Smile and the whole world smiles with you.

I was watching the Cleaveland Show, which is a terrible spin off imho, and one of the kids wanted to impress a girl he fancied so the other one told him to think of something that made him happy so he smiled when he was around her. Because smiling makes you more attractive, seem happier etc, and everyone likes a happy smiley person, for the most part.

I also read a thing on body language etc that was suppose to help with flirting, it was on a friends blog. (if I find the link ill put it up, but the friends blog is longer than the hobbit nowdays) In this guide, it had a whole section about natural smiling, but still having an expression that changes, and how attractive that was.

Anyway so there are these two things, plus my own experiance chatting to some friends about someone i thought was attractive, i asked them what they thought, and the number one response was along the lines of smiling/laughing/looking like they enjoy talking to you makes someone more attractive.

This makes me think, if you are on a date you should smile alot, show your enjoying yourself.

Theory established. Next bit, set the scene:

I was out to dinner with a friend and we were having coffee/hot chocolate afterwards at Max Brenner. Anyways, two thirty something suits sat down on the table next to us. And i know its rude to eavesdrop, and i should be listening to the person im with, but i hibitually pay attention to alot of what is going on around me. I managed to keep the conversation with my friend fine, but also overhead the first guy going on about economics plus house prices etc. A very work-collegue safe conversation for afterwork coffee. But the other guy was smiling alot, and looked very attentive to what the first guy was saying. Then they got waffles with chocolate and fruit, and the second guy didnt want the banana only the strawberries, so the first guy was like "its ok, ill have it" and the second guy said "oh, so you want my banana?" with a laugh, and gave it to him. That seemed like a risque remark to me.

So afterwards i was chatting to my friend, and i asked her about it, and she had the same impression as me. First guy was hanging out after work, second guy was on a date.

Although first guy seriosly seemed oblivious, there were many clues. Attentiveness, alot of smiling, some imho flirty comments, and for last: who goes to a chocolate shop for afterwork coffees with work collegues anyway? it is soo a date location (despite the fact i go there alot with friends, collegues and sibling, im allowed to, its called double standards.) Maybe in the end, first guy liked second guy as a friend, and enjoyed the attention to some extent, and was acting oblivious to avoid having to deal with any more than that.

Dominion

I bought the Intregue and Cornicopia expansions for the card game Dominion during the week. Also I have played a couple of games of it with my new flatmates.

Its fun, you get to choose 10 "kingdom" for a common pool for which each player builds their deck throughout the game. The game ends if 3 card piles run out or all the provinces are bought and the winner has the most victory points in their deck at the end of the game. Provinces add the most victory points but other cards add some too.

I ended up playing till about 2 a.m. with my flatmates. Their is lots of versitility and variation as there are now (with expansions i have) about 65 types of kingdom cards, from which we randomly chose 10 to play with.

My new flatmates seem to be keen boardgamers, I already knew they were keen computer gamers. Seems promising, they have copies of risk, axis and allies, dnd boardgame and some others.

Just a side note tho, one of the guys seems really keen to play, but he seems overeager, like an adult trying to engage a shy kid. And it aggravates my paranoyer and inferiority complex, makes me feel patronised. However he seems socaily well adjusted for a gamer and maybe its the easiest way to build report despite initial negative response. One of my old housemates used to be fairly charismatic, successful at meeting new people, but made me feel a similar way. I read somewhere "Too much flattery tends to be the least badly recieved annoying habit". So maybe this is one of those things... the most successful, slightly offputting way to build report.