You always feel silly asking those kinds of questions, but you really just have to sometimes....

When I was in uni, my roommate's boyfriend was got an email from someone from the Yukon saying that "he'd heard his friend Carlos was in Montreal," and did Erik know him? He didn't, (he didn't know anyone who wasn't an engineer or some other flavor of computer geek, really), but he passed the email along to my roommate, and it turned out to be someone I was in a class with. So he got reconnected with his friend (Carlos and Amahl, from the Yukon, who knew?) and I ended up becoming really good friends with Carlos. So it can happen.

Heh. One time, I was sitting in a coffee shop with some friends. One, B, I went to school with (in DC)--he's from Wisconsin. One, J, I know through some gayboys. J went to a different school. And is from New Jersey.

J starts telling this story about how he had this friend freshman year, Jean, who had found out her second cousin also went to their school. She started telling J about this cousin, and suddenly, J realized the cousin was his roommate! What a coincidence!

All of a sudden, as J is telling this story, B goes "Wait, Jean Karstensen??". And J is puzzled, and says yes...not realizing he never mentioned Jean's last name...

Turns out, B went to high school with Jean's younger brothers...

So of course, I had to ask if he knew Angus. Just to see. He pointed out that Melbourne is a city of 3 million people. And I told him I just HAD to ask.

Oh yeah, you always have to ask. Because on more than one occasion, I've run into someone who knew someone. The funniest time was in Hungary. My friend & I were talking about another friend of mine who knows people all over the world, although he seems like the least likely person when you meet him. As so we're talking, and this woman (also not from Hungary, but not from the US either) overhears us and says, "excuse me, I couldn't help but overhearing, but how do you know PERSON (names my friend)?"

We met a Jewish family from Owings Mill in the airport in Rome. They went to the same shul as my mom's best friend, proving that Jewish Geography can in fact be played at the international level.

My favourite of these stories was when my mum and sister (who was born in Bombay), were changing planes there on a package tour, the guides gave them this whole spiel about not responding to the many touts, beggars etc they'd encounter on the way through the airport, as there are lots of people in Bombay airport who make their living rolling tourists. Cue my mother taking 5 steps into the concourse and flinging her ams around the first Indian chap who crossed her path, who just happened to be an extremely old friend of ours. Apparently the guides wee really peeved.

I have had this happen twice! Once with a woman I hated, on the Paris Metro, and once with a woman I liked on the Royal Mile of Edinburgh. Yay tourism?

Let us not begin the number of times I have ego-googled and found people with my last name, and curious, investigated them -- only to discover they were my first cousins.

Hey. They live in Canada. All right, we're not hte most connect-y of families.

Ack. I was once in a newspaper office bitching about a former colleague from years past who was supposed to be in Hong Kong Then she walked around the corner.

Apparently my facial expression was one of pure horror.

edit

Nutty, maybe we're first cousins. Anyone from Southern Ontario?

Quebec, I fear. They split time between Montreal and Geneva (their mother is Swiss). My other cousins are Britons, so it's not entirely a wonder that we don't see each other.

My cousins in Baltimore? I see them all the time, now.

Penny, I have family in Sarnia and Toronto - where are you from?

Nutty, you have family in Baltimore?

keeps meaning to instigate a Balto-Washington F2F