Communicating with the locals

   Latinos are very different to Australians when it comes to communication. Latinos are affectionate. Every meeting starts and finishes with a kiss on the right cheek.... Man to woman, woman to man, woman to woman, and, yep, man to man. And even phone conversations, email messages, and text messages are finished with kisses.
   I am never sure what the protocol is, so I just try and play along as best I can. When I worked as a volunteer in Iquitos (peruvian amazon) I found it tiring to have to kiss everybody in welcome and goodbye, and especially having to kiss the one guy I didn't really like. Even friends of friends require a kiss on the cheek.
   In Tucuman I learnt something interesting. Here my local friend would finish a text message with bss or mil bss, these being short for kisses and 1000 kisses respectively. Of course, in English speaking culture, we put x to signify kiss, multiple x's for multiple kisses and o for hugs.
   So one day I send a message to him ending in xxx, which my iPhone converted to XXX. He told me later that this means porn. I had never in my life heard this before.
   I posed the question on facebook of what xxx and XXX mean, and I got varying responses about kisses, porn, poison in cartoons, not quite a Qld beer, and 80's rock band. A Bolivian male friend who had arranged to meet with me in Buenos Aires (we happened to be there the same time) also popped on line, and gave some explaination as to why he ended up ignoring my messages in Buenos Aires and not meeting me.... had I accidentally made him and offer I hadn't meant?