No, it is not!
I am so glad to share this wonderfully inspiring experience of my recent trip from Venice, Italy to Phoenix Arizona and from Phoenix Arizona back to Venice Italy.
I have become used to unconditionally trusting and following my inner guidance, my intuition.
A few years ago, I would sometimes set two alarm clocks to make sure that I would not oversleep.
At home, I still have two alarm clocks, but I no longer use them for the purpose of interrupting my sleep, my sweet slumber. I never use them in their quality as alarm clocks. They merely serve as clocks to inform me about the passing of time while I am conscious and awake.
More than a year ago I found out that I am allergic to the disturbing sound of a ringing alarm clock. One evening I was very tired and went to sleep after setting the alarm clock for the following morning. As tired as I was, I should have slept deeply and peacefully for eight hours. But my system sensed the subtly aggressive energy and presence of the alarm clock that was ready and set to brutally disrupt the serene silence and my sweet slumber with a sharp high-pitched ringtone that my subconscious mind was no longer willing to accept or tolerate.
It had already happened to me time and time again that I always woke up just a minute before the alarm clock started to ring. I always woke up before the alarm clock was ringing and turned it off before it could ring.
Although I was extremely tired, I literally woke up half a dozen times during the night, every hour (!) and when I looked at the alarm clock, I realized that I still had more than just a couple of hours to rest and relax. Finally, shortly after sunrise, I woke up and looked at the alarm clock exactly one minute before it would have started emanating its sharp, high-pitched ringtone, disrupting the serene silence of this beautiful morning. Luckily, I prevented this from happening as I immediately turned it off and have never set it again since that morning. I was still tired. I had not been able to sleep properly because my system rejected the impending acoustic disturbance of the alarm clock.
From then on, I have never again used an alarm clock.
I must say that I was amazed at myself and at the tremendous power of my subconscious mind and my intuition.
Since then, I have never ever used an alarm clock. When I go sleep, I determine precisely when I wish to wake up, and I surely and reliably wake up exactly when I plan to. Sometimes my system is over-zealous and makes me wake up just a bit earlier than I had hoped to, reassuring me of the strength of my willpower and the clarity and strength of my conscious and subconscious mind. For example, I went to sleep at 7 p.m. in the evening and thought of waking up shortly after midnight or around 1a.m. to work on my next book. I woke up half an hour before midnight, but then I went for another nap until 1 a.m. and further for another nap until 2 a.m., I finally immersed myself in the task of writing at around 3 a.m. and continued until 1:30 p.m., for more than nine hours straight. Two days before, I had been writing from 3:00 p.m. until 3:30 a.m. in the morning, for a total of twelve hours. Throughout the years I have sometimes worked for twenty hours nonstop when creating my artwork. For example, when I was painting the floor (about 150 square meters) in Venice in a space that now hosts the Feltrinelli book shop.
My subconscious mind is highly disciplined and always reliably executes my orders.
I have trained myself to wake up exactly when I want.
Usually, the night before I embark on a long-distance trip, I cannot sleep. However, the night before I went on my trip to Phoenix Arizona, I was really tired because I had slept very little the previous night. At about 4 a.m. I dozed off into a sweet, refreshing slumber. I slept deeply and peacefully for two hours straight, until 6 a.m. whereupon I woke up rested, relaxed, refreshed and full of energy and enthusiasm. I finished preparing my luggage and got ready to get to the airport. I was perfectly on schedule.
Early in the morning on Monday November 27th I headed to the airport (Venice Marco Polo) to board my flight to Frankfurt.
As there were no direct flights from Venice Italy to Phoenix Arizona, I had to fly from Venice to Frankfurt, from Frankfurt to Toronto and from Toronto to Phoenix.
During the flight to Frankfurt, I got acquainted with a practicing Buddhist, who was born in Tibet and now lives in the United States of America. He occupied the window seat next to me on my right.
From Frankfurt I flew to Toronto. In Toronto I had to wait twelve hours for my connecting flight to Phoenix.

