In October 2010, the International Telecommunication Union’s Telecommunication Development Bureau (ITU-D) estimated mobile phone subscriptions would be at 5.3 billion, 6.1 trillion SMS would be sent and mobile network penetration would reach 90 per cent worldwide by the end of that year (ITU-D, 2010).With such levels of cell phone penetration, we should expect to see prevalent usage and to be bombarded with ‘halfalogue’ (the overheard half of a mobile phone conversation) in public places. A recent Cornell study shows that since halfalogue contains only half of the phone conversation, it is more unpredictable and demanding for accidental listeners (Ember son et al., 2010). The study concludes the incomplete nature of halfalogue makes it harder to be ignored, especially if the listeners are stuck in confined public places; for example, on a bus full of passengers all chatting on their mobile phones. However, that does not seem to be a common experience for most of us in our daily encounters, at least not in 2011.