68. A guest's dilemma

I was a guest at 5 more places on my 3-city trip....Nowhere did I feel as out of place. When you're a guest at someone's place, you expect that certain someone to stay by your side(for a major chunk of the time) during the short stint(of time) that you are there(in this case, 4hrs)....Isn't this the norm, the way things are supposed to be in the civilized world. But what I saw there was something different. The host, who stayed along with two others(and had two regular visitors then at their place then....and I knew none of them before hand) expected me to like gel in with the group on my own. Reluctant to do something that I'm not used to doing, I kept mum for most of the time, keeping meaningless chatter to the minimal and just watched the television for most of the time(yea, they had a TV with cable :D). Yea, the host had to divide attention amongst the two other visitors and me, but the division dint exactly work in my favour.

Was it expected of me to open-up to the whole bunch there and do instant-socializing? Is this the new norm? Have I missed a few decades of evolution here? Has there been a progressive shift in the train of social thought? I have been living in urban India all my life, so I guess I should have caught up with any trend that has started. For instance, no one uses email anymore, its all orkut and facebook. Its all debit and credit cards, no more cheques and DDs and plain cash.Its all DVDs and blue-rays, no more CDs and floppies.....I've managed to keep up with most of the trends. I wonder how I missed this one.hmmm....May be I'm just crazy.