Slimmer, smaller, sillier?

I was in an auto yesterday and I saw an advertisement for a camera from Sony. It said:

The world's slimmest digital camera.

Samsung, supposedly, has the world's slimmest digital phone. Panasonic claims it has the smallest phone. Here's what I'm thinking though--if you keep making things smaller, slimmer, and tinier, things are going to get misplaced easily. You can leave the small thing under a book or in a book and you'll have a hard time finding it. Or, it's so slim or so small, it's hard to hold. You'll have to dial a number or shoot a picture with your pinky or maybe your nails. I have a hard time with my Nokia 1100 (a fabulous phone by the way) as it is. It's nice and compact and pretty light. Every time I put my phone in my front pocket, I'll forget (because it is light) and lean over and drop it. It's a good thing that I've not leaned over in toilets thus far. With the world's slimmest whatever, I could drop it and I wouldn't even hear a sound. Maybe that's not such a good thing huh?

Things I don't like to hear on the phone to call centres

I end up calling call centres a lot now-a-days because my Internet connection is about as reliable as a politician taking a stand on something. When I call, I hear messages that I just don't get. Here are a few:

• Your call is important to us. Please hold the line and a customer care executive will be with you shortly. (If the call is so important, then why isn't the executive with me already? Coffee break?)
• Your approximate wait time is 3 minutes. (From when? When I called? Or when I heard this message?)
• Please leave your number with us. We will call you back within one hour. (I never get a call back. Should I take this personally?)
• We are experiencing extremely high call-volumes. Please call back later. (When? When? When should I call back?)
• The system is down for maintenance. We apologise for the inconvenience. (This one I can understand sometimes. Systems do need maintenance.)

But, they all talk about being customer-centric.

Uncomfortable bus journeys

If you travel by bus from Bangalore to Hyderabad (and this is probably the case with some other cities as well, but I have no first-hand experience), you get a choice of traveling in Volvo buses. The buses have AC, they don't toss you around every time there's a bump, and they're reasonably comfortable. Except for the seats of course. Most of the semi-sleepers have reclining seats. You can also move the arm-rests back. The problem is that the arm-rests don't go as far as the seats, so you end up with the arm-rest poking you in the ribs. So, if you're planning a cozy two-some with your significant other (or a hot stranger), don't. Then, there's the leg-space, which is not so bad, unless you're a bit tall. I am. The design problem there? Well, you have this iron rod that's about two inches off the ground that gets in the way of your feet. If you take off your shoes, then the underside of your feet hurt when they have to rest against the iron rod or pipe or whatever it is. Also, some bus drivers will stop and in the middle of the night (about 3 am I think), there's this guy who comes into the bus saying, Jew-shh, jew-shh saar? (Juice, juice saar.) I am not a violent person, but I've experienced this a couple of times, and I've really wanted to do some serious physical damage to the guy. There's something about losing sleep that makes you want to do things that you don't normally do. Now I know why sleep-deprivation is used for torturing people. Give me a train journey any day. Except that the tickets are not so easy to get as buses.