performs a function. Unlike quite many creatures that carry the name of dog and are in fact very sick due to inbreeding and whatnot and don't even perform any rational function; they just are. It sickens me. The people who think doing that to a dog is acceptable also sicken me. I guess they have some sort of god complex or something.

Saw Melody & Lyrics last evening. Got my quick fix of romantic comedies again. Followed up by watching Pride & Prejudice this morning when I woke up a bit before 8 AM. I think I may have to watch one of the Bridget Jones movies tonight... Or maybe I'll go hit the gym at work again, since I know it'll be completely empty on a Sunday night. Then I could sit in the sauna for half an hour. I always like it when I'm completely alone at some large building. Like at work. Or at airports.

Polyphasic sleep redux

I think I touched up on polyphasic sleep in some earlier blog post. But I don't typically read my blog posts afterwards, so I can't be bothered to search for it. But I recall having thought about it earlier, too. Maybe I should seriously try to start tagging these posts...

Anyway, I've been thinking about polyphasic sleep again lately, and I recently found Steve Pavlina's blog entries on his experiences with polyphasic sleep. I have to say that right now I'm more than intrigued by the possibilities and opportunities offered by such a routine. One thing worries me about it, though. Well, ok, a couple of things. Firstly my diet right now isn't that healthy. I eat just about whatever junk I come across without much thouhgt. I think I'd need to adjust that and eat more healthy things if I were to try to adjust and reduce my sleeptime. Secondly, and this is somewhat related to the first issue, is that I think I would need to give up alcohol consumption. Again, that might not be such a bad move either, but...

Then there's also the issue regarding how to nap at work. I work in a cubicle farm, so I don't really have my own office or anything, so that might cause problems with being able to nap. Steve doesn't touch on this subject (or at least I didn't notice), and this might actually be a dealbreaker for me... Additionally I'd need to do the transition between monophasic to polyphasic sleep over a period of apparently two to three weeks and that would require a long-ish vacation... Oh well. Time to get back to the Principles of Strategic Management course books, since I'll be losing the reading time tonight as Istvan's throwing a goulash dinner.

LibraryThing

What's the first thing you do when you wander into some flat you've never been in before? I always check the bookshelf. Typically. And I'm guessing I'm not the only one who does that. But unfortunately people with their busy lives today don't have time to read anything anymore. It's a pity. And as such, as shocking as it may be, bookshelves are disappearing. But back when everyone had a bookshelf or two, it was easy to determine what type of person someone was by looking at the books he/she reads. Nowadays the same goes for what's on your MP3 player. But I think books are still interesting.

So, enter Web 2.0, or especially social networks. Last.fm already keeps track of what sort of music I listen to, so people can then go "oh, your taste in music is all weird and stuff". Luckily now there's also LibraryThing for when you want to list all the books you have in your bookshelf to tell the world. It's also fairly addictive. I went through a couple of piles of books and entered about 40 books that were lying around in my flat. I guess I'll go through the rest of the books in my bookshelf over the weekend. But a cool feature is that I can include a mosaic of the most recent books I've added in the sidebar of my blog. On the right. I'm so in love with that.

I have retaken my bedside table!

It's true! I finally decided that instead of keeping the enormous pile of unread books, magazines and articles on my bedside table, I should instead just put them in my bookshelf. So for the first time in over a year my bedside table is now essentially empty - only five books, my diary and my calendar. It looks so empty...

Why I am boring

Cars can be a source of endless debate. Just go over to a local pub and you can pretty much start a heated debate anywhere by throwing some car-related provocative comment. Naturally, you can also get beaten up if you don't know when to shut up, considering the amount of intoxicated buffoons who reside at a local pub. But that's another thing. Debates centering around incredibly expensive cars are also always nice, considering the fact that no one has typically ever even seen, let alone driven, any of the cars that are debated.

So considering this, I decided that I want to argue why the Aston Martin DB9 is so brilliant. And why, because of that, I'm a boring person. Consider your typical debate over fast cars. There's always a Ferrari, perhaps a Lamborghini, some AMG tuned Merc, a Porsche and whatever. But the point is that just about all of the debated cars are in the sports car or supercar category. Granted, they're quite possibly incredibly fast and can go around corners decently well. But I happen to be keener on grand tourers. I guess the whole idea that I can have a fairly fast car which doesn't sacrifice ride comfort on the altar of POWERANDSPEED just attracts me more. And of course, a car has to also be discrete. A Lamborghini is anything but. And Ferraris, well... The DB9, styling-wise, is just lightyears ahead of the style of the other manufacturers. And that's an absolute truth.

And then there's the brand. What Aston symbolizes is something that the other manufacturers can't get even close to, at least from my point of view. It's the understated elegance, the craftsmanship, it has a soul. Ze Germans can undoubtedly make brilliant cars and I guess I'd be lying if I'd say that I'd be unsatisfied if I owned a Porsche 911 Turbo. But it just feels so cold, so sterile. As an analogy, I guess one could argue that whereas an orchestra that's perfectly in tune and executes some piece flawlessly might (and actually should) be the ultimate goal, over a long period of time that just gets boring. No, wait, that actually wasn't that good an analogy, as an orchestra that's not in tune will also get incredibly annoying fairly quickly. But I guess that sort of describes the situation.

Overall I'm fairly boring because the F430 doesn't do anything for me. It lacks the finesse. It's sort of like some teenage punk, lacking the maturity and the appreciation of the finer things in life. It's a show off. It's the Rolex of cars. Well, that analogy is also a bit flawed as Rolex isn't, even in the technical sense, a top watch maker. You can find more expensive and more impressive (again, in a technical sense) watches elsewhere. The Ferrari is arguably a brilliant piece of engineering, but the status it has just doesn't attract me. I don't want to go to the track and shout POWEEER! while driving sideways. I want some elegant, soulful car with which I can pop in Monte Carlo to have lunch and drive to Paris for the night. And I want to do that while being subtle and not attracting too much attention.

But alas, this is in no way a relevant problem. And most likely never will be. At least for me. Maybe I should just get back to schoolwork and stop daydreaming.