The United States may be a melting pot, but with this new job of mine, I’ve found out that Sydney is an incredibly multicultural city. And it doesn’t seem to matter where someone is from, respiratory disease is an equal opportunity aggravation. In the last five days, I’ve logged 300 kilometers, visited 60 homes and heard a dozen different languages. Changing air filters isn’t glamorous, but in the ten minutes it takes to do the job, I’ve met interesting people, learned new things and spread a little joy. An Assyrian-speaker named Shaman told me he was a Christian from Iraq and when I apologized for what my country was doing to his, he got off his bed, stuck out his hand and shook mine. “Saddam was my president, but it was not my fault,” he
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