Pure Coincidence!

Style! emcee:

In my entire life living in Singapore, I have had many occasions when I accidentally bumped into a friend, neighbour, classmate, relative, teacher, colleague and many others whom are related to me in a certain way. I won't term that as coincidence since Singapore is a small island.

A real coincidence in Singapore may be considered as running into a friend at Mount Faber (erm.. don't ask me why I quoted this place), or say at Gek Poh Shopping Centre (know where that is?...).

I was walking along Beijing famous food street known as the Ghost Street. I had my dinner alone and was walking and looking around when I passed by this restaurant with loads of people waiting outside. Was wondering what happened but decided to give it a miss and not join in the crowd.

Suddenly someone tapped me from behind and said "Richard..!!" I was shocked. Couldn't believe that I actually ran into a friend of mine in Beijing. 1.3billion population, with such huge land masses, who is going to believe this? How I got to know this friend is also quite a story.

This friend of mine who is a chinese national, came to Singapore to study. We were studying in the same uni (NTU) and I didn't know him till we did our Masters (TIP) together. Then he said that after graduation he was going back to Beijing. We lost contact after that. When I came to Beijing, somebody gave me his number but it wasn't in use anymore. So couldn't contact him. Then I found out he is in Tianjin, which is about 1.5hours drive from Beijing. After some contacts and "treasure hunt", got his number. But he said that he JUST went over to Tianjin because he found a job there. So coincidental, I just missed him. But told him that I will visit him when I visit Tianjin. Never had a chance actually till now.

Somehow, at Ghost street, we bumped into each other and decided to have dinner again. I was thinking "If I didn't go come here, if I didn't walk past the restaurant at such a leisure pace, at a particular time of the day, and a thousand of "if I", then we wouldn't have met."

So finally, I had the chance to eat at the famous restaurant. He was, like any other patron, waiting for his turn in the queue.

Bon appetit!