conversation kills

When my friend Alex came to London, he pointed out to me how London is unusual in that people are so averse to talking to eachother in public. He's got a point too.

It's understandable why people are hesitant to talk. The tube is a good example. It's much easier to sit on a tube train and look around than it is to talk to someone else. I think for a lot of people, myself included, it's very much a case of going outside of your comfort zone to talk to someone else. It's fine when someone talks to you but to initiate is very different.

Another reason is that if you have no need to talk to anyone, then why do it? I think that's a big reason. Most people aren't the sort who feel they need to converse with others. The gain of the conversation doesn't override the risk that they'll be rejected or look awkward in one way.

However, I think there is something to gain. Right now, I'd love to meet some more interesting people. There's a lot of different qualities I like so the chance to find someone with one or two of the qualities I like shouldn't be too hard. There's potentially a hell of a lot of contacts you could pick up from just talking to people on the train, in queues etc.

So here are some of the qualities I'd like to find in people:

• Adventurous spirit
• A party spirit - the kind of person who doesn't regard a night out as a night out unless hometime falls after midnight
  
• A particularly interesting take on life
• An open personality
• People with a good/ interesting sense of humour
• Great music taste or films or something
  
• A knowledge of good nightspots
• Potential business contacts

So I have an incentive to start a conversation and if anyone gets nasty and says why are you talking to me, I can say that my friend said London was the most antisocial city and I wanted to prove him wrong. I can vary that depending on how nasty they are about it.

My challenge
My challenge should be to try and get into one proper conversation this week. I.e. I should at least make some inroads into seeing if the person I talk to qualifies for one of the points of interest above.