Thursday, October 4, 2007

Chance meeting in Calgary

This story begins almost ten years ago. In my first years in IAF I was an aerodynamics instructor. I had a friend there called Shahar and people became accustomed to seeing us together. When in 1999 we left the flight academy, Shahar became a full time Master student and graduated three years later, while I was still in the army and struggling with my studies. When he graduated I lost track of him, and the rumor was that he immigrated to Canada.

During the four years people who knew us from those days asked if I know where he is and what he is doing. They were quite surprised to hear that I don't. When we were in Canada in August, Alex, who had been with us in the flight academy asked about Shahar, and I answered as always: "I don't know where he is", and added: "rumor has it that he is in Canada". We laughed that it will be interesting to meet him there. Later that day we did! We met him at an Indian restaurant in Calgary.

It was such an impossible event that I don't think anyone can believe it:
  1. We didn't know where he was.
  2. We intended to go a restaurant a day before, but somehow didn't do it.
  3. We intended to go to an Italian, but Alex thought that since he has stomach aches afterwards he prefers to go to the Indian. So we did.
  4. We arrived at the restaurant exactly when Shahar and his family were getting their bill. If we had arrived ten minutes later this meeting would never have happened.
  5. Finally, the only reason I glanced at the direction where his family was seated is that his father wears a Kippa. I noticed that and looked to that direction while waiting for the host to guide us to our table.
The meeting itself went very well. We caught up about things. We also exchanged email addresses so we will be able to contact one another.

3 comments:

Dana said...

This is a story of an amazing meeting.
I'm happy you started writing!

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Yaron Kaufman said...

Amazing story ! I told it to many people after we met.
Good Luck with blogging !

MemoriesAndThoughts said...

Thanks guys