Presidential debate and small talk...

I'm gonna recall the things in reverse chronical order... no special reason :)

However, today was the first presidential debate and unfortunately I didn't had much time so far to really catch up with the news. A friend from my studies hosted a "watch the debate evening" and when I arrived, I was informed about the rules. Sorry internet is really slow right now, but you can find them here:

I have to admit,... we didn't played completely under the rules... otherwise we would have been out after like 10 minutes as Obama just ignored the moderator (we have had to jug for 2 minutes... not good!!!)

Overall, it was very interesting, all the present US citizen don't use the debate as a way to build the opinion, just as entertainment. They know already who they will what anyway. For me it was good to hear the talks, see the candidates live and get a feeling about this ongoing debate!!!

Coming to the next topic... today we had another Fulbright Event. At these events, many fulbrighters who barely see each other come together, have a funny evening and most of them go separate ways again. For my part, I happened to meet a friend and started talking to her.... suddenly some random girl joined our conversation and started asking the usual (really bad & annoying) questions:

"What's your name?" (read it on my nametag, thats why we have them!!!!)
"Where are you studying?"

"Where are you from?"

the next one is a bummer

"What are you studying?" as when I answer "international political economics and development", most of the time the just faint after pol.... that's why I stick to "econ"...

and guess what... after these totally interesting fancy 4 questions.... the conversation was DEAD!!!! so i just turned back to my friend and continued the conversation which has been interrupted - sorry for the directness, but if you wanna start a conversation - just JOIN a conversation and don't kill it!!

Later that evening, I still had that in mind and promised to myself not to start a conversation the same way... the next talk I had was by the time I ordered a drink and started with something I don't remember... something like "look over there, these people look funny" - guess what - I had a wonderful talk for about one hour!