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.

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.

Mindsets

I was visiting Accenture in November (or was it December). They have fairly nice offices in Ruoholahti, pretty near the Nokia buildings. Actually part of the same block, essentially. Anyway, I talked to some guy who's apparently in some sort of lead position at the Finnish operations or something. I was interested in hearing what sort of attitude Accenture has towards supporting their employees if they decide to pursue a second academic degree or work towards doctorate degree. I was sort of surprised to hear that the company per se does not encourage their employees in this regard and overall remain fairly neutral.

Some wiser people have told me that although initially when you graduate, the piece of paper you get is important when looking for jobs. But after 10 years nobody cares which degree you've already forgotten. I guess they have a good point. But in my opinion there are some things that a degree will teach you (at least in the ICT field and when talking about Finnish MSc (eng) programs)... Firstly you learn to get projects done. Mathematics might not be the funnest subject, but you learn that work is work is work and you have to do it. Additionally you also demonstrate that you can finish larger projects; you did graduate right? That's the first large project.

Then there's the mindset. Recently I've been studying quite many software business and strategy related courses. It has changed my view of the world slightly. Now when I encounter a new idea or piece of software or anything, the first thought is: how does one make money with this? You find yourself looking at the angles without even noticing it. That's a big thing with any degree. It'll teach you the mindset, how to approach things. And this is a major point why I'd want to study another degree for myself at some point. Don't get holed in the single box, since things are never black and white. They're shades of grey and by being able to assuming different viewpoints is, in my opinion, a great advantage. Of course this is also part of the personality traits that were passed onto us in one way or another. But don't underestimate the power of learning and conditioning yourself. And that can cause not only positive things, but also negative. I've recently experienced this first-hand and I'm not entirely certain I like myself right now. But we're all learning and continously adapting to change and external stimuli.

Information addiction

I don't know, I may have already blogged about this. Or not. And yes, this is quite a cliché, but it's just so true. Many people say that when you finally turn your mobile phone off and cut yourself out of the information distribution loop altogether is luxury and something to strive towards. I call bullshit. It's not true, at least not for me. I don't know if it's because I haven't been able to detach myself for a long enough time, but I find that I have to know that I have at least the possibility of getting my hands on information at any point of time with little work.

The mobile phone is turning into a more and more important part of my daily life. This itself is something that I would have been fairly skeptical of just a few years back, but oh well. I mean, firstly it's a phone that I can carry with me all the time (well, duh! and the SMS capability). Then I can get my work emails pushed to it, which is nice. I can synchronize it with my Google calendar that's online. I can browse the web, I can type blog entries on it (painful), I can send pictures, location data, presence data, set up an SSH connection to another box so I can check IRC and my personal emails, etc. And that's just with a phone. The interface is a bit of a pain and it's slow, but I can do that. Then there's the computer, which brings the entire multitasking dimension to the equation. RSS feeds, music, blogging, reading web pages, IM, emails coming in, etc. Everything open all the time. It's when you silence all that that I get sort of annoyed. Think about giving up coffee, for example. Or I would imagine cigarettes would be an even better example. Although I don't really see that many negative effects in being tuned into the information flow as long as you are able to manage it relatively easily. It just takes some time to sort routines out, but afterwards it's fairly nice.

I don't really even want a vacation, in fact. I mean, sure I'd like to travel, but just cutting all the lines to my daily life, that's something I don't want to do. So if I do travel somewhere, I'll sure as heck have my laptop and phone with me. It gives an entirely new dimension to life and increases efficiency. Where to eat today? Let me just quickly check some reviews from this site or possibly use this location-enabled feature to see what's close by. It's not fairly romantic, I'll admit that. And that's quite possibly the biggest issue with all this.

Monday mornings

I typically will argue the point that I'm not a sadistic person in general. As, I'm sure, the majority of folks also aren't. But I'll also argue that there is some small sadistic tendencies in everyone (check out the Stanford Prison Experiment for some interesting points...). Mine is that every Monday morning when I have a car and am driving to Helsinki, I get extremely happy in traffic. I put on some Stan Getz or whatever and then just chill in the jam and just enjoy all the people who're completely pissed off at the traffic jam. I don't know why, but I sort of enjoy the situation. Maybe because I don't have to experience that very often as I always commute to the opposite direction when compared to the masses and my commute is something like 7-15 minutes via bus.

Jeans

Ok, so the last post was about suits. Today I went looking for new jeans from Salo (yes, I know, I could've picked a better town for this...) and it turns out that getting jeans is incredibly difficult. You can't just go in and tell them that "I want a size 152 dark grey suit with slight pinstripes in a slim cut, side vents, two buttons and notched lapels". Or I guess you could, but they'd be lost. Or I'd have to learn the jeans jargon.

