all 14 comments

[–]Djfjfjdbffj 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Bumped into my next door neighbour on a campsite in another country

[–]ISaidWhatISaid 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Back in 2017 I was sitting in a park reading a book thinking how much fun it would be to meet a sheer white cat. I look up from the page I am reading, and, I kid you not, there was a sheer white cat, catching a mouse in the tall grass. I tried to approach it but it was too busy hunting to bother with me. A few weeks ago I met this same sheer white cat again, after three years of not seeing it anywhere. This time I approached it again, and this time it let me pat it, rubbing up against me. Turns out it's actually a very friendly cat.

[–]Blkbox 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

That wasn't a cat. It was a glitch in the matrix.

[–]dissent 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

When I was younger I worked in Post Production in Australia. There was a CUTE girl I worked with. Smart, good-looking but I worked in graphics/creative, and she worked in sound/admin.

We flirted, but she had a BF, so we just left it easy and there were never any lines crossed.

I decided to move to the UK and expand my work horizons there. About a year and a half later I visit a dive bar in London, and I am listening to my fave band. I go to the bar to get a drink and guess who's the one serving me?! We both just stood there in awe that we could meet each other on the other side of the world like that.

I got great drinks all night, and we still never went any further with a relationship but it was just a cool experience / co-incidence for both of us.

[–]yayblueberries 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Nothing too specific but I've had multiple financial windfalls out of nowhere - a job bonus, a missed check from a previous job, etc. in amounts extremely close to a financial emergency, right after that emergency has occurred.

I most recently was standing in the store muttering to myself how I wish the overpriced crap I needed in there could be paid by somebody else, because I was in the middle of nowhere with no other store around besides a gas station. I went over to the gas station and found a $10 bill in the parking lot, just enough to cover those items.

Wish it would work with my debt or me wishing I had a million dollars!

[–]dissent 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

I have another.

I used to live in a city in Australia. I moved to the UK. Many years later moved back to Australia.

I took the Easter weekend break with my wife and kids and we went to a campsite. It was a busy campsite about 2 hours from the Australian city I used to live in before I went to the UK.

I stumbled across my old neighbour at this camp site. I (and they) were amazed. We caught up and it was great. We all had drinks that night and as a group we stumbled across our OTHER neighbour from the other side of the house. We were all in shock. that was until they said "WAIT! Come with us!" and we followed them to another tent where the old neighbours from across the road were camping.

I would not believe it if I'd not been there. 4 x neighbours. All from years ago. All go camping to the same campsite years later and bump into each other. I can say many a drink was had that night.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]dissent 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    :-) That was actually ME, posting twice. That would have been insane.

    [–]hfxB0oyA 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    I traveled by car to Montreal from Halifax in Canada, over a thousand km away. We were en route to Toronto, so we did a stopover for the night. We decided to go out for a drink and to see the nightlife, so we went out to a small funky dive bar where I ended up bumping into an ex of mine from many years before. I've bumped into her several times in a few cities where we coincidentally happened to be at the same time for the same few days.

    [–]noice 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Just a PSA that stories like these could potentially reveal your identity to people who know you. I discovered a couple of my friends' reddit accounts in a similar discussion.

    [–]whyyoudrinksomuch 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    You reminded me of an experience, a true story. I'm not sure how you cross-post posts to comments, so here's the link https://saidit.net/s/ccj/comments/637c/coincidences/ and here's the text. Ignore some terms, it's a pigeon, they're quite east to work out.


    Because all laowai smell, we take great care showering in the morning after a night of rolling in body odour on our wooden mattress.

    Like every morning, I was shaking my phone to find a hot Rainy to cherping with. Total 7/8. Added instantly. She didn't want to cherping but seemed abashed and demure, to use Rainy language from her translation A P P. She was location in Shenzhen, worked in finance, 27, preferred to use Chinese but spoke English, mainly posted about the restaurant she was eating in, some pictures of coffee cups, buying clothes in a boutique store occasionally a screenshot of a financial graph or how she'd earned some commission. The usual crap.

    We spoke for a few months, most days. I promised to visit the next time I went to Shenzhen.

    Not content with 300 Rainies to speak to while on the crapper, another morning I was shaking my phone and saw a picture of another girl who looked incredibly similar. I was going to Shanghai in a couple of months anyway, so why not? She added back after a few minutes and I saw she had a pretty similar lifestyle as the first: restaurants, coffee, clothes, and a smattering of finance. This one worked in banking in SPD. Never asked for a Hongbao.

    We continued chatting for a month, and then:

    They both posted almost exactly the same selfie sitting at work in the morning at exactly the same time! Wow! Were they twins? I understood they weren't as they both said they were single children, born in the country, and had done well in school and searching for a job.

    This image was almost identical, same hair, same make-up, same smile. The only difference was the plant on the desk. Even the desks were the same. They also posted exactly the same recommendation to buy a small cap stock, at the same time. The stock seemed to have been doing very well recently, so they seemed to know their game.

    What a coincidence!

    Immediately it rushed through my head that these poor girls growing up in poverty could have been identical twins separated at birth. I wasted no time forwarding one the picture of the other. I always saved their pictures on my Oppo's SD card anyway.

    I sent their contact details to each other eagerly expecting a gushing of thanks.

    Then they both deleted me. Instantly.

    Back to shaking my phone.

    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]whyyoudrinksomuch 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

      This is an in-joke for foreigners in China, and Chinese too. Yes. Sort-of. If someone buys and furnishes a house they'll likely have a proper mattress bought from Slumberland, IKEA, wherever.

      But a lot of rental places, especially the older, cheaper, and free ones (a lot of schools have free accommodation for their foreign teachers or students, dorms or a dusty beat-up apartment) and there are some several hundred thousand of these 'foreign friends' in China, so several hundred thousand in the same boat, have a few sheets of plywood with a few sheets run over them. That's the mattress. The landlords don't care, they don't need to, and in their eyes it was fine when they were growing up, so why shouldn't it be fine for you?

      And there's the local thing, whatever the bed, nice or not, of putting a bamboo sheet over the top and sleeping on that when the weather's hot. Which I'm not a fan of. It's not getting caught up in the wrong thing, not at all. Come over to s/ccj if you're interested in any more of the 'differences' of life here - it's a satirical sub BTW that was banned from Reddit, banned twice.

      [–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      I fell 12m while climbing a scaffolding with two heavy toolboxes onto a pile of grinder (these small stone pebbles, you know) by accident and i still live. Only one broken bone which acts like my weather frog till today.

      [–]diogeneswanking 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

      i don't know if coincidence characterizes this but i'm going to take the opportunity to tell the story. i was made homeless in october 2017. i had some microbitcoins saved, when i sold them and added the amount to £50 that my mum gave me and another pound that i found somewhere i had exactly £666. i fear i may have accepted the devil's coin. anyway i never had to live rough. yea coincidence would be the name for it, the price of bitcoin started shooting up right when i needed it to. still gutted that i couldn't wait until the peak a few weeks later

      [–][deleted]  (1 child)

      [deleted]

        [–]diogeneswanking 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

        i got £615 for nothing, i'm happy. it just would have been nicer if i'd known to wait