Ice breaker – ‘weather is ….’

(wrote this about a week back)

All of us must have encountered many a situation in which we have just to kill some time with no acquaintance around say : say on a long train journey, or passing time at airport or even if u know a person but just can’t figure out how to start a conversation. Yesterday I found myself in such a situation where I wanted to take some advice from colleague, but just couldn’t figure out how to start the conversation. It was then that I mentioned something about weather and the conversation took off. It was then digressed to the thing I wanted advice on.
Then I realized that how often I use anything about weather just to kick start the conversation. For e.g.: I was going home via train, the journey was about 20 hrs long, found a guy sitting next to me. I commented that weather was really good. He responded and our conversation kept going for the complete journey. In the process we became good friends. The phrase ‘weather seems to be pleasant/good/nice/hot….’ has come to my rescue at lot many times.
Actually when you say something about weather, 99% of people will agree to it. After all if the temp is above 40 degrees then you can’t expect someone to feel cold, neither can you expect a person to feel warm at 15 degrees. The point is that more or less everyone will have same views regarding weather, though preferences may differ. For e.g. two persons will definitely agree that weather is cold if temp is 15 degrees but only one of them may like it while the other loathes cold.
When you can find similarity in views with other person, however small it may be, you can always start talking and then he discussion will involuntarily move on to other things of interest. This small comment about weather gives u a small opening to start conversation by at least having some common starting point.
Also if the other person is disinclined to talk and doesn’t responds then your situation will be much better off then when you ask about person’s name, occupation etc. and he does not answer.
P.S : I was just trifling around, trying to find out something to write on…could not come out with anything worthwhile, therefore this post.