School's starting...

Yep, so school's starting once again and the new batch of freshmen will be arriving sometime this week (Wednesday?) and officially the semester will be beginning in two weeks or so. This autumn appears to have the potential to become a rather interesting one. My original contract at N was until the end of September, so I'll have to work slightly longer days so that I can catch at least a couple of hours of lectures each week. And even then I guess I have to play a bit of catch-up.

I've met tons of interesting people at work this summer, too. Many other trainees. And I have to say that right now my motivation to continue my studies is higher than it has been in quite a while. I've been in the incredibly lucky position to witness what it's like in The Real World this summer and gotten more insight on what exactly it is that I want to do when I "grow up". As a result I have a bunch of courses from the Dept. of Industrial Engineering & Management this autumn, and this might prove to be a fairly good and interesting thing in at least two ways. Firstly, it'll offer something slightly different from the Comp. Sci. & Engineering courses I've been doing for the past two-three years and will hopefully provide further motivation. And secondly the structure of the courses is different from the courses of last year in the sense that they focus more on exams based on books and an occasional exercise here and there instead of having endless hours of lectures and exercises. Oh, and that's a good thing since it might allow me to think about the possibility of a part-time job...

A puny attempt at articulating some thoughts...

For as long as I can remember, I've had problems with a certain group of people. Finland has a fairly nice welfare system and a general policy of "not leaving anyone behind." That's swell. Finland also has the highest taxes around. That's not so swell. The aforementioned group is that of the idealists who like the welfare system, want to make it better, want more money and at the same time bitch and moan about the mindsets of the people who pick up the bill. I mean, come on, that holier-than-thou routine is getting old. And fast.

Ever since childhood, everyone is out to instill the "aim for success and work 'til you drop" mindset. That's justified with models and books and research which show that overall things are better if everyone strives for their own/the community's collective success. I won't comment on that. Many people more intelligent than me will most likely know better. But what I do know is that my patience is running out in regards to the welfare system and what it's costing for me. I pay taxes, I have my goals set, I work, I study, etc. And when I go to a bar with some friends, I have various welfare cases harass our table, culminating in some drunkard aiming a punch right in the face of a friend of mine. That's unacceptable.

What's even more interesting is that Kela most likely pays the drunkard more than it pays me. And I'm a student. Investing in me would create more goodwill between me and the government and would perhaps even entice me to stay in Finland after my studies. But right now the situation is that the support I get from Kela doesn't even allow me to stay alive. I work during my vacations from school to raise money so I can study more. But they've also capped the amount I can earn before they'll start cutting the money they pay me. And that's ok. I can deal with that if those are the rules. And then I have some idealists pounce on me and lecture me on how my views of the world are distorted and I have a twisted view on money and how to use it. This coming from people who think sitting around with drug addicts and watching movies all day long constitutes as real work. Nature doesn't have a welfare system; it's the survival of the fittest and the ones who can adapt the quickest. Dragging along extra weight is not worth the effort. What should be done instead is provide everyone a level ground to jump up from (i.e. to ensure that everyone has the chance to the same primary schools, etc.). And then if some people fall or don't jump high enough, that's their problem. Better luck next life.

But under no circumstance am I interested in listening to the hypocritical bitching and moaning and the associated sniping based on stereotypes that these idealists who also lack a real understanding of why evolution works and why driving people out of countries with draconian taxation doesn't. Or otherwise transfer the money that I've paid for the welfare of others back to me; then you can say whatever you want and albeit still lacking weight, it's more credible than what I've had to put up with thus far.

And finally, a note: this was most likely a provoked response to a shitty day, tiredness, etc. Most likely I won't sign the above verbatim in the morning, but...

Breakfast

I usually don't have the time or the energy to eat or make breakfast; I just eat a large lunch at around eleven to make up for the lost energy. That said, I've recently rediscovered the joys of breakfast and how to pamper yourself by outsourcing the breakfast making to an external entity. In this case a cafe. And today I checked out the offerings of the Tintin-inspired Cafe Tin Tin Tango in Töölö. And I have to say that I instantly felt at home there and will be frequenting it from now on. It's not exactly the chic and trendy, ultra modern cafe, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's the same reason as why I'd take a Morgan Roadster over some soulless German; it has something incredibly cool about it. You can't really say what, but it's the sum of all small things.

