There was a time when making polite conversation used to mean talking about innocuous topics, like the weather for example. When I met a friend, he’d remark:
“Hi Paddy. Very hot weather we’re having lately, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Mike,” I’d say (if his name were Mike). And I might comment about the sharp difference in weather between Singapore and Chicago.
Alternatively we would talk about sports. He might ask me if I watched last night’s tennis match between Nadal and Federer and whether I agreed with him that it was awesome. I would answer both questions in the affirmative and go on to compare the match with another one the two gentlemen played last year.
Or it could be movies. Or politics. You get the idea.
While these topics are innocuous, there is a school of thought that says they lack zing, that they are boring, precisely because they are innocuous. Books have been written on the subject, with titles like How to Convert a Conversation into a Friendship. To save you the cost of buying one and then the torture of reading it, let me summarize the wisdom it will impart:
