So, today I’m walking around Kyoto with my parents to go to a restaurant. I haven’t eaten breakfast; I’m kinda hungry. Prerna has been complaining nonstop for what’s probably half an hour about how she thinks we’re wasting time walking around; how she wants to just take a taxi over to a restaurant; how eating is wasting time and how much of a rush we’re in for time (my mom has a strong checklist mentality to her vacations – she wants to see everything on her list, which in turn makes it much less of a vacation to Robbie and I). The first lunch spot we dropped by said that we couldn’t eat there, since it was reservations-only or something like that. So I’m getting hangry, Prerna’s being annoying.

And then I walk right into a pole.

Seriously, I have no idea how that happened. I guess I was looking at my phone trying to navigate and figure out exactly where we were all walking to – but in any case I wasn’t looking ahead, and I just slam my face right into a tall metal pole (probably a streetlight, I didn’t really check). My mom starts laughing, and I’m just pissed. My face hurts. My glasses are a bit loose.

I could have told Prerna to quit complaining. Giving into anger is a default setting – it’s easy to do on Autopilot. Instead, I just put in my AirPods and turned on Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride (yeah, from Lilo and Stitch). And suddenly, I stopped being so angry. The noise-cancelling blocked out the complaints; it’s hard to be mad when you’re imagining surfing the barrel (which a friend said was dangerous? That certainly won’t stop me from putting it on my bucket list. Honestly, I just want to do it more.)

We ended up having Thai food. Everyone was just hangry. It’s amazing how much food helps things. Don’t pick anger. Pick surfing the barrel and shrimp fried rice.