Oh, and supposedly I look a bit like Richard Branson. I guess I have to get hold of the pictures that a friend of mine took today and do a survey or something before I completely swallow that. But hey! I wouldn't mind being Mr. Branson...

Scratch that, then...

Ok, so the plan about getting a new phone will have to be scratched. Even though a new phone would be nice, my primary computer, an IBM ThinkPad T21, has just died, it seems. Very annoying but by no means that surprising or catastrophic. Luckily I just keep my important files all over the place on multiple computers. Even Murphy's Law can't destroy computers at three different locations (and additionally the backup mechanisms that are at place at the school) and simultaneously destroy all of the DVDs. I hope. *knock on wood*

So anyway, I don't think I can live without a computer and for the past couple of days I've been just surfing around and looking for a new laptop. All the machines I'm interested in start from roughly EUR 2 000, which is a bit too much for a student. I've also been following Apple and an interesting venue would be to get a MacBook for roughly EUR 1 100 and then selling it next spring and get something else. The hardware seems ok and I'm fairly interested in seeing the much hyped Mac OS X in action.

I need a new phone...

Yeah, that about sums it up. Right now I still have the communicator from work, but I'll have to return that along with all the other stuff at the end of September when my contract ends and I go back to school. My personal phone has been a Nokia 6210 for the past 6 years (yeah, the shock, the horror, some people can actually use the same phone for more than 6 months).

The problem in general has been that there really haven't been that many interesting phones from my point of view in the recent times. Right now I think I'd either be looking at a Nokia E50 or an E70 with the E50's price being roughly half of that of the E70. But the E70 has all the cool gizmos and features I just have to have... Add along the fact that I think that my personal laptop has been going through a long and painful death and it seems like the coming autumn may be a fairly expensive one...

URB

So, tonight was yet another show of URB06 at Kiasma and I was actually able to convince a couple of friends of mine from the uni to tag along. And they actually seemed to like the show quite a bit even though they were fairly skeptical at first. Apparently not everyone has an open mind by default when it comes to modern art.

Anyway, the repertoire was

• Mindman & Felix the Beatboxer
• Irven Lewis Dance Theatre
• Jussi "Focus" Sirviö
• HK 119

As previously mentioned, I'd actually gotten a glimpse of Felix earlier this year and he still continued to amaze me with the human beatboxing. Just amazing. Although it has to be said that I think he pulled of a better set the previous time I saw him. Now he was pretty much drowned by the DJ mixing his sounds. Or at least that's my opinion.

Irven Lewis & Co. were quite possibly the best act of tonight. Period. Jazz dancing, like jazz itself, may seem quite chaotic and appear to lack all structure, but it is immensely cool. And very difficult; I should know, I've tried it (well, ok, one or two lessons and I've never done aerobic before, so I was usually going the wrong way, etc.).

Jussi was also fairly good. I've not seen that many breakdancers before in real life and even though I don't listen to the music associated with the dancing that much, you still have to respect the guys who can break.

And finally HK 119. I had a slight idea of what was coming, but that didn't really prepare me for the real thing. To sum it up in a few words, Heidi Kilpeläinen's show was weird. I'm not really sure whether it was good weird or bad weird, but I'm starting to lean towards the former. I guess I'll have to keep my eyes open and see if I can go see her live again sometime and perhaps then I'll be able to form an actual opinion... But overall the show was great and considering that the tickets were cheaper than movie tickets these days, the value for money was outstanding. I think I should just stop going to movies altogether and start frequenting shows like this more.

Of sleeplessness

Yep, so now that we've discussed how nifty it would be to be able to sleep for just three hours a night we get to the topic of how unnifty it is to sleep for six hours a night. The last time I slept for more was last Sunday, when I slept for eight hours. Before that, I can't really remember.

