I have always admired people who are genuinely social

[casimendocina]

Originally Posted by Pico and ME

The maxim 'it is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt'

I'd agree with this completely and would like to abide by it, but don't a lot of the time. Sometimes, speaking and being social works fantastically. Other times, it backfires phenomenally. Occasionally, it works well for a while and then ends up coming back to hit me in the face.

Last night, after an initially uncomfortable start, pushing myself to be social, rather than hiding in a corner as I really wanted to do, had a good result. I went to a party and when I walked in, I didn't know anyone except the people who'd invited me. Usually, I'm fairly social (in fact, that's probably an understatement), but I didn't particularly feel like talking to anyone-in fact, initially, I only went to be polite. Anyway, there was a band playing outside, so I went and stood around the brazier and ended up talking to about 3 people-when I first took up a position by the fire, I felt so uncomfortable that for me, the only way to break the uncomfortableness was to try and establish some kind of common ground which luckily worked. When I left the party a couple of hours later, I was really pleased that I'd made the effort to go. The band was great. More importantly for me, by talking to people who are completely outside the circles I usually move in, I got a new perspective on Hugo Chavez (or at least an alternative viewpoint to follow up on), found out that apparently there are about 300 unaccompanied refugee asylum seeker minors in detention a few hours up north-this is being kept very quiet by the government-and a reminder (which I need every so often) about buying fruit and veg straight from the source and how to do this (and amazingly enough, point 1 and point 3 are linked).