Hooks

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

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

Power and sexuality

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

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

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

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

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

A superficial description of a day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of social classes

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

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

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

The irony of saving the world today

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

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

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

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

Regarding decisions

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

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

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

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

Smarts

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

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

Teetotalism

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

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

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

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

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

Winning and heroes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Values (sans the rants, hopefully)

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

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

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

Utility

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

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

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

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

Discontent

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

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

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

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

On languages and socialness

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

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

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

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

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

Elegance and humility

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

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

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

On suits and globalization

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

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

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

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

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

On haircuts

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

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

Walking

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

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

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

Affluenza strikes again!

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

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

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

Technological evolution

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

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

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

An aspiring author...

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

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

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

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

On plaids, fashion, and style

Yesterday I got my new grey Glen plaid suit delivered and I must say that I really love it. I recently had a discussion with some people about plaids and the view they held was that plaids were horrid and should never be worn. I found this view especially strange, considering that plaids are very traditional and will stand the test of time very well. My friends held the opposing view. After some bickering, it actually turned out that with plaids, they were referring to those horrid overshoots from a couple of decades back. This allowed us to find some common ground as I will admit that those sorts of extravagant plaids might be something that you would want to steer clear of. But as for more traditional plaids and checks, like the Glen plaid and the Prince of Wales check, are very traditional and stylish. And as such, there is nothing wrong with either, in my opinion. Quite the opposite, I think that a subtle dark grey Glen plaid suit with a nice tie and maybe a vest or a knit can in fact look very sharp.

This leads me to another discussion that I had yesterday regarding fashion versus style. The worst mistake you can do, from my point of view, is to treat the two words as synonyms. I dislike fashion and the fashion world. I think they just artificially and commercially create fashion fads that run a multibillion dollar industry that forces (or allows?) fashion aficionados to scrap their wardrobe every six months and buy everything again. Additionally I often get this feeling that fashion is exactly form over function. Take, for instance, very tight and slim jeans. What is the point of them, exactly? I would imagine that moving around in them is very tedious and restricted. Additionally it represents one end of the scale, and extremes are rarely good things.

Enter style. I would define style as your personal taste that you develop and which evolves through time. But unlike fashion with its sharp corners, I would say that styles, at least for me, evolve more slowly, gradually and with softer edges. One might say that every time your style changes slightly, that you might have started to follow a new fashion. And I guess that's a fair thing to say. But still I would hold the view that style is stronger than fashion and for me, my personal style dominates fashion in the sense that if fashion brings about something that I in fact do like, I will adopt it into my style. This, of course, would also include some background work on the thing being adopted. In this regard I guess I am very conservative when it comes to clothing. I would've also said pragmatic, but that would've just been provocative and nobody would've believed me.

I would like to have you believe that fashion and style are very far away from each other and you should never ever use them interchangeably. But that's quite a harsh view and isn't very true. I think a better interpretation is to see the dynamics between the two. Fashion tends to be very blunt and aggressive; it makes sharp turns, tight corners, reverses itself every six months, and so on. Style, in turn, is slower, more refined, more subtle and when style starts turning somewhere, it turns very much slower and different fashions are just slightly steering it. As an analogy, think of fashion as a speedboat and style as a large cruise ship (I don't know how well that analogy works in practice, but it captures some broad points). I think another distinction might be that style is very personal whereas fashion might be less so. I'm not, of course, saying that I outright despise fashion. Instead, I just find it slightly silly and prefer a more traditional approach. But this topic is of especial interest to me, so if you do want to share views or just spend an afternoon argueing about this in good faith, just drop me a line.

Equilibriums, aging, and censorship

Many much more wise (and also older) people than me have recently been explaining to me that I might have a tendency towards taking very hard line views on different topics. The same people have also tried to comfort me that it's all very normal and in due time my views will stop swinging from one extreme to another and I'll find my balance. Balance and equilibriums seem to be all the rage now, too. The topic keeps recurring in yoga all the time and most things at work revolve around finding equilibriums and balance. It's a cliche, but life seems to indeed be a very complex balancing act.

In light of this, it seems that as you begin your life, you get the grips on the basics and when that's done, the pendulum is set in motion and it starts off oscillating between extremes. If we can trust the wiser and more experienced people, the pendulum will slowly slow down and work towards the equilibrium in the center, which should represent the balance you find after life has taught you some more lessons and you (hopefully) have also learned the lessons. In a way I guess this is somewhat of a sad or depressing thought. That life will eventually mold you into a person that knows better than to take hard stances. But I guess at the same time it's also kind of comforting.

