Coincidentally travelling

Some people see coincidences as more miraculous than they are. I say take 6 billion people, shake-em all up and let them rip for 70 years or so and they well see coincidences a plenty, more than there are constellations in the sky.

So today (well yesterday and today) I flew from San Francisco to Chicago and then to London and met up with some old friends in London tonight for dinner.

Coincidence number 1 - my seat neighbor from Chicago to London was a young woman on route to Beirut (that's Lebanon folks). She'd never been there but was meeting someone who was flying in from Saudi Arabi there. So guess what kind of restaurant my friends in London had arranged for us to go to? That's right, Lebanese - I've never been to a Lebanese restaurant but it was pretty tasty. As Ben would say "I'm only here for the burned meat" and really can't go wrong with burned lamb. Mmmm.

Coincidence number 2 - my Beirut bound seat neighbor happened to have started her journey in Madison Wisconsin where she lives, and Madison is also where my dos amigos Erin and Dave hail from. And of course they also just happen to have moved to Chicago which is where that leg of my flight started.

Coincidence number 3 - sitting at SFO the gate next to mine had a last boarding call for passenger Colin Smith which is the name of someone I once worked with at a former company. Mr Smith never showed up but at dinner with my friends who were also from that company his name came up randomly. I haven't seen Colin in years, I think he's at Google now - sure would be nice to hear from him.

Coincidence number 4 - traveling from SFO to Chicago my seat neighbor was a former Vietnam vet who spent his time taking photos hanging from helicopters, in observation planes etc. He is now a consultant specializing in teleprescence and autonomous systems, something me and my business partner are both interested in. After further discussion we turned out to have a lot of interests in common - when someone can list a bunch of pretty obscure books and you've read them all you know there has to be some commonality to explore.

Coincidence number 5 - okay this is kind of weak but as you may of noticed I managed to find out a bunch of stuff about my seat neighbors. I usually try to bury my head in a book or put on the 'phones and tune out the world. Probably the last time I ever talked much to a seat neighbor was a guy who noticed I was reading a book on religion and proceeded to try and proselytize about his particular religion for the next two hours, hence the headphones. However this time I feel I lucked out sitting next to not one but two interesting people with something to say, dare I say - "It sure made the time fly" ???