COFFEE & BISCUITS

Last week, inspite of a busily “scheduled” weekend, I managed to begin and finish the novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” a philosophically tilted piece of literature written by the Czech writer Kundera. In the story, the main character Tomas (a womanizer who was finally tied down by a woman named Teresa) ponders how 6 fortuities brought about his meeting with Teresa.

And then I think about all the fortuities in my life, especially the more recent ones.

A true fortuity: last year I travelled solo to Austria on a pilgrimage for classical music and sound of music and a verification of the beauty of the scene of a little lakeside town as captured on my desk calendar. There I befriended a couple spanish/german speaking men (one is a biology teacher and the other is a Spanish teacher in a university in Linz) and a dog, and stayed with them for a night and then to Czech Republic. This year, a couple weeks ago, I went with Lynette to Costa Rica, where, on the first night, I met two Austrian college students, who happened to go to the university which the man I met in Austria teaches — and they happened to know exactly that man I met in the small lakeside town in Austria last year — and I happened to still have the business card of the Austria man I met last year in my wallet and showed it to them.

Is this a true fortuity? I think so. It took 3 countries (Austria, Costa Rica, USA), in 3 different continents, thousands miles apart, more than 1 year later, to find a 2nd degree of connection with Javier (the Spanish teacher in Austria). Is this fortuity meaningful? Perhaps not.

While that above example is a fortuity, it is actually normally tricky to identify whether some encounter is truly fortuitous, as you’ll see…read on.)

So then I ponder about my latest fortuitous encounter:

I signed up to a piano meet up group (which meets in a church) because I want to befriend some African Americans who play jazz and get tips from them. I went there that Friday evening. Arrived at the designated church, but found that all 5 entrances were locked. Now, I am not a really social person, and at that point, I was not feeling very determined about going into a church to discuss and perform piano in front of a bunch of black people, so — I was about to give up and leave — only that I suddenly remembered that, the night before I had copied the main contact’s phone number onto my map (normally I am not this organized…for some reasons, that night, at that second that this possibility crossed my mind, I decided to grab a pencil and jog down the number).

Do you know, that a split second decision could be the break between a stagnant day-to-day life versus an amazing and eye-opening experience? (It has OFTEN been this case in my life of almost 27 years)

So I called the organizer of the piano group, and viola, they were meeting upstairs. I could already hear the Chopin wafting from above. The church is a very, very old church. And surprisingly, inside the compound is like a castle. There is an indoor basketball court!

Cut to the crux of the story: in the meeting, indeed there were a lot of African Americans. And a few white people. I was the only Asian. It was an amazing experience, because never had I actually participated in these informal sort of piano recitals, among a very eclectic group of pianists. All the African American piansts blew me away — and they were not playing blues or jazz — they were playing Rachmaninoff and Chopin.

My latest fortuitous event happened during this meeting in that, during the middle of the session, another Chinese person joined the meeting. We became fast friends and talked about everything about music.

How many Chinese people I know sail? (Yes, SAIL A BOAT) Among all the friends, only 3 guys, and 1 girl. Well, this Chinese person I met in the piano group, happened to sail, and in fact, sail in Northwestern, exactly where I had spent the summer windsurfing. Furthermore, after more talking after sailing, I realized that piano and sailing are not the only things that we have in common — he reminds me of somebody I know: my Dad! How many people resemble my father in actions and personality? Far and few between.

So at first I thought, meeting a person who plays piano, and who happens to sail, and who happens to resemble my Dad — meeting such a person in a roomful of African Americans — this must be a fortuitous event.

But as I think about it, I don’t think it is as random as it seems.

When I went to that piano group with the intention of mashing with black musicians, I was behaving what my Dad would have done if he were me. My Dad has a knack of getting himself into situations where he would find himself the only Chinese (and not speaking proper English). It requires a certain, adventurousness or openness to foreigness, to take the initiative and follow through to this meeting. If I were not feeling that passionate urging to learn jazz piano, I also wouldn’t have followed through.

The counterparty of my story — yes, the other person must be sort of like my father to go to that meeting too. Any normal person (especially Chinese, who tend to be reserved about meeting non-Chinese people and super cautious, and even racist) who saw that piano group’s photo album should be expecting themselves to be the only Asian face in the crowd. Furthermore, the person is not discouraged by the amazingly frustrating traffic that night (yes, there was huge traffic). This piano-sailing person I met was late because of the long traffic, came toward the supposed end of the meeting (but the piano playing lasted more than 2 hours beyond the designated end time, with a Greenmills performer (blind) ended up taking the hot seat….) His interest in the subject has to be strong to resist the temptation to turn back.

So, if I were behaving like my Dad, and the other person was behaving like my Dad, it makes sense that these two people who resemble Jones Wong, will cross path…if not there at that particular situation, the encounter will still happen on some other day!

P.S. Let me further hammer the optimistic point of this post into your head: follow your passion and just go at it with ferocity, without reservation or second thoughts (my faith in this mantra had somewhat waivered in the last couple years but now restored). There you are BOUND to meet kindred spirits, sooner or later.