And speaking of stances and hard lines, the discussion around the Finnish internet censorship program has been heating up recently. It appears that yesterday a fellow student from the university decided to mirror Matti Nikki's original site criticizing the censorship practices and disclosing the list of censored sites on the school servers. This, interestingly enough, led to the school deactivating his account, which seems somewhat out of proportion if you consider that technically I don't believe he did anything really wrong. And the most interesting thing is that apparently the school's representatives are not willing to disclose any sort of information on why they have done what they have done to him. This is very appalling, especially considering that the Helsinki University of Technology is supposed to be one of the better schools in Finland. And to think that the school also engages in behavior such as this, to blatantly censor sites that do not host anything illegal and just criticize a completely and utterly silly law which should never have been passed in the first place (according to EFFI and some experts from the University of Turku's department of legal stuff, the law might even be very unconstitutional). Anyway, the best of luck to Jyry on his quest to find justice and for taking a prominent and hard stance to help a cause that tries to keep the freedom of speech alive.

Saving projects

I was recently asked at work what I felt about a project that I had been closely working with and putting in a lot of effort. I was seeing only problems and not that much potential in the project and we were getting our back against the wall as a competing project had emerged recently and they were cutting corners by taking a less academic approach. So I had to suggest that our project be canned as it hadn't produced any tangible results for a while. Since then, I allocated 50% of my personal targets into the said project for 1H08, which, all things considered, still is a completely idiotic thing to do, if you would want to optimize your bonuses. This is starting to resemble a hit-or-miss situation with the odds against me.

Today we were finally able to deliver preliminary results to the powers that be and right now I have to say that I'm cautiously optimistic that we just might be able to pull this off. In fact it seems that the ground work that we've done is in fact sort of decent and the approach might be the right one, after all. And I have to admit that maybe it was my pessimistic self again who was standing way too close to the project and the problems to see the potential in it. I guess that's a common problem when you're hitting your head against a wall; you lose your perspective of things and then you're in trouble. If you're an optimist, you keep digging yourself into a swamp since you can't see the reality. But if you're a pessimist, you can only see the things that can fail. So maybe it's time to learn a bit of optimism again...

Affluenza

My parents brought me a copy of Oliver James's Affluenza from London recently and I started reading it yesterday. It offers quite an interesting view and theory that explains the reason why we're unhappy even though our wealth has been increasing over the past half a decade. James's idea is that a virus called affluenza is currently the plague of developed countries--people are unhappy as they chase material possessions, money, power, and recognition. And what more, apparently most of the developed countries have the same problems. And even the ones that necessarily don't have the problem in the general population, the elite is still plagued with it. And affluenza in turn creates emotional distress in people.

According to James's description, I guess I have to admit that I recognize some symptoms of affluenza in me, although more recently I've been talking with some people about what the actual point of all this is and have been changing my perspective slightly. The problem with money is that when you are lost or don't know where you might want to go, it's easy to start optimizing money and just make sure that the building blocks are there when you do finally figure out what you want to do. But that's with the assumption that you figure out what you actually want, and it might very well be that I'll never figure out what I truly want and what makes me get up in the morning and in the mean while I'll just continue onwards and try to accumulate wealth and become affluent.

James interviewed quite many affluent people in his book and one thing that was strange was that just about none of them had any real and stable relationships. Some were married and others were switching girlfriends every three months. But none had a real relationship, but all had either learned to deal with the lack of intimacy or then the lack of intimacy was never really a problem in the first place (and that's a spooky thought). I guess these are the types of people who will say that intimacy is overrated. Finding intimacy isn't easy, but it is worth it. Cynicism makes it even more difficult.

Another interesting thing this far was that people in Singapore exhibited signs of affluenza, but didn't really have the symptoms of emotional distress. This led me to wonder if that might have something to do with the cultural differences. The western societies have always embraced rationality and reasoning (cogito, ergo sum, etc.) whereas apparently Asian cultures have been much more concrete and living in the moment. This is in fact in line with the suggestion to think less and observe more that was put forth in last week's yoga lesson. This might also explain why white collar workers are experiencing illness emotionally. Work that focuses on abstract things and in which you won't see any concrete result in years, if even then, can seriously start to undermine your feeling of being useful. You just have to believe that you're doing something meaningful. James suggested that developing countries are a lot more happy according to some metrics, and it's not hard to believe that from an emotional standpoint he's correct. You're a lot more in touch with the present when you do mundane physical tasks, but you can derive happiness and pleasure from the fine tuning that you can do there.

