October 12th, 2009 §
I bought myself an £85 pair of jeans from a major high-street retailer today. I have about 4 pairs of trousers, 3 of which I wear on a regular basis, and they are starting to show signs of wear and tear despite being in use for 2 years. The £85 jeans costs the sum of those 4 trousers put together, and I’m worried that it won’t last as long the price tag says – simply because I grew up thinking that money doesn’t always buy you lasting products.
Of course, not all clothes are designed to be industrial strength. But it should at least be able to hold my keys in the pockets. The pockets of the one I bought from Gap about a year ago gave way, and I’m having to patch it because I think it’s still wear-worthy. A pair of chinos, which I bought from Dockers, also saw multiple holes in the pockets. I’ve just thrown another pair of Dockers chinos into the trash after seeing frays at the edges of the pockets and at the rear-end.
I’m somewhat frustrated because I expect my clothes to last longer than that, and maybe I’m being too demanding. But I bought those trousers because I believed that was what the brands were promising. So I’m not frustrated that my trousers actually have holes – but I’m frustrated by the fact that the promise of the brand failed to live up to my expectations.
I expect this happens with a lot of people – they pay for the price on the tag because they believe in what the brand is promising, because it’s just too much work to go into the details of actually assessing the quality of the product to estimate the actual value of the purchase.
It would’ve been nice to know from these companies how certain types of trousers are expected to last X months/years based on certain usage. But no one seems to talk about such things, more so these companies that sell on such high promises.
Update: A good friend has just educated me on the benefits of paying for high quality denims, some of which cost almost three times what I paid for the jeans I bought today. His pair of Evisus have lasted him years, but you don’t get them for peanuts. It’s one of those rare brands that actually delivers on its promises, and they get to keep their customers for a lifetime.
October 11th, 2009 §
I feel I’ve had a lack of education, coming from a developing nation in the Far East. I wish I had been enrolled in a school that actually taught history and geography in all its wonderful richness.
I don’t care so much about math because I feel it’s hard to screw up math because it has been made comparatively standard and agnostic from politics and subjectivity, that I assume it hadn’t been whitewashed or dumbed-down for our consumption.
And life isn’t all about numbers.
About an hour ago, I was flipping through the pages of a free, relatively unpolished ebook by Seth Godin. Despite his rough outline about blogs and how to write them, I could tell that by mere reference to specific names and his understanding of journalism and the publishing industry set him many miles apart from so-called “blog experts” that promise to sell you the secrets to blogging success (and I’m not even mentioning “social media”… ugh).
And I feel that the difference about a man or woman is brought about by his perspective of the world, and more importantly, the appreciation and critical self-assessment of that worldview.
I feel that topics like history and geography actually provide the building blocks for thinking about important issues like culture, politics, business, society, philosophy and religion. I may never know what it’s like to have that rich perspective of life without a proper understanding of these basics – because it feels like I’ve been robbed of an opportunity to learn stuff like history and geography in all its richness when I was growing up, except for those moments when my mom was actually teaching me.
The overemphasis of rote learning could’ve been the cause of this. And I remember that I was told off for asking “why” so many times, despite genuinely seeking answers. Did I surpass my superiors’ ability to thirst for answers at that young age? Heaven knows.
Wikipedia only helps so much. Don’t take your education for granted.
October 7th, 2009 §
Startups aren’t sexy things. Sad to say, I believed all the hype when I read it. But no one talks about it anymore. They don’t say – “Oh, you work at a startup! So, do you have beanbags and free food and wear whatever you want?”… basically, no one gives a hoot – because it’s so easy to get into a startup nowadays and most people don’t even want to go there anyway because it’s crazy.
I’m one of those weird people who still think crazy things are possible, which is probably why my boss hired me. Thankfully, it’s not one of those startups that have no clue how they’re going to make money – but it’s no Google… well, not yet anyway.
And that’s the thing – you go in with a hunch. And you stay with it. Until the point where you have a good feeling that you’re really going to succeed or really going to fail – and everyone in the team makes a decision to push like crazy or run like hell.
In return, you get to experience and contribute towards the success of a company… and sometimes there’s big money involved. If it becomes a failure, you have the real-world experience of how not to run a business – and that’s very valuable experience indeed.
The worst thing that can happen is that you lose your job. And it’s better to lose your job at a place where you’re doing something you love at than at a job where you wish you were dead every morning you wake up and have to go to work. And even when you’re homeless, you don’t die immediately. It’s not like you lose the skills you had when you did have a job. And it’s not like you can’t learn new things.
Playing safe in a career is overrated. It pains me to see some people go through their working life enduring so much agony.
