How This Trip Happened
On September 30, 2025, a monsooner named Yuhan — who’s been on many trips with me — randomly invited me to watch her favorite anime that had a surprise 2-week return to theaters: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, originally released in 2006.
I don’t usually watch movies in theaters anymore. I certainly don’t get invited to hang out with a friend specifically to watch one; it’s been that long. I’m not that into anime. And this was an anime re-released nearly two decades after its original run, showing at Regal Cinemas Union Square, which happens to be a few blocks from where I live. The whole thing felt so random that I said yes.
After the movie, something compelled me to keep the evening going. I took Yuhan to dessert a few blocks away at Mango Mango on Astor Place, where we actually got a table (it’s usually too busy to bother waiting for). Over dessert, she told me she wasn’t interested in any of my upcoming listed monsoons, but she would come on one if it had a magical winter wonderland vibe. I thought of Finnish Lapland and pulled up some photos on my phone. She’d never heard of Lapland before. When she saw the photos she said, “That’s the one.”
I explained how my monsoons work: they’re chosen based on serendipity and chance. If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen. And if it was going to happen in the near future, the only time I could go was February 2026; I already had monsoons booked every single month for the next year except February.
Then on October 8, 2025 — that’s 8 days later mind you — Keseena, another monsooner, asks me if I’d be free to attend her wedding in February 2026.
When I asked where, she showed me the invitation.
It was Lapland. The Ice Chapel at the Arctic SnowHotel.
I sent it to Yuhan immediately:
Calvin: Literally days after we talked about it, I got this invitation!
Calvin: The ice chapel is in Lapland! Don’t think you can come to the wedding but looks like I’ll be in Lapland already in February! I’ll make a trip out of it. I just created the itinerary for Lapland if you’re still interested. After all, you’re the one who planted the seed last week before I got this invitation a few days later… The universe is talking again!
Yuhan: Haha Yayy I am down for Lapland!! And I am surprised because I thought you don’t attend weddings?
She’s right — I generally don’t. But when the universe arranges things like this, you don’t argue.
The Keseena Thread
And Keseena herself? She’s a result of serendipity too: maybe the most convoluted chain of coincidences I’ve ever documented on this blog.
A recap: Back in early 2018, Dave Zhou — a monsooner from my Spring 2014 Cuba and Winter 2014 Palawan trips, and one of my first guides — asked me if I could host a friend of his from Mauritius who had couchsurfed with him in Bali earlier that year. I couldn’t, given my overnight work schedule. But this mutual friend extended her NYC stay by a few days, so we ended up meeting for a quick 30-minute coffee one afternoon before she had to catch her overnight bus to DC. I teased her for leaving the city so soon before trying shisha with me at my favorite bar. Her name was Keseena.
Later that evening, I get a message from Keseena: she had missed her bus and needed an emergency place to crash. I obliged. In the course of picking her up, we ran into the friend I had just had dinner with again — in a completely different part of the city — who was with another friend who casually mentioned he’d been hanging out with Jenn, another monsooner, just one hour earlier.
I ended up hosting Keseena the next 2 nights, as if she was destined to couchsurf with me all along. And right as another potential monsooner named Esha was backing out of an upcoming trip, Keseena wondered aloud if she could take her place. As we pondered the craziness of such a last-minute decision and how we needed one more sign, the very next minute Keseena got a call from colleagues she’d worked with in South Africa, letting her know they had just arrived in Western Europe and half-heartedly joked that she should join them for the weekend.
Within the hour, Keseena booked a flight to Frankfurt and left right then and there. She met up with us in Budapest the next day.
Confused? This might come in handy:
That trip led to more trips. Those trips led to a friendship. That friendship led to Keseena meeting Dominic in Zanzibar. Zanzibar led to a long-distance relationship. The long-distance relationship led to a wedding invitation in an Ice Chapel in Finnish Lapland — landing in my inbox exactly 8 days after a girl who leapt through time planted the seed over dessert on Astor Place.
The Pattern
If this sounds familiar, it should.
2 Novembers ago, on my flight home from Rapa Nui, I chose to rewatch Interstellar for the first time in 10 years. Its story of time, love, and synchronicity — of Cooper entering a tesseract where time becomes physical, using a watch to send messages across space-time to the people he loves — resonated with how my life has unfolded. At 36,000 feet I wondered: could the serendipities in my life be echoes from my future self, or my late father, or someone yet to come, reaching back to guide me?
When I landed, still lost in that thought, I came home to a surprise: 33 friends and monsooners had spent weeks organizing a gift — the very same watch from Interstellar, designed to connect across time — arriving just as I was contemplating its meaning.
And now, barely a year later: a friend randomly invites me to a 2006 anime I had no business watching. Over dessert I show her photos of a place she’s never heard of. 8 days later I’m invited to a wedding at that exact place, during my only open month, for a bride who only exists in my world because she missed a bus 7 years ago.
And the anime? The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
I can’t make this up. And at this point, I’ve stopped or even forgot to remind others of the pattern when trying to explain it. I just continue to pay attention.
- Mel “Monsooner” Jeng, 7 time monsooner returning from Park City, Caribbean At World’s End, Extreme NE America, Bhutan, Crete and Le Tren Bleu
- Sampson “Puffin Sniper” Lau, 6 time monsooner to Syria, Svalbard, Australia, The Pacific Coast Highway, Vancouver, and Sardinia!
- Yuhan “Chief Barista Officer” Lee: 6 time monsooner returning from Spain Tip to Tip, Easter Island, Tomorrowland, The Hokkaido Snowpocalypse and The Greek Epic
- Melissa “Employee Discount” Rios: 2 time monsooner returning from Tomorrowland 2025 and Isle-land of Man
- Keseena “The Bride” Chengadu: returning from Central Europe
Introducing our newest generation of monsooners:
And where we’re actually monsooning in 2 weeks:
Want to join us? More details about the trip can be found here: FEBRUARY 2026