Taylorism was originally devised as a method for making manual labor a lot more efficient and commoditizing the worker. And nowadays McDonald's is commonly believed to be a company that exhibits this idea on a very large scale. Previously it was assumed that tayloristic work is not fulfilling for the worker and as such the worker has to be compensated for doing the tedious tasks. Apparently, however, there are some views that recently people have started embracing and enjoying Taylorism again. I would have to guess that it's the same reason why white collar jobs are making people unhappy. I even recently talked with a coworker about this and how, in the long run, I was thinking that maybe I'll just leave the current society and put up a small grocery store somewhere in the Caribbean, or something to that extent. Just as a hobby, assuming that I can arrange a financial position in which I can get enough money to allow me to barely stay alive with capital incomes.

So yes, it seems that I've also caught affluenza, but on the positive side, at least I recognize it and am actively thinking about what it is that I in fact want from life. Even though it might not always seem like that for people on the outside.

On yoga

Yesterday I started another new hobby, yoga. Actually the course started about a month ago, but since it'll apparently last quite a long time, I could still join. I was somewhat skeptical in regards to whether or not yoga is just some trendy thing without any substance. But after the first time, I have to say that even if that is the case, I felt that it was fun and it helped me relax better than I've been able to do in ages. And even just for that, I'm ready to pay the monthly fee. Overall the experience was sort of strange.

I know nothing of yoga, but I got the feeling that it's sort of like feng shui. I know nothing of feng shui, either, but I've been led to understand that it's more or less common sense wrapped into a nice packet with the knowledge presented in the form of metaphores, and so on. I'm not exactly sure what variant of yoga we're doing, but it's very light and focuses quite a bit on stretching. So it's not astanga, for sure. But the stretching is also actually pretty bloody marvelous as I sit in meetings and at the office all day long and I get very tense at times. So in light of this, the feeling afterwards was undescribable. Brilliant.

I'm still skeptical about the religious aspect of yoga. For some reason I sort of reject it off hand, as I seem to do with religions in general. Again, the stories basically suggest that it's based on common sense stuff like suggesting that you should observe more and think less to achieve some sort of calmness of the mind. Which I guess is quite a good suggestion if your life and job and studies happen to be the sorts that encourage and reward quick and objective analytical skills. Oh, and I'm very much looking forward to next week's session. Yoga seems to be very addictive...

On subsidizing art

Recently a professor at a course focusing on venturing suggested that one reason that Finnish start-ups weren't really huge on the international level was that the current mechanisms for supporting venturing and entrepreneurship in Finland were too much of what you'd expect in a European welfare state. The government was shoving money into start-ups to just keep them alive, barely. But because of the level of support, you didn't have the survival of the fittest effect kicking in, which in turn meant that eventually some internationalized start-up would show up and be a lot more lean and mean and would put the Finns out of business, because they weren't in a shape to put up a real fight.

I also recently (well, a year back) had an interesting discussion on how Finns subsidize art at a governmental level with a family friend of ours. In a typical Finnish fashion, the discussion took place in sauna. His view was that the current mechanisms for subsidizing art are sick and that they should be scrapped and the tax rates cut accordingly. Then private people could invest the "extra" money into whatever art they wanted, if any at all. I didn't really agree with this notion in its entirety. But I've been recently reading Chris Anderson's excellent book on long tails, and a thought occurred to me which helped me understand what Jussi was in fact suggesting.

If you consider long tails and how the internet has allowed the democratization of distribution and connected supply with demand on a global scale and as such helped a massive amount of small niches to be born, it's intuitive to see that the age of hits, as we previously knew it, is over (Anderson demonstrates this situation in the music industry). Maybe fine art that is subsidized by the government is another ill thing about our society in Finland? Some people who have a big degree and are vocal enough about silly little things decide what is good art and what is bad (ok, I'm being very provocative here, but play along). They, in turn, spread the support for different artists based on different criteria. And one is what sort of network of connections the artist might have.

