Mobile phones     Listen to this article   01    02

Recently I noticed hundreds of people "camped out" on the walkway between Central and the Star Ferry. Many of them were from other countries, so I presumed they were protesting about the right of abode issue. Then someone told me: they were queuing up to enter the nearby Apple centre where only a limited number of  IPhone 4S were on sale!  

There are now almost as many mobile phones in the world as there are people.
China and India each have about one billion mobile phones. In Hong Kong the number of mobile phones is almost double the population.

The first word of a baby is usually “Mama” or “Papa”. Someone jokingly said that
the first word of a  baby in HK is “Wai?”  

People used to talk about “a three-course meal”. Now we have “a three-call meal” – when a meal is interrupted by three calls. Which is why some people are putting their phones on “silent” during a meal. This reduces tension – for both the user and those who have to listen to the user during a meal.

For the same reason some people are putting their phones on “silent” when they are traveling.
Listening for the sound of your phone can be a strain when you’re on a noisy street,
or when you’re trying to get on or off a bus or train or ferry.

Smile: some weeks ago when I was on the MTR, I noticed a boy about
10 years old staring hard at my phone. At first I didn’t know why he was so interested.
Then I realized: my historic Nokia is like a museum piece….and he’d never seen one before!