You may have already noticed that I talk a lot about transport, whether it’s good or bad. Well, the reality is, transport is a fundamental problem that affects the daily lives of Bogotános, which means that it has found its way to conversations with frequent presence.

You’re going into a meeting with your clients, you run through a list of potential topics that maybe nice to talk about when you meet them. One of the most common, safest opening line would be, ‘did you get here alright?’

‘Not bad.. This place was easy to find.’

‘How was the traffic?’

‘Oh, it was terrible. We got stuck at xyz avenue! There might have been an accident although it wasn’t clear what the problem was.’

You meet your blind date, ‘Hello. Nice to meet you! Did you have any problem getting here? I hope this location didn’t cause you much trouble..?’

You know the other person had another meeting before coming to meet you, ‘Where did you have to travel from? How did you get here? How was the traffic?’

Your friends came to pick you up at the airport. It’s not them asking you about your journey, but you asked them, ‘How was the journey here?’

You wanna build relationship with someone whom you’ve just met, ‘How was the traffic?’

This magic question will open up a myriad of possibilities for the other person to grunt and express what he or she thought about the traffic.

And the beauty of this specific conversational topic is that the causes of traffic are ever so numerous, and most times there is no apparent reason for the standstill. It can be as trivial and annoying as having a random car that’s parked on the road, reducing two lanes into one. Other times you see an accident but the way the cars have crashed into each other looks impossible. That’s when your exchange your opinions, how on earth could these two selfish bast*rds have made such a mistake, bringing a bad day to 10,000 people?!