Oh yeah! Smaller than you think!
I went to work one time for a New York outfit by the name of Amerada Hess who immediately sent me to a little island (Arzana Island) (bout a mile long by 1/2 mile wide) in the Arabian Sea 110 miles offshore from Abu Dhabi near the border with Qatar. When I got on that twin otter at Abu Dhabi airport headed out to this island I was asking myself just what the H*LL I had gotten myself into this time as I just knew that there would not be a soul on that Island that I knew.
WRONG! Within a couple of hours of my arrival I had discovered that half the people on that little island were folks I had worked with at other times and places. If you work in the "awl" patch it really is a small world!