When I impersonated Gordon Freeman in Half Life 2 and nobody noticed 😄

Still waiting.

I do have the gift of not being in the wrong place at wrong time though.

A number of years ago, my other half was popping over for a rare visit, so she got a flight to Cardiff Airport. I headed over to meet her.

It was a rubbish day - cold, went, and foggy as fuck. Predictably, the flights started getting diverted here there and everywhere.

I stayed in the terminal for an hour or so until the airline had decided what to do, and once they’d firmed up their travel plans and shuttle back to Cardiff, it turned out I had two or three hours to kill I thought “sod it, I’m off to knock some balls about at a driving range or something”.

As I headed down the steps into the entrance concourse, I saw the whole area was lined with press and photographers, and as I walked through, the entirety of the Wales national rugby team started coming through the doors. It was surreal - a wall of similarly dressed dudes who you usually only see on TV, and I’m stuck square in the middle walking against the tide with a courtesy “alright boys” to get me through.

For an instant, I was probably the most photographed random dude in the country, and probably ruined dozens of photos. It was cool as fuck though.

I was in a bar in NYC once and the cast of a Broadway musical was having drinks to celebrate a birthday. So, I may have seen the best “Coworkers singing Happy Birthday to someone” performance in history.

After some job prospects fell through my dad convinced me to pursue an online master’s degree part time while I continued looking for work

Come the following March and all those jobs shut down completely with the initial outbreak of COVID but I was already ahead of the curve using the lockdown time to get a swanky new degree.

When I was a teenager I had a variety of joint problems, including my knees. Walking down off a mountain one day the weather took a turn for the worse and a strong gust of wind knocked me off my feet and I landed knee-first on a rock. Nothing broken, but couldn’t walk on it. We’d barely seen anyone else that day but it just so happened that a couple were just approaching us as I fell. The wife was a nurse, the husband was ex-special forces.

In September 2019, I was notified that my landlord was selling the property I had been renting and I had to be out of that house by end of the year.

It was out in the boonies, so rent was cheap, and I’d been saving up to buy a house closer to where I work. My time frame was mid 2020 to start that process. Rather than put a bunch of money down and pay crazy rent (dipping deeply into my house fund), I took what I’d saved and was actually able to buy a house earlier than I had planned (not quite the one I was saving for but still nice).

Here’s where the “right place, right time” comes in. A few months after that, bam, COVID hit.

My original plans to start house shopping in April/May of 2020, would have been completely out the window.

I also got the opportunity to work remotely, and jumped on it. At my old house, my internet wasn’t fast or reliable enough to support that (except in a pinch), but my new house has fiber. On top of that, I got really good interest rates on my mortgage and even re-financed the next year to lower those even more.

So, had my landlord not decided to be shitty and sell the house I was originally renting, I’d still be there and would not have been able to work remotely like I still do to this day. Have had lots of other opportunities open up since then, as well which would not have been possible.

Had two moments where me and room mates were out of work during covid and got to post pone my mortgage for the year. Then when it came to pay they offered a refinance deal that took 3% off my loan.

I like to think of myself as a forward planning oppertunist, so a lot of my good fortune is hardworking and foresight. That was shear fucking luck on my part.

Got hired at the same time as another guy. Don’t recall why, but I was in my boss’s office when he decided it was time to assign us offices despite us being in training and not needing them for another few weeks, so he grabs his admin assistant and off we go to verify which offices were open / available. I got the one with a window.

I went to a Rammstein show, after it me and a friend couldn’t get to the hotel because there weren’t any buses that late, so we went to the back street to wait, might see the band go out or something and we had nothing better to do. At something like 3AM the gates open and they all walk out, we just stayed there because we didn’t want to bother them, but then Till walked towards us and asked “Have you been waiting long?” We were a bit befuddled and answered “yes?” and he said “Sorry to keep you waiting” and took a picture with us.

Not a great story, but as a huge Rammstein fan that was really cool.