Went to a friend's birthday party tonight. Was held at the Trane Studio (a bar of sorts). The music was good (live, for the most part), no complaints there. It's just that it was so loud that the only way to make oneself heard was to scream in one another's ears. It only took 30 or 40 seconds of attempting that for all of us to go hoarse. A few hours and our ears were in serious pain.

Now, that would have all been fine, if there was lots of dancing, but there was only one song in the entire night where people danced (plus one where I danced alone, being bored with not being able to talk to anyone). So the night consisted mostly of sitting across the table from what I assume were fairly nice and interesting people, smiling politely but never so much as catching their names.

For someone who lives for conversation and new ideas, that's just painful. To finally get to meet new people, who might have new ideas and insights about the world, and not have any chance to interact with them... sigh.

As a side note, I realised tonight just how boring I've become. Having to summarise what I do, at work and for play, into a few short words to be screamed across a table it sounded incredibly stupid. I program computers. My hobbies are programming computers and writing a thesis. No wonder no-one felt the desire to get to know me better when the cost was voice and hearing.

Oh well, the one dance was okay. It was also nice to see (if not talk to) lots of friends. Even Simon was there. We need to get together and chat over coffee sometime soon, it's been way too long.