might sound silly to some, but I had a script prepared in my head for when I met new people, some questions to ask and some responses I would give if asked the same question - I subsequently was chatting to a highly respected professor who admitted to doing the same thing in their professional life.
They even had a mental model / analogy / aide memoir (if that's the right name for it) to give them a line of questions to ask (most people talking about themselves and like people who ask them nice questions) where they imagined walking down a street, going up to a door and ringing the bell, talking to the person on the doorstep and going in to the hall and then choosing a room to enter - and each room was a different topic (eg kitchen food, living room hobbies or music, stairs were dreams)
Walking down the street is about how you got here, so it could be which town / place you are from etc
Ringing the door is about that first interaction, how are they feeling now they have arrived
Probably doing their thing a complete disservice, but just having some good questions to ask and being genuinely curious about others goes a long way to finding people you will get along with