One of the most common crimes in the city is knife-point mugging, so you DON’T walk around talking on your cell (especially if it’s an iphone 5!!) So the street aesthetics are quite different from those of HK, where you get into the danger of bumping into people when they are all looking down at their phones while walking on the streets. You get on the MTR and the first thing you notice is that everyone seems to share the same relentless love for their phones!

But here, talking about Latino passion, people really LOVE their phones. They love them so much that they’d die for them. Yes. When they are getting threatened for their phones, they decide to fight back, protect their own precious little things, and get killed. Yes, they think their lives are worth less than US$500.. (Don’t worry my friends, when I feel the nudge of a knife on my back I won’t try to see if my tai chi training has borne fruits. Instead I will drop the phone and run away.. Maybe..)

So, since mobile theft is so serious in this city, the government has decided to make some rather grotesque and unnerving ads. You get this one on the newspaper – ‘Would you buy a t-shirt of a murdered? Then why would you buy his phone?’

On the TV you get horror movie-like ads with shrieks from the likes of Scream.. When you make phone calls you keep thinking that people are avoiding you because the person you’re calling may be on the streets and won’t pick up his phone..