1.
When I was 16 I participated in a program called Young Achievers, which was a non-profit program designed to teach secondary and tertiary students about running a company.
Earlier this year I was throwing together ideas for the Dynamic Business 'Young Guns' issue and, for the first time in more than a decade, thought of the program and wondered if it still existed. It did, and although we didn't run anything on it in the magazine, I decided to follow it and see if there was anything we could do with them.
Long story short, I ended up buying a ticket to their awards night at the end of November, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The keynote speaker was Belinda Yabsley, former Mercedes Benz Salesperson of the Year, who made a terrific presentation on customer service. My first coincidence of the night was that Vive, a magazine I used to work for, had done a profile of Belinda some years back.
A little while later in a break I sought her out to introduce myself and and my new position with DB. Surprisingly, she remembered my name from the magazine, even though I wasn't the one who did the profile on her. We exchanged cards and since then I've convinced my editor to do a story on her in some shape or form.
Coincidence number two was at my table, a rollcall that consisted of a few sponsors and their partners, two people from YA and two students, one of whom was up for Secondary Businessperson of the Year (Ameya). I asked Ameya a lot about his company and the nomination process throughout the night. It was close to the end of the night when I finally asked him what school he went to. Lo and behold he replied "Baulkham Hills High", my alma mater. We then spent the rest of the night comparing teachers, seeing who was still there etc. I told him I was going to visit the school the very next day and when I popped in to see my old maths teacher, Ameya was in that class and said 'hi'.
2.
Eleesa Collis was my horticulture teacher when I did Green Corps back in 2002, which was my first full-time job. She was cool and I liked her as a teacher and a person. One thing she said to me has always stuck with me since: "You don't 'find' time, you make time [to do the things you love]."
Ass, Gla and I had just come out of the New Theatre's production of The Little Shop of Horrors in Newtown when I recommended we drop by the Pastizzi Cafe across the road (for those of you who don't know what a pastizzi is, it's a kind of crispy layered pastry with filling. The Pastizzi Cafe has a whole lot of flavours, of which I favour the sweet: chocolate ricotta, cherry ricotta and apple).
The joint was full so we'd ordered bags to go but then a table near the back became available and we sat down. About 15 minutes into our visit the lady sitting behind Gla, who was opposite me, stood up to leave. I recognised her but I couldn't place her and she was almost out of range when I suddenly called out "Eleesa!" It was her.
We exchanged pleasantries, and she even remembered that I wanted to write a book and asked how that was going.
3.
Tim Lohman did media at Macquarie University in the same intake as me. I didn't know him, but I knew who he was. He did some of the same media classes and submitted his work to campus publications. My friends, who did know him, thought he was a twat.
When I was at POL Publications, the time came when I was to move up in the company and I was asked to hire my replacement. From a flood of dozens of applicants, I interviewed just five people (as an aside, one of those five was Christine Piper who was also a Mac grad and whose work I had actually published in Soma, the arts magazine I co-edited in 2001).
The only male in the group was Tim Lohman. He had the goods on paper but I was wary about his reputation as a twat. I thought I did pretty well at judging him fairly, but as it turned out Jennifer Pinkerton (who I haven't contacted in ages, wonder what she's doing now?) was better qualified and a better fit for the company. I don't think he would have satisfied Jan Mackey's 'non-diva' prerequisite anyhow.
So, I'm in my friend Alison's kitchen looking at all the 'Come As You Were' photos and I see this couple also looking at the photos and making comments (they were the judges, I discovered later). I get the distinct feeling the name of the guy is Tim, but I don't say anything because I'm still waiting for my brain to catch up to tell me why I know this guy's name is Tim to make an introduction.
In the meantime Alison names him Tim so, that confirmed, it all comes back. I ask him if he went to Macquarie and in the course of the conversation, it all comes back to him as well: "You interviewed me for that job in Redfern and you said: 'You're a man, can you multi-task?' I was going to reply: 'You're a woman, can you read a map?' but I thought the better of it."
I told you he was a twat. BTW, I can read a map, I did gold level Duke of Edinburgh at school. Besides which, I don't think I asked him that question in that manner. And I also asked all the girls whether they could multi-task as well so I wasn't being discriminating.
So that's a weird-arse history lesson of different aspects of my life that is incrementally coming back to haunt me for no apparent reason.
4.
Another short one to add is a guy named Peter Kunzin. When I worked at Red Apple a couple of years back there was a company a few floors down called Appen who did linguistic research. They were doing a study on the way people typed and used various programs, so were paying guinea pigs to do a typing 'test'. A few of us decided to go for the extra money. The guy to co-ordinated the tests was Peter.
Recently, Appen won the Australian Exporter of the Year title. The Australian Institute of Export had their Christmas party last Tuesday and invited Appen along. I bumped into Peter at the party and he recognised me and I had to explain what I was doing there in my role as Dynamic Export editor.
Seriously, somebody had better explain to me why this is happening or I may well go mad with curiosity.
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