But he admits that connecting with people was never his forte and that most of what he learnt about wine he learnt "in solitude".
In 1977, remembering the lessons he learnt in the School of the Americas, Massera travelled to Nicaragua, where Argentina was active in support of the Central America military tyrants regarded as allies of the West.
He'd dropped out of a business studies degree in the south becauseeven after the rudimentary lessons he learnt in the first two terms, he couldn't see any way to justify spending £9,000 on information he could quite easily peel off the internet.
Tony Abbott seems like he's been preparing his whole adult life to show off the pugilistic skills he learnt in the mean, sandstone alleys of Oxford University, where grizzled professors and down on their luck Baronets lurked around every apse and dropped unexpectedly from double vaulted ceilings.
Subtitled Lessons for Living a Good Life Without God, the book is by science teacher Alom Shaha and tells of his upbringing in a Bangladeshi Muslim community in south-east London, "how he overcame his inner conflict surrounding his atheism, and the lessons he learnt in leading a good life, full of awe and wonder, based on humanist principles", said the Association.
His brain was unaffected, and after a brief period of near despair - which eased as soon as he could breathe without the ventilator - he learnt, in an astonishingly short time, to communicate by accessing a computer through movements of his chin.
