Synchronicity

[Bee]

I love a good coincidence. I know that's all it is and that my particular pattern recognition bias makes me link some things while ignoring others. But the spookiest thing happened today. I'm a little freaked out by it.

I've had a very busy couple of days - my old boss from Swindon, Alan, has been to visit me with his mother, so I've shown them the delights of Seaford, Eastbourne, Jevington, and Alfriston.

About 18 years ago, I worked with Alan about 140 miles from where I live. We also worked with a guy called Stephen and we'd often go out for a pint together. Stephen moved to work in this area and alerted me to the job at Lewes which was the reason I moved down. At the time, Stephen bought a house in Eastbourne and I rented it from him until I got myself on my feet. Then, Stephen and I had a massive falling out and I haven't seen him or spoken to him for 6 years.

Today, I took Alan and his mum to Eastbourne and as we were walking by the bandstand, Stephen was walking towards us. Bearing in mind I work in Eastbourne half the week, I've never once seen Stephen there before. It's the first time Alan has been to Eastbourne. It's the first time all three of us have shared the same airspace in more than 15 years.

We didn't speak. He recognised us, we recognised him. We passed by each other.

What are the chances?

 

[FiFi]

Fate maybe?
I have a story which was a weird coincidence...
In the late 80's I worked in a hotel in Tunbridge Wells, I worked behind the bar lunch times and evenings. I worked there about 2 years and nearly every lunchtime these 2 gentlemen would come in and have lunch.
In 1989 I moved to mid Wales and worked in a hotel there, again behind the bar...been there a few weeks when one lunch time the same 2 men came into the bar, in Wales...I looked at them, they looked at me and after initial shock, we all burst out laughing. It transpired that they were in Wales on business and staying at the hotel I was working at. Very strange.

 

[Bee]

I love stuff like that. I have one more story which is really complicated and a bit geeky, but I will try to explain it...

I used to (and sometimes still do) play World of Warcraft online. There are some things you need to know about the game to understand the weirdness of this story.

1. At its height, it was played by about 11m people worldwide - this story happened in that period.
2. When you start, you can choose between 2 factions, Alliance and Horde. I always, always, always played Horde. No question.
3. You can also choose to PvP (player vs player) where the Alliance and Horde can kill each other in game, or PvE (player vs environment) where the Alliance and Horde can be in the same area, but can't kill each other. I always played PvE. PvP was a drag because of the higher level characters camping out to kill the low level ones.
4. Importantly, there is a chat feature in game, so you can talk to other players you encounter - but Alliance and Horde can't talk to each other at all.
5. When you create a character, there is a little bit of customisation you can do, but they are largely very generic.
6. Finally, each region of the world (Asia, Europe, America) has more than 50 servers to choose from when you create a character.

So, by now the complexity of choices includes, PvP, server, faction - to give you some idea.

I made a number of good friends through the game and we used to group up together to get quests done more quickly. One of them was a young man in Malta, called Malcolm. Me, him, and a couple of others would frequently group up over the years, but then I stopped playing so frequently because I started writing - this would have been 2012. I also changed servers with a large group of friends, then, I moved to Sussex and have only really dabbled with WoW occasionally, so I lost track of many of the people I played with regularly.

One night, I couldn't sleep. It was about 2am and I thought I'd hop onto WoW and do something different. I created my first ever Alliance character and decided to do it on a PvP server - again, something that I had never done in the previous 8 years of playing WoW. It would be like a Manchester United supporter switching to Man City...

I created a new character and was happily questing along, picking mushrooms and killing boars for their ears. Another character was in the area - higher level than me, and Horde. I'm on a PvP server so that player could have killed me over and over for fun and there was nothing I could do about it. Instead, he stopped killing the animals that I needed for my quest, let me finish, and then /bowed to me in game. All of this without communication, because Alliance and Horde can't talk to each other in game.

And yet, I just had this feeling that I knew the player on the other side.

So, I logged off my low-level Alliance character and created a Horde character on the same server, just to talk to this other player. I made contact with him and asked him if he'd ever played on a different server called Kilrogg. He said he had - my pulse was racing at this point. I asked him if he had a character called Umibozu - he had. (Character names are unique - there can't be 50 Umibozu's on each server). I asked him some other questions to double-check and sure enough, it was my friend from Malta, Malcolm! Turns out, he'd been trying to search for me for 3 years, but couldn't remember which server I'd moved to!

If I had been able to sleep that night, or had created a character on my usual server, in my usual fashion, I'd have never bumped into him.

Now, the odds against that are akin to lottery winning stats.

 

[Jon]

But there is a lottery winner 100% of the time.

 

[Bee]

But there is a lottery winner 100% of the time.

There isn't.

 

[Jon]

Actually, there are. There are many prizes. I can be pedantic too you know!

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Statistically, for the USA's biggest lotteries (Mega Millions and Power Ball), it is possible to have a lottery drawing for which there is not one single winner, even of the consolation prizes. The odds on THAT happening are also quite small - but it is theoretically possible. Given the luck I've had with such tickets, my small sample of the microcosm says it is not merely possible but seems likely to have no winners.

 

[Jon]

Yes, I accept it is theoretically possible. It is also theoretically possible that someone's individual vote would change the outcome of the USA election. As an agnostic, I also accept there may be a God, or three.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I also accept there may be a God, or three.

There are either NO gods or ONE god or MANY gods. A thing if it exists at all, is either unique or not unique. (Thus saith that sage philosopher and author Isaac Asimov, in his story The Gods Themselves.)