Cambridge Coincidences Collection

My husband and I married in 1883 when he joined me, from Buckinhamshire, in Brighton. Some thirty years before he had been head teacher at a small country school in Yorkshire, with, at most, some twenty-five pupils. Invited to my son's barbeque, he was in conversation with one of the guests, who suddenly recognised my husband as having taught him in Yorkshire when he was five years old.

I was living in Brisbane, Australia, in 1974 and the day was especially hot. As I paid the fees for two of my childresn to attend a judo class, I remarked to the collector that, though she, like me, was a red-head, she looked remarkably cool. She said that she had been born in Ceyn, perhaps that made a difference. It transpired that we had been born in the same small town in Ceylon, I in 1934, she in 1935, where our fathers were engineers. When I wrote to my mother in England to tell her of the conversation, she wrote back to say that she attended that woman's christening in Hatton, Ceylon. After my parents' deaths I came across a photo of the event. Ann

When I was still working for Marco Polo Hotels in Hong Kong, often I would go from my office to one of the hotels in the Ocean Centre complex for lunch. On the way back I would always go through the Ocean Centre Shopping Arcade which joined the properties, and from there the route was to turn left into the Hong Kong Hotel where my office was located. On this particular day however, as I approached the entrance to the Hong Kong Hotel, I felt that instead of turning left and going straight into the hotel, I should be turning right and going into the Ocean Terminal area, which was on the harbor front, where the cruise ships docked. There was no real reason to do this as it added an extra five minutes to the walk, it also meant that I would have to go one floor down by escalator and then one floor back up by stairs to reach the elevators to my office. However, somehow I felt it was the right thing to do. As I was riding down the escalator near the harbor front where the cruise ships came in, I saw, standing at the bottom was Harry and Judi Mullikin, my previous boss when he was President of Westin Hotels & Resorts, and his wife.

Before leaving my corporate position with a hotel group in Hong Kong, and starting the process of setting up Sanctuary Resorts I had an unexpected meeting with my friend Ronnie Ng. I had first met Ronnie a few years earlier when he was engaged as the first outside trainer for our Rotary International District Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) program. Subsequently Ronnie conducted some training programs for one of the Hotels where I worked, and it was during this time that we reconnected. We had some interesting conversations in between the programs and during one of them I remarked that I admired the style of jacket Ronnie was wearing, as it was casual, and while it had a Mandarin style collar, it was more contemporary in design. Ronnie thought it would look good on me and suggested next time I had a suit made I get one similar. A few months later it was time to get a new suit, and to be honest I “chickened out”, and when my tailor, Andy, asked me what sort of suit I would like, I just said “my usual,” meaning a classic style double-breasted black suit. Interestingly he then said, “Actually Mr.