I used some of the time to check on my Canadian friend, Gary, who had invited me to Canada in 2017. We met in Venice where he stayed for an extended vacation in May 2017 and we had got into conversation because he was staying at my next-door neighbour’s apartment (she lived in Rome and rented out her Venetian apartment to academic visitors).
When I went to Toronto for the first time, my new Canadian friend and I attended the Toronto Festival of Authors, and we also took a trip around the country, visiting Algonquin Park, Ottawa, Kingston, Stratford-upon-Avon, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and Niagara Falls. This first Canadian journey was an amazing experience that I will always remember with thankfulness.
In the following years, I stayed at his place for a total of five times, including when I attended Bob Proctor’s life event July 2018 in Toronto.
I last met Gary in person in summer 2019 in Toronto, right after my first trip to New York where I had been interviewed by Jess Todtfeldt for the Times Square Today TV show and delivered a talk at United Nations Headquarters.
Over the next couple of years, we kept in touch by email, and when I knew I would be in Toronto the evening of Monday November 27th until Tuesday November 28th (Gary’s birthday!), 2023, I reached out to my friend by email and text message. It was strange that I received no reply to these messages.
When I arrived at Toronto airport, I tried to call him on the phone, but again got no response. So I took a taxi to make a sidestep to North York. I explained to the driver that I needed to be back at the airport the next morning to get on my connecting flight to Phoenix Arizona, but in the meantime, I wanted to see if my friend was still alive and still living at the same place.
The taxi driver was wearing a turban and had a long white beard; he struck me as a spiritually highly evolved being. He barely spoke, but I could sense an incredibly clear, pure, high-vibrational energy, and he was also an excellent driver. In the silence of this taxi ride, I felt a thoroughly harmonious connection both to the world and to infinite space. When we arrived at the luxurious apartment building in North York, the driver was waiting for me while I walked inside the building. I took an elevator to the 12th floor, knocked on the door, but no one answered. I got back downstairs and into the taxi.
On the way back to the airport I got into conversation with the driver. I asked him what his favourite mantra was, and he shared it with me. As I was interested in his meditation practice, he also readily shared how he worked with sound, visualization and imagination when reciting his mantra. We spoke about spiritual awareness in contemporary society. It was a very inspiring conversation!
Back at Toronto airport, I spent the rest of the night working on my next book, taking an occasional nap, before I checked in for my flight to Phoenix Arizona.

I spent a week in Phoenix, I was a speaker at Go All In Fest, hosted by Nim Stant.
On Tuesday December 5th, I boarded my flight from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport to Toronto Pearson International Airport.

However, due to the weather conditions, the flight from Toronto to Zurich (Switzerland) was delayed by two and a half hours. When the plane touched down on the following day, December 6th around lunchtime, in Zurich, I had missed my connecting flight to Venice, which was the only direct connection from Zurich to Venice. There was just one direct flight from Zurich to Venice.

I called the Customer Service of Air Canada in Montreal, and they rescheduled my flight connection. As I was waiting for my flight to Vienna, from where I was supposed to catch the connecting flight to Venice, I saw that the flight was delayed by one and a half hours, which would meant that I would have missed the connecting flight from Vienna to Venice.
So, again, I called the Customer Service of Air Canada, and they rescheduled my flight, assuring me that I would arrive in Venice before midnight.
And, luckily, the flight to Frankfurt was delayed by less than an hour, so I managed to catch my connecting flight to Venice. The plane that was supposed to land in Venice at 22:40 was already on the runway at 22:39 at Marco Polo airport with the lovely rooftops that look like the hats people wore in the era of Marco Polo.

