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-   -   Had any strange coincidences? (https://britishexpats.com/forum/usa-57/had-any-strange-coincidences-244704/)

effi Jul 27th 2004 9:10 pm

Had any strange coincidences?
 
I had something strange and quite cool happen to me this week. My username on this board is Effi, short for Euphemia (not the name I go by I might add) it is an old family name that goes waaaay back. I have never in all my 52 years ever come across anyone with this name. I have lived all over the place and travelled to many countries and just never encountered anyone with the same name. Anyway, I bid on something on Ebay and noticed that the person selling the item lived in Gilbert AZ, same as me. I emailed them asking where they lived and saying what a coincidence that we both lived in the same place. She answered me and signed the email Effi. I thought strange, can it be she has the same name as me. Low and behold she did. She is Greek and lives just 5 minutes away from me. We met up and she is a really nice gal.

Another time, just after we moved to the US, my son brought a friend home from college that he had hooked up with. This kids mum was a Brit, from Norfolk and had lived here for many years. This kid came to our house on many occasions but I never met his mum. I started working and used to catch the bus to work, it was only a 5 minute ride but this being the US you could not walk as there were no sidewalks. One night on coming out of work to wait for the bus home, one of the women in line said to me "do you know what time the bus is due", so I told her. She said to me "you are a Brit. She said "my son has a British friend at college, his name is James, she turned out to be this kids mum.

Anyone else had something like this happen to them?

CalgaryAMC Jul 27th 2004 9:14 pm

Re: Had any strange coincidences?
 
Nowhere near as weird. But as soon as I came out of the DMV yesterday, new license in hand, a guy crashed his new Mustang into a tree in the median of the road. On the way home I saw two more accidents, totalling three in the space of 15 minutes.

I think my new license is jinxed...

NC Penguin Jul 27th 2004 9:30 pm

This didn't happen to me but to my Mum but we were together at the time.

My Mum and I were in Paris (France) visiting in 1994 and we were sitting in a restaurant.

There was a group of Japanese tourists there and my Mum struck up a conversation with a lady sitting on the end of table, close to where we were sitting.

Turns out the group were from Yokohama in Japan which is a place my Mum has lived.

Even stranger is that the lady, a complete stranger in a foreign country, and my Mum shared a mutual friend who lived (he's dead now but was living at the time).

So, my Mum who was visiting a foreign country met another lady who was also in a foreign country who both share the same friend. What are the chances of that?!

effi Jul 27th 2004 9:48 pm


Originally posted by NC Penguin
This didn't happen to me but to my Mum but we were together at the time.

My Mum and I were in Paris (France) visiting in 1994 and we were sitting in a restaurant.

There was a group of Japanese tourists there and my Mum struck up a conversation with a lady sitting on the end of table, close to where we were sitting.

Turns out the group were from Yokohama in Japan which is a place my Mum has lived.

Even stranger is that the lady, a complete stranger in a foreign country, and my Mum shared a mutual friend who lived (he's dead now but was living at the time).

So, my Mum who was visiting a foreign country met another lady who was also in a foreign country who both share the same friend. What are the chances of that?!
There are some strange things go on eh. About 10 years ago we were due to go back to the UK to live and decided that we should go on vacation to see a few of the sites before we left the US. We decided to take a month and just travel and stop wherever took out fancy and camp cause it was the cheapest way to do it. So myself, husband, son and dog took off in our camper van from Philly intending to head south and try and make it to San Francisco then head across country back to Philly. The first night out we camped in the middle of nowhere at a little camp site, the woman who ran the site was a Brit and she let us stay for free. Great we thought, hope we meet lots of Brits on this journey, how prophetic that would prove to be. The second day out just outside of Knoxville, our camper broke down at the side of the freeway. We could see a Mcdonalds sign off in the distance so my husband started walking hoping to find a garage. He came back with a Brit guy, who owned the garage and he towed us into town. He spent the whole of the next day fixing our van, it turned out to be a faulty 'o' ring but was a shit to get to. He did not charge us a penny. We headed off to Memphis to see Graceland and decided to rent a cabin on one of the camp sites. The people in the next cabin were from Birmingham. In Dallas my son and I got in the pool to try and cool off. We were the only 2 people in there when 2 other people turned up, yeah you guessed it, they were Brits. We met Brits in almost every state we stopped in, it is amazing where those buggers get to, and yes, we made it to San Fran and got home safely.

snorkmaiden Jul 27th 2004 9:59 pm

I was in Toni and Guy getting my hair coloured two weeks ago.

I've been going there every six weeks or so since I moved here just over a year ago.

On this day a hairdresser I hadn't seen before asked me where in England I was from. I said Liverpool and she told me her husband was from St. Helens. I told her so was mine :) She got her husband on the phone and our husbands lived really close to eachother and went to the same school, her husband a few years above mine.

Merseysiders everywhere ;)

FlyergirlUK Jul 27th 2004 10:29 pm

About eight and a half years ago, I used to live in Colchester with my, now, ex-Hubby and we used to travel, quite regularly, down to Cornwall to visit our families and friends.

One evening, as we were driving down there, we had some trouble with our car and it broke down at Wincanton. We managed to stop at a petrol station there which only turned out to be owned by some guy who'd gone to school with my dad in Tavistock many, many years ago... :eek:

excpomea Jul 27th 2004 10:49 pm

I live in Tallahassee, pretty small place. It was 18 months before I met another Brit.

Anyway, last year my previous boss calls me up to enquire about the qualifications of a Brit that she was considering employing.

Turns out we served together on a ship in the early 90s and he too married an American and moved to Tallahassee.

