it's strange how small and coincidental the world is. for some things to happen, there are only miniscule seconds when a particular event can occur. like when you run into somebody. you have to take the same train, miss the same stop, get out at the same time, peer over the crowd at exactly the same moment... and yet stuff like this happens all the time.



i ran into palak one summer getting off the NR train in new york. what are the chances you run into anyone in new york? (well, pretty high, but i'm not speaking figuratively.) especially when you only know about five people in the city? and then when we ran into louis' friends (but sadly, not louis, because we missed him by five minutes) in switzerland last summer. trippy. this isn't on campus. this isn't in a city. this is a whole 'nother continent. we knew people were gonna be in europe at the same time as we were but to actually run into them? the odds were trillions to one. but then we run into mikey song and crew as we're walking around the coliseum one week later. that's two out of three groups of people we knew were gonna be in europe that summer. (ironically, the third group, angie's, we missed. even though i knew they were supposed to be in vienna on a particular date. we went to "suprise" them. guess who got the suprise when they left early? i'm not a bitter man though.) and then in barcelona, as we were wandering the streets in search of shelter, i ran into mike spear's friend from high school at a burger king. and he offered us shelter. (we politely declined because they already had a ton of people. we spent the night at the airport. slightly uncomfortable but a brilliant idea all around. point for hongshin.) how does this happen?



and how small is the asian community? it's freakishly hard not know someone connected to someone. from somewhere. related to someone. (actually, i kind of got shocked if my parents didn't know someone else's parents. i half-expected them to know every chinese family who ever immigrated to america.) i went to chinese school with grace chen. (although i don't recall it because we weren't in the same class.) and karen chen from wilmot #4, version two, knows josh from years ago in minnesota. and now an ex-roommate of hsing, whom i've met exactly once in physical form, turns out to be rollen's friend from loveboat. and i know who she is from her website. interesting things in life result from overcoming the mathematics of it all.



(i know, too many damn parentheses.)