Becoming wallpaper

Being on your own is taboo, and in my experience can make some people surprisingly uncomfortable. I was told explicitly in Vietnam that a single traveller, particularly a man, can be quite threatening. Sole traveller, single parent, lone gunman, the associations with disenfranchisement, madness or criminality can, if you are sensitive to these things, confront you more frequently when travelling, particularly here in NZ, where as a proportion there seem to be fewer single travellers than there were in Asia.

You notice something in the air most often in the evening when you venture to the pub, restaurant or cinema in search of a diversion from cheap stubbies, pasta n sauce, and the hostel's DVD collection. It can be quite a dispiriting experience, but where there is taboo, there are conventions for avoiding discomfort in your and those around you:

1) Mind where you sit / stand. You need to balance being inconspicuous with avoiding lurking in the shadows. In a pub, there are three acceptable locations - by the bar, in front of the Sky Sports TV, or in a fireside armchair if there is one. In a cinema, sitting in the back row is not acceptable, this being the domain of the demonstrably successful in love only. Any location in a restaurant lit by fluorescent bulbs is fair game for a single, however.

2) Take a prop. A newspaper or dog are acceptable accessories to reduce your weirdo factor in a pub. A book is a risky alternative which works in some scenarios, but which can mark you out as intellectually aloof from the common if you are not careful.

3) Watch the time. In every pub or bar there is a time after which it is impossible to sit on your own and retain any semblance of social respectability. It can be any time between 5pm, when the after-work crowd comes in, and 11pm, when only prostitutes, clients and pimps are left (in Asia that is) and it varies between establishments, but the change in music, clientele, menu or whatever it is is instant, palpable, and inviolable.

4) It is never, ever acceptable to enter a pub on your own when a quiz is happening. The point of a quiz is to create an illusion of dynamic social interaction where the anally-retentive can indulge their love of trivia and pointless competition without being ostracised. A single person sitting in the midst, whether taking part or not, would expose this fabrication just as clearly as when the house lights go up at the end of a university disco and reveal spotty youths prancing around with arthritic hand gestures in a bland gymnasium on the outskirts of town.

5) If in doubt, don't strike up a conversation in a pub. It is possibly the most loaded of all initial social interactions, and the chance of success in conversing with a stranger is substantially outweighed by the risk of being perceived as a lonely, alcoholic benefits defrauder. If you need to chat, sit at the bar. A good barman will talk to you. A great barman will make it seem like they actually want to talk to you.

I'm sure the are a million sensitivities that vary across different cultures and scenarios. If enough people contribute them here, maybe I'll pull them together somehow.