Is this really the optimal scenario? Maybe the expensive, massive art forms that need state subsidization have lived beyond their best before dates? Maybe the only reason we have opera is because the rich demand that we lug along the legacy relics? Why not let the masses themselves decide what sort of art they want instead of forcing something on them? It might be that previously it was impossible for artists to efficiently reach all the people in the world, but that's changing now (just like Anderson is suggesting in other long tail examples). In this sense more people should be able to get together and appreciate similar niches and as such it might not be a good thing any longer that galleries, opera houses/production companies, etc. control the bottlenecks. And that states in essence help keep these status quo institutions in shape by pumping money into them.

Granted, it would appear that quite many of today's art forms are tied to time and place and are presented as performances. And performances may be a lot more difficult to distribute via cheap internet connections. But maybe this is because the art forms have not changed at the same rate as other parts of society. And maybe this is why the Finnish government keeps pumping money into an art society that is based not on democracy, but a very tight system of control that is enforced by tightly knit groups of friends doing favors for each other. This isn't democracy, it's more along the lines of an aristocracy or oligarchy.

I don't know if this was the reasoning behind Jussi's argument, but it's how I've interpreted it. And as always, I think it helps to provoke an interesting discussion. I have to admit that I know very little of the world of fine art, but it seems like a bunch of snobbery and as such the resources that are shed into it might be better off used for other things? Like improving public transportation, fighting poverty, etc. Even according to Maslow fine art is at the top of the hierarchy of needs and can only be enjoyed when the needs below have been satisfied. And with the current form of things, I doubt that very many people can say, even in Finland, that they have the other levels satisfied.

On Gordon Gekko

The antagonist of the 1987 movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko, is quite possibly one of the most hated and still most loved figures in the fictional world. He's the embodiment of greed and shrewd tactics and shows no sense of real conscience. Yet after Wall Street hit the movie theaters, there was supposedly a huge surge in the amount of applications sent to business schools all around the US. Investment banking was where it was at. And apparently up until recently, nearly two decades later, investment banking was again very hot.

I personally think that Gekko is a very interesting character and that people should observe him more closely. He might also have some positive impacts on the world. If you think about it, Gekko was a hyper-competitive businessman who just had to go on winning. In a way, these are the alpha males of the world, in a sense. The bad guys in the phrase "Nice guys finish last." I'll offer the provocative opinion that the world needs people like that. Money makes the world go round and these guys make the money go round. Granted, there's a real danger that the money ends up piling in the hands of the Gekkos of the real world. But that could of course be offset by mechanisms like taxes. In fact, taxing people who make millions and millions over long periods of time more harshly than one-time winners and then the rest of us sound intuitively appealing. And why shouldn't it. But competition is good. Wars are less good, but they can still be classified as crises that enable the world to change, albeit in a forced way and driven by the few in power.

Now, let's approach this from the opposite aspect. What happens if the Gekkos disappear. Greed is dug out of world and everyone is satisfied with the average. In this regard the intuitive result is stagnation. Why in the world would you want the status quo to shake if you like how the things are. In a way, we're no longer moving anywhere, just staying in a single place. Or going around and coming back to the starting position. I have been led to understand that this is sort of similar to the view of life that is held by our friends in the far east. And don't get me wrong, if things were like this, if we lived in a world where everyone could be happy with what they have and where they are, things would be bloody marvelous, to say the least. But for some odd reason one way to look at and define your degree of satisfaction is to reflect yourself against your neighbors and your peer group, overall. And in this sense if everyone is equally happy, then everyone is equally unhappy. And someone is bound to be unhappy when they notice that they can't move up or down or get ahead at all because there is no longer a concept of getting ahead or winning. Must be a terribly boring world to live in.

So, enter Gekko & Co. They grab the money they can and fight each other to come out on top. What sort of effect does this have on the rest of us? Possibly quite little. Capital is moved around, some companies may fall, others won't. You can be happy with your job and try to get the raise next time you see your boss so you could maybe upgrade your housing a bit. Maybe treat yourself with a more luxurious car or that bottle of premium vodka. And you feel good with yourself, for a moment. For that small moment in your life you can get a taste of the high life. And then, to cite the lyrics of Here Comes Another Bubble, "... back to work you go again!" And, that's not necessarily a bad thing, since typically the journey is a lot better than the destination. The entrepreneurs behind different start-ups continuously demonstrate this point. And this is where the Gekkos come in. One could say that they, in a way, help facilitate the journey towards the "better" life. And when you hit your midlife, if you can look back and see that you've done lots of interesting things and actually lived and led a colorful life in the pursuit of the gold at the end of the rainbow, I guess that's better than just lying in the couch and cursing at Gekko and the greed he represents.

