Woke up to HEAVY snow right down to the valley. All the grassy bits covered in hours. Was very conducive to a sleep in but for
the hardier souls it was up the mountain to tackle the powder.
In my case the powder
won easily. Visibility close to zero, snow past the knees, bailed out early.
Beginner snowboarders however had their private lessons and are now ready to
move off the beginner slope.
On the way down the
mountain I shared a gondola with a young ski instructor. After commiserating
about bad weather and difficult snow I find out that his mother was born in
Sydney, and so was I! As a young Italian he had work ski instructing now but he
told me he wanted to go to London to improve his English. I thought it was
pretty good already, especially compared to my Italian.
Side Bar –
Interesting connections and 6 degrees of separation
This little
episode reminded me of how as social beings we naturally look for connections.
We do this by trying to identify something we have in common, however obtuse.
When we find something, we can start to connect and bond. If we find nothing
then we will probably just move on and completely forget the contact. Sometimes
it can be something simple like the episode above, that makes the connection
memorable. However the more radical the connection, for example meeting a
complete stranger in a place foreign to both of you and finding that you know
someone in common….that becomes really memorable.
I had one
such episode at a conference in Colorado many years ago. I was hanging out with
some folks from Alcoa, Pittsburgh when one of them said to me…”you know I only
know one person from Australia’ his name is Bill F.” Amazingly Bill was someone
I did know as well through a work engagement. He and Bill had worked together
at a previous company for them both. We laughed when to think that from a
population of 20 million people that the two of us who had never met before
would find a common connection.
More
recently Julie and I had joined a tour group in Turkey and met Sharon and Tony.
They lived in Sydney but had previously lived in Port Macquarie. After a bit of
exploring we found that one of their best friends had gone to college with
Julie and they had even lived together during that time! They shared some even more incredible six degree stories of their own. I find these small world
connections so fascinating. We still keep in contact with Sharon and Tony, no
doubt influenced by our shared connections. Interestingly, in that same share
house of Julie’s she had another friend Margaret who she hitchhiked around New
Zealand with over 30 years ago now.
Recently we found that it is highly likely that they are related based
on some genealogy detective work that Julie’s sister Kerri has been doing
recently.
It really
is a small world after all!
Social Network Update
Social Network Update
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