Meeting a Stranger Sharifah...

Many things happen in life that we have yet to understand. It just happened when we least expected, like this story that unfolded as I moved on in life. On my journey of life many such incidents did happen and I would be telling it in this blog as I move on. This is one of the stories that I would put in the categories of mysticism. 

Some years back I received a request from a woman, a stranger who wanted to be my friend on Facebook. As usual before I add anyone as friend on FB I would check their profile first. My condition is simple; there must be a personal profile image of that person and a name. It is all right if a person use a user name but the true image of the person must be there. Without it I would send a gentle request on a Personal message to the person that he or she must put his or her personal image on the profile. Without the Personal Profile Image I would not add such a person. Since her profile was all right I add her and we soon became friend in the virtual world through the social media Facebook. She was good at bantering on Facebook and  we often meet and share our thoughts. I soon found that she work at an International bank and have kids and that her husband had retired from working. She lives at a condo not that far away from our place. One day her husband got sick and admitted to the Specialist Hospital nearby. I told my wife that I wanted to see a stranger's husband at the hospital and whether she wants to come along. She said that she had other appointment and that I should go alone. I then call the woman Facebook friend that I would come over to the hospital to visit her husband. I then drove to the hospital and met her and her husband for the first time since knowing her only in the virtual world. We kept following each other on FB and continue to banter on subject that both of us like. After a year or so I got a message from her inviting us and another couple to launch at a restaurant in town; she wanted to meet our spouses. So on that Sunday together with the other couple we went to have lunch at a restaurant at the Pavilion. While enjoying the food everyone chat on subject that comes to our minds and my wife after been told that her parents were from Kuantan ask her who her father is.  She mentioned that his name is Syed Hussein and that he was a Custom Officer in Kuantan and that her mother had separated from her father when she was still very young and had not met her father even since, not until she need to get his consent to get married. I search my mind and it does a ring bell but was still not that sure who he was. Kuantan in the fifties was a small town and almost everyone know who the government officers there were then. Moreover Asmah and I were amount those young officer working in the government at that time. We were in our early twenty then. Asmah say she knew a Custom Officer of that name but was not that sure. We then continue to exchange more information and soon to our surprise found that the woman Sharifah, the stranger who had invited us to this lunch that day was indeed the daughter of our friend in the early sixties in Kuantan; the Syed Hussain. Soon the chat became more of a refresh of our history of our youth in Kuantan then. She then said that her father has passed away but she did meet him once before she got married. We have not seen Syed Hussain since we left Kuantan in 1967 and did not know that he had a daughter. So this lunch turns out to be real special in that we got to meet the daughter of a close friend in the sixties after 53 years. There are thousands of Malaysian of my age on Facebook and she choose me a total stranger to be her friend on FB. And that friendship in the virtual world let to this lunch in the physical world that day and we got reconnected to a friend's daughter Sharifah after 53 years. I believe the meeting in the virtual world as well in the physical world is more of a synchronicity rather than a mere coincidence. Well folks life is full of surprises and I like it. 

Have a nice day.