It's a Small World

As a follow-up to my previous post I wanted to share a story that pretty much made my day today.

So in case you don’t know, my friend Areg is a photographer. He mostly does candid photography, taking pictures of people, natural and urban scenery, and the like – in a word, anyone or anything that he finds interesting.

And he also makes his own post cards and sends them to his friends from all the different places he travels to. Let me use this opportunity to apologize for never returning the favor – I just don’t seem to have whatever it takes to use snail mail, unless of course it involves picking up the stuff I order on Amazon.

Areg went to UCLA as an exchange student during the fall quarter of 2014. And naturally he took quite a lot of pictures on campus. And he was kind enough to send several post cards from the U.S. to me. One of them featured a photo of a young woman. And this is the point where the story could have ended had it not been for the twist of fate that followed.

The following year I went to UCLA as part of the same program – one of the best experiences I have ever had in my life! Of course, I made a lot of friends and got to know a whole lot of people. Maybe you already see what I’m driving at, but hold on a second.

Fast forward half a year. Areg just completely redesigned his website and we want to make a concerted effort to promote it. I wrote down some of my thoughts on his work (my previous post) and I’m browsing for the best pictures that would go with the text. And I stumble upon that picture of the young woman I pretty much forgot about. And bam, I think I know her!

I attended a class called ‘Culture, Media, and Los Angeles’ at UCLA, a class I absolutely loved by the way. LJ attended it too. I had other classes before and after this one, so I never had an opportunity to linger in there to talk to anybody. But I happened to meet LJ on a few different occasions outside of class and get acquainted. The point is, it never occurred to me that she was the young woman in the picture.

So this morning I had an epiphany. Just think about it, my friend travels 6,000 miles away from Moscow, takes a picture of a stranger and sends it to me. A year later I go to the same place. UCLA is home to some 40,000 students, 30,000 of them are undergraduates. What are the chances that I end up in the same class with that person? And most importantly, it took me two quarters to figure out that I know the young woman in the picture! A small world!