Archives for July 26th, 2007

Ljubljana is the best place for your cell phone to fall off your ear.

Reader’s Digest recently conducted an experiment: They dropped 30 cell phones in cities around the world and recorded how many good Samaritans would bring them back. In the surprise to end all surprises, Ljubljana won.

From the article Excuse Me, Is This Your Phone?:

The highest-ranking city happened to be the smallest: Ljubljana, Slovenia. Twenty-nine of 30 phones were returned in this picture-postcard city in the foothills of the Alps, home to just 267,000 people . The Slovene helpful streak extended beyond the parameters of the magazine’s mission: In one case, a young waiter at a coffee shop returned a phone and a leather jacket accidentally left behind by our reporter.

I still can’t believe it. For me, it’s the biggest surprise since Shanghai Surprise, and the biggest shocker since Wes Craven’s Shocker. My first thought was that people returned it because they’ve already got enough phones and don’t need another. But according to this, Hong Kong leads the world in mobile phones per capita (after Luxembourg) and they were dead last in returning phones. (You can see the complete rankings here. [pdf] )

So what the hell happened? I don’t know. Could it be that this country is changing into a kinder, gentler nation? Sometimes it feels like it. Yesterday, I was making a left turn and some guy actually let me in. He even waved. And it’s been happening more often lately. I don’t think it happened to me a single time in the first two years I was here. Maybe the government’s putting something in the water? Or perhaps the booming economy has something to do with it? I’m baffled. Still, as Tomaž suggested, it would be a lot more interesting experiment if they used iPhones…

(Big thanks to Gregor and Tomaž!)