When I got to the luggage carousel, my carry-on luggage was right there, ready for me to pick up.
When checking in at Phoenix Airport, I was asked check in my carry-on luggage too, because the aircraft already had too many passengers with carry-on items. So I was waiting for my suitcase to show up on the carousel.
As my suitcase did not appear, I approached one of the airport staff members, easily recognizable by their uniform. I said “Buonasera, Lei lavora qua?” (“Good evening, do you work here?”) “Purtroppo, si!” (“Yes, unfortunately.”) And he said that with ease and grace, effortless elegance, natural charm and nonchalance. Those of you who have never been to Venice might be wondering how an airport staff member could express himself that way. This is part of what I love about Venice, that I can blend in with the people who unapologetically express their emotions. Countless people in other parts of the world desperately try to reconnect to their own emotions. Believe me, there is no way of trying to connect to your own emotions, you just do it.
I was waiting for another twenty minutes until I got to talk to someone at the bagagli smarriti (lost-and-found desk). Apparently, my suitcase was still in Frankfurt. I was pleased to know that my luggage had been located and I was eager to know when it would arrive in Venice. I was informed that it would arrive on the following day, with the plane from Frankfurt, touching down shortly after twelve thirty, around lunchtime. I was very much looking forward to getting my suitcase because my bunch of keys, including the keys to my apartment, were in the suitcase. I had put them there just a couple of days before because I was not using them while I was in Phoenix, and when preparing my luggage, I had only focused on having all my items safely packed in my luggage and the bunch of keys remained in the suitcase. Usually, I would have put it into my handbag, but I did not think of it when getting ready to get to the airport.
When I was waiting for my luggage at Venice airport, just for a short moment, I remembered that exactly thirteen years ago, on December 6th, 2010, I had arrived back from Israel in Vienna where I lived at the time.
While I had been preparing for the journey, I was looking forward to visiting some wonderful Jewish and Israeli friends. As a teenager, I had become a great fan of one of Israel’s greatest authors, Ephraim Kishon.
Before this trip to Israel, the last time I had last enlisted the services of an airline was in 1996 when I was flying from Moscow to Munich. On this occasion, the customer service provided at the airports and during the flight was consistently polite and respectful.
On my way to Tel Aviv in November 2010, at the El Al security gate at Vienna airport, I was interrogated by a certain Mister Cohen who asked me some absurd questions regarding the purpose of my trip. I responded to his questions clearly and coherently, but he was never satisfied with my answers. All of my luggage was inspected, and I then had to undergo a pat-down search which I found upsetting. This was not a good way to start my journey! From Tel Aviv I had to travel across the desert to Be’er Sheva and then on to Meitar. When I arrived at my destination, I still had to wait for two days for my checked-in luggage to arrive. When it finally arrived, some of my personal items were missing, including the socks I used to wear at night and my bunch of keys.
(Over the years that followed my trip to Israel, I became increasingly aware and more and more alert to my conscious perception of the subconscious collective paradigm. What had happened on my trip to Israel was merely an illustration of this governing principle within our collective subconscious mind that most people are not consciously aware of.)
For the following three months, until March 2011, I was engaged in an energy-consuming email and phone conversation with El Al, the Israeli Airline that almost made me lose any desire to ever travel by air again. After three months, they finally gave me a refund of a few hundred euros because I had to change all the locks on my Vienna apartment door. After this experience, I swore to myself to never travel by air again!
Only Gary’s invitation to Canada made me change my mind.
In some way, a story has come full circle as exactly 13 years later, in 2023, I had this positive experience of honest and dedicated customer service.
Throughout this lifetime I have come to realize that I can perfectly and completely rely on my intuition. I am always divinely guided by my intuition. When you let the Universe do its job, things are always working out for you. You simply need to trust, detach and surrender to your highest good.
Rest, relax, recharge and randomly reap richly rewarding results.

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. – William Shakespeare
When I walked into the beautifully designed departure hall with the long, elegant, slightly curved ceiling with a diagonal pattern of square glass windows, it was almost midnight. The Marco Polo airport of Venice (Venezia, la Serenissima), was filled with love, light, peace, silence and serenity. I was looking for a spot where I could spend the night and where I could work on my next book, write down some affirmations, and, maybe get some rest. The most inviting spot, a group of seats near an elevator, beautified by some green plants was already partially occupied by a young lady with two big suitcases on an airport trolley in front of her. I walked up to that area and took a seat at right-angles to where she was sitting a few meters away.
In this moment, I began to think that there must be a reason for the Universe guiding me to spend the night at the airport. I was also reminded of the many other times I had trusted my intuition which was always the safest bet. Intuition is directly linked to the infinite intelligence of the Universe.
Between midnight and daybreak, I made two new friends. One was the young lady who had been in Italy for a few months for an internship at a laboratory. Although she was still in her twenties, she struck as being incredibly wise. She was waiting for her flight to Tunis and, for more than five hours, we had the most inspiring conversation. We had been speaking for less than half an hour when we were joined by a young man based in Canada on his way to visit some relatives in the Near East. These two friendly people helped me to install a language app on my phone, and they both proved to be excellent company.
On Thursday, December 7th, after about 15 hours of waiting at Venice airport, I finally picked up my luggage. When I had gone through the gate usually reserved for cabin crew members, I felt surrounded by a cheerful atmosphere. One of the staff members had seen the paper bag from Zurich airport with sticks of the renowned Toblerone chocolate clearly visible, and he said, jokingly, “Oh, we wouldn’t mind trying some of that!”
And I smiled and nodded. I continued through to the luggage collection area, and after signing the receipt for my suitcase I told the airport staff member how much I loved Venice, that it is the most livable and most lovable city on the planet. I explained that I had just been to Phoenix Arizona, advertised as “America’s Friendliest Airport”, but nothing compares to Venice. I wanted to give him some of the Toblerone chocolate I was carrying, but he asked me to repeat what I had just said about Venice being so unique. So we went back to the lost-and-found desk where there was a woman. They both smiled when I repeated that nothing can compete with Venice. The Toblerone chocolate was graciously accepted!
I have never been more satisfied and delighted by the dedication and good humour of the people working at the various airports that I passed through on this long journey.
Is good customer service dead? This year I have traveled from Europe to the USA three times. During the first two trips between Venice and New York, the customer service was good. On this last trip, however, it was excellent, and made my long journey from Venice to Phoenix a real pleasure.