number 14

i can never decide whether i'm the kind of person who likes to talk to/be talked to by friendly strangers in day to day life, or the kind of person who likes to be left to himself... have you ever thought about this? which are you?

the reason for this being in my mind is that i'm due to spend 12 1/2 hours next to one or two perfect strangers on sunday as i fly to malaysia, read about why i'm doing this here... part of me is quite excited and looking forward to the opportunity to spend such a long time with somebody i don't know, and yet, another part of me is a little bit daunted...

thinking about it... i suppose a large amount of the experience comes down to who that person is, and whether they are likely to talk or remain quiet... it would be terrible if i decided that i was the kind of person who loves talking to strangers, only to find myself sandwiched between a couple of plain faced business types who did not care for polite chitter chatter with an eager young man from... well... from different parts of the uk at one time or another...

the reverse is that i decide that i prefer the solitude of my own company and end up next to a big talker, who can't help but spill their entire life onto me and expect me to do the same... there are many more possibilities in between that are more likely, however there are, perhaps, a couple more factors that need to be thrown into the equation...

i loathe small talk... well... i'm not sure if i do or not, the fact is though, i can't seem to do it, on rare occasions when it's forced i can drag myself through it, but i can't seem to help but feel really uncomfortable the entire time... so... here we have something that might hinder a potentially brilliant opportunity... however, on the other hand, i love being in proper conversations, flowing syllabic movements, free falling social interaction nuggets, deep insightful, or laughably funny, i really love it... this is what i'm hoping for and looking forward to... its seems to me that with a new "friend" i.e. someone you've just met, you need to negotiate the small talk super highway before you can progress onto more rewarding conversational levels... hence... my problem... that being said, i'm fairly confident that all will be fine and i'll either have great conversations and be truly thankful for them... or i won't, and i'll not be that bothered...

if you glance back up the page you'll see that this malaysian transport experience was not the point of the post though, i'm trying to figure out if, on the whole, i'm the kind of person who likes to talk to strangers, or the kind of person who doesn't...

I reckon that maybe these are not the only two extremes as i can think of times when i've met someone and chatted to them and its been great and others when i've just wanted to be left alone... i truly love people, and strongly believe that everyone's worth getting to know and that makes me think that i must be at the more sociable end of the scale, although when out and about i spend a lot of my time listening to the ipod (due to an insaciable love of music) and that prevents these meetings from taking place... a bit of a conflict of interests... which has got to go?

i wonder if i'm the only one that thinks about these things