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02:23 PM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
July 26, 2013
This is it - the big one, the great crossroads of my life. Decision time.
I am going into a partnership with a friend and our company is called Downsizer. It will produce a new range of electronic and electrical items for the masses out there who pay top whack for features they never use. That is the biggest con job done on the human race and Downsizer is going to break the habit. Like how many people do you know who used to program their VCRs for Wednesday June 14 at 9.30 pm 10 years ago. Come on, don't put me on, you don't know anyone.
Anyway, stop arguing, you don't like our fil-oss-o-fee you don't have to buy our stuff. This is how it works.
Our range of microwave ovens simply defrosts and heats. It does not bake, roast, brown, broil or do the rock and roll. It will not have 76 variations painted on its face with all those numbers that make you believe you are doing a maths test and end up feeling diminished in your eyes.
You should see the Downsizer washing machine. It doesn't even have an instruction book, no flipping timers (hate them with passion) and all you do is dump in clothes, dump in powder and shut and go, none of those beeping lights and those cute, coy instructions about woolens and fragile silks and chiffons.
One of the bigger selling items will be the Downsizer X nothing music system. It does not have a graphic equalizer (useless thing anyway) no sleepers, no 11 miles of cable and no hidden bass acoustic doodahs whatevers. You just put on the disc and it plays to an audience that is statistically 82 percent tone deaf anyway.
All Downsizer appliances will perform one basic function and that's it. Your TV will not have 24 yellow and red orifices in the back that you have absolutely no idea why they are there and no one else has either but you paid for them, you know those dust covered little things marked 'left' 'right', RF out, RF in, RF aux (what the heck is aux, why would I want an aux, have you ever sat in front of your TV and said, sheee, my aux isn't working).
The Downsizer mobile phone will ring for you and it will let you call out. No more eleventeen eleven programming features and arrows going up and arrows going down and something called 'mode' and something else called ‘hash’ key and all of it making you feel like a total ninny.
Our mixi will mix, our grinder will grind and our shredder will shred but you can choose which one you want and you won't be saddled with half a dozen funny looking blades that you can never quite figure out.
We will never have to say, enjoy the new TRDPX sound that is so real it stuns you.
Nor will our screens have 33,000 HD lines with black matrix or white matrix or even grey matrix for that extra clear vision: it will just be a plain screen, period.
And there won't be any of that PMPO stuff that none of you really know about, I mean what does it stand for? And you can take your woofer and tweet it.
We will save you so much money because if the item you bought has only a singular function there won't be any malfunctions like there are in these multi-active things we buy.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
If my call is so important to them, why don’t they answer it for 22 minutes?
How come when I want to, but something specific online is the only item out of stock.
When I get into a queue or lane going fast, the moment I get in, it becomes the slowest and refuses to budge.
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