Thursday, March 01, 2007

Who Says There Are No Coincidences?

I am obsessed with Sitemeter. For those of you who don't know, I see you.

This shouldn't freak anyone out. It doesn't mean I can see the contents of your hard drive or your mother's maiden name. It means I can see general things, like what country you sign on from and whether your use Windows XP or Mac OS X. And I can see when people "hit" my site while searching for some specific term. (In most cases this is random and meaningless, but occasionally it tells me a lot. For example, if a European is searching for my ex-boyfriend by the nickname I gave him, and then pores over the entries related to him, I assume this person is not his uncle or mother.)

Yesterday, someone in Egypt hit my blog while searching for blogs on Valentine's Day in Zamalek. That was so weird that I mimicked the search.

I found this. It was similar to my own blog entry for February 14th, and the blogger's photos show that he lives in the building with the "flat with a view."

Those are both funny coincidences, but not really that unusual.

But this... this is a good one.

I know this guy! I met him at a party in New York's Chelsea in 2002, given by the girlfriend of a man who was selling a condo in Jersey City, one I nearly put down an offer on.

Our email exchange then went something like this: "You're in Cairo? I'm in Cairo! You're in Zamalek? I'm in Zamalek!"

We're having coffee on Sunday.

8 comments:

Chip said...

do you use the free sitemeter or the pay one?

Anonymous said...

And what makes it even more peculiar is that I got an email from a friend I introduced Marie to -- this friend was going to work in Tashkent some years ago and I knew Marie had been there -- who wrote to say "I assume you guys (meaning Marie and I) are hanging out," with a link to Marie's blog. That was before I got Marie's message on my blog about the similar Valentine's Day blog entries.

More reason to believe my life is actually "The Truman Show."
http://craigduff.wordpress.com/2006/09/27/the-truman-show-cairo-edition/

Amanda said...

That is a very cool coincidence. And yes, sitemeters are way too addicting! :)

Linda said...

I use the free sitemeter and I love it except right now it keeps giving me a timeout error.

When it works, I always check the referrals to see what people are searching for. Very interesting.

Amanda Castleman said...

Use your powers for the force of good, like Aunty B...

Marie Javins said...

That made me laugh and laugh! And wish I had thought of doing that to help the poor souls who found my blog while searching for "sex with lovely maasai girls" or "enjoy groping on trains." Thank goodness I *can* help people who find my blog while searching for "rat on a stick."

Marie Javins said...

Oh this is priceless. Seems my blog comes up at the bottom of page 1 on google when you search for:
what bags do women execs carry when they travel

Yeah, I'm a lot of help on that front.

Amanda Castleman said...

I reckon there's a surprising amount of crossover between the "rat on a stick" crowd and female execs luggage-shopping...

However, you are a huge help on that front, Marie: a textbook example of How Not to Shop for (or Carry) a Wheelie Case.

I've seen one blog that keeps tabs on "what people are searching for" under "links". Pretty funny stuff.