This is of course just a provocative view and I don't exactly completely sign it myself. But in a way, when kept in check and control with different mechanisms, greed is good. It's a powerful motivator, and getting it in line with the common good using different mechanisms and motivators may allow the rest of us to harness the relentlessness of the Gekkos and relieve the pain of the everyday life that the rest of us lead. Either that or I have to start adopting a Zen Buddhist approach to life.

The problem with British suits...

... is the fact that the British insist on having their pleats on their trousers the wrong way round (and they even dare call them forward pleats! bah!). I dislike pleats in the first place, but having them mirrored! Annoying!

Valentine's Day

Today was Valentine's Day again, which was spent in a fairly uneventful way, first at work and then at school. In Finland Valentine's Day is in fact known as Ystävänpäivä, a day for friends, and thus has a slightly different tone than the lover's day that it at least is in the United States. But if we take the Finnish interpretation, I of course must take this moment to thank my friends for all the support that they've recently offered, regardless of the fact that more often than not I can be a fairly difficult person. So, from the bottom of my heart, Hyvää Ystävänpäivää!

But fear not, this temporary lapse of arrogance is soon to pass and I'll be back to my normal self...

Cars and blogs

Yay, I'm no a guest writer on Antti's recently established blog where the topic of discussion is none other than cars. I have to admit, I know nothing of cars and my taste in, well, everything, is notoriously bad. And I'm a wannabe-Brit without the nice accent, the passport, the family, and the estate. But that doesn't mean that I can't go shout around my opinions and try to act in an arrogant, Clarkson-esque way. So, without further ado, feel free to go read the rants and raves at b-pilari. (Oh, and apparently some of the content there will be in Finnish. But worry not, I will never forsake the only True language. ;-)

Of plans

I recently met up with an old friend of mine and we spent some time catching up with what had been happening since we last met. And then of course we continued right onwards from there and talked about what was going on now and what was planned for later this year. And an interesting discussion spawned regarding planning. We had slightly different points of view--I have plenty of plans and even multiple plans for the same things but my friend brought up the point that planning was sort of scary. Well, not exactly scary, but difficult and restrictive.

I started to think about this and what was my relationship with plans. In a way I don't see plans as restrictive or normative in any way. Plans are sort of like a framework or a support structure which I can use to keep track of things. And multiple plans allow you to plan for contingencies. And if you deviate from plans, that's ok too since plans are in fact organic. At least I feel so. I even like to plan things over different time horizons. Plans spanning the following year should be pretty clear. Horizons of three to five years need to be done with a slightly lower granularity. And 10+ years are just broad directions and ideas. And of course I will readily admit that none of my plans have ever worked out the way they were originally envisioned. But that is really alright, because the planning process itself has benefitted me as it has made me think about certan issues in advance, hopefully even before they become acute.

My friend's point was of course very valid also. Plans can of course feel restrictive if they are planned to be static and rigid. I'm of course a firm advocate of the opposite, aforementioned way of using plans. But it might be that formal plans (such as the ones you sometimes have to do at work, or at school) may be scary as you have to quantify the goals and steps and present them to other people. And then I guess it might be problematic to admit to yourself that now that you have told about your very thoroughly quantified plans to everyone else, it's shameful to admit that you can't follow through on them in their current form. But I still firmly feel that these cases can also be solved by taking a more relaxed view of the plans. If deviations start occuring or the goals have moved and the plans seem to solve problems that aren't relevant anymore, then the drift should just be countered by changing the plans. Or adopting a contingency plan. And that itself should be simple enough, since you should be able to motivate the plan to at least yourself, preferrably also other people if the plan includes them too.

Creating cars...

... and that's how they created the new Audi A4...

First contact with Coelho

Paulo Coelho seems to be quite a prominent writer, but I've been in the dark in regards to his work. A person recently suggested that I might want to look into Coelho's By the River Piedra I Sat and Wept and that it might give me some insight on the things that I've been experiencing and been a part of for the past half a year. Yesterday I went and got the book and I more or less read it in one sitting.