Anyway, I guess I'll go off to read a bit and then hit the sack and try to clock my six hours worth. Going to go see another URB show tomorrow; they sold out the 7 PM show with HK 119, Irwen Lewis and Jussi Sirviö, but luckily they're arranging a second show at 9 PM with Felix the Beatboxer taking part too. I was actually lucky enough to see Felix do his stuff earlier this year in the Don Johnson Big Band's party for their new album and all I can say is that that guy rocks. Anyway, more on this on Thursday, hopefully.

Of sleep

Ok, this is going to be a cliche, but... Why do we sleep one third of our lives? I mean think what you could do if you'd cut your sleep to, say, 3 hours a night. A quick comparison will show that if you sleep for eight hours a night, work eight hours a day, commute an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, that leaves you with six hours of handling chores, meeting friends, going out to see Ursula Rucker, and so on. Unless you phase in some overtime work. And the 8+ hours of continous work, at least for me, is pretty exhausting. Being a student, my attention span is roughly three hours. After that I have to do something else.

So consider a world where you slept for three hours. Say from 1 AM to 4 AM. You get up, commute and get to work at 5.30 AM. You work for four and a half hours and it's 10 AM. Go to a museum, catch up on reading, whatever. And eat. It's 2 PM. Go back to work, clock four more hours of work and by 6 PM you're out of work and not even nearly as tired as before, since you've had a nice four hour break from work in the middle of the day. So you can actually go meet friends and do something asides from crawling home and dying on the couch. And there's even 7 more hours until it's 1 AM and time to hit the sack. Ok, ok, this is just one scenario. Other people could plan their days differently, but the simple fact is that if your day went from 16 hours to 21 hours, you'd certainly notice the difference.

And now on an entirely different note: how do men in movies and on TV keep their just ironed shirts so crispy and wrinkle-free all day round? That's unpossible!

Night driving

Night driving is something that I enjoy immensely. Or actually it's not specificly night itself, but an empty city in general. Be it night time or a very early morning. When the entire city is sound asleep and the streets are deserted. I think it has something to do with the fact that even though I consider myself a fairly urban person, I'm still somewhat of an introvert. Or a borderline introvert/extrovert, according to Myers-Briggs. But then again, that's nothing unusual, I would think, and many people feel the same sort of comfort that stems from solitude and the calmness.

Anyway, too bad I didn't remember to snap more photos of the city tonight, but I have added some new pictures to my Flickr page.

The public persona

I just finished watching the Bourne Identity (a very good movie, considering it's indeed a Hollywood movie) with Doug Liman's comment track. Doug was giving credit on multiple occasions to the guys and gals doing the makeup, hair, wardrobe and similar stuff and emphasizing how difficult it is to achieve a natural yet good and stylish look and avoid the shallow and phony stuff seen in many poorer movies.

This led me to do some introspection and wonder how much time and effort I (or any other person, for that matter) use at a daily level for all things related to my vanity. And where exactly does the line between vanity and hygiene exactly reside. Ok, washing your hair every once in a while goes to hygiene, but styling your hair a couple of hours a day is just vanity. But the borderline is difficult. For example, at what point does shopping for clothes cross over to vanity? And overall, how much effort do we actually put into trying to create a perfect public persona for ourselves while still striving to have our personal look appear as natural and as easily maintainable as possible.

Competitiveness

I've been playing tennis once a week with a friend of mine for a month or two now. Mostly every Tuesday morning, just before work. I've gone to a number of tennis courses when I was younger and the reason why I stopped it was because I tend to be fairly competitive in whatever I do (or did, when I was younger) and sports just stopped being fun when all you aimed at was victory and anything less caused great upset.

Anyway, since then I've grown up a bit. At least I think I have. These days I can actually enjoy a variety of sports without being obsessed with winning. But the interesting thing is that when we play tennis, the warming up by hitting balls around a bit is pretty much useless. I just can't seem to get the ball over the net or when I do, to get it to stay in. And the same thing applies to my friend, as far as I can tell. But as soon as we stop warming up and start counting points, the game improves immensely. All of a sudden we're able to keep the ball alive a lot longer and have long rallies. At least for me this is mostly because of my competitiveness trying to gain control again; defeat is unacceptable.

