Odds

Quick question:

1. What are the odds that 2 people with the exact same name have accounts in the same bank branch?
2. What are the odds that 1 other person sharing the same exact name as mine (which is by the way, extremely unique) having an account in the same bank branch as I use?
3. What are the odds that this other person is none other than me (i.e I opened 2 accounts in the same bank branch)?
4. What are the odds that I forgot that I have 2 accounts in the same branch?

Okay, that was what happened to me. Don’t laugh. I have 1 Maybank account, and 1 CIMB Account. Recently, I remembered that when I was younger, I had another Maybank account. It was in a Maybank branch quite far from my Maybank current account branch (right in the middle of town). And I’ve decided that that old account is useless, so I went to close/consolidate it. [note: No. of Maybank accounts - 2]

I filled in all the necessary forms. Then my number went up. The teller typed my name into her computer and then told me that there were two accounts in the same branch having the same name, so she needed my IC (that’s Identity Card to my non-Malaysian readers) to verify that I am me.

That was when the first and second questions popped into my head. I mean, my name is very rare. I once did a check, and the closest match I have is a girl in Singapore (different surname), and a girl in China (ah, my name sounds girlish). So what were the odds?

I gave the teller my IC. She checked, and after a while, she told me both accounts in the branch… were mine. Okay. I told myself. That’s odd. So I asked her if she meant my other account (a current account). She told me, no. The other account was opened some 10 years back, and still have a small amount of money in it. I have a total of 3 accounts in Maybank. WTF. What are the odds?

Apparently, I had opened 2 accounts in the same branch, and not remembered it. What are the odds of that?

Ah, but in the end, all went well. I consolidated everything into 1 Maybank account. So there.