In the train, yesterday, before getting out, the man in the same cabin all of sudden spoke to me: “the world is small.” After a few seconds he continued, “all our lives we are looking for someone or something else, while we haven’t found ourselves. How can we look for someone else when we don’t know who we are?.”

A few seconds before the following paragraph had popped up on my iphone:

“At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all. For a million years humans had grown up with a personal daily knowledge of the vault of heaven. In the last few thousand years they began building and emigrating to the cities. In the last few decades, a major fraction of the human population had abandoned a rustic way of life. As technology developed and the cities were polluted, the nights became starless. New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that only ended with the dawn of space exploration.” via Kottke

I remember one early morning at Audarya last year when I stopped while walking to the bathhouse and looked up. Hundreds or thousands of stars lit the sky. Very little light pollution. Years ago I was on a school excursion and we looked at the stars too and picked out a few well know stars, like the pole stars. Years later as well, I was sitting on a veranda at the Mediterranean and looked up to the stars. Magnitude. That’s what I thought. And it forced me to think and be humble.

And so I believe introspection leads to a better quality of life, and a less random one too.

A good friend of mine recently uploaded his bamboo flooring business website. Since all businessman are looking for customers, I would love to direct you to his new website. Bamboo floors are a good green alternative to standard wooden floors.

Bamboe vloeren

After moving into an apartment and emptying out all the boxes, I realized the place was still very empty. Since I always have a research appetite, this proved to be an interesting experience into the world of interior design. Having falling in love with Swami’s design of Audarya and always having liked the Japanese and Scandinavian interior style, I went out searching on the internet. If you ever need to do some interior design and are looking for inspiration, these are some of my favorite blogs:

Apartment Therapy
Design Sponge
Emma’s Blog
Purple Area
Style Files

Just a little diversion, back to more on topic issues hopefully soon.

“Persistence isn’t using the same tactics over and over. That’s just annoying.

Persistence is having the same goal over and over.”

Well said.

If you get lost here, I understand. If not, say hi.

Isn’t it strange that sometimes what we perceive as weaknesses are actually strenghts? Or what may be apparantly cool is not so cool in the end? For instance, the Marlboro cowboy may be a though looking guy, he still has a far superior chance of getting long cancer than that guy who has never touched a cigarette in his life and eats two pieces of fruit everyday. Sometimes left is right and right left. We take much for granted that is actually less straightforward than it appears.
To those who say they do not want to think about life neither make any choices, I can only argue that I do not see myself as being a machine ruled by outside sensual attraction. I may feel the same, but I believe my attempt to act counterwise will improve myself in the end.
What is the point of endless extraction into an always half-empty glass? We’ve got the power within to lead better lives. But it takes courage to admit that we are limited creatures, and can not be endlessly satiated. Honesty is the only guide on our way up.

It’s been a bit quite here lately. My apologies for the lack of updates. It doesn’t mean nothing has happened, rather too much has been going which prevented me to post here.  I’ve moved to a different city into an apartment. I could write a post about that, all the interior design involved.

Also, I started a new assignment and on the train rides getting there, I’ve been reading my new favorite magazine, Monocle. In their latest issue they interview Arianna Huffington who says the following:

“I believe in reincarnation. Even if you don’t believe in reincarnation - it’s hard for me to look at life and not believe that it didn’t have any purpose, that it didn’t have any continuity. I can’t believe that all things have a short time and then it’s all over.

I’m amazed that people who think it all ends with death can accept that. Socrates, my compatriot, used to say, ‘practice death daily.’ He didn’t mean it in a morbid way, he meant that if you practice death daily, then you put everything that happens to your life in perspective.”

I like how train rides can give you this. Introspection. Step out from the traffic jam and give hands out of control for 30 minutes or so.

I love it when someone from within a conservative environment is able to say this. It shows that indeed investing is apart from the mathematics, or maybe as much as included, a creative sport. These are true lessons when the whole outside world talks about recessions and black mondays.

“It’s, like, one business school guy, one finance major after another, kids who, from the time they were twelve years old, were watching Jim Cramer and dreaming of working in a hedge fund. And I think in reality that, probably, if anything, they’re less likely to make good investors than people with sort of more interesting backgrounds… Because I think that in the end the way that you make a ton of money is calling paradigm shifts, and people who are real finance types, maybe they can work really well within the paradigm of a particular kind of market or a particular set of rules of the game—and you can make money doing that—but the people who make huge money, the George Soroses and Julian Robertsons of the world, they’re the people who can step back and see when the paradigm is going to shift, and I think that comes from having a broader experience, a little bit of a different approach to how you think about things.”

From: “Interview with a Hedge Fund manager” N+1 magazine via Kottke.org

I’m currently reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness. Apart from the fact that he is an interesting fellow, part mathematical trader, part literary essayist, his book is based on a compelling premise: life is much more random than we think it is. When we look back at success in time, we can rationalize how we did it. For instance, someone may say he became rich through hard work. However, this can never be the sole reason, because there are many people who work hard but never become rich. It is easy to focus on the details while losing the general view.I like how he mentions too that mistakes can never be judged retrospectively with the information we know now, but rather with the data that was available up to the point in time the mistake was made.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but from what I read now I highly recommended if your interested in philosophy, trading or just intelligent thinking. Watch the above video for a bit more by Taleb himself. (Last year, he published The Black Swan which is also on my reading list.)

“Drinking has so become the norm that those of us who choose not to, whether for a day or a lifetime, set ourselves apart from the crowd. If someone asks and I attempt to give an honest answer as to why I don’t drink─because I’m trying to lose weight, because it makes me feel out of control, because I feel like I’m a better person when I don’t drink─they often hear my responses as accusations, like I’m saying there’s something wrong with them for drinking, when nothing could be further from the truth… I’ve discovered that I may not always like the person I am sober, but grappling with her, facing her with all her flaws and insecurities, is preferable for me than trying to blot them out with another vodka cran.”
- Rachel Kramer Bussel

Do what feels good in your heart and makes sense in your head. The New Year period is a good time for reflections.