WEIRD E-MAIL

I have a throw-away Hotmail account I use whenever I need to sign up for anything. I check it every couple of days to clear it out and to see if anything relevant has come in. I don’t conduct any personal correspondence with it, nor do I give out the address to people.

A few days ago, I received a non-spam message. The text of that message is as follows:

Hi Erwin,

I’m not sure if I’ll go water running this afternoon but maybe in the next couple days during public or university swim hours, John said that they have short periods in between the races.

Lets go for some underwaterrunning or a bike ride in the next days. I’ll write you an e-mail or you can give me a call, 604-222-xxxx.

Take care, Andreas

For starters, I don’t know any Andreas’… well at least I don’t think I do. Also, I don’t know anyone named John. Now as random as e-mail can be, look at the phone number that was left, the area code is 604 and the prefix is 222. That’s a Vancouver number and more specifically, a prefix for in and around UBC. Adding to the puzzle is that when I traced the IP back, I got the address of an AMS computer, which meant it probably got sent at one of the public terminals in the SUB.

Was it by totally random chance that someone sent me an e-mail by accident, and we both just happen to be in the same city and we both are involved with the same university? Or is there a thread of commonality between us?

I’m kinda tempted to call that number, but I bet it would get uncomfortable. Andreas, if you are reading this by some odd chance, please contact me!