The usual opening question in Ireland is "where are you from", and it's similarly awkward to answer for me (I'm not really from anywhere specific). If you're a foreigner in Ireland, the follow-up question is often "when are you going back?" - not intended in a xenophobic sense, but rather an assumption that one wouldn't want to leave one's home area for the rest of your life.

But I'm not sure there really are better ways to start a conversation that leads into talking about the people, rather than third-party topics. Probably a better answer to "what do you do", if you don't like the gambit, is to talk about your hobbies, or make something up that is only tangentially, allegorically or metaphorically about what you do.

I grew up around reservations in the northern plain states of the US. The opening question tends to be some variant of "Who are your relatives?". It can be quite uncomfortable if there is / was some dispute between relatives of theirs and yours.

>The conversation will turn immediately to other topics.

Maybe among other programmers who aren't much interested in lisp, but most people are more likely to ask "What's Lisp?"

I don't know if this is strictly American though. In Italy, people are often referred to by their professional titles. We do that with doctors here, but they would say the equivalent of "Lawyer Smith" or "Engineer Jones".

I only know this from studying the language. I have never been to Italy, so correct me if I am wrong.