Six Degrees of Separation from Singapore

If Kevin Bacon is the center of the entertainment universe, and can be linked to any other actor by six steps of separation, then Singapore must share some similar weird connection like that, where everyone in the universe is somehow connected to this place.
Yesterday we experienced yet another one of those "You've got to be kidding" circumstances that seem to keep happening.   Elaine and I were in the Chinatown MRT station, when this tall person walked up to me to say hello.  The face was familiar, but the context was all wrong.  I looked, then looked again.  The person was Mark P., whom I worked with in Boise for many years.  I hadn't seen him in perhaps 20 years.
As it turns out, Mark (who still lives and works in Boise) was in Singapore on business-- his first visit.  He was in Chinatown to see some of the sights, as Singapore is preparing for Chinese New Years.  We met for dinner that evening, and caught up on the last 20 years.
One of these chance meetings alone would be unique, however, this is the third occasion where we have met someone with first or second order linkage back to our world in the U.S.
Perhaps there actually are only two or three hundred people in the world, who are moving about constantly.   This would make the chances of these odd encounters occurring much more likely and believable.
And yet they do happen.