For anyone who has lived on the east coast, it is quite well known that if you visit the Niagra falls on 4th of July, you are bound to run into an old friend or aquaintance of yours. Well I never tried to take advantage of this fact while I was on the east coast but after coming to the Bay area I have been running into friends from my first school (folks with whom I went to school from Sr. K.G thru 5th grade).
I met the first one at Mystery Point (Santa Cruz) and coincidentally he too works for Cisco. He had volunteered to demonstrate one of the “mystery’s” there and I thought his face looked familiar so I asked him if he was “so and so” and he too recognised me. This was not as surprising as even though I had changed schools after 5th I used to meet him in the local trains especially during exam times while doing B.E.
The second friend I met was when one of our professors from UMKC was visiting the Bay area and we had an alumni dinner. There was one guy sitting there who said that his wife was in the area shopping and another batchmate of his asked him to call her since the dinner was for ex-students and their families. After he introduced his wife to all of us we got to talking and soon figured that we were classmates in school in Andheri.
So if you have unexpectedly met old friends/aquaintances in places you least expected start posting
Nitul’s elder brother Sachin Haria was in same Engineering College as me (Thadomal Shahani) (One batch junior to me). I knew Sachin but never knew he had brothers.
It was only when me and Nitul were chatting about engineering colleges that we realized that we both had a connection via Sachin.
(Of course this is not on the same lines as what Samir has asked for, but i thought I will put it out there 🙂 ).
We did goto Niagara about 1 month back but did not meet any old friends there. :-).
However I keep bumping into old friends at Indian grocery stores and other stores in the Bay Area.
I have met old friends/acquaintances at Six Flags in Atlanta, at the Sunnyvale El Camino Hospital on Old San Francisco Road, At former Indian restaurant Kamats on Flora Vista and El Camino (he was working in the restaurant there), at San Jose airport, etc.
Once I saw someone at the now defunct Indian restaurant Shilpa who looked familiar but I could not place him. Same thing for him also. In order to figure out where we had met before we started with “Which School you went?”, “Where do you stay?”, “Which College?”, etc. Then finally when we reached which company it dawned on us that we both worked for same company in India and used to travel in BEST bus sometimes together. 🙂
Usually in the Bay Area if someone comes up to you and says ” I have seen you somewhere” or
“do i know you”…the first suspect is whether he/she is trying to get you into the Business of Multi-level marketing (read Amway!!!)…Have encountered a few of those in the Bay Area
I once happened to meet one of the visiting faculties from my engineering school (in bombay) in the san jose library. At such moments the world seems really small. You bump into the people you thought you almost forgot 🙂
I too keep bumping into colleagues from engineering college, company in India etc in Indian grocery stores, malls, temple etc. The world is really small.
This just happened in a party recently…
I met some uncle and aunty and got talking to them…talked about Mumbai…Ghatkopar and Somaiya(where I did MBA from) …and then Aunty says my nephew went to Somaiya too to do MBA…then their surname KAPASI striked I am like Paritosh Kapasi…..came to know he recently got married to one of our juniors from my undergrad college…
At the same party met a girl who lived in Kings Circle…just a block away from where I lived in Matunga…and we are like seems like we know each other…we realised we went to rival schools…Auxiliam and J.B Vachha had common friends…but had never met each other….just heard about each other from common friends…
It was good time to catch up with some gossip who is where, whom did they married to, how many kids,etc….
In the same party bumped into a friend’s (friend back in India) twin cousins…
She would always talk about them that the two brothers are in CA,etc….had just heard about them never thought would meet them….It was just a coincident that they were cousins to the guy whose party we had attended…
World is a small place…rather duniya gol hai…
I too keep bumping into old friends. The sad part though is that most of them are girls and they now look far better than what they looked like in School. Damn !!!
Now this is a really small world. I tracked down one of my junior college friends whom I had not met for 16 years and just had dinner with him. He works for Cisco and while talking turns out that one more person from Cisco bumped into him and recognized him as being from the same high school. Name: Samir Shah :-). Yes Samir, I am talking about Emran.