Hello, How are you?

When you meet someone for the first time this greeting is quite common, here are some others you can use:

How is it going?

Where have you been?

What’s going on?

The above question are a cause for someone to give a long story explaining their situation.

Note
Always feel free to interrupt if you can not follow or that you want to ask for more details. You can use these questions for example:

Could you please slow down?

Can you repeat that?

I am sorry I can’t follow you.

If you want to ask follow up questions for example :

How long did you stay?
Could I do that to?
Was it difficult to arrange?

These are the types of question you can ask to further the conversation and enjoy the company of the person.  See you next week.

Louis