a dozen reasons to miss..

1. my petite cafe au lait
2. my long walks down the boulevards and the rues
3. my fresh croissant et espresso. freshly baked baguette and sometimes aromatic cheese
4. my fresh crisp french newspaper along with #3, the paper that I read pretending to understand it all. But it reality just pick words I know and glance thru'
5. my rushing thru' metros, picking the wrong direction sometimes and running back to get to the right one
6. my 3 hour lunch, more talking less eating. les fetes for no reason whatsoever
7. my half a day run/walk/trek thru' les forets
8. my impulsive indulgence at the patiesserie
9. les bavards in french
10. french radio/news in french
11. Friends from other parts of the world. proximite to london and milan at the same time
12. gazillion more things that cannot fit into one blogpost

We apologize

"For the continued delay in the service of your call. Please remain on the line for the next available nurse.."
I was listening to this voice time and again for more than 30 mins as I held the line for my insurance provider.
I heard the message " All of the available nurses are servicing other customers" and it is just sheer numbers that strongly makes me believe that the message I hear is simply not feasible.
What is the possibility that many other colleagues of mine were actually on the line talking to nurses to help them with their insurance details at 2330 hrs (PST).
I wouldn't definitely mind (let me say mind so much) holding the line for other services like hotelling or air travel. But for something as time critical as medical insurance, this is a big 'tsk-tsk'. I thankfully wasn't passing out while waiting, but for others who are possibly in that situation, a 24X7 support has completely lost the whole purpose of its existence with such extended wait times..Is there some where I can voice these thoughts to have an effect?

G forces - Alert!

It has been a while since I said anything about this company. But now I am. Has anyone been following kayak (www.kayak.com). I have been pretty impressed with their service since about 2 years now. Kayak helps me get the best deals without having to pay an additional service fee (like Orbitz or Travelocity) and even better, no additional cancellation fees (that $30 that is charged by Orbitz). Kayak apparently directly pings the SABRE database for flights and shows you the price. The cool features I like about it is the fare history, interface to change the search criteria, the host of options with Flights/Hotels/Cars/Cruises/Deals etc. I understand they are pretty strongly funded, stable and have the best and the brightest in the travel industry on their board. So this is the next pit stop for our G-force! Yes, the algorithm is the core competency and they need to leverage it whenever/wherever they can. By now, it is obvious that I am talking about the forces of Google!
Simple, buy Kayak->have a single sign on through G-mail -> enable payment through Google Checkout -> allow searches through past purchases -> add some artificial intelligence to make suggestions for the next vacation trip, show deals, personal search (leverage iGoogle) -> enable posting pics through phone directly to picasa online web albums, the possibilities are endless
Viele Grusse!