Soundtrack for this post: George Michael - Fate

I will try to explain this case on my own example, which further led me to this question from the headline.

(photo: www.markpetruska.com)

Couple of days ago @katarinazaja and me were cruising the center of Lisbon, we went to Alfama (part of the town) to see all the beautiful viewpoints, buildings and streets. Walking, discovering, investigating, we ran on one small DIY store that sells 100% recycled items. To be more precise, people are bringing chocolate envelops, chips bags, cornflakes bags, flips bags, toothpaste tubes, bubble gum wraps, pet food bags, etc., literally everything, than people who own the store make wallets, bags, paper blocks, note cases, bookmarks, etc. from that material. To not go further with describing everything you can just check the store on the following link. It's really unique and it's really worth checking their work:

Garbags Recycling Shop

To continue my story, we met a girl who works there. Young girl in her mid 20's, very polite and friendly. First, we started to chat about the products she sells, and after just about life in general. She asked us when are we leaving Lisbon, because she thought that we're tourists. We said that we are living and working here at the moment, and that we don't have any plans about the future or when we will return to our country. After a question: "Where do you work?" magic started to happen.

Garbags recycle store

When we said where's our working place, she was very surprised, maybe even a bit amazed. Currently we are working in a company in which she wanted to apply for a job, and actually she did couple years ago, but she didn't have a working permit to work in EU, since she is from Iran, so she was rejected.

I will go now to the end of the story.

We applied for her through one system in our company called "Bring a friend" - recommendation that greatly increases applicant's chances to get a job, because we knew that our company needs someone who speaks Farsi/Persian, not for our project, but for some other one. And that was it! She is now in the process of application, doing interviews and tests. *crossed fingers

Let's reverse all the major happenings that happened before this, and in the end what made me to ask the real question

What are the odds for that girl from Iran to meet two of us? In her case, she moved from Iran to Lisbon to study. She found a job in DIY recycle store after she did not succeed to get a job at a company where we are working at the moment. But where are the things, happenings, which we don't know that happened to her on her way to Lisbon, even before her "way" to meet two of us.

In our case it is way more complex. If @katarinazaja didn't go to Valencia two years ago, and after to Sevilla one year ago, she would never met a girl from France, who later recommended her for this job in Lisbon. She got her job and recommended me, and after all the interviews and tests here we are, cruising, investigating, discovering Alfama in Lisbon, entering one cool recycling store, and at the end helping some random Iranian girl, that we just met, to get a job in the same company as we do.

So let's get back on the beginning of the story to answer the question.

Do you call it a FATE? Or it's just a COINCIDENCE?

"If Tom had learned anything......it was that you can't ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple earthly event. Coincidence, that's all anything ever is, nothing more than coincidence... Tom had finally learned, there are no miracles. There's no such thing as fate, nothing is meant to be. He knew, he was sure of it now." (500 days of summer)

Thank you for your attention and take care.

GG

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