While reading the book, it felt very much like it had intelligent things to say. There was substance, it explained things that I hadn't known how to phrase properly. It was written in a manner which allowed it to be read very quickly. But when it ended, I guess the top most feeling that was left was bewilderment. In a way it felt like the book had spoken to me. And even now I will admit that it was decently well written. But in a strange way I felt sort of similar as when I finished the notorious Da Vinci Code years ago. It was entertainment, it made you feel fluffy. But in fact I'm still questioning the actual substance in both. I've heard Coelho being praised for giving insights, but I felt that he had chewed everything for the reader and didn't really leave that much to think for the reader. Everything was handed on a silver platter, and this was a bad thing as in fact I don't think there was that much new or interesting that he contributed. The book was entertaining, but ultimately I have to classify him and his book into the same category is shallow consultants and fortune tellers.

If you read the previous entry, I guess this was one of the things that gave me the motivation to type it up. Don't get me wrong, though. Coelho might be a brilliant writer and a brilliant thinker and according to some quick research with Google, he even seems to be quite a nice chap and engages in many types of charity work. But personally I was left feeling a bit empty. But in a way he rises above so many other authors, since I did get provoked enough to actually brush on him and these subjects in two blog posts. Not that many authors have recently done that to me.

Bookshelves

Traditionally the first thing you do when you visit a friend of yours (or any person) is to check their bookshelves. Unfortunately it seems that nowadays more people decide not to invest in their library. And more often people forget to check what other people are reading. At least I have to admit that I seldom check bookshelves anymore. And if I do check, I don't bother acting on the information later. I guess it would be wise to actually understand what people are reading. It gives quite a bit of insight on how people think and act and why they think and act like they do.

Most people, myself included, typically absorb most of the stuff they read in one way or another. This leads to another possibly problematic thing. Just as people can be manipulated by other people, I guess people can fairly easily also be manipulated by the writings of other people. Pseudo-sciences come to mind right up front. Just because it's in the form of a book doesn't mean that you shouldn't take it with a grain of salt. If school teaches you that you can learn things from books, I guess at some point people should be taught to critique what they read. The university taught me this important lesson. Try to look behind the text and try to understand why the person is writing what they are writing. I guess as an exercise you can try to figure out why I'm writing what I'm writing. Trying to maintain an objective and analytically rigorous approach at all times, again, seems to be the key to success here too. It's too easy, especially with text that is intuitively appealing, to automatically assume that it provides answers to everything. The situation is familiar from a situation where another person is attempting to sway your opinion with rhetorics, or even blatant manipulation.

I guess this leads me to religion, as it is something that people often readily accept or totally disregard offhand. I'm not in a position pass judgement, but far too often people don't take that small grain of salt with what they are fed. I would classify myself as an agnostic and I typically steer clear of these discussions. I feel that various holy books shouldn't be taken word for word. But at the same time I guess defining God as the force that got things moving in the first place is fair. Be it the laws of physics or devine intervention or anything from between. I also think that holy books may have a slight bit of truth in them, but it might as well be that the books and the stories in them were just developed as means to convey rules and guidelines to live by and to get a herd of people to survive in a primitive and hostile environment. The rules and guidelines might of course be taught using metaphores and stories that are in turn interpreted further and when the origin is forgotten, they are interpreted as factual situations. Who knows. Miracles may happen, but then again, statistically improbable situations also occur occasionally. And when unexpected things happen, they might happen in twos or threes. Or it might just be that they spawn copycats and "me too" events which are just fabrications.

But too often when you are feeling like the world is kicking you in the head, it's just easier to seek comfort from stories and discard rationality. I'm of course sort of biased when I say this, considering my branch of studies and the overall mindset that a typical aspiring engineer has. In a way I guess I like to be in control of things, or at least understand why things happen as they do and see the mechanisms behind them. And in light of this, accepting parts of Nietzsche's writings is natural for me. I don't agree with everything, but there are parts which I can take and with the help of a pragmatic nature apply to my personal life and use them as tools to continue onwards. And this is why I will not and cannot overtly criticize different religions and people who believe in their teachings offhand; the religions may just be tools for them to achieve movement. But this doesn't mean that I can or will subscribe to all teachings. And this is why I consider myself an agnostic on this topic.

