iPhone special: No contacts in the contact list when I couldn't talk to my Microsoft Exchange server

I interrupt my usual rant about .NET (and Dell laptops) to bring you a rant about my iPhone.

Story begins like this...

So we had a bit of a DNS hiccup with our Microsoft Exchange server.

When I pop over to use my iPhone, it says "Cannot Get Mail. The connection to the server <mail server> failed"

Fair enough.  Not the iPhone's fault.

Then I lose all my contacts.  In my contacts list, there was "No contacts".  There were 200 contacts before.

Panic

What, really?  Yes.

I must crazy.  Someone who designed this must be crazy.  It couldn't be the iPhone.  It must have been me.  I thought I must be mad.  It must have been a bad push / sync, or something.

Resolution

Anyway, I frantically tried to look for a solution, but it was only until when I finally got it to connect to Exchange server again after the DNS issues were sorted out, and hey, all my contacts re-appeared again.

I contemplated on restoring the phone, but my contacts were synchronized with Exchange, iTunes isn't tracking it:

"Your contacts are being synced with your iPhone over the air from Microsoft Exchange."

So I couldn't sync mail for an hour.  I also have zero contacts in my iPhone for an hour.  From the point where the iPhone decided that it couldn't sync with Exchange, apparently it also decided that it should now hide (or remove - I can't tell) all my contacts.

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

jliu