After 33 hours of airplanes and airports beginning Sunday afternoon in Belgrade at 3PM, I finally arrived in Sydney at 6:20 AM, Tuesday. I was beyond tired. More like unaware of where I was, what time zone I was in, that sort of thing. My friend Theo picked me up from the airport, we had a quick breakfast, and he put me on a train into the city as he went off to work.

Long story short, I got to his place but because of some confusion and miscommunication, I was locked out of his place for the next 3 hours. But, magically, by now I wasn’t tired anymore, just coasting.

Instead of cursing my fate and rotten luck, I decided to take the advice in Thich Nhat Hanh’s book “Peace is Every Step” which I’d picked up in the Bangkok airport. So I started practicing mindfulness, to breathe and smile, and be aware of all the things around me. The strange bird songs, the incessant streams of airplanes approaching for landing at the airport, and the unfamiliar vegetation, like this thing that looks like corn on the cob growing on a pine tree: