Statistically Impossible Encounter

I have been a FaceBook user for many years. Initially you could only be on FB if you had an EDU address. But even back in those days P&G had a relationship with the founder and we were allowed in. It was a brave new world - the future of society. So naturally I signed right up.

Every now and then I'll get blasts from the past through it. Someone from work who I haven't worked with in many years will send me a friend invite. But never anything like this.

I was in Budapest for business (see my other post!) and had finished the meetings for the day. So I was back in my room, taking advantage of the in-room internet connection (Only $70/day!) As I was going through my email I saw a FB friend request. So I opened it up.

Initially I didn't even recognize the name. This is not unique. I am horrible with names. In fact an old HS friend recently told me that this is nothing new - I was even bad with them in HS. This actually cheered me up - at least it wasn't an effect of getting old!

Anyway - since I didn't recognize the name I clicked the link. As soon as I did the memories started flooding back. I remember this guy. Drew - I went to college with him at Beloit. He lived on the same floor of the fraternity house as me. I could picture his door - he had a poster of Marilyn Monroe on it, and an article from a newspaper with the title "Kids are Tools." He was a good guy. We weren't close buddies or anything, but I knew him and thought he was cool.

As I looked at his profile a couple things were odd. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to them at first. I was in Budapest so I was thinking that maybe the Hungarian FB servers were overlaying info into his profile. But after I had seen enough curious entries I really started to wonder. There was a lot of Hungarian written on the page, and something about a place called budacast.hu. Finally the incredible dawned on me - Drew lived in Budapest!!!!

Now c'mon. How do you even figure the odds on something like this? Haven't seen the guy in 21 years. Never really close to him. He had no connection to Budapest in college. Hell, I don't think he even knew I had gone there. I haven't been to Budapest I 22 years. And the one week I return is the week that he finds me and reaches out through FB? I think million to 1 is way too low for something like this. It's just not possible.

And yet there it was. Of course I immediately sent an email off to him. "Hey man - I'm here in Budapest too!" was the essential gist. I got a quick reply "Yeah, right." It took me describing my hotel for him to believe the unlikely. I don't blame him, it took me a while to believe it too!

Clearly the fates clearly wanted us to get together. So we got together for dinner and a few drinks. It was great seeing him again. He's exactly the same as in college. A little quirky, but smart, funny, and fun to be around. We had a great night. He's lived in Budapest for something like 15 years. Budacast is his work - he does podcasts. If you find this all hard to believe I don't blame you. But check out his podcast entry for the week after I was there:

http://www.budacast.hu/shownews.php?newsid=255&cat=5