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Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Day 48, Monday, 2nd, and Day 49, Tuesday, 3rd January, 2012

If I had been Sachin Tendulkar or Sehwag, and on the crease opposite Australians in the currently playing test match, I would have been very nervous as I am now close to completing my half century on this land that is Saudi Arabia. Well, I am not any of those people, and I am certainly not nervous, more jubiliant than I had thought I would be when I had come here over a month and a half ago. Thanks to the availability of the net, this blog, my readers (you, my dear friends), the cheap calls to my family and friends via VOIP every day, the quiet and calm of this small town, the unpolluted air, the friendly colleagues, the easy hours of work, the daily brisk walks and healthy food options that have enabled me to lose nearly 4 kilograms and the diverse activities that I undertake when I am free, I am quite content here. 


The last two days passed nicely enough. There were just 8-9 patients in the entire day on Monday, and even fewer on Tuesday. As I am not on ER duties, I was completely free to do my own thing after leaving the hospital in the afternoon. I must say that Monday turned up an unexpected surprise, and I worked on this surprise on Tuesday, so that I am quite happy here on Wednesday as I write this.


So, what exactly was the surprise, I can hear many of you ask me. The surprise was a 1 km walk along the main road of Al Muweh in the direction opposite to the one I take everyday to go to the Hospital. There is a garden here, sandwiched between the Tareeq Abdulla of Al Muweh and the Jeddah Riyadh highway.


A garden? Yes, a garden! I write this from hearsay that is possibly correct, since the sources include some informed people. The town has received generous largesse from the administration, and they have used this to decorate the town with lighted roadway lights, sculptures (made from stone, mud and wood), artificial and natural patches of greenery along the pavements on both sides of Tareeq Abdulla, and this garden, that was inaugurated last year. It is a landscaped garden (see photos on the new page I created to showcase the garden), with seats and umbrellas, and children's slides and swings, and a beautiful water fountain and just ahead, a water stream. Alas, children of this town have vandalised most of the artifacts. They have broken many of the toys, tilted over the seats, jammed the fountain nozzles so that its pump got burnt and play football where there is natural grass overgrowth so that the grass has withered away. Although I did not go close to the swings and slides, I think many of those are also broken.


In spite of the above problems, the garden was a sight for sore eyes. I visited it thanks to my room mate Dr. Niaz and his Pakistani friend who works in the Saudi Electric Co in a senior job as an overseer of connections and transmission of electricity in the entire region. This visit was between Maghrib and Ishaa  prayers, and we combined it with a rigorous walk that helped shed some flab (I hope). I resolved to re-visit the garden the next day with a camera. 


This is exactly what I did on Tuesday. I went there immediately after my return from the hospital, and I carried with me my Canon DSLR this time. The photos that I took there are in the new page I just created, and the photos of the birds I saw there are in the Photographs:Nature page.


Do read and comment on this post and also visit the photography pages to share your observations/comments. Thank you.

1 comment:

Ravi Pandit said...

Shame about the disfigurement and vandalism. I hadn't experienced this in the Gassim province. The times they are a changing.