Mobile phones make the wait more bearable

at Westgate in Jurong East
at Westgate in Jurong East

When I first saw five people sitting on a bench in a mall staring intently at their mobile phones, totally oblivious to their surroundings, I thought: Aha! Here’s an opportunity for me to comment about the idiocy of mobile phone culture—with phones in their hands, people seem incapable of paying attention to anything else.

And then I realized: They’re all men.

Presumably they’re all waiting for their womenfolk to emerge from some nearby store. They’d be bored to tears, or they’d not have come along in the first place, if they didn’t have mobile phones to help them pass the time.

Mobile phones may make people rude in some ways, but here, they’re making these men very, very patient.

Every icloud has a silver lining?