Anyway, after 15 minutes I got sort of desperate and decided to just go to the next store and just take something that didn't have holes in the pockets (see? I'm quite an easy customer after all). So now I bought some random jeans that didn't have holes in the pockets. The entire purchasing process was also quite interesting. When I came into the store the girl started asking what brand I wanted. Brand is a completely secondary thing, in my opinion. Especially considering that they weren't even selling any especially prestigious brands. I'm sure they make a decent buck with the inflated prices, but this itself is an interesting case, as I some blokes from the Boston Consulting Group were giving a lecture a while back and they talked about the trend of trading up. Trading up is essentially the phenomenon of people focusing on some things that are important to them and shelling out the bucks to buy the premium product (or brand) and then scaling down in something else to make up for the dent. This in turn leads to the top, high-end brands and the bottom low-cost suppliers to lead the way and leaving the guys in the middle to deal with a slow and painful death.

Secondly, who the hell actually wears the jeans that they sell these days? I mean, there's only a marginal group of jeans from the catalog that you could actually wear to work. And what is it with the ultra-slimness? This iteration of the ultra-slim trend in clothing has been going on for a year or two now, wouldn't it be time to ditch it once and for all and banish it for all eternity? Ultra-slimness in clothes is not in any way aesthetic - not in suits, not in jeans. Period.

Looks like this is turning into a rant and I could go blasting away at a lot of stuff, but I think instead I'll just stop now...

Sleep, she is for the weak!

... and right now I'm starting to think that it might just be better to acknowledge that in fact I want to be weak and sleep. And have a vacation. When you start getting back responses to emails you don't even recall sending, it's getting bad (and no, I was entirely sober; heck, who has the time to drink these days let alone waste a day being hung over...).

The Modern Road Warrior

Well, ok, I don't really travel that much, but I've been noticing a trend in the stuff I buy. Especially electronics. I like small, durable, and wireless. So what do I have with me when I do travel?

• laptop (Thinkpad T40)
• external hard drive (small aluminium LaCie USB drive, 100 GB)
• mobile phone (Nokia E70)
• headset (some random Nokia Bluetooth headset)
• a bunch of chargers (this is actually a real problem!)

If I have to be able to do work, then I'll need to either take along another laptop or replace the T40 with the work laptop and of course the SecurID card.

And then of course a pile of books, clothes, sanitary equipment (toothbrush, contact lense stuff, haircare stuff, face-care stuff, etc.), and a portfolio case with relevant papers/magazines and so on. Previously I've been typically lugging along a duffel bag and a laptop bag, but recently I pretty much got rid of the laptop bag and just throw the laptop and other stuff in between clothing (works well, I don't fly that often and I typically have my bag with me at all times).

It's nice to know that packing has become a routine already. I guess I can pretty much pack a bag for a week-long trip in about 15 minutes. The only problems are jackets; you can only take one with you without any hassle...

Rate of Change

"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." Newton's third law, if my memory serves correctly (ha! I know something about physics even though I haven't gotten around to passing my obligatory physics courses!). Although I guess that is primarily applicable to mechanics, it might have some interesting applications in other fields as well. Anyway, if you consider the current ICT field, it's obvious that in order for a company to be succesful, it must be able to react to changing situations immensely quickly (first-mover advantages, anyone?). This of course has some practical implications as well - namely that the individual people who make up a company need to be able to also react quickly and reinvent themselves as the need arises. All in all it would seem that the entire culture of doing business in high-tech is being pumped more and more full of steroids every passing year.

So, about Newton's third... That would explain why in the recent year Morgans have started to look very appealing. Well, ok, they still won't be very practical in your typical Finnish climate, but come on; a car for which you have to buy door handles from the options list has got to be immensely cool! Morgan Motor Company itself has been operating the same way since it was founded in 1910 and their cars are still reminiscent of the cars the predate the war. Perhaps because they, in fact, do. I guess you can't go further away from the rate of change of the ICT world than that. Unless you want to look at the British bespoke clothing scene, which predates the Morgans by a hundred or so years...

Marketing Management & Luck

The exam for Marketing Management was today and let's just say that I got moving a bit late in the semester when it came to preparing for it. In the end I didn't even have time to delve that deeply into Kotler & Keller, but thankfully there were rather decent summaries at the end of each chapter which helped create a rather good high level view of what the course was about. Additionally the questions in the exam couldn't have been better for me.

They'd also done away with the multiple choice questions part, which has traditionally been the hit or miss part of the exam. I stumbled a bit in the first exercise in which you were to explain various terms briefly. The maximum was 10 points, I'll venture a guess that I should get about five.

Then there were the essays. Three essay choices and you had to answer two. The two I did were on differentiation (what is it, what are the different dimensions of it and then examining how IKEA differentiates itself from the competition) and segmentation (what is it, when should it be done, advantages/disadvantages and then how the traditional segmentation model differed from the "Strategic Segmentation" concept which was discussed at a lecture). And best of all, English was allowed. Overall I'd say that the exam went extremely well considering the amount of effort I put into it.

I'm starting to get to the conclusion that school, in fact, isn't that difficult at this level either. It's just a question of optimizing workload and goals. I'm satisfied enough to have a grade average of 3 or higher, preferrably closer to 4 than 3. Of course 5s would be nice, but they're hardly worth the extra effort, especially if that extra mile would most likely increase the required effort by an additional 40-50%. Oh, and right now I'm becoming increasingly certain that I indeed want to do my minor at the dept. of industrial engineering and management.