telephonic oddities

it's amusing, the way people sometimes react when something unexpected happens at the other end of the phone line. i probably am weirder, but my puny mind doesn't allow me enough of objectivity for me to see the humour in that. so yeah, back to making fun of other people:

my office desk phone rang today afternoon. a name flashed on the screen, so it was an internal call. i answered.

k: hello!
u: ummm
k: hello?
u: errrr
k: kris here, who's this? (yeah, that was a dumb thing to say. my name is showing on his phone, and his name is on mine :P)
u: (probably got over the surprise at dialing hari's number and seeing kris on his phone) can i speak to hari?
k: this isn't hari's phone. i think hari left the company.

i later found out that hari hadn't quit, he was transfered - and he is very much in bombay too. oh well.

which reminds me of another (pretty old) incident:

k: (picks up the landline to check for a dial tone before dialing)
phone: silence
k: (screams across the house and also into the phone) mama, the phone's dead!!!
confused voice at the other end of the line: hello...kris???

apparently i picked up the phone at the exact same moment as the phone started ringing. neither i not my aunt at the other end heard it ring.

oh and of all the possible coincidences, i happened to make 2 calls today that were answered by fax machines. i tried squeaking into the line in the hope of making the machine detect my voice as the carrier signal. i actually managed to confuse the fax machine once :P