Kung Fu Panda in Copenhagen 2010 

Arrived Copenhagen one early Saturday morning and had the rest of the day to myself. I explored the city on foot, watched the guard changing ceremony at Amalienborg Palace, went to the Marble Church, even took a canal cruise to see the city from the water. Well, Scandinavian weather means frequent rain showers. Of course, I chose an open roof tour boat because it was not raining at the time. My rain jacket was no match to the constant showers, it lost the battle and I was left soaked and wet for the hour long cruise and of course, soaked and wet from the long walk back to my hotel. Nice welcome from Denmark I thought. As I approached my hotel, I looked up and locked eyes for 1 second with this guy in a tweed jacket. No, it was not Professor Robert Langdon from “The Da Vinci Code”. The guy kept walking. I turned around and instinctively hollered “Excuse me, do you work for an engineering firm in so-and-so city?” The guy turned around and responded “do I know you?” He did not recognize me at all. I recognized Jacob’s face from company announcements. He worked at 1 of our offices, who was taking a sabbatical to study some green engineering stuff in Stockholm. He had no idea who I was. As a matter of fact, we didn’t know each other; never spoke to each other, though we worked for the same company in the same office. I introduced myself and mentioned some common co-workers we both knew. Jacob reached out and shook my hand. He was kind enough to offer to buy me a cup of coffee. (Did I mention I was so soaked and wet?) I thanked him for his offer but suggested he moved on with his appointment. I desperately needed a change of clothes and re-washed my hair with tap water instead of rain water.

When I looked into the bathroom mirror, I watched in horror that not only my clothes and my hair were soaked, my eye makeup has melted, I looked like a panda, I looked like Alice Cooper, no wonder why he had no clue who I was, perhaps terrified that I even knew his name. I was glad to decline the invitation to coffee (looking the way I looked at that moment), the best decision of the day!!! What are the chances that 2 people worked in the same office, who didn’t know each other, ran into each other across the ocean, in a faraway place???

But it can happen……

I remembered Debbie told me her family took a vacation to Florida. They ran into their next door neighbor in the same Florida hotel, who was taking the same week for a vacation to Florida. Except they did not tell each other ahead of time about their vacation destination to “you guess it”, Florida.