[OT] Encounters with fate, consequence, destiny and general weird stuff.

[Ashrem Bayle]

Ok, the weirdest thing happened to me a few days ago and I thought I would share.

I'm sitting here at my computer working on a new design when I get to where I need to type in the part number for the part I just finished. All of our metal part numbers use this format: 819034xxx0..

So.
I couldn't remember the part number and I was talking to myself.

I say to myself: "What was that part number? 819034-"
Just then it comes over the radio: "It's 4:47 and traffic is getting heavy."

My jaw dropped. The part number was 8190344470.

Needless to say, it freaked me out. What are the chances that the guy on the radio would announce the exact number at the exact time that I needed to know it?


So what weird experiences have you had?

PS- Lets keep the ghost and UFO sightings to a minimal.

 

[Agback]

So what weird experiences have you had?

Last night I set "Oh What a Lovely War!" running in the VCR, a film about World War I. The bloke sitting beside me pointed out the time showing on the VCR clock: it was 19:14.

Some Americans might not be aware of this (since the USA did not get involved until 1917), but WWI started in 1914.

Regards,

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Re: Re: [OT] Encounters with fate, consequence, destiny and general weird stuff.

...
Some Americans might not be aware of this (since the USA did not get involved until 1917), but WWI started in 1914.

We're not all ignorant savages, you know.

I'm surprised this thread hasn't been getting more responses. Are we all being good little Aristotlean Westerners? Refusing to admit to that which we cannot prove?

Even little things count. Hasn't anyone ever felt suddenly sad, very, very sad and lonely, and then found out that they were standing in an old battlefield? Or had a really good day for no apparent reason and then found out that their kid sister had gotten the acceptance letter from the college she wanted that morning?

Granted, the 2nd one is entirely likely to be either coincidence or projection, but the 1st still bugs me to this day.

 

[Rinulin]

A very good friend of my wife's was going through an ugly break-up with her then-current-boyfriend. My wife's friend had always had strange things happen around her, from the stories that I had heard, but I always remained skeptical. However, in this particular instance, I got to see one of the strange things. Our friend happened to be over and was being consoled by my wife when she mentions that with all of this stress that she's under, her watch is now running backwards.

I was incredulous, but sure enough she shows me her watch and there is the second hand ticking in reverse. Over the course of a few minutes, I look at the watch again and it had ticked backwards corresponding to the number of minutes that had elasped. It was very strange.

As you can probably guess, it was not a digital watch (wouldn't that have been something, a digital watch going backwards!). I don't know enough about wrist-watches to know what would cause them to go in reverse, but it seemed very strange given the events that were going on her life.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

bump

 

[MerakSpielman]

This happens rather consistently.
My mother-in-law is a waitress (and a darn good one too!). She works the lunch and dinner shifts at a local Mexican joint called La Salita.
My wife and I go to eat there about once every week or two. We also go when she has something she wants to tell her mother.
Every now and then my wife gets a sudden, inexplicable urge to see her mother. So we pack up the baby and go to La Salita.

Lo and behold, her mother's sick. Not at work today. We go home and she calls her mom to see how she's doing.

Now, my mother-in-law practically NEVER misses work. She works every lunch and dinner shift (closed on weekends). She has missed shifts (not even whole days!) due to illness only 4 times in the last 2 years.

It turns out - and we only noticed this just last week - that EVERY SINGLE TIME her mother's sick, my wife gets an overwhealming urge to go see her. We have found no instances where this was not the case.

They are very close, those two.

------


The other wierd coincidence that I can vouch for was as follows:
My father lives in Albuquerque and frequently takes business flights around the country.
My sister-in-law (brother's wife) lives in Pasadena and almost never flies. She happened to fly to see her family last summer (01)

Though their destinations were completely different, they found themselves sitting next to each other during one leg of their flight. It took them a few minutes to even believe it.

-------

So.
I couldn't remember the part number and I was talking to myself.

I say to myself: "What was that part number? 819034-"
Just then it comes over the radio: "It's 4:47 and traffic is getting heavy."

My jaw dropped. The part number was 8190344470.

That sort of thing happens to me all the freaking time. It can get annoying, really.

 

[Kibo]

Given the stagering numbers of opportunities for coincidences like those mentioned, the fact that there are coincidences is stageringly likely, no matter how unlikely a particular coincidence is. I'm pretty sure that makes sense even on rereading, but maybe Y.K.Rao has finally gotten to me.

 

[Agback]

Re: Re: Re: [OT] Encounters with fate, consequence, destiny and general weird stuff.

We're not all ignorant savages, you know.

Of course not.

But last week I read an opinion piece that had been published in the 'Atlantic Monthly' in which the author argued from the 'fact' that in 1942 the USA had stood 'almost alone' against world Fascism. I was amazed that the editors had printed the piece. Still more amazed that a friend of a friend had sent it to my friend with a covering letter that made it clear that he thought it was a very sensible piece.

Further, my experience of talking about hstory with Americans is that most of you are not taught about the 'Intervention', the Allied invasion of Russia in 1919. So it seems to me that Americans on the whole are not terribly well-informed about WWII. (And there's nothing wrong with that: Australians are not terribly well-informed about American history, either.)

It seemed to me quite possible that at least some of the USAmericans reading these boards, perhaps the younger ones, might quite possibly not know when the fighting in Europe that preceded the sinking of the Lusitania began, exactly. After all, why should they?

Regards,


Agback

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Agback,

It wasn't a shot at you. I was making fun of my fellow Americans.

As a group, we tend to pretend we know a LOT more about the world than we do, especially when it comes to history.

That article from "Atlantic Monthly" is still shocking. I don't suppose it's on-line? I'd like to take a look.

At any rate, the American school system is not of a piece. I got lucky in where my parents chose to live. So, while I'm not terribly well-informed about the history of many individual countries (outside of the ones I chose to look into myself), I think I got a solid overview of significant world events, and the "local" events that had a significant impact on the world stage.

Still had to filter out the Amero-centrism, though.

 

[Kyramus]

Unexplained phenomena?

1) While writing up notes and watching tv, I wasn't paying attention to the show as i got engrossed with the adventure I was planning, when I came to points that I got stuck at, I would look up and saw a tidbit of the show and kept working.
The adventure (without telling you everything) is basically a rescue mission. The NPC is a very dear friend to some of the pc's. I was trying to see what was needed to start of this adventure and when I looked up, I saw a man holding two eyeballs. There you go, start from 2 eye balls. Wrote out who the enemy is, what they were doing, wrote out the actual stats for the npcs. I got to the point where I was trying to figure out why the NPC was so wanted by the group. I looked up and saw the guy with the eyeballs holding separated pages of a book as they converge into one book. Cool effect. The NPC knows of a book and how many pieces it is in and where the first one is located. The tome has information about something campaign specific.
movie: Warlock.

2) I was thinking of a friend of mine and as I reached for the phone it rang. Two weeks later, I was thinking of the friend again and I reached for the phone, managed to dial the number and got a busy signal. AS soon as I hung up, the phone rang and it was the friend. About a month later, I began to wonder if my friend was ok and reached for the phone and it rang again. Same friend. The friend is still alive, but was going through a tough time in her life. Weird but true event.

3) Every once in awhile when I start to feel depressed or dissappointed about myself, I would look at the clock and it would show either 4:XX or 10:XX. (XX is in place of the actual numbers, i'm paranoid of sending any personal info online.'' ) No apparent reason, but one of those is my birthday and the other is my wifes.


Ok i'm stopping now. I keep thinking of the movie Final Destination. later all.