Clones

Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho is a brilliant book. The movie is also more or less decent, but I would still urge everyone to read the book and possibly skip the movie. One of the more humorous parts in the book are the parts where Bateman and his friends desperately attempt to look unique and spend tons of effort on fine tuning their image--clothing, business cards, etc. Or it was funny up until I noticed that some guy at work had bought the Boss Black overcoat that I had been thinking of getting a while back. This intrigued me a bit and it turned out that about a quarter of the mens overcoats in the coat hangers on our floor were in fact Boss overcoats. I guess Boss isn't that prestigious as a brand as certain others (*cough*Savile Row*cough*), but I still like it. And apparently so do many other people. So much for uniqueness.

Oh, and the aforementioned parts in American Psycho are still funny, regardless...

Homeless

Well, things are changing quite rapidly again. Today was the first day at work when I was no longer sitting in the original cubicle that I got when I joined the company, nearly two years back. We're being moved around as the powers that be are preparing to start a massive renovation of the HQ. And because of all this moving around, I won't be having a personal cubicle for the next three weeks, thus meaning that I'm more or less homeless at work for the time being. And even though this is just the first day, I'm quite annoyed by the nature of the flexispace office; no fixed seats, take any free seat when you want when you come to the office. But it means that I can't leave stuff lying on the desk, etc. Annoying...

But on a more positive note, I finally got around to arrange time to play some tennis with Juha. It wasn't much of a game as we were both pretty rusty, but at least I felt like I was slowly getting the hang of it again... And best of all, it was fun, regardless of whether or not we had any actual control over the ball.

Moments

Life doesn't come down to a small amount of moments. Life comes down to the amount of grunt work that you're willing to put in to lay solid foundations and build up from there. When the background work is thoroughly done, the moments will follow.

One day at a time...

Intuition is a bitch. It really is. I guess most people very often live by just following their intuition and doing things according to what feels good and avoiding things that don't. Add a small spice of rationality (especially if it's in line with intuition) and mid- to long-term perspective and I guess that might be quite a winning combination. Success follows, or something. But then there are the situations where intuition/feeling and rationality conflict. These include moral dilemmas, relationships, etc. I'm personally reminded again about why there are so many love songs and songs about lost love and so on in the world. The most popular subject of songs. And operas. And theater. And many other mediums. But my only hope is that through conflicts between rationality and intuition you just might be able to grow as a person. All extremes are always bad and I guess right now I'm oscillating between the ends, but the equilibrium just seems to be out of my grasp.

And with that, I'll leave you with a link to Leona Lewis's recent song. Yes, it's a list hit, apparently.

Savile Row

Having just arrived back from London very early this morning, I guess I need to touch up on some points of the trip. I'll blog about my feelings about low cost carriers later, but right now there's only one thing on top of my head: Savile Row.

As people who know me or have read my blog are already familiar with, I'm quite interested in tailoring and traditional men's style. I've also been to London on quite many occasions but I've never been to Savile Row. Anyway, this time we did get around to Savile Row and I dragged Eve along and made her listen to me rave about how much I'm in love with the street. It's a small and incredibly idyllic street near Bond Street and houses quite possibly the best tailors in the world. And just by looking at the coats and suits displayed on the windows of the shops, it's not too difficult to understand why there's a slight price difference when compared to some obscure copycat manufacturer in the east.

Anyway, I already got into a discussion today about whether the prices are inflated or not. I guess I will have to admit that without a doubt there's a bit of air in the prices. But then again, if you consider the amount of work that goes into making, for instance, a bespoke suit and then consider the price and what it has to cover, it's not necessarily really that much. And you're not only buying a piece of clothing, either. It's handmade and unique to you, it encompasses centuries of tradition and craftsmanship and it's a work of art. Tailors have different signatures and it shows on their clothes. And I guess there's pretty much always a reason why something is done and something isn't. And in a world where everything's mass produced in China, I guess this is one of the ways that a single person can make a stand against the mass shopping hysteria that's so visible in, for example, the American way of life. A suit of this caliber will last and last and last. And it'll always be in style. Sort of like traditional high-end Swiss watches...

Lifestyles

How do you sell a watch that costs a couple of grands or more? Simple answer? You don't. There's no rational reason why anyone would buy one. But what do you do then? You sell a lifestyle, an image of what the better life would look like. After that people will come and buy the premium stuff from you. It's not about rationality, it's about feelings.

I especially like the music from the second part of the video (especially note the broken strings and the bassline from 2:16 to 2:30).