My best friend is a guy called Peter and he's incredible at talking to people. He has a vault of information in his head that he's gotten from all of his past conversations with people. When he meets someone new he merely tells them what he knows so far about their hometown and then lets them build upon it, this he'll take to the next person he meets from there and so on. I was with him the other day and we were talking to a guy from south africa, we live in australia, and the guy was used to people not knowing much about his coutry. "Where are you from?" Peter asked, "Durban" he said. "Ahhh there are a lot of Durbanites in Birsbane aren't there? I hear its becuase of the similar climate." The guy was impressed. A little bit later they had got on to a technical discussion of preparation of Biltong, a kind of jerky south africans love.