Status update

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

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

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

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

In search of the perfect shirt

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

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

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

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

On the temporary nature of structures

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

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

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

The decline of journalism

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

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

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

First level reached

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

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

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

On taxes and subsidies

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

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

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

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

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

On electric cars

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

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

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

Stunning

Specialization

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

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

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

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

Stockholm Halvmarathon '09

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

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

And then the times that the organizers recorded for me:

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

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

Decision making and the recession

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

Krav Maga

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

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

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

Adaptability

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

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

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

Well...

On dialogs and debates

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

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

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

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

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

Housekeeping

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

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

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

Patience, perseverence, and persistence

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

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

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

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

On generosity

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

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

Customer retention

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Asymmetricity of information

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

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