Opening lines

You find yourself wedged together, surrounded on three sides by water and the fourth by a wall o' cocktail party. The sound of a rushing waterfall somehow blots out the crowd, plunging both of you into an intimate silence that demands conversation. Naturally you're a state-of-the-art professional; you have a well-toned 'big picture', buffed opinions on all the issues. This is the 'networking' your company is paying big bucks for. What do you say? Perhaps you open with a worldly globalization-cross-border-consolidation-DaimlerChrysler-stock