So in a way, if tennis is an analogy for life, it would appear that trying to subdue my competitiveness just holds me back and makes my life that much more miserable and brings failures along with it. If this is indeed the case, then perhaps instead of just trying to be nice to everyone and striving for some obscure ethical goals I should be focusing more on actually getting results and going after the things that really matter to me. Dunno, just an idea.

On a related note, I stumbled on a review of DeRossitt's The Rules of Ruthlessness online today and that may be precisely the book I should look into next.

Perpetual backlog

The photo above is of my perpetual backlog of books on my nightstand. Every time I pop at Akateeminen, some book always tags along until my nightstand resembles a leaning tower of books, defying gravity. Well, ok, not really, but now it's nice and tidy again. Except for the unopened new Economist, which I shall be digging into as soon as I hit 'Publish Post'. G'night.

My Life 2.0: Redux

Considering the nature of my current job and my employer, I figured that I should delve more deeply into the world of e-personas. So I have my blog, my calendar, my music list and homepage online. As does everyone and their dog. So what has happened since?

Well, firstly, it seems that MySpace is a really big thing in the Rest of the World (i.e. the other side of the pond), so I of course had to register there. No real idea what I'm actually going to do with it, but regardless, my presence on MySpace has been established. Yay!

But did I stop there? No! (Well duh, wouldn't make a very interesting blogging if I did now, would it...) So while enjoying a nice salad at a local cafe, I figured I could document all great meals I've had, and instead of reinventing the meal, I mean wheel, I decided to investigate the offerings of Blogger in regards to mobile blogging of images. But it turned out that I couldn't really get that working for some reason or another, so instead I recalled that there had been a big hype surrounding Flickr, so I instead registered there. And their system actually works and I have a foothold there also.

So now the real question is, will all these new thing-a-majics really fit into my current lifestyle and will I actually learn to use them. Or more importantly, will I ever bother to use them...

Edit: Oh, and how could I have forgotten! I'm even more chic since I also have a del.icio.us account!

Of nine-to-five days

Ever since the semester ended and work started, my social life has taken a nose-dive. After work I come home exhausted and just fall on the couch and stay there until I hit the sack. I can't really explain it. It's not like the work I do is that exhausting; it's a typical white collar job. And therein lies the problem, most likely.

Most of the year my official occupation is student. So I have lectures I go to, etc. But there aren't really any real obligations. Sure, I have to get N credits over the semester to get money from the government, but the required number of credits is so low that that's hardly a problem. And on any given day, I most likely am at school for two or three hours and then just hang around for the rest of the time. So that's the only reason I can think of why my days now consist of sleeping and working. But luckily school is starting again in a couple of months, so I'll be back on track to slacking off again...

My Life 2.0

It's amazing how the internet has spawned a new breed of people and what's equally amazing is the extent to which people go in sharing their life. With blogs, services like Last.fm and so on, soon you can have your entire life online. The corporate world seems to have also caught onto this trend and for example, what'd be better for Google than to provide everyday services for people and being able to analyze and build an incredibly precise profile of a single person.

Right now I have my personal calendar at Google, the music I play at Last.fm, my blog also at Google, my link list on del.icio.us and so on. And Nokia Research Center just published a port of the Apache web server for Symbian, so pretty soon you can host information about yourself from your mobile phone; you can share your contacts, your calendar, your availability information and so on right from your phone.

A while back I even played with the idea of putting up a persona wiki into which I'd write about me, my views, my relationships with other people and so on. Basicly a wiki to document my life. I soon scrapped that idea since I most likely wouldn't have any friends afterwards since some things are better left unsaid...

