The first time I felt Tokyo is small.

It is not unusual to bump into not 1 but a few acquaintances, friends, or even famous people on the streets of Singapore.

It is also almost predictable or I would say a pretty easy feat to be able to find a link to someone you might have met for the first time. The person could easily be a friend of your cousin, a senior from your school, the sister-in-law of the colleague sitting beside you...
Just like the top 5 accounting firms in Singapore is filled up with graduates from NTU, 90% of the doctors making their rounds in Singapore's government hospitals are probably your NUS med grads too.

Well, it is not anything to be surprise about considering most of us are born, schooled, worked and socialised in the same 700km square for our entire lives.

I remember when I first came to Tokyo, I was just so overwhelmed by sea of unfamilar faces. There were times days gone by ( long weekends especially) when I realised at the end of it, I have not opened my mouth to talk to anyone for the entire 3 whole days. Tokyo is just so wide and confusing. The vast endless train lines just see so many people coming and going in and out of Tokyo daily.

In my 2 years here, I have also met so many people who come in and go out of my lives. Mostly introduced by friends over parties etc... and really... though I socialised with utmost sincerity, I know that most of the time they are also people I will never meet again. Twice.
The truth is, most of us ( or actually 99.0% of the Japanese people) whether or not with the intention of meeting someone again will say " see you again!" just to be polite (or as a form of greeting) and probably not contact the person again until there is a need to.

Same goes to the group of people I met 2 weeks ago when my friend's friend came over for a visit in Tokyo.

In fact, if not for my friend, I would not have met this friend.

If not for this friend, I would not have met her group of friends here too.

But then today when I went to church, just as I was settling down in my seat, I caught a familar face in front of me.

I was almost too surprised that it took me a moment to realised I was looking at the same lady whom I met through my friend's friend 2 weeks ago.

This lady almost became someone whom I thought I will never meet again.

She was also very surprised to see me. Her fiance too.

We chatted again after service and we realised that we have been attending the church for about the same period of time and is always sitting in the same area too.

It just dawned upon me how wonderful this kind of meetings can be. If not for that simple act of hosting my friend's friend, this lady will probably still remain a stranger to me till today. We could be sitting next to each other for the rest of our lives in the same church but never ever have the reason to talk to each other.

On the side note... I finally signed up for DCAT seminar. ( = Doing Church as a Team). I want to go the beach camp in Aug too but can't take leave now le... So sad!! I want to go to the beach and play soon! It's summer!