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Saturday, October 05, 2013

My Second Trip to Riyadh - V

I must apologise for the delay in posting this installment of my Riyadh trip. A few things happened along the way, and left me with no time to update my blog. So, here goes: 

The new day began early, as I wished to reach the conference venue well in time. I left Mufaddal's house at about 15 minutes past eight, and reached the conference venue within the next 20-odd minutes. However, the first sessions had already started. I rushed in to join the session on acute neurological problems. As the morning wore on, I moved to other sessions, including those on genetic disorders and epilepsies. During my visit to the poster section, I had the occasion to meet Dr. Tajul Ari from Malaysia. He and I have interacted on FB and I admire his knowledge and enterprise. He is originally from Hyderabad, and is presently working in Malaysia in the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital as a Pediatric Neurologist with special interest in movement disorders. He presented 2 posters in this year's conference. It was a pleasure to meet him. I wanted to spend more time with him to get some tips on how to clear part III of MRCPCH (he is one), but as luck would have it, I was unable to do so. 

I had also met a few other new people, including a few doctors from India (one of them a female speaker from NIMHANS, and the other, an adult neurologist from Aurangabad, with a 100-bedded neuro hospital in his city). I also met Dr. Farooq, a specialist Pediatrician who had come from the Eastern province (Hafr' batan) - and he and I hit it off well together. 

Lunch was as interesting as the previous day's offering. So were the snacks that accompanied the different snack breaks. The scientific fare was absorbing. At the end of the day, I received my "Attendance" certificate. After this, I went back to Mufaddal's home. In the evening, I went to the car garage and collected my car; the Syrian mechanic who owned the garage charged me SR 750/= I also requested his Indian assistant Rizwan to fix a few other minor issues, which he did. He also helped me to buy a hydraulic jack at a nearby retail store. 

Later, we (i.e. Mufaddal and I)  went to Khayyam restaurant where we had an interesting dinner. I cannot remember the name of the place, but the food was reasonable and not very expensive.

The next day saw us visiting a restaurant to eat pani-puri; I also had one Punjabi samosa which, unfortunately, wasn't so good; and parcelled some stuff to take back with me to Al Muwayh when I returned. All day long, I stayed in, except foa few visits to a nearby STC showroom where I purchased an unlimited STC sim card for r  In the evening, we went to Lulu's hypermarket, where, after some shopping, we ate at Darbar restaurant - the unique Mughlai joint, where the food was finger-licking good.

It was on the next morning at a little after 6 a.m. that I left Riyadh and made the return trip to Al Muwayh, reaching my home just a little after half past twelve in the afternoon. Thus, this highly interesting Riyadh trip had ended. 

Thank you for reading.

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