Serendipity?

As you all know, I'm very reflective of events. Particularly, occurrences that seem rare. I'm always too analytical and just can't help it.

I forget the exact date, but sometime during the second week of September, I went into a nearby cafe to grab some tea and get some work done in the evening. This was my big proposal that I'm leading and hope to hear good news on in December.

The cafe was crowded and all the front tables, where people could sit to focus, were taken. This girl sitting at a table for four noticed the predicament and offered to share the table. So far, the Baltimorians are friendly. There were some exchanges of words and I was able to easily relate to her. She was finishing her dissertation in hopes to defend and get her Ph.D in about a month. I still remember that day that I defended. We both enjoyed our conversation on/off over the next two hours.

She gets up, and said good bye. Knowing she would be busy, I gave her my number and left it for her to call me after she is done with insanity overload (literally) to grab coffee. She admits that she wouldn't be able to call for another month.

This past Friday, I moved into my apartment. I was unpacking my boxes and moving things around on Saturday. It's in the evening after dinner, and I wanted to finish some stuff. I noticed that one of my neighbors is in. I figured, when I'm done for the night, I'll say Hi. The evening progresses and my neighbor's guests are leaving, so I said, "You must be my neighbor."

She said Hi, and thought that I looked familiar. She did, but memories were a bit blur. I was puzzled at first, but after telling her a bit about me, it immediately clicked for her. She was the "friendly coffee girl" who lives directly across from me. I didn't immediately recognize her because she wore a hooded sweatshirt that covered her hair. We chuckled and laugh and caught up on how things are for both of us.

OK, let's talk statistics. There is probably like 20 tall buildings around campus. So the chance of living in the same building is ~5%. Now for this building that I lived in, there are 13 floors with apartments. Each floor has more than 10 units. So roughly speaking, the chance of me meeting someone outside of this building and having her be my next door neighbor is like 0.04%!!! She said she isn't surprised because one of her colleagues in the department lived down the hall, but that is more likely by a factor of 10.

Coincident, maybe. But I say we were suppose to meet.

It's good to know that within a day and a half, I have a great neighbor. Sadly, she is leaving in December.