I'm not quite sure where this belongs, but here seems appropriate enough.

When meeting someone, regardless of whether or not you intend to get romantically (or if you seeing if you want to get involved) what do you do or ask in getting to know how a person is or if you are interested in them?

And any pointers on making small talk in general and perhaps turning it into a decent conversation topic? As in, how could you turn something as completely banal and cliche as the weather into something worth discussing?

Check the archive, there are plenty of similar threads already.

>As in, how could you turn something as completely banal and cliche as the weather into something worth discussing?

Quite easy. Make an unrelated remark, as for example on a sunny day "Maybe it's going to rain today!". Then fork the conversation on whatever follows, chaos theory, global warming, your last vacations wherever, something you read in a book or saw on TV. The point of starting this with an unexpected remark is that it surprises people, so they're more likely to enter the conversation interested.