sabrinamari | Alex (left) and Maria (right)

The first night I showed up at Habitat HQ, the Melbourne hostel I discovered during my travels, I found that I had miscalculated and failed to book weekend accomodations. This was a problem---and it could have been a really big problem, except for the kind Irish girl---Maria---who found me panicking in the women's bathroom and helped me book a room above a pub down the street.

Although we agreed to meet in the bar later, she couldn't come. I thought I'd never see her again, and sent her an email of thanks.

When I went downstairs the next morning, the guy at the desk told me that although they were booked solid for Thursday night, there *was* space for me over the weekend. I jumped on that right away and quietly prayed my thanks while he booked me into a sweet, all-woman six-room dorm with an attached bathroom.

When I showed up for the weekend, I had a surprise waiting. As I walked into my dorm, I saw Maria perched on the top bunk opposite me.

"Maria?" I exclaimed, "What are you doing here?"

"Sabrina!" she answered, equally startled. "You're back!"

And so, instead of saying a silent good-bye, I spent the next three days chatting and hanging out in the evenings with my savior and our other roommate, a hedge fund manager from London. I took Maria to dinner the next night and heard all about her life, her story and her dreams for the future.

It turns out that she got a degree that involved some form of research and writing not unlike a Ph.D., and she has a background in anthropology. She has an easy time creating rapport with people and wants to be a life coach sometime in the future.

Right.

So, apparently, even if I travel halfway across the world, I will be found by anyone with a background in writing, research, anthropology and/or medicine (my first night's roommates at that hostel included three nursing grad students from Kansas---and I think they were the only other people over 34 in the whole place).

This also happened at Uluru, where I was befriended by Nina, a German woman who has just finished her Ph.D. She is revising her dissertation on the literature created by children of Holocaust survivors and is currently grappling with the immense challenge of turning her diss into a book.

We spent an evening at dinner laughing until we choked over the dysfunctions of dissertation committees and the eccentrities of academic advisors.

It's nice to know to know that I'll always have like-minded people to hang out with.

And, of course, Alex helped run a hedge fund in London. So, you know, I get to enjoy my favorite people: finance geeks, researchers, writers and medical folks.