Interlude 14: Daylight Robbery

Knowing me, you probably think I´m talking about high priced rip offs with a title like that. Well, not this time:

Whenever people talk about the insecurity here, it always sort of had a smack of 'big city crime' about it. For example, i would hear stories of muggings, or pick pockets. Obviously, these things are pretty bad - but they are also widespread throughout every city in the world. So why is it that a major talking point here is the 'inseguridad', which is clearly so bad that it is right up there with socioeconomic woes and corruption? I really didn't think I'd ever find out, until i was given a small taste of it on the way home from work last Friday.

There I was, standing at a (crowded) bus stop in one of the nicer parts of town, listening to some music whilst messing around on whats app on my phone. Suddenly, some ****** comes zooming from behind on his bike, and grabs my phone out my hand and zooms off again. Only problem for him was he underestimated the iPhone´s grip on its headphones, which although were torn from the socket, retrospectively seem the reason why it flew up in the air before smashing the glass back all over the floor.

By the time I'd taken stock of what had just happened, and let off every Spanish swearword i knew at him, he was long gone on his bike. To their credit, the rest of the people at the bus stop came over to help and let me know how much of a bastard he was etc - its just that, weirdly, none of them seemed that surprised. 'well, that's just the country' said one. 'you´re Argentinian now' said another. I should also add (perhaps in my defense) that because he was riding against the flow of traffic and therefore approached from behind, he couldn't have even seen what I was holding (i.e. that it was an iPhone 5 as opposed to something else)

That's pretty scary - we're talking about a crowded bus stop at 5.30 in the afternoon sunshine. Such a shame - not only for my phone (which, admittedly, still works) but more for my opinion of this country. I was beginning to quite like it, but its just gone down slightly in my estimation...