Parallel lives

Five years ago I became a project manager of the project for improved rural water supply and opened a call for an expert to conduct a situational analysis. Apparently, the topic was not very popular at the time and we received small number of applications. The first one that I opened was a surprise. The birth date on the top of the CV caught my attention as the day and the month were exactly the same as mine while the year was different in one figure only (almost the same). It turned out that the expert was exactly ten years older than me. The content of the CV, i.e. the overall application, of this expert was rated the best. This was established in the end of an objective selection process and had nothing to do with me having subjective preferences for this expert which were grounded not only on the birthday connection but also on the fact that the person had an engineering background and was working at the university at which I studied towards my BSc diploma. Since the moment we met, we have been having a smooth communication and mutual understanding about our common topics on water supply. Moreover, it turned out that he is married to a lawyer and my husband is a lawyer as well. He has one daughter and I have one son (which I call ‘gender symmetry’). He has two (female) dogs and I have one (male) dog. So, apart from professional interests, we also share the family values and love for dogs. I think that, to a certain extent, the two of us live parallel lives. I am sure that I live a kind of parallel life with many other people, but to date I have not met any more ‘parallel’ persons so this is my very special story.