Small world eh.

AmerLisa Jul 27th 2004 11:44 pm

Re: Had any strange coincidences?
 

Originally posted by CalgaryAMC
Nowhere near as weird. But as soon as I came out of the DMV yesterday, new license in hand, a guy crashed his new Mustang into a tree in the median of the road. On the way home I saw two more accidents, totalling three in the space of 15 minutes.

I think my new license is jinxed...


:eek: :eek: :D :D

elfman Jul 28th 2004 2:45 am

August 1992, my first visit to the US: I got off a plane at Logan airport around mid morning, and while I was walking around with my backpack trying to find the youth hostel in downtown Boston a minivan pulled up alongside me and the teenage driver (about 19 or so) asked me if I knew how to get to Fenway Park. I had no idea what he was talking about and when the driver and his two mates heard me explain in my British accent that I wasn't exactly a local they sniggered at me and sped off. Once in the youth hostel I found out that Fenway park was the Red Sox stadium, it was just around the corner, and there was a game that afternoon. I decided that this was a piece of Americana I just had to see so I went along and was able to buy a ticket on the door. On taking my seat I looked to my left and found myself sitting next to the three teenagers who had asked me for directions a couple of hours earlier. We kind of looked each other up and down for a few seconds before we all went "weren't you....".
It turned out that asking obvious visitors for directions was something they got a strange kick out of and found it terribly amusing, but they turned out to be ok and I had a very pleasant afternoon with them teaching me about baseball.

I always thought that was kind of a strange coincidence. And the Red Sox beat Oakland 2-1, if I remember rightly.

Lesley1020 Jul 28th 2004 2:55 am

Re: Had any strange coincidences?
 
Pretty amazing huh! Normally these things only happen to other people but I had something pretty freaky a couple of weeks ago.....

My friend Jen knows this guy, Brian who I have hung out with a few times. Anyway he was in my apt watching a movie and started flicking throug a photo easel I had and suddenly said..OMG that cat is the double of mine - I assumed he was talking about one of mine (who hide under the bed LOL) and he was pointing to one of M's cats. Anyway, he says yeah my cat Smokey, my ex wife took him 2 years ago and someone said he ended up in an animal shelter in Cordova. I was amazed - first of all cos its a weird name for a cat of this color, and obviously because they had the same names and because I knew that M had got Smokey from an animal shelter on that timeframe - and also that he was looking for a new home for him because of problems with the baby. So long story short, after much persuasion I gave Brian his number and he called him. Turns out that it is in fact his cat. No happy ending though - M won't give him to him!

How bloody weird is that!!!!!!!

mandpete Jul 28th 2004 10:08 am

We moved here 2 years ago and very quickly found out our neighbours had moved here from the Manchester area 2 years previously. When we got talking to them it turns out that my husband and the neighbour used to play in the same Sunday Football League years ago.

They are now our closest friends over here and moving next door to them was probably the best thing that could have happened to us.

One other thing both men (and our son) are huge ManU fans and can talk for hours and hours about football. And yes we are going to watch them in Philadelphia tonight and then a men only outing to Meadowlands on Saturday. During the EPL season we take it in turns hosting the live 7.00am matches with the mandatory bacon butties at half time.

CaliforniaBride Sep 27th 2004 1:05 am

Re: Had any strange coincidences?
 
When I had my visa interview in London we were in the doctor's surgery waiting for our medicals. On the wall was a map of America, three of us were standing there looking at it. All three of us were moving to LA but only myself and another guy to Los Angeles county. Which city? Exactly the same city! In fact he was moving about 1 mile from me in a city of about 150, 000, that's no small coincidence!

snorkmaiden Sep 27th 2004 1:46 am

Re: Had any strange coincidences?
 
My husband was traveling around France and met an old man whose family had sheltered a British man for four years during the Second World War.

After lengthy discussion it turned out that the man they had sheltered was the father of my husbands high school headmaster. How weird is that :)

Rete Sep 27th 2004 2:39 am

Re: Had any strange coincidences?
 
Back in 1992 when I was first using the internet and started socializing in a chatroom on MIRC I met up with a lovely woman from New Brunswick, CA. We began friends, discovered we had had breast cancer and decided to set up a cancer survivors channel on MIRC's Efnet. During this I met this woman's sister, Julie, who lived in Ottawa. The channel was a huge success but I continued to use the other channel for socializing. I met many people there, several of which I met in person at various get togethers across the US. There was one man, who had a great sense of humor but he would often only pop on for a brief time and then leave to have his scotch or to mow his lawn and intrigued me but that I had not met in person. One day I emailed him that he was rude for leaving the channel abruptly without waiting for the normal goodbyes from other members. It developed into an email correspondence. After a year when I had stopped dating someone I had been seeing for a while, asked if I would like to met him for coffee. I quickly said yes. He said hold on and let me see where we can get reservations that is 1/2 way between NY and Ottawa. While waiting for him to get back to me, my NB friend came online. I said, I'm finally going to get that guy that I am interested in from Canada. She said laughingly, I hope not my ex-husband Dan. I said no, Jim from Ottawa. OMG she said that's my former brother-in-law, Julie's ex-husband. I didn't believe her but when Jim and I met that weekend, yes, it was true. He and Julie had been married for 16 years and she had known he was interested in me. She lived in the small apartment in his house when she was between assignments with the UN and once when he had signed off from the channel he told her he had met a wacky lady on the channel named Rita. She said, go for it, Jim. I think she and you would be great together.

And yup, we are ... today is our sixth wedding anniversary.

Rita a/k/a Rete


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