Corporate Strategy

It's summer, the semester is over, I passed all of the courses I took and now I'm working. Great. And as a matter of fact, I'm actually enjoying my current situation and that's a really big thing for me. Anyway, I went to grab something to eat downtown today and I of course had to go by Akateeminen (a big Finnish bookstore) and as typical, couldn't get out without buying anything... And this time a book named Exploring Corporate Strategy (Johnson, Scholes, Whittington) tagged along.

I have a choice coming up shortly on what I'm going to minor on. I want to read something from the Department of Industrial Engineering & Management and right now my two choices are either some minor from the lab of Work Psychology & Management or a minor from the Institue of Strategy and International Business. I talked to some people earlier in the year and it appears that possibly the most hated course in ISIB is PRISMA (or Principles of Strategic Management), so being the logical person that I am, I'm going to try to solve my problem concerning the minor by reading the course book for PRISMA and the based on that do my decision. *cough*chessslidesets*cough*

Sailing

Went sailing for the first and probably last time this summer; the boat's leaving for ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers) in a couple of weeks and I most likely will be pretty tied up with work for the foreseeable future. Regardless, the sailing was fun, as always. Have to find a new hobby for the rest of the summer after all, apparently. I still want to try archery and canoeing before winter, so there's at least some kind of a plan.

Anyway, regarding the ARC, I've recently been designated as the webmaster of the blog of the project (layout, hosting, etc.). It's online here.

Of summer parties

The company summer party was on Wednesday. I've been to one of N's summer parties before in San Diego and the whole nature of the event was completely different. In San Diego the event was a whole family event on the beach and had this nice laid back atmosphere and people were just mingling. A very nice event, all in all...

In Finland, however, it was completely different. When I first got the email about the party, the first thing which popped up from it was the age limit; 18 or older. This sort of gave away the theme of the party: drink as much as you for free before heading off to the after party where drinks cost money. This seems to be the general way things in Finland are celebrated, so I guess I'm just fighting windmills. But still.

The actual party was at a parking lot-ish area, where thousands of people were crammed together. And all in all I found it fairly stressful. The positive things, however, were that I got to meet some of the other summer trainees and they seem like an interesting bunch. Fairly international, so I even got to practice my English a bit again and overall networking is always a good thing.

Spontaneity

Spontaneity is a dying thing these days, apparently. At least forms of it. Back in the good ol' days people would just drop by unannounced and going to the park to just hang around didn't need to go through a process that makes the decision making at Brussels look agile. Or perhaps I'm just spending too much time with the wrong type of people.

But regardless, mobile phones are here to stay and everyone has their calendars synch'ed to their phones, their laptops, their PDAs and some calendar application online. That's fine, but is everyone really so busy that all that is warranted? I mean, come on, that's not quality of life if you have to run around all the time and to meet friends you have to book appointments weeks in advance...

Anyway, we did a spontaneous trip to ESO (Eteläsuomalainen Osakunta, a type of fraternity appartment) after hearing that there was supposed to be a party there from a friend who'd heard it from a friend. Turned out that there really wasn't that big a party there and that initially they didn't really want to let our group of four people in, but after some chatting, we finally wound up inside drinking beer and making new friends. The worst part was the slight hangover this morning, but even that was beat and I ended up doing a 13 hour day at work. Well, at least now I can leave work somewhat earlier on Friday and catch a train to Salo to go meet up with some older friends.

Work as usual

I started as a seasonal trainee at a large telecommunications company about four weeks ago and things are finally starting to normalize. Of course the hype around trainee positions at such companies is huge and the first few weeks fly by with a continous feeling of euphoria. But then the honeymoon is over and you realize that it's typical company, just like anything else, just like those smaller companies you've worked for before. Don't get me wrong, this'll look good on my CV and I do learn lots of things daily, but the problem from my point of view is that I'm not getting very much technological competence as I'd like to; instead I am learning about how large organizations work and how things get done or don't. That's of course very important too, but...

On the plus side, the benefits are great. Gyms, saunas, phones, etc. The pay is decent and of course since it's a trainee position, the tasks given are also such. So yeah, overall, this is a good place and offers good networking possibilities, but it isn't exactly what I imagined it to be, but then again, nothing that's hyped will ever meet expectations.