About Time

First post here. Hello.


I was out with friends today. Er, okay, not really friends. Out of the 15-odd people, I knew say 5-6 people. Mixed Crowd (I mention mixed crowd coz this is Abu Dhabi. Different scene here).
The guys stood to one side and the girls stood to other side. Rarely was there interaction between the two sides. And that confused me since everyone knew everyone (except me) and it's not as if they hadn't hung out with the opposite sex before.
It took food to get the two sides to come together and join in holy comradeship. And that struck me strange. I spoke about this to one of the girls (one of the sensible ones, thank god) and she said that to break the ice, it takes time. And that too struck me as strange because why do you need to "break the ice" between friends??
What am I missing here?