Zero degrees of separation

My friend Carolyne has just posted on Facebook about reacquainting herself, by chance with a friend from many years ago.  That led me to think about some serendipitous meetings I have had.  Or in one case, nearly had.  Its a bit long for an FB post so I thought I'd dump it here.

  1. Frances and I did a tour of SE Asia in about 1975, flying out of Perth.  On the return leg I went to the newspaper shop in Perth Airport to buy something to read on the final leg back to Adelaide.  As I came out I bumped into Russell, a friend from Canberra who was doing a campervan trip around Australia!
  2. Go forward to about 1989.  We were visiting friends in New York and one afternoon we walked down 42nd St, from the Public Library.  We were on the side opposite Grand Central.  On return to Australia, a little later I was talking with a friend from Perth who mentioned a trip he'd taken to New York to organise a lacrosse World Championship in Perth.  We managed to work out that as I was walking on the downtown side of the street he was on the uptown side. We agreed that if we'd been on the same side of the street our reactions would probably have been "Gee that looks just like ..." and kept walking.
  3. We spent 1992 in Ottawa where I got involved in a World Tourism Organisation Conference.  The circumstances leading to that were an amazing set of coincidences in their own right.  However at a social side event I was chatting to the UK representative and his wife (who sort of looked familiar).  It emerged she had been 2 years ahead of me at High School.  We then spent some fair time discussing various "identities" around the Dengie Hundred known to both of us.
  4. In 2005 we were living in New York while I worked for the UN.  I was taking a mission to Kabul which required flying out of Kennedy to Dubai.  Standing in the check-in queue I was intrigued to see a white female in front of me in the line, accompanied by a black teenage kid - which seemed a little unusual, and for some reason she looked a bit familiar.  She checked in and vanished with the kid.  Just as I was about to go up a call went out for Ms Helen ... please return to check in."  Back came the woman and kid.  A light bulb clicked in my brain: she was a resident of Tanzania who had organised a few things in the ex-pat community while we were there.  The different context had blocked my recognition until I heard here name.  I can't remember why they had been in NYC but she was on her way back to Dar es Salaam.
It is not quite the same circumstance but there is a coincidence of timing between now and 2006, involving Carolyne and Bob.  They are currently living in Italy where my guess is that no-one talks about the World Cup.  (Think Basil Fawlty and The War.)  That would be because the cheating bastard Azzuri didn't make to the Finals this year.  In 2006 the Socceroos "Round of 16" game was at lunchtime in NYC so I ducked home from the office (in effect crossed 45th St) and watched the ensuing debacle.  The worst bit was that as I walked glumly back to work I encountered about 200 Italian fans celebrating their theft of the game.  And I was able to restrain my natural impulse to assault them.

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