Rhonda Bracey: At Random

There are about 7 billion people on Earth, so what are the chances of two people from opposite sides of the world (US and Australia) being on the same tour in India and Nepal at the same time, and both knowing me??? I don’t even want to try to do the maths on that one!

Sharon lives near Los Angeles and is a friend of mine on Facebook — I first met her at technical writer conferences we both attended in the US. Julie lives in Perth and is a quilter — Julie knows of me, probably because of the work I do for the Community Quilts program of our state quilt guild, but I don’t know if we’ve met. However, Julie is quite well-known by another West Australian quilter, Michelle, who is a good friend of mine.

With that background, imagine my surprise when Sharon messaged me yesterday from Nepal telling me there was a Perth lady on her tour who’s a quilter and knows of me. I’m not sure how they got to me in their conversation, but I expect it was something like ‘Where are you from? What do you do in your spare time?’ ‘Perth; I quilt’ ‘OMG! I known someone in Perth — Rhonda Bracey — and she’s a quilter’, followed by ‘I know of Rhonda! Wow!’

Normally when a Facebook friend is off on a trip somewhere, I sort of follow along, but not very closely. But this time was different – I’d done a trek in the Annapurna foothills in Nepal back in 1988, so I was interested in what Sharon was doing there, where she was going, and how different it might be from my trip there 30 years ago. She went to some of the same places I went, so we’d been chatting about that on Facebook, when all of a sudden she asked where in Perth I lived. That must’ve been about the time she found out Julie was from Perth and was a quilter.

What are the chances? It certainly is a small world! And in this case, two of my world’s collided — my quilting world and my tech writing world. In Nepal, of all places.