LA LA Lalala

While driving to Canberra with Zoe I started singing The Offsprings ‘Self Esteem’. I haven’t even thought the Offspring for years, but the song came into my head, ‘I know, I should say no, it’s kinda hard when she’s ready to go! I may be dumb, but I’m not a dweeb, I’m just a sucker with no self esteem!’..

We got to Canberra late so I missed my coach to Sydney. We went walking to an ATM to get money out for a later coach. As we walked past a store on the main mall we heard music blaring out the door, it was the same song I’d been singing earlier.. “I may be dumb, but I’m not a dweeb, I’m just a sucker with no self esteem!”.

Coincidence Factor: 2/5 Stars

Three in a day

I had three coincidences today.

1. I caught the tram to work in the morning but there weren’t many free seats. I sat down quickly without buying a ticket from the tram machine so I wouldn’t miss out. Approaching Flinders (Central) I saw a poster in the tram with pictures of undercover police checking trams for tickets and thought ‘gee, you can’t tell they’re cops at all’.

I have never (in 6 months of tram catching) had an undercover ask for a ticket, but I got up and bought a ticket from the machine anyway. I sat down again and no less than ten seconds later an old looking man came inside, looked at me, then proceeded to pull out his police badge and ask to check my ticket.

In all my time in Melbourne this was the first time I’ve been checked by an undercover. Lucky!

Coincidence factor: 2.5/5 Stars

2. At work going through my ‘To Do’ list, which has over twenty items on it. I decided to call back a ‘Chris’ about a missing delivery, tho it had no priority over the other 19 tasks on my list. That very instant the phone rung, it was a lady from the delivery company calling to tell me that Chris had just received his item!

Coincidence factor: 2/5 stars.

3. I’ve decided to use a new program with which to keep my ‘to do’s’ and reminders. It is called Remember The Milk (it’s an online web app). There’s a new user tutorial video so I watched it to learn.

On the demo list of the tutorial video the first entry is “Call Emily”. Emily is the fake name that I use for emailing customers at work. (People are nicer when you’re a girl). The third entry is “Call Steve about Lunch”. Steve is my best friend in Melbourne (and in Sydney!) who I planned on calling today! (I took a screenshot of the video below).

Coincidence factor: 2.5/5 stars

Efficient!

(Note: This is a coincidence that happenned previous to me beginning this blog, I will be uploading coincidences previous to the blogs beginning in order to build a previous coincidence database. I will post one up for every second day without a coincidence to report, with the date included, after 1 week I will archive these in their correct hierarchy and position)

November 6, 2007:

I started a new job doing administration for an import business. In my role I have to type and retype many templates. ‘Surely there’s a better way..’ I thought, so I introduced macros and hotstrings to my work, cutting down the amount of work and typing I have to do by half. I called my best friend Austin and told him about how ‘Efficient’ I’d made my job. ‘It’s my word of the week!’.

——

Walking home from Zoe’s five days later I got a call from Austin, “Pablo! I have the horse for you!”. “What?”, “The Melbourne cup! It’s today! I have the horse for you to bet on, It’s Efficient!” “Huh” “Efficient! It’s your word of the week, there’s a horse named Efficient you have to bet on it! trust me.” “Ok man, I will!..” but I didn’t.

The next morning I woke up to find, “IT’S EFFICIENT!”, on the front page of every newspaper.

Efficient had won the Melborne Cup.

At 28:1 Odds. Surprising even its owner and coach.

On a $20 bet I would have won close to $600. Damn.

Coincidence Rating: 2.5/5 Stars

A Call from Zoe

I’d been thinking about calling Zoe so I got up from the computer, picked up my phone, and of course it started ringing, I knew it was Zoe.

I answered laughing “That’s so funny! I was just about to call you”.

Zoe and I don’t call each other on the phone very often. Around once a fortnight.

Coincidence Factor : 1.5/5 Stars.

(Is it a coincidence that after I start a blog about coincidences I have two of them?)

A man from Argentina

I was randomly looking for free music to download while at work. I followed the first link that came up from searching ‘full albums blog’ into Google, which was ‘Free Albums Galore’. After reading through some of the posts the author recommended downloading music by a band called Billie The Vision & The Dancers. I did and followed this link which took me to a list of their albums.

Their second album was called “The World According to Pablo”! (Pablo is my name by the way!). The first track was called “I’m Pablo”. The third track was called “A man from Argentina”.

A running joke in my house for the last few months has been that I’m from Argentina (I’m actually Mexican).

Coincidence factor